Last week was the grand finale of Engine London’s ‘Lift Off’ challenge. As I’ve written before, the idea was pretty simple: Each agency was given the opportunity to take over a lift in the Engine building for two weeks. This was to be used to deliver a unique ‘elevator pitch’ that would explain what they do to staff from other agencies and visitors.
If you’re like me and have worked in data your whole career, you’ve probably spent a disproportionate amount of time trying to explain to your friends and family what you actually do. “No, I don’t sell lists, I don’t send junk mail, I actually try to stop people sending junk mail. I look for patterns of behaviour in data that marketers can react to. What do you mean you don’t get it?”.
So when my dad gave me a book written by L.E. Modesitt: “Flash” – a book categorised as science fiction – and asked ‘is this what you do, but in far distant future’ (according to Wikipedia the 24th century, and I wouldn’t argue with them) I couldn’t wait to read it. And lo and behold, I’d finally found a family member who understood what I do. Read more »
The Artist, a film directed by Micheal Hazanavicius, is brilliant.
It’s a brave film in that it flies in the face of convention, it’s beautifully directed and tells an engaging story. But it does so without any dialogue. Even the musical numbers are mute and we never actually hear the voice of Peggy Miller, the young starlet whose career takes off in the ‘talkies’ as an entertainer. We never hear the flirtatious chat between her and George Valentin, the Douglas Fairbanks look-alike leading man because it doesn’t exist – other than in a few inter-title boards.
Last week I went to a fascinating talk by Mark Earl’s basically paraphrasing his latest book “I’ll have what she’s having” – mapping social behaviour.
It is well documented that the impact social networks have
had on both consumer and brand behaviour is enormous. With total transparency
of information, and the ability to populate knowledge at lightning speed,
consumers have taken control of the brandscape in which we exist.
