Thursday, November 30, 2006

Current Nationality

So I’m on the plane to Mexico, and we’re all busily filling out those little visa forms, where you need to confirm that you have never single-handedly attempted to blow up the Houses of Parliament, or at least that if you did you now regret it. I’ve been travelling for about 24 hours at this point, which included a 6 hour stopover in Washington Dulles Airport (Dulles by name…), and I’m tired, grumpy and generally not in the mood to be trapped in a steel cylinder 32,000 feet above the Earth with a bunch of overweight Americans.

You see, that’s the problem. Not the Mexicans returning home to their families after a brief business trip to Washington, or the travellers in beads hoping to find themselves in the land of the Aztecs, but the fat, pasty middle-Americans determined to go down to Mexico for some sun, booze and free dentistry. The kind of guys who see a neighbour with severe political, social and economic problems as a bonus, since at least the local mamasitas will be impressed by their dollar bills.

I work my way down the form, ticking the relevant boxes and trying to print my block capitals neatly. And then I hear this shrieking from behind me:

Current nationality? What does that mean? I mean, what’s my current nationality?”

“I think it just means your nationality”

“Well then why the heck don’t they say that? Gosh… these Mexicans make it all so confusing…”

Soccer mum sitting behind me evidently finds is shocking, and confusing, that these damn wetbacks don’t even know that nationality is Eternal, much like the stars and stripes she has flying in her front lawn next to her picket fence.

And I sit their pondering whether I should point out that all white Americans are immigrants somewhere along the line, and that for all of them, ‘American’ is only their ‘current’ nationality.

Nah...

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Russell Davies and the death of the media budget

Now here’s an idea – get yourself one of the UK’s premier Account Planners/Communications specialists and invite him round to a major global media planning agency after work. Make sure you all have a beer and a few crisps, and then ask him to talk about the future of media. Sit back and enjoy the fireworks…

Actually, it was a really interesting talk. Russell gave the presentation he recently gave at the APG’s ‘Big Thinking’ conference (for which he won the ‘Biggest Thinker in Media’ award), which had some thought-provoking ideas, as well as a selection of ace Japanese commercials which inspired the Honda ‘Cog’ ad.

Most controversially though, he discussed how brands could still have a huge impact with zero media budget: “Take that budget, put it into production, and if you do something interesting enough, consumers will find you by themselves”. Which is a brave thing to say in the middle of one of London’s biggest media buying arms. Effectively, he was saying “You guys working in planning, you’re going to be ok. In fact, you might even be better than ok. But you guys working in TV Buying… start updating your CV…”

The thing is, he could well be right. Some of the best work of the past year, such as Nike’s Run London and Joga Bonito campaigns had a minimal media budget. And even Sony Bravia’s ‘Balls’ ad wasn’t on TV as much as you’d think - they chose to spend the money making something that was just beautiful to look at, and word-of-mouth and online communities took care of the rest.

The problem comes for the low-interest advertisers – how do you make engrossing, consumer-led content for a mortgage provider or drain unblocker? Can you do it, or do you end up with a secondary tier of brands so dull that they can’t escape the curse of the 30” TV spot?

More to the point, if the era of push advertising is over, and everything is going to be based on transmedia story-telling/Web 2.0 delivery/insert-your-favorite-buzzword-here, what does that mean for the media owners? Their major source of revenue will disappear, forcing them to air crowd-pleasing minimal-budget drivel (see ITV…), and those media owners that broadcast more premium content will need to start charging their audiences subscription fees. Which is bad news for pensioners who enjoy foreign films and students who are trying to save money for their tuition or lager.

Anyway, all good food for thought, and a thoroughly entertaining talk. Have a read of Russell Davies’ blog to find out more.

Monday, November 20, 2006

The State of the World

Went for a walk along the South Bank on Saturday morning, one of my favourite things to do in London, especially when it’s a beautiful sunny day and the tourists are out in force. They’re annoying until you remember that they’ve travelled for miles to come and visit your city – once you think about it like that, I tend to find it quite flattering.

Anyway, as part of my wander I ended up in the National Theatre looking at the Reuters ‘The State of the World’ photo exhibition, which I heartily recommend. The images are by turns horrific, inspiring, heart-warming and terrifying, but all are totally captivating. And the fact that it’s free helps as well.

Plus you get to pop out and buy a second-hand book afterwards. Go on, spoil yourself.

Reuters: The State of the World

Sunday, November 19, 2006

Tired of Being Sexy

Went to see Cansei De Ser Sexy (CSS) the other night at the Scala in King’s Cross. Ok, it’s not South London, but still plenty of Fear and Loathing in the surrounding areas, including a Irish pub that still seems to have a ‘men only’ room and a strictly-stout drinking policy…

Anyway, by the time we got there, support act The 1990s were about halfway through their set. Nice rollicking bass lines rumbling under a broad Glaswegian accent, somehow managing to sound like they could soundtrack Wacky Races. They seemed to think they were already playing a stadium gig in Houston, but it’s easy to forgive them their delusions when they’re such an affable bunch.

Quick break for a pint, then back down the front to wait for CSS to appear. For those who don’t know, they’re a Brazilian electropunkpop combo that are currently hyped in the UK as the answer to all your ass-shaking needs. And judging from the CD, the hype might be right. I was really looking forward to finding out, although was mentally preparing myself for disappointment, especially when the band took to the stage and the bloke next to me immediately started shouting ‘Get yet tits out!’. Lovely British welcome that, thanks mate.

But, once lead-singer Lovefoxxx and the rest of her motley crew take to the stage, there’s no question that this band knows what it’s doing.

They’re Brazilian, but about as far from the samba-and-football Girl From Ipanema stereotypes as you can get. If they’re anything to go by, Sao Paolo must be some kind of Brazilian Shoreditch, all angular haircuts and brightly coloured leggings (a look copied, unsuccessfully, by quite a few of the crowd). Plus their guitarist has a moustache. These fashionistas aren’t messing about.

But despite being the hard-edge of totalitarian electropunk fashion, they also manage to be bloody good fun. Lead singer Lovefoxxx (possibly the most beautiful fringe I’ve ever seen) chats with the crowd, borrows their clothes, gives them coquettish kisses on the cheek… and then gets down into the crowd to dance around with us, security desperately trying to keep her mike lead from being ripped to shreds by the revellers.

In terms of the set-list, let’s not bore ourselves by going through it one at a time, suffice to say they played the majority of their album, with Meeting Paris Hilton, and new single Alala probably being the highlights. Until they finish off with Let's Make Love and Listen to Death From Above, at which point all hell breaks loose and the crowd turn into a mad moshing funk monster, only to have Lovefoxxx give up all pretense of maintaining her calm and throwing herself over the crowd. There's nothing quite like having the greatest thing in Brazillian electropop crowdsurf over your head...

It's rare to see a band who place the emphasis so squarely on just having a great time, but that seems to be what CSS are all about. Their name comes from a quote from Jennifer Lopez, who claimed she was tired of being sexy, which the band apprarently thought was such a ridiculous comment it might make a good band name. But if they're tired of being sexy, they're clearly not tired of having fun.

Saturday, November 11, 2006

User-Generated Life

A painful amount of my day-job is spent thinking about User-Generated Content. What does it mean? How can advertisers best capitalise on it? How can brands be protected from the networking masses? What does it mean for traditional media companies? How can we make money out of it?

So in this kind of environment, it's nice to take a moment and remember that it is people that are at the heart of this seismic shift in communications, not marketing strategies. The below video's quite long, but it reminds you of the sheer variety of people that make YouTube such as fascinating place...



Semantic note: Most US advertising companies are now talking about Consumer-Generated Content, not User-Generated Content, which illustrates just how much they are putting the cart before the horse. Would it be totally radical to suggest people called it People-Generated Content? Or even just 'stuff that people make'? With this in mind, have a look at the new BuzzMetrics system from Nielsen and shudder.

Avenue Q

Went to see Avenue Q this week, a musical featuring puppets and such show-stopping tunes as 'The Internet is for Porn' and 'Everyone's a Little Bit Racist'. I'd heard great reviews of it, both from my mates and in the media, which always makes me a little anxious that it'll be a dissappointment. But far from it, it's one of the most entertaining things I've ever seen.

Basically, it sits somewhere between Sesame Street and South Park. Human actors stand on the stage controlling the puppets, but after a couple of songs you hardly even notice they're there. And most bizarrely, everyone in the audience seemed to be getting really involved, with a couple of people I was with getting genuinely emotional during one particularly heart-wrenching scene...

And how can you not love a musical that includes the refrain:

"Schadenfreude!
Making the world a better place..."

Adventures in Chicken

So I'm in Millenium Chicken on a Wednesday night, swaying slightly while Shiva throws together a tasty piece of fried foul for my drunken pleasure. There's a tall black guy playing the fruit machine in the corner, wearing a dirty tracksuit with the hood pulled up and looking slightly shifty. In fact, if David Cameron had been in that chicken shop with me at 1 o'clock in the morning it would have been the ideal time to find out how serious he is about his 'Hug A Hoodie' scheme...

No change there then. All walks of life come through this chicken shop, it's one of the reasons I love the place. The guy on the fruit machine turns around and asks me for a light, so I reach over and light the tightly rolled fag hanging from his mouth. It occurs to me that I didn't think you could smoke in here, but I make a mental note to start doing it. Just then, Shiva starts laughing, and implores the hoodie-guy to open the door at least. It's then that I smell it - that little roll up is filled with some seriously strong hash, and the heady scent of it is mixing pleasantly with the smell of burnt grease.

I prop the door open slightly with my foot, while hoodie-guy starts laughing and offers Shiva a drag, "Come on man, it'll make you relax a little..."
"No sir, if I am smoking this I am sleeping while I am working!", Shiva giggles. All three of us are chuckling now as I pick up my food and start to leave.

And as I leave, I can't help thinking how nice it is to live somewhere with a friendly chicken shop and a relaxed attitude to the law. And how no number of Conservative policy statements will ever be as effective as a giggle and a burger.

Thursday, November 09, 2006

Monkey Media

So Dennis Publishing have launched a brand new product, Monkey magazine, in an attempt to stem the inevitable decline of their profits. With the print medium slowly shrivelling and dying, and their flagship product Maxim struggling to translate its brand online without getting lost in the sea of lad sites, I can understand their motivations.

But why they have gone ahead with Monkey is totally beyond me. They came into our offices a few weeks ago, and although I managed not to physically attack them it was a close run thing…

So here’s the thing. I love blokey magazines – all those pictures of scantily clad ladies, articles about blokes drinking their own body weight in Estonian lager or jumping the Thames on a tricycle… it’s all great stuff. Plus you’ve got reviews of CDs, books, cameras, digital hoojimeflips… And then, on the other hand, I love wasting time on the internet (especially whilst at work…). Again, loads of funny videos, little viral games, pictures of scantily clad ladies, reviews of CD and cameras and…

It’s at this point that Dennis Publishing stopped and had their eureka moment: “No one’s buying our magazines, and everyone’s talking about the internet. Unfortunately, we don’t know the first thing about the internet. But it sounds like people use it at work during their lunch hour for exactly the same thing as magazines. So let’s just email everyone a magazine! Wow! And then tell everyone we’ve done something revolutionary! Yeah! Job done, let’s go to lunch!!”.

But it’s nonsense. Every Wednesday, they send the Monkey ‘magazine’ to your in-box. You open it and can flip through the pages, read articles, watch funny videos and stare at naked ladies. Great. But you have to go through it page by page, in order. That’s to say, it’s a totally linear experience. And everyone knows the most exciting thing about the online experience is that it’s non-linear. Then there’s the videos, which are grainy and don’t load fast enough. Then there’s the fact that most people don’t have a full 25 minute block to devote to looking at tits in the office, and would rather do it by skimming the odd viral sent to them by a friend. Then there’s the fact that the ‘boss button’, supposedly to make it look like your working, takes a good couple of minutes to load and opens in a small corner of your screen, leaving Holly Valance still artfully draped in all her 15 inch glory across the centre.

I don’t want to be so negative about all this, but I really can’t understand what Dennis are thinking. The lack of attention to little details is unbelievable – on the review page, there’s a camera review, and then a phone number to call if you would like to purchase one. But you can’t by it online. Why not? What’s the point of an online magazine that doesn’t connect to the rest of the internet? Plus at the moment it doesn’t look as though you will be able to access previous issues of the magazine, so there’s no archive of ‘funniest animal injuries ever’ or whatever. Again, this would have been such a simple thing to do, but they missed it.

So there you go, that’s an update on what’s happening in the world of press – it’s floundering in a blind panic. And with the exception of FHM, who have delivered an amazingly integrated digital offering, complete with MMS, WAP, digital TV, the full works (and even managed to get users to pay for content…), every other player in the Men’s Monthly market seems to be struggling.

Which leaves Dennis Publishing’s latest offering looking like a total monkey.

Don’t just take my word for it: Monkey

Badly Drawn Boy


...live at Bloomsbury Ballrooms. Poshest gig i've been to in a long time, but none the worse for it. in fact, there's something quite pleasant about a gig where the audience stand on a light maple dancefloor... After apologising for playing his new material (despite Born in the U.K. being a stormer) Badly Drawn Boy proceeded to do everything to get the crowd on side, including giving a fag to a hard-up punter and mocking the inherently Bono nature of crowd participation. Looked like he was drinking tea though. Is that rock 'n' roll? Hmmm....

Isobell Campbell played support, which I can't do justice blogging from my mobile, but suffice to say that she and her band know how to put the desolate sigh into slide guitar...

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Requiem for a Candy

Went to see Candy, this year’s sex-and-drugs morality play on the nature of addiction, last night at the Ritzy. It’s basically an Australian take on Requiem for a Dream, and equally as traumatic and upsetting as that film, while also equally as great. There’s some lovely direction (and by that I mean over the top: silly camera angles, a long shot of the pretty patterns made by a trickle of honey…), a great soundtrack, and really powerful performances by both Heath Ledger and Abbie Cornish (who I may have fallen in love with last night. Which is a shame because she’s an insane junkie who covers farmhouses in lipstick graffiti poetry, and thus potentially fairly high maintenance).

It’s weird though, watching an Australian film about drug addiction. It’s every bit as gritty as a Trainspotting or Requiem for a Dream, but no matter how harrowing, it’s still set in Australia, where you can leave the city and get out to beautiful open fields within minutes. And where your dealer says “G’day” in a chipper tone as he sells you your smack. And where even junkies have swimming pools…

Dammit, if it wasn’t for all the bloody locals I’d be there in a flash.

Still, meantime I’ll just watch the film in the Ritzy (which, as ever, delivered: a couple of beers before the film, half listening to a free screening of a Spanish documentary on the revolutionary possibilities offered by organic crops. Happy days…) and ponder the greatest line of the entire film: “They say for every ten years you’re a junkie, you spend seven of them waiting”.

I just can’t imagine Lou Reed sippin’ a VB waiting for his man.

Monday, November 06, 2006

We lose Lost to Murdoch

I sent my flatmate a link to all the epsidoes of Lost, 24, Scrubs etc. online, and he wrote back to say thanks. Then asked if I knew that Murdoch had stolen it.

Well yes.

Bizarrely, was watching Badly Drawn Boy last night, at the Bloomsbury Ballrooms (lovely venue, but possibly the whitest, most middle-class gig I’ve ever been to….), and the girl behind me was loudly informing her companion that “Well they just had to chose between Desperate Housewives and Lost, they couldn’t have both. And we decided to go for Lost. Yes, it’s £980,000, but we think it’s worth it”. I’m fairly sure she actually said “£980,000 an episode”, but I’m loathe to misquote someone so outlandish.

So obviously I turned around, called her a media imperialist raping the cultural commons, and spilt her Red Stripe.