Viva La Revolución

STARVING ARTISTS

Susie Mottram writes:

Perhaps the artists that showed their work at the ARMORY SHOW aren’t exactly starving, in fact, they are probably eating a little extra foie gras this week…and so they should. I’m not about to jump on the “$130,000 for that?!?!” or “My 2 year old nephew could do that”, because guess what, someone did pay $130,000 for THAT and your 2 year old nephew DIDN’T do that.

Are there fair artists who have been called out for pandering their work to the demands of the contemporary art market? Of course. Ultimately, what is relevant is that they have figured out a way to become creative professionals, to generate income as artists but most importantly, they are participating and defining our VISUAL CULTURE.

Why should an ad agency care about an art fair? As I understand it, each of us here at the pond has an obligation to understand the ‘WHY?’ and ‘WHAT?’ that surrounds our visual culture. This understanding is what gives campaigns weight and subsequently gives a brand legitimacy in its ability to connect beyond some didactic blurb about a product with haphazard design. I’m certainly not proclaiming that attending the Armory Show was my solution to creating this said understanding, it is however, a piece of the puzzle.

Check out some of the work for youself here

Don't Miss This

We are unabashedly flogging the speech our CEO will give at the opening of this year's Global Future Marketing Summit in New York March 5th.

Read on...

FUTURE MARKETING SUMMIT CHAIRMAN’S SPEECH: CHANGE THE MODEL, CHANGE THE WORLD

Chairing the Future Marketing Summit demands that the appointed chairman set a visionary agenda for the marketing and communications industry. On March 5 Scott Goodson, founder of StrawberryFrog, will open the Future Marketing Summit NYC with a bold and challenging perspective on the future, not only for our industry, but for how he sees that future playing out within a much bigger world context. Scott will propose what he believes the new agency model of the future should be; how that might be reflected in and sit alongside a new client/brand marketer model and way of doing business; and ultimately how the work that agencies and clients do together, in generating new ideas for a new interactive consumer culture, could be leveraged to help drive the social, environmental and global change that is so badly needed within a new world model.

Please also note that Lee Maicon, our Head of Strategic Planning, will present a most exciting case on March 6th on the area of Entertainment and content. And, March 5th, our very own Tori Winn, StrawberryFrog’s ECD Interactive, will lead a distinguished panel on Technology.

More details... http://www.futuremarketingawards.com/nyc.htm

La Pequena

Julie Grinberg writes:

On a recent Sunday morning, sleepy, peaceful, streets of Santiago’s Plaza de Armas began slowly filling up with early strollers: couples, families with kids, teenagers. Milling about in the warm summer sun the morning held all the expectations of an uneventful and lazy day. Then, without a warning, as though an invisible dam, just moments ago holding back a swelling, anxious flood, burst open and in a blink of an eye crowded the streets with people who descended onto the scene in a human tsunami. At first walking, then increasing the pace, and soon running, the mob filled the square to the brim, every neighboring city corner virtually bursting at the seams.

Later we learned there were 50,000 people in all that day.

To a tourist caught off-guard, those first moments were alarming and the initial thought running through my mind was: this is a terrorist attack.

But wait, this was Chile. What’s happening? Is this the beginning of WWIII or is it …is it… a celebration?

The latter turned out to be true. However, the events leading to the day’s festivities were even more curious than the scene we observed that day, and would likely have aroused fear in American cities this day and age.

What the Chileans were so enthusiastically cheering was actually a French invasion of sorts. A few days earlier, a French street theater company took the capitol by surprise when it launched its street performance by leaving visible signs of destructions throughout the city. On the first morning of the “show” commuters were greeted with three large busses and two taxis overturned in front of Chile’s La Moneda Presidential Palace. Similarly, in a different part of town, a microbus was found burnt to ashes. The gov’t, anxious to inspire the imagination of the people, apparently spared no expense in terrorizing its citizens.

In the end, the plot was simple: a huge metallic rhinoceros runs wild, destroying anything in its paths. A six-meter tall puppet, lovingly referred to as the Little Giant, takes on and conquers the giant. But the shock value, that’s priceless.

And therein, perhaps, lie our cultural differences. In the wake of the Aqua Teen Hunger Force due to pay $2 million to the city of Boston for disturbing its tranquility, Chileans excitedly welcome mayhem into their lives.

GLOBAL SOUL BRANDING: PART 3

Scott Goodson writes:

Another trend in Global Soul Branding is "Riding the Oceans” - the idea that the blue parts of our planet can tell us more about cultural movements than the continents.

This is a world of old assimilations and new migrations, and we are perhaps at the moment very lucky to be at this stage. Here ethnic identity is not yet blurred and the world is in an exciting state of mixing and mingling and transferring of tastes. It may not last.

Take as an example the ever-growing online gaming experience phenomena. In some cases communities are continental, but most of the time global, where players are playing and chatting for hours with the same people. In this give-and-take, you get to know people and their real, as well as their virtual world. In the latter the process never stops: the world evolves round the clock hence the status of your character may change even while you sleep.

Aficionados of this world develop their networks hoping from contact to contact, meeting in forums. They know the events happening in their own country as well as any other on the planet. If not physically traveling there, they know all about it via the Internet.

I am personally engaged in the WORLD SUDOKU LEAGUE. Every day at midnight GMT a new Daily Sudoku board is uploaded to World Sudoku League and can be accessed both from the World Sudoku League website and via the Sudoku Master 3 mobile game. The scores from each Daily Sudoku board can be found at the Scoreboard page. You can browse older scoreboards through the calendar at the same page. All acquired scores are applied towards your World Sudoku League ranking.

All this contagious globalism is yours, for a small price. Or even free if you want it, on sites like www.netbabyworld.com/

Our Other Half

For your viewing pleasure, we’ve added a new photo album of StrawberryFrog Amsterdam. Here is a glimpse for the impatient ones. For a full insider’s look we invite you to visit the album.

Cartoons Declared Threat to National Security

Chris Coots writes…

The Adult Swim marketing campaign Boston authorities viewed as a terrorist threat has ruined Jim Samples, the general manager of Cartoon Network. Samples, who joined the network in 1994, was forced to resign on Friday, following an agreement by the network's corporate parent, Time Warner, to pay Boston $2 million to cover the city's costs to deal with the perceived threat.

"I deeply regret the negative publicity and expense caused to our company as a result of this campaign," Samples wrote in an internal memo. Mark Lazarus, president of Turner Entertainment Group, responded, "Jim's decision to leave his post is a reflection of his regard for the business he helped build and the people he trusts to move it forward."

It seems to me the only reason a bridge, river, and major roads were shutdown is because American hysteria will not die. Why didn’t the 9 other cities it ran in report the campaign as a terrorist threat?

The most horrible part of all this hoopla is that it failed as a worst-case scenario publicity stunt. I haven’t heard the related film, “Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theatres” mentioned more than a few times in the reports. (For those not aware, the ‘alien’ characters featured on the ‘suspicious devices’ are characters called Mooninites from the Cartoon Network/Adult Swim program ATHF.)

Thought Bubble: Where’s the line with environmental experience marketing? If these Mooninite Lite-Brites were snatched up as a threat to national security, let’s figure out how we can adjust for the future… without being boring, paranoid, or uptight. Boston.

StrawberryFrog Powernaps at Work

Check out a segment from CNN and last night's CBS Evening News reporting on the frogs indulging in a little rejuvenating siesta at work.

CBS News

CNN

GLOBAL SOUL BRANDING: PART 2

Scott Goodson writes:

What is the Global Soul?

The co-founder of StrawberryFrog, Brian Elliott put it this way:

“Back when we were envisioning what Strawberry Frog could be, we recognized the emergence of a Global Soul—a universal mindset, an electromagnetic current of people and ideas circling the globe. We saw how people in the Americas, Europe, Africa and Asia are influenced by ideas from miles away. Different cultural backgrounds collaborating can capture that common core.”

Pico Lyer describes these values in his book “The Global Soul.”  Born to Indian parents, raised back and forth between England and the United States, and living now in Japan when he's not visiting some far-flung corner of the earth, Pico Lyer calls himself "a mongrel," part of a fast-growing population of global souls who exist in many cultures all at once "and so fall in the cracks between them."

What do marketers need to know about this global soul? It is about opportunity, but it’s also about a greater sense of peril. Universal insight into human values increasingly joins more and more of us around the world, but not in the form of one top down advertising campaign. Rather its through new technology, tools, and understanding of our new world that we can help marketers attract a unified mosaic of diversity.

The way to understanding this is by looking at trends in the cultural conversation.  For now, let’s talk about one that marketers cannot ignore (expect more to be coming soon)  – "The Active Mosaic” - How yesterday’s melting pot or salad bowl is becoming a continuous amalgamation of random cultural influences.

our travel, our selves

lee maicon writes:

others (including own own mr. goodson in a recent and other upcoming posts) have more eloquently than i will here explained the effect that travel, technology and transculturalism have on us, our identities and our existence.

here's one recent and very clever example, that i love, addressing how technology and web 2.0 will impact our constructions of self. how does technology, travel and transculturalism change who we are?

william gibson's character cayce pollard's theory was that jet lag was when...

her mortal soul is leagues behind her, being reeled in on some ghostly umbilical down the vanished wake of the plane that brought her here, hundreds of thousands of feet above the Atlantic. Souls can't move that quickly, and are left behind, and must be awaited, upon arrival, like lost luggage

this may very well be true. one good thing, however, is the fact that travel forces us to experience, both new things and, particularly, ourselves. new space forces new perspective, which is why travel writing, from herodotus to kapuczynski is as engaging as it is. transculturalism can be just a more authentic representation of ourselves, unbeholden to the anchor of space or tradition or ingrained habits. (which is why planners need to get out of their offices, or desks, as the case may be.)

plus, it's fun to see new things in a new environment. get up and go somewhere. take some pictures. you might learn something.

Check out 12 websites to inspire your day

1. colette.fr/
2. pandora.com/
3. hintmag.com
4. mooch.info
5. boingboing.net
6. thefutureperfect.com/
7. digg.com/
8. flavorpill.com
9. stuartsemple.com
10. thisheartsonfire.com/
11. zoozoom.com
12. worldsudokuleague.com