Boony in New York

The One Show Pencil awards were held last week in New York, basically this is an event that recognises and gives kudos to all those wonderful examples creative excellence in print, television, radio, outdoor, innovative media and marketing, and more recently, integrated branding. Each year, an international jury of award-winning art directors, copywriters and creative directors, judge a wide variety of work, entered by a wide variety of places, from multinational advertising giants to small regional shops. Why this is of particular interest to me this year is that the Boonanza campaign spearheaded by George Patterson Y&R with involvement from Accure won a silver pencil!!! Check out carpark at Accure.

The beezneez of blogs

I'm not talking about the local boutique beer, which I'm told is quite the biz, but thats reserved for a later post. I am in fact here to tell you all that I am joining a collective of weird and wonderful things over at the beezhouse. Of course there will still be posts of a branding kind here, but I've been told that the grass is greener over there, so like a readership junkie, I have offered my services. Please support this world changing exercise by adding it to your feeders!

Personal Branding

Ok, this post is for all you Melburnians and anyone who has been in Melbourne of late. It is a post on the subject of "Personal Branding". I'm sure you would have noticed that one particular little Chinese man has been getting a lot of press and its all good press... at least on the surface. Cr John So (the Honourable Mayor of Melbourne) has somehow captured the hearts of the general public during the recent Commonwealth Games and this has somehow carried on a while after the Sierra Leone athletes were located. Now if you're like me, you have no idea how this happened and you're probably still baffled at his astronomical rise to fame. There is considerable scope here for the goat to get out and about to do some research to explain this phenomenon, but as you effective researchers will know, some qualitative groundwork is required as the first step. So before I go any further to present my thoughts (and rants) on Personal Branding, here is a brandkudos debut - an interactive cyber-poll on the very issue. In the words of Cr So himself "I invite you all" to participate if you would like to see this whole thing cracked open and the secrets revealed. Happy voting!

The Technicolour Dream Goat

Emily Bennington over at Maple Creative posted an entry on the persuasive effect of colour in communication. Taking her lead, I have decided to use more colour...if nothing else, it livens up all the blackness. For you long time readers, you will have noticed a few changes to the blogspace here at brandkudos. The most prominent one would be my profile picture which at the moment is in a bright shade of green. Using colour to reflect the my mood at the time of posting, the BGE mugshot will change colour accordingly. I'll leave the interpretation of the mood up to you... So...As Emily has pointed out, I have opted for green first to reduce the likelihood of argument.

Is the current state of the Blogosphere polluting our collective consciousness?

Dave Sifry in his latest post on the Technorati WEBLOG lays down the facts on the blogosphere as seen through the tracking eyes of Technorati. As Daves suggests, the sphere is probably much bigger, but from his figures alone, I am gasping. Here's a summary: * Technorati now tracks over 35.3 Million blogs * The blogosphere is doubling in size every 6 months * It is now over 60 times bigger than it was 3 years ago * On average, a new weblog is created every second of every day * 19.4 million bloggers (55%) are still posting 3 months after their blogs are created * Technorati tracks about 1.2 Million new blog posts each day, about 50,000 per hour There's a lot of other interesting figures on Dave's blog for those who are that way inclined, but this has further added to my fascination of the empowerment of a global conversation. The question I ask you is whether all this infolust and millions of voices are polluting our consciousness as a society? I tend to think that ideas and opinions regardless how big or small cannot be considered as pollution. Yes there may be heaps of it, but this very state allows people to connect and share specialised content, in this sense, more information is OK. The bigger the blogosphere the greater the amount of tools for filtering all the white noise until you get content that is truly interesting to you. It is only the voices of those that truly resonate with me that ends up on my RSS reader. I can't agree with the notion of "information overload"...its the time of "information control". Speaking of voices that resonate with me, Seth Godin's post on Small is the New Big is a good 21st century common sense look at business and marketing, I've linked here because i am getting the vibe that Seth would agree that many little voices are crucial to the collective growth of our hyperlinked society. What do you think? What voices are resonating in your head? And who's on your RSS reader? Talk back...I'd love to hear your thoughts despite the fact that I may get some staunch opposition here.

Cool hunting

The guys at Random Culture have pointed to a good compilation of great outdoor and guerilla campaigning. Created by JWT. Check it out!

Some hidden commands for your Ipod

I know some of the readers here are proud owners of an Ipod (and why wouldn't they be) so I thought I'd share some information I stumbled across that may come in handy. I don't know how useful or relevant these are, I haven't had a chance to try them out on a Ipod myself, but thats where I am asking readers to post the results of their experiments. The original post was from Comman-Tab, there is considerable discussion here. Happy commanding!

Do you want to do your MBA?

There has been much talk between a few of us on the topic of a MBA...Well it looks like Josh Kaufman (an assistant brand manager at Procter & Gamble), along with the endorsement of change agent Seth Godin is onto something. Forget about the $$$ required for an MBA, The Personal MBA is worth a look. In keeping with my regime of life long learning, I have decided to enrol in PMBA (as well as the fact that I have read 3 books on the list already)

What the F#*K are "Best Practices"

OK people, time for my weekly dig at the Corporate Zoo. I was walking into work today after I was bitterly disappointed by Mr. Woods' attempt at defending his green jacket (woeful putting! For those of you who missed the action at Augusta). As I strolled behind two guys with nicely cut suits pondering where the hell my own golf game had gone the Sunday just passed, I overheard these two guys talk about something to do with implementing some sort of procedure for whatever they were doing. One of the guys kept going on about 'best practices'....What the fuck are best practices? Like mindless research, it seems I have found something else that really eats a me. As I thought about it some more throughout the day and decided to actually devote a little time to try an understand what everyone at management level or higher is adapting to, I seem to have come away even more confused. From what I understand, there is little explanation given by those adhering to best practices as to why they are actually doing it, but it seems that they're all very proud of adhering to them. To me, the term "best practices" means "let's copy what everyone else is doing" and once again, it brings me back to the fact that most businesses these days have no balls to actually come out and be brilliant in fear that they may get themselves into trouble. I suppose, if you are a boring business that gets by on producing safe mediocrity than "best practices" offer an extremely attractive short cut that can be easily cut and pasted into a lovely powerpoint presentation. I think its all an excuse for those sitting in their ivory towers to stay put instead of venturing outside to the real world and actually opening their eyes and ears for once. I know you might be wondering what the hell this has to do with Brand Kudos, but imagine if all businesses continue to adopt so called "best practices" what am I going to give kudos to? Originality counts especially in a market filled with "Masters of the YOUniverse" and best practices the way I see it has no originality whatsoever. As an extension to this, I read a great article in the latest strategy + business magazine: Sharpening Your Business Acumen by Ram Charan. Charan points quite clearly to the fact that business (leaders) need to look outside of their four walls and really study what is happening in world. The ability to effectively assess the external landscape drives the strategic and executional acumen so essential for the new age leader. He states verbatim: "This is the art of business acumen: linking an insightful assessment of the external business landscape with the keen awareness of how money can be made and then executing the strategy to deliver the desired results..." "...It requires transcending the old rules of thumb that are etched deep in the psyches of many executives, and it means giving up the habitual reliance on precedent (best practices??)that worked for many companies during times of more linear change. While this material might make some of you corporates shake at the knees, take note next time you're thinking about best practices. Read Charan..Hee even puts it in nice little bite size pieces you love so much: 1. What is happening in the world today? 2. What does it mean for others? 3. What does it mean for us? 4. What would have to happen first (for the results we want to occur)? 5. What do we have to do to play a role? 6. What do we do next?

What do "lovebrands" and U2 have in common? Don't ask Audi!

A reunion, a coffee and some long overdue catch up today prompted some discussion into my last post on "obsessive branding disorder", I believe "nothing new" was the general comment thrown around. So in response, I have decided to explore this branding issue further (like I said, this was bound to get some lip service). Instead of going on and boring you with my opinion on brand, I want to bore you with some passionate rant on how companies might develop a lovebrand. Some of you companies out there take note, your 4 rings won't hold you up forever, this is the market talking. Its all good and well to say "let's create a lovebrand", but spending squillions on advertising that is a sorry excuse for creative won't do it. The people behind the brand need to step up to the plate and be prepared to truly lead this discerning community of ours and deliver something far greater than a stylishly engineered lemon! Improve our lives, change our lives, connect with our beliefs...take a lesson from U2. Our discerning nature has been fuelled by our growing resourcefulness and apetite for information, it's access beyond belief; so much so that our daily lives continue to receive emails on our blackberries deep into the night, information ready and waiting for us to use for whatever the fuck we want. Aside from all this knowledge though, we are still human and are continuously in search for people with character who will help us form opinions, lead our inquisitive nature and question old principles. U2, Bono and many other modern day poets offer belief through their craft and we hang off their every note. Why can't business take this same approach? Why don't more business' offer insight and attitude I want to be part of? Here's a big clue right here companies, to create a lovebrand, you all need to buy a pair of "Flies-eyes" sunnies like Bono and see the world differently. Like most of the people close to me, I am willing to take brands to the heart, so long as they offer something true to my beliefs. But don't be fooled companies, we are discerning, cynical, judgemental and very particular. We won't like something purely because mum and dad have spent their whole lives mindlessly advocating! This is a time of information and lots of it, www.whateverthehellyouwant/butnotAudi is at our fingertips and we'll put everything you offer on trial and if you treat me like a clueless car owner, then we'll hyperlink your ass to oblivion. Belief is a wonderful thing (just look at Steve Jobs), we all want to put ours to something, give this to us, link us to others who share the same views or problems, give us product and services others can't disprove and you just might see some love to your brand!