sparking curious mind

This is a great tools! Free online file conversion. Just the kind of thing lots of us was looking for. Zamzar supports conversion between a wide variety of different file formats: text, image, music, video. You can even convert YouTube videos. This is the epitome of web 2.0.

Some friends of mine put together a interesting event. Mad Days is a mix of advertising, music and film. It will take place in Iasi between 22 and 24 March.
I look forward to the workshops held by Marius (on branding) Costin and Elena (planning) and the guys from Violet. Also there will be a fine selection of Romanian short movies and a concert with Al Jawala, a German band with an eclectic sound, mixing Balkan rhythms, drum'n'bass, jazz and funk.

Looks like fun. Come join the fun!

via iasi nights (ro)

I love this visual. It reminds me on the times I learned to ride a bicycle and the liberating sensation of my first meters on two wheels.

In an Adage interview, Bob Iger, CEO, Walt Disney Co. commented:

According to Mr. Kent Oldham, associate director and GBS consumer view solutions manager at P&G, “now more than ever, consumers are owning our brands, and we not only have to understand that they are owning our brands. But we also have to embrace that idea and understand the implications of it.”

Finally P&G admits it. The change in consumer's attitudes towards brands is irreversible. Consumers have the need to be in control, people are becoming more self-expressive on a scale not possible before -- with family, friends and even strangers on the Internet, thanks to new technology. “They have ways of networking with each other that they have never been able to before,” Mr. Oldham said.

Marketers don’t control all touch points, and those touch points, as a result, have a great impact on the way consumers view brands. The implication of not learning from every touch point a consumer has with your company or product or service can be costly. “No matter how much great brand-building work you do, and how much equity your brands have, all it takes is one negative consumer experience to destroy all of it."

After a long wait, I've got my blog back. Unfortunately, everything posted on the new blogger platform is lost :(
Now, I don't know what to do. Should I try to rebuild the blog as it was, or should I continue posting from here on? What do you think? Any suggestions?

Copy: "Because your brain is faster than DSL"

The tagline says "Discover the importance of reading"
Don't know the agency. Anyone?

In his new book, Grant McCracken deploys "complex adaptive theory" to track the movement of trends and new groupings of consumers. It applies complexity theory to the turbulence of contemporary cultures and markets.

He says, "Complexity has a theory. Commotion has a pattern. Dynamism has a system. We can continue to live by damage control, or we can change the way we play the game." To survive our own world of collision and speed, marketers need to see the world as "flocks and flows."

Brand: Happydent
Product: Chewing Gum
Client: Equinox (Ram Madhwani)
Agency: McCann Erickson

Great ad! Creativity personified!

A study by Winterberry Group examines how market and industry trends are driving systemic
change across the agency landscape, further transforming the agency/client dynamic.

Compiled in more than 70 interviews with senior-level executives, the study demonstrates that the traditional agency model is dying.

• - The complex demands of the multichannel selling environment require that agencies provide clients with a unified offering spanning both "“above-the-line"” and "“below-the-line"” marketing channels
- Compressed margin availability, expanded client scrutiny and the
emergence of alternative service providers are raising the competitive
pressure for agencies of all sizes
- Integrated service providers are seeking to command a greater
presence in the agency environment, but struggle to sell their strategic
and creative offerings to marketers who associate their brand with
other services
- Clients are increasingly leaning on internal strategy and creative
capabilities-—as well as procurement departments-—to support
marketing initiatives and generate leverage in negotiations with
external agencies
- The prevalent "“agency holding company"” model is poorly equipped to
provide the organizational agility and cross-channel service offering
that today'’s marketers demand.

The study sparked a lot of discussions around the blogosphere. The change is irreversible and those unable to switch will parish.

As Noelle Weaver says, the way forward is getting past the medium and get to know the consumer. Intimately.
Also, Blue Flavor'’s Director of Strategy, Brian Fling, in his post The Agency Model is Dead, says there are five reasons why the old model doesn't work anymore:

1. Segmentation (Too many choices, pervasive media weakened)
2. Big Ideas: They don'’t always reap big rewards
3. The Cost of Trial and Error
4. The Growth of In-House Resources
5. The Talent Pool

The study concludes that "Forward-thinking shops-—those that embrace media-agnostic planning and employ integrated "“across-the-line"” methods-—represent a model to which
many others are likely to convert in the years ahead. Merger and acquisition
activity may well drive this hybridization. Already prime acquisition targets, for
example, interactive agencies will continue to be incorporated into general and
direct agencies as they are likely too "“siloed"” to survive as standalone entities.

Despite the seismic shifts that have occurred on the agency landscape, the
results from this study confirm that agencies are adapting to the new rules of
engagement and even flourishing beneath them. It is impossible to state with
certainty how the terrain will change in the future, but these findings suggest
that agencies with accountable, innovative marketing programs will always be
in demand."

via experience planner

"Temporary means learning to care for things (and people) that are precious, and when it’s time, to freely let them go. As Gary Thorp says in his book Sweeping Changes: "the joy comes not from trying to keep things forever, but from keeping them well."

"Permanency breeds a state of fear. If you own something, there’s always the potential to lose it, while if you own next to nothing, you won’t worry about ending up with nothing."

From an excellent report on a new trend, cleverly named, temporariness.

You can download it here

Collaboration of W+K and Nexus Production with a GTA twist, and you get an unusually cool Coke ad.

via brand new

I've travelled 400 km to see Placebo in concert in Bucharest. I didn't like it. They are not very good playing live, and what was even worse, they delivered the playlist at a very fast pace, without any interaction/connection with the crowd.
I had high expectations and I left dissapointed. I will stick to the dvd and the cd's. This way I will avoid seeing Mr. Brain Molko's arrogance and platitude. Too much hype for too little.
They didn't played with the heart. It was professional and aseptic. Easily forgetful.

Pretty innovative form of marketing for the upcoming release of Snakes on a Plane that shows how just including a limited amount of user control can drastically affect a product.

The premise of the site Snakes on a Plane: Send a Message from Samuel L. Jackson is that you can enter a little bit of relative data and can then generate a call to anyone you want from Mr. Jackson asking them to see the movie on its Aug. 18 release date.

The site asks both your name and the name of the person you are sending the message to, the numbers of both, and the occupation, hobby, looks, and mode of transportation of the person receiving the message. When you complete the information, the site calls the person in question with a message from Samuel L. Jackson, addressing them by name and telling them to leave their job and hobby behind, pick up the person who made the call and take them to see Snakes on a Plane.

I'm curious if those who receive the call will go see the movie. Or it will just create a buzz, and only a percentage of them will go to the cinema.

I rely too much on technology. Maybe because technology seems more serious and professional than a pencil, so instead of writing or drawing, I, like many other creative professionals, turn to mechanical aids. I've used overhead projectors, stat machines, digital cameras, scanners or Photoshop to put my ideas on paper or screen. The more I come to rely on these tools, the less I trust my abilities to write/draw.
We are feeling incapable of producing images that approach the "perfection" of machines.

Like any physical skill, whether shooting baskets or driving a car, if we stop doing it, we get rusty. So on those rare occasions when we do pick up a pencil, the results are disappointing and we vow not to make that mistake again.

So what price are we paying for this? Why not just rely on stock-photo websites and Photoshop to present our ideas? My cell phone has a camera built into it, so why bother carrying a sketchpad?

That's simple.
Because our jobs, our happiness, our lives depend on it. Because our goal is not to produce slick compositions; it's to lead a creatively fertile life.

Client: Cancer Patients Aid Association
Agency: Euro RSCG, India






Client: History Files
Agengy: Graffiti BBDO, Bucharest

Hilarious account about the modern man. George Carlin is on top of his game!

The young people driving the markets nowadays got a name.

Colin Bates came up with C Generation, which stands for:

Content - creating and distributing their own content
Creativity - finding new ways to interpret brands
Community - sharing their ideas with friends

I think that is a good description of what this generation is about. More and more brands took notice and started to collaborate with their audience. Inviting customers to participate in the development of TV commercials, involving them in product development or promotions, allowing shoppers to customize the products, are some of the ways brands effectively build relationships with their customers.

So, brand owners should ask themselves:
Am I doing enough to collaborate with my marketplace to build my brand?

InBev Germany introduced two new brands in the segment of beer mix beverages.
Beck’s Level 7 is a beer and energy drink, a mix of guarana, coffee and beer.
Beck's Chilled Orange is mix of beer and Kumquat orange with fruit-fresh flavour.

Both products have an alcohol content of 2,5 per cent and are offered in transparent, white glass bottles. Both novelties are offered in the following bundles: Single bottle, Sixpack and 24er box of 0.33 litres (single bottles and/or four Sixpacks).

more info: www.becks-level7.de
www.becks-chilled-orange.de

After being awarded the prestigious BMW advertising account, fledgling creative hotshop Ireland/Davenport launched its first TV commercial for the brand.

Shot in the Netherlands using the moving sculptures of world-renowned artist Theo Jansen, the commercial, entitled "Kinetic Sculptures", forms part of a broader campaign which serves to highlight BMW's market leadership in the fields of technology and innovation.

Emphasising the strategic background behind the creative execution, newly appointed strategic director at Ireland/Davenport, Priniven Pillay, adds, "BMW is so passionate about innovation, from their design elements to their pioneering engineering concepts, and it was this passion that we wanted to capture through our TV commercial."

Truely unique & amazing way of bringing together art and engineering.

via guerrilla innovation