Curiosity Junkie

It was Valentine’s Day yesterday (if you hadn’t noticed) and I co-hosted a round up of topical Loved Up ideas with David Brown our Digital Director. We had a great turn out at Home, so thanks to everyone who shared the first part of their evening with us instead of  serenading their loved one. We kicked things off with a few highlights from the urgentgenius.com archives and then looked at the best Valentine’s efforts of 2012.

We started the night with a certain Miss Brittney Spears and her 55 hour whirlwind romance. Back in 2004 she managed to get absolutely wasted in Vegas, then got married to her childhood sweetheart and then divorced all inside 55 hours. BBH London created the ad below  and got it into the paper the very next day.

We then looked at what happens behind closed doors and the satricial talents of Next Media Animation. The guys in Taiwan generate cgi animations in just 90 minutes. Their reconstructed news stories show you what really happened as if you were there as an eye witness. They came to Worldwide recognition with their reconstruction of the night Tiger Woods’ wife found out about his affairs. Their animation of her attacking Tiger with a golf club went viral.

Getting dumped is never easy and last year Cheryl Cole felt the elbow when Americans couldn’t understand her Geordie accent. She got axed by American X Factor so within 24 hours iris London created this simple translator to help Americans understand ‘our Cheryl’. www.speakchezza.com

We then picked out a few highlights from this year’s Valentine’s efforts. Starting with Asda’s advice regarding being a cheap date. Their 7p Valentine’s Card is probably the cheapest on the market. It costs just 7p and you have to pay another 7p to get an envelope. It brilliantly promotes their price check value range.

Field Notes created this beautifully crafted genuine film. The brand simply gives a genuine guy the platform to show his love to his partner.

Big architects in New York created a pulsating Big Heart installation. Using motion sensors it reacts to how many people gather around it in real-time. The more people there are, the brighter it glows.

Cripin have used the talents of Ted Williams (The Golden Voice) to help Kraft Mac and cheese seduced people . People send in their tweets and Ted reads them out in the manner only he can.

The ideas that stood out were the ones that kept it fresh and kept it relevant. Valentine’s Day is an overcrowded event if you’re going to stand out you’ve got to be genius as you ride the trending wave.

2011 has been a pivotal year where we’ve seen more and more real-time techniques being deployed across the globe. Brands and individuals have Newsjacked topical stories with varying degrees of success.   There were many examples to choose from but here are the five that I think are genius.

1. Bacterial billboard for Contagion – Canada

The bacterial billboard announced the release of the new Steven Soderbergh film Contagion on the 28^th August. Lowe Roche in Toronto created it with the help of a couple of microbiologists.  Two giant Petri dishes were painted with live bacteria and they multiplied over three hours to spell out the name of the film. As a living billboard that played out in real-time we think it was truly Urgent Genius.

Update:  Lowe Roche worked with Curb Media to realise the project : http://www.curbmedia.com/case-studies-warner.asp

2. Scoopshot app – Finland

Scoopshot monetises crowd-sourced newsworthy imagery, it was created in Finland in February 2011. It links photographers to the media and allows the public to put a price on their images. Put simply, it turns anyone into a mobile news photographer. By downloading the app you can upload any shots you think are newsworthy. You then set the price and the media have 48 hours to buy the image. If they buy an exclusive you get 10 times the price. This is a fascinating platform that uses technology to deliver crowd-sourced news imagery in real-time.

3. Steve Jobs tribute graphic – Hong Kong

The loss of Apple’s leader sent shockwaves across the net and it resulted in numerous tributes in a matter of minutes. The most iconic has to be the graphic of Job’s profile as the bite out of the famous Apple logo. It was designed by Jonathan Mak, a 19 year old Hong Kong Polytechnic student, back in August when Jobs originally resigned.  The graphic lay unnoticed until the announcement of Job’s passing away on 5th October. Mak received over 180,000 messages via his Twitter account in response to the illustration. He stated that any money he made from the image would be donated to cancer charities. It’s a brilliant demonstration of how an idea can, inadvertently, catch the trending wave.

4. @BronxZoo’sCobra Twitter feed – U.S.A.

On the 26^th March 2011 the Bronx Zoo, NYC had a bit of a situation. Their Egyptian Cobra went missing. The Egyptian Cobra’s venom is so deadly that apparently it can kill a full-grown elephant in three hours. The New York media whipped up a bit of a frenzy. Reassurance came from an unexpected source as Twitter (@bronxzooscobra) gave the snake a voice. The reality of the situation was that the snake would be hiding scared out it’s tiny mind. The feed brought the snake and her adventures to life with a healthy dose of wit. The media changed its tune as they picked up on the positivity from people across New York who couldn’t get enough of the Cobra. The snake is now the second most followed animal on Twitter.

5. Heineken Star Player app – UK

In April AKQA created Heineken’s Star Player App. It played to viewers’ willingness to go dual-screen even at the most dramatic parts of a match. Designed to run throughout match times during the UEFA Champion’s League, the app turned solitary watching  (apparently 72% of viewers watch alone and at home) into a social and competitive experience. Given time limits and a fixed number of bets, viewers/players could predict what might happen in the next thirty seconds, compare the results with others’ guesses around the world.

5 + 1. Heineken Super Social Tree – Singapore

And I may be biased on this one but it is Christmas, so a big shout out to the iris Singapore team. Our Super Social Xmas Tree has generated lots of chatter across the blogosphere over the last week. The 48 screened socially powered Xmas tree for Heineken went live this week down at Clarke Quay. The tree will be decorated with various people’s images and festive messages via the social tree Facebook app. The 11 metre high installation was conceived by iris in collaboration with local artist Edwin Cheong and Make Studios.

Do you agree with the selections? Is there anything I missed? Check out www.urgentgenius.com for other 2011 examples

The end of October was one of celebration in India. The fireworks and festivities of Diwali were extended as the country geared up for its first ever Grand Prix. 27 million Indian F1 fans have waited a long time for the glamour of the sport to hit its shore. We were over in Delhi shooting the latest Step Inside the Circuit episode. During our time there we had a great interview with Vicky Chandhok.  Chandhok is the President of the Federation of the Motorsports Club of India. Driven by a love of the sport he has been on a 10 year journey to get F1 to India. He’s incredibly proud of the Buddh International circuit and the fact that India’s has proven that it can host the world’s most technologically advanced sport. Vicky embodies the optimism and determination in India. It’s a vibrant, exciting place full of entrepreneurs.

Spark The Rise embodies the spirit of the country. It launched in mid-August as a way to support entrepreneurial thinking, yesterday it announced it’s latest winning ideas. For those who don’t know of it, it’s “a funding platform to propel innovation, entrepreneurship and positive change in India.” It encourages people to share their ideas and then it awards grants to the best ones. I’m a big fan of the creative funding platform Kickerstarter, and this works in a similar way. There’s a public vote and a jury vote. Users can submit ideas into five different categories technology, Infrastructure & Transportation, Energy, Agriculture & Rural Development and Social Entrepreneurship. The winning ideas get announced in a series of rounds. The winners of round two have just been revealed. I particularly like the Intelligent helmet. A circuit within the helmet prevents the bike from starting unless the helmet is worn. It also detects whether a rider has drunken alcohol and in case of an accident it has built in GPS to notify the emergency services. It’s worth exploring the site and reading about some of the great ideas that are being given the chance to live. Kickstarter, in comparison, feels a little like creative indulgence. The ideas on Spark The Rise genuinely feel like they could make a real difference to the communities in India. I hope they do.

Sparks fly every year in the UK on the eve of the 5^th November. The country celebrates the failure of Guy Fawkes to blow up the UK’s Houses of Parliament in 1605. The plot was uncovered due to an anonymous letter posted to the authorities. The letter prompted a search of Westminster Palace and the discovery of Guy and his explosives.  Fast forward to today and Anonymous, the hacker activist group  who have adopted the Guy Fawkes mask from the film V is for Vendetta, have threatened to bring down Facebook on Bonfire Night.  It seems they have the capability but they like to use threats rather than action. Facebook has become a target as the group sees them violating users privacy rights.

But it’s not just the Anarchists who are on the ‘take Facebook’ down bandwagon. A new social network Unthink, wants to over throw Facebook’s rule of the social network Kingdom. “We are not another social network. We are a Social Revolution,” declares the website. It’s been described as the anti-Facebook. It was founded by Natasha Dedis a Greek American who became an entrepreneur at 21. In an article on thestar.com she is quoted as saying that “Facebook could become a Cyber-dictatorship”. Unthink isn’t a business it’s a cause and it seems to want to empower the user community to shape it.  It launched in Beta on the 25^th October and has already attracted over 100,000 registered users. Unthink ‘suites’ are automatically set to ‘private’ as the default. It has four separate information streams public, social, lifestyle and business. These are very similar to the way Google+ circles work. It’s also an ad free zone it promises “No ads ever”. Instead users choose brand sponsors, if you don’t want a sponsor then you simply pay $2 a year. There are also loyalty rewards in the pipeline for users who choose to subscribe to brands on the site. It’s still a tiny start up but perhaps it’s caught the mood of the moment. Just look at the chatter online. People are concerned with privacy on Facebook and there’s growing unease with financial organisations as demonstrated by the Occupy Wall Street movement. I don’t know if the Anonymous threat tomorrow is real or not, but one thing that is certain is that the issue of privacy and what Facebook does with our personal data is becoming more and more of a hot topic of discussion.

As an independent agency we’ve long believed in controlling our own destiny. So it was refreshing to see the independents well represented at Spikes 2011. Our Urgent Genius Spikes workshop, on Monday, examined the trend of News-jacking and real-time creativity. Whilst The Network One showcase yesterday brought together three independent creative collectives from Japan, Singapore and India. It was invigorating to see how smaller creative collectives, without the bureaucracy of a large network, can be fresher, more relevant and quicker than the established shops.

Morihiro Harano and Masahi Kawamura, creative founders of Party in Toyko, talked about their approach. They described the collective as a creative lab constantly experimenting with creativity and technology. With some impressive music videos and the award winning xylophone film for NTT Docomo under their belts, this new collective is one to watch. They showed their real-time app Backseat Driver that they have developed for Toyota. Using the phone’s GPS it allows kids in the backseat of the car to drive down an animated version of the road their parents are currently driving on. It works in any country and I’m sure it will keep many kids entertained on long road trips. In line with our Urgent Genius philosophy it uses real-time technology to enhance people’s lives.

Nicholas Ye from The Secret Little Agency, here in Singapore, showed some disruptive work that questioned the controls of the Singapore Authorities with tongue firmly in cheek. And Raj Kurup, the Creative Chairman of Creativeland Asia, chatted passionately about the need to have fun when creating work. Creativeland started with five friends around Raj’s dining room table. Their Hippo Project T is a great example of the Urgent Genius philosophy. It turned a potentially negative situation, stock short-fall and poor distribution, into a positive. 92% of the outlets stocking Hippo are small independents, so there’s no linked-up distribution network. Creativeland used Twitter to turn the public into a real-time sales force. By tweeting @hellomehippo consumers could notify Hippo if their local shop had run out of their favourite munchie snack. In return Hippo would restock their local shop and deliver a personal hamper to the Tweeter. It’s a brilliant case study demonstrating a really innovative use of Twitter. Creativeland have been producing some fun work and well done to the guys in Mumbai for picking up the Independent agency of the year award.

On the theme of Independence Under The Influence issue 3 looks at how other independent minds are using their creativity around the globe, check it out here.

It’s that time of year again when the South by Southwest Interactive festival Panel Picker kicks into life. Over 3,000 panels have been submitted for the festival in March 2012. For the last two  years we’ve been tracking the trend of real-time marketing and we’ve selected a few talks we think are worthy of been selected.  Our tips for this years Panel Picker include live battles between man and computer, interactive demonstrations WITH LASERS, crowdsourcing experiments and collaborative app-building, and even the odd meta-Panel, attempting to tweet and trend it’s way into influence. Give them your vote and you won’t just get to watch, you’ll get to be part of the talk as well. We’ve also included three submissions from our Urgent Genius team and look out for the Urgent Genius workshop at Spikes on Monday 19th September at 4 pm.

Movie screens with frickin’ laser beams

Speakers: Adam Russell and John Sear of WallFour

Hyperbolic, interactive, innovative entertainment WITH FRICKIN LASERS!!! One hundred of them, to be exact. Aside from giving audience members free reign to let the lasers loose, this talk will address mass participatory viewing and how viable it might be as a more widespread option for cinemas.

Man vs Algorithm: Online Video Curation Face-off

Speakers: Mark Hustvedt, Tubefilter, Hunter Walk, YouTube, and an algorithm.

Are you with the humans, or will you side with the machines? Fortunately we’re not quite at Terminator-style battle stage yet, but online the question remains; who really knows what viewers want? Can an algorhithm be better than a human at curating video content? Are the human curators too slow, or does a machine fail to discern ‘real’ viewer enagement? This man vs machine showdown promises to find out.

SXSW Presentations:The Good, The Bad, The Trending

Speakers: Craig Pladson and Mike Caguin, Colle+McVoy

A panel about panels. Intriguing.. Pitched at the beginning of the festival, this talk will take stock of last year’s success stories and analyze what makes a great panel talk. Then they’ll predict in detail, using real-time data gathered via Twitter, which talks will be the best and worst of 2012. Intimidating, much? We’re inclined to think this talk sets itself up for a fall (according to their criteria, is their talk going to be the best of all?!) but we’re still very interested to know the secret of success!

Real-Time Marketing Is Here

Speakers: Michael Lazerow, Buddy Media, Shiv Singh, PepsiCo

An interview with Shiv Singh, global head of digital for PepsiCo, conducted by Buddy Media CEO Michael Lazerow. If the idea of real-time marketing still leaves you feeling dazed and confused, then this talk is the best place to start. Covering the pitfalls and advantages of real-time (and how to be ‘relevent without being creepy’), it offers a how-to guide to using real-time from one of it’s best-known practitioners.

Live Visual Blogging -> Realtime Social Drawing

Speakers: Fred Lakin, Performing Graphics Company, Rachel Smith, The Grove Consultants, David Sibbet, The Visual Meetings Company, Alan Levine, The CogDog

It’s not ‘video’, it’s real-time text-graphic journalism! We’re as confused as you, but this talk promises real-time enlightenment. Exploring both current use of the medium and it’s prospects for the future, this panel talk aims to find out live video blogging is the key to online authenticity, or an instant passport to chaos.

Do you really know what’s happening at SXSW

Speakers: Justin Graves, Infegy, Jenny Viscarolasaga, Gabriel Marketing

Well, do you? Justin Graves of web-analytics company Infegy does. Shifting through sentiment analytics, geographical breakdown and conversation volume, Graves’ talk will find out exactly how the world feels about SXSW, right this minute. Social media monitoring on hyperdrive; is it actually of any use? He’ll be asking this too. We can’t wait to see this, though we’re not sure we’ll be able to keep up…

Behavior change mash-up: Hacking a health app

Speakers: Liz Mitchell, CloserLook inc, David Ormesher, CloserLook inc, Martha Funnell, MS, RN, CDE, University of Michigan School of Nursing, Richard Black, Ph.D, Kraft Foods Global, Sean Slovensky, HumanaVitality, Jeff Leitner, Insight Labs

We might be a nation of screen-addled, sedentary slackers, but perhaps technology will save us from the obesity epidemic. Or so this panel is hoping. Four health experts hack out the ideal health app, one that can monitor individuals where the doctors have failed. The talk also explores the reality of doctors, investors and devlopers working together, and the present legal barriers inhibiting radical healthcare change.

3-2-1 Publish: Prepping the News Room for D-Day

Speakers: Rachel Petersen, Nectar PR, Joel Abrams, The Boston Globe, Eleanor Hong, ESPN3, Yoni Greenbaum, Philadelphia Media Network, Tim Ruder, Perfect Market

Unlike the other talk’s we’ve featured here, this one questions how far real-time can go. In media, writers are employed to compose obituaries for still-living celebrities. Why shouldn’t the same apply to world events? Can digital staff and social feedback loops prepare for the worst? And if they can, then should they? This panel explores how new data-mining techniques and algorthims can help predict what readers will want to be told, helping media outlets to manage when ‘D-Day’ arrives.

FOMO: You Won’t Want To Miss This

Speakers: Rachel Sklar, Change the Ratio, David Pakman, Venrock, Jocelyn Leavitt,  Nerd Nearby, Aubrey Sabala

Fear Of Missing Out. Are you at risk? Rachel Sklar of Hashable and Change the Ratio leads a discussion on social media’s favourite neurosis. This Very Exclusive Talk also promises champagne, limited seating and the possibility of an appearance by one A. Kutcher. Is it genuine, or is this just one massive real-time experiment in status anxiety? Not your average panel; we advise you to vote and not miss out!

Streamweaver: I believe you can take me, live

Speakers: Evonne Heyning, TechSoup Global, Sarah Austin, POP17

An exercise in organized tech chaos? Or just outright chaos, and web information overload brought to life? We’re not quite sure how this talk is going to work, but the promise of dozens of live-streaming celebrities, audience interaction and ‘vibrant local and global conversation’ across the world leaves us intrigued.

How to Rob a Bank in under 2 minutes

Speaker: Ken Habarta
Times are hard. It’s only a matter of time till we all end up bankrupt and are forced to go all Bonnie and Clyde on the bankers. Should you find yourself short-changed, this SXSW, we advise voting in this solo talk (and, we’re hoping, demo). Author Ken Habarta addresses ‘behavioural economics at it’s most raw’-rich rewards for all attendees!!

Real-time Newsjacking & a Cold-blooded Tweeter

Speakers: Grant Hunter, iris Worldwide’s Urgent Genius HQ, Bronx Zoo Cobra, Matt Ryan, 4thAmendment Wear, Michael Logan NMA, Robin Stam Lemz
Urgent Genius explains itself in style, in a panel discussion with a surreal and scaly twist. Exploring real-time responses that can go from niche to global on the coattails of the news, the panel are also joined by the Bronx Zoo Cobra, a lady snake on the run with a prolific Twitter following, who has the honour of being the conference’s first ever reptile speaker.

The Not So Allied Forces of Social TV Comedy

Speakers: Will Saunders, BBC Comedy. Jon Burkhart, Urgent Genius

British humour goes social in another of our talks in the running, where we ask why the country which invented the Edinburgh Fringe, Monty Python and, um, Graham Norton hasn’t yet discovered social comedy? With vox-pops from UK comedy’s leading lights as our guidance, we’re going to attempt to create a social comedy pilot, exclusively for YOU!*

*said comedy might turn out a disaster. But we promise lots of fun in the process!

Can SXSW Become An Internet Meme?

Speakers: Matt Golding, Rubber Republic. Jon Burkhart, iris Worldwide’s Urgent Genius HQ
A room full of social media innovators at SXSW, versus a jealous online sphere, Tweeting bitterly about how they’re missing out. Surely there’s a gap here, waiting to be bridged by a bona-fide SXSW meme?! Our Urgent Genius experiment (emphasis on the experiment…) challenges participants to bring the lols after three nights without sleep. Are you up to the task? Give us your vote and find out!

Last week Kickstarter, the funding platform for creative projects, successfully reached a major milestone. An Ohio based band called Citizen, looking to release a 7” single, reached their $800 goal and became the 10,000^th project.  I’ve been following Kickstarter for the last 18 months and I think I may be developing an addiction.

Kickstarter launched on the 28^th April 2009. Perry Chen first had the idea in 2002 whilst he was trying to put on a concert without any funding. In 2005 he meet Yancey Stickler in a New York diner and they started working on it.  The final piece of the puzzle was Charles Adler, the technical brains behind the build of the site. They felt there were loads of creative ideas that never saw the light of day due to a lack of cash. So, Kickstarter was born. It’s a funding platform for creative projects. It’s a way to raise money for the stuff you want to do. It’s all or nothing, you have to hit your funding target. This adds a gaming element to the projects. 500,000 people have pledged to date and 3,000 people are doing it every day. It’s grown during tough economic times because it’s a different type of spending. It empowers everyday people to feel like producers and gives them a direct connection back to the idea’s source. It’s not a donation platform because by investing you get something back. A million and a half gets pledge every week. 250 proposals are submitted every day and half of those get accepted. On the business side of things Kickstarter takes 5% from the projects that are successfully funded, this makes them profitable. And, importantly, the people who generate the idea retain the copyright.

http://www.kickstarter.com/

Stickler states in the PSFK lecture that the first projects were mainly music and film. Then a product idea caught fire. The ‘Glif’ is a tripod stand for an iPhone 4. It’s New York creators looked to raise 10k but quickly raised $140,000. This was the first real product to launch on the platform and the Kickstarter team wrestled with it as it seemed to be a conflict with the original ideology, it felt like it could become too commericalised. They decided to draw the line at corporations trying to use the platform to product test. Kickstarter is there to realise creative people’s dreams.

A case example is THE most successful project to date. Scott Wilson used to be Creative Director at Nike. He designed watches in their design department. He has now set up his own design studio called Minimal. He came to Kickstarter with an idea for a watchstrap for an iPod Nano. He made the case that he was doing this for himself because he believed that launching it on Kickstarter would be much cooler than getting a massive commercial backer onboard. He was looking to raise 15k to fund the project. He had two designs one called TikTok ($40) with a rubberised strap and the more expensive LunaTik ($60) formed from aircraft-grade machined aluminium. He raised an amazing $950,000 in just five weeks. This was the first project I backed and I’m the proud owner of a LunaTik, it’s a brilliant product.

http://lunatik.com/

The LunaTik hooked me into Kickstarter and I’ve funded a few other projects since.  Of those Tweetland from Costa Rica stands out. Tweetland is a world of games where what happens on Twitter influences what happens in the game. And this all plays out in real-time. Certain words in people’s tweets trigger events in the game. The games are all designed with an 8-bit aesthetic and I’m awaiting the Beta test of the first game called Route 141. I’ve no idea how the game will turn out but I’m intrigued to see how it develops.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nestorvc/tweet-land-the-first-set-of-games-that-play-with-r

The latest project I’ve funded is the awesome LongShot magazine. The last month has seen me completing the first draft of the Urgent Genius book and Longshot features as one of the case studies. It’s a bold project that embraces real-time creativity. It was conceived one evening when a group of the founders were talking about the future of publishing and looking at a magazine that had been produced using the print-on-demand service MagCloud. The Longshot team wanted to experiment with the possibilities of print-on-demand through a project that wouldn’t demand too much of anyone’s time. It was this need to do something outside of ‘full-time work’ that led to the 48 hours (over a weekend) time frame. The team set a theme and then invite submissions from around the globe. People can submit articles, photographs and illustrations as long as they relate to the core theme. The team in the States edit the content and design the magazine. It takes just 48 hours to go from initial brief to final magazine. The printed magazine can then be purchased from MagCloud. The last issue was based around the theme Comeback. The next issue goes live this weekend. The theme will be released on Friday and submissions will be accepted from around the globe. Find out more here:

http://longshotmag.com/?2b7360e0

Kickstarter is a platform that breathes life into ideas. It’s full of creative people’s dreams. Go and explore it. And fund the things you love.

Asia was well represented in the winners enclosure at Cannes with some firsts for China and amazing innovation from Japan and Korea. But there were surprising stats this year. In Direct Germany dominated the short list with Belgium coming up close behind. And the States dominated the Promo and Activation list. In Cyber the usual suspects of The States, Sweden and Japan led the way.  In the Titanium and Integrated Lions shortlist there were  no Asian finalists.

Cheil Worldwide Seoul’s Home Plus subway virtual store caught my eye at the start of the week. Using QR codes it literally took the store to commuters on subway platforms. By going along snapping the items they wanted with their mobile phones commuters would then get their shopping delivered to their door. It won the Media Grand Prix for best use of outdoor and gold Lions in the media and outdoor categories.

DDB Singapore won gold and silver Promo & Activation Lions and a bronze Direct Lion. The ‘Musical fitting rooms’ campaign for Starhub’s online music store utilised RFID chips in the fitting rooms of 42 retail outlets.

Congratulations to JWT Shanghai for winning China’s first Grand Prix in the press category ‘Heaven and hell’ depicts the heavenly oasis of business class travel whilst exposing the hell that your suitcase has to endure thanks to the baggage handlers. It was expertly crafted and obviously drew inspiration from historical cravings of religious scenes. The art direction conjured the illusion that the ad had been cast in pure Samsonite plastic. ‘Heaven and hell’ also won a press gold and silver Lion, adding to the two gold outdoor Lions. I also loved the simplicity of Euro Bangkok’s  ‘Chameleon’ and ‘Frog’ ads for Reckitt Benckiser, they picked up gold.

In the Cyber Category it was left to Japan to represent Asia. Apart from a bronze for Leo Burnett, Thailand, Japan dominated with two gold Lions for Dentsu Tokyo’s ‘Lucky line’ campaign for Uniqlo and DRILL Tokyo/Dentus’s ‘Xylophone’  for NTT Docomo.

In film there were no gold winners but silvers from Japan and Indonesia, and bronzes for Thailand, Japan, India and Singapore.

So where does that leave us?  It seems there are pockets of innovation from a handful of APAC based agencies. But we seem to be lacking the grand 360 campaigns that will claim integrated and titanium metal.  From watching many of the entry videos there were a few too many ‘World firsts’ and there’s definitely a need for quantifiable numbers rather than generic grand statements. I also picked up on the fact that many of the jurors wanted simplicity in the way that the entries told their stories. All-in-all the quality was high but with an ever growing number of categories it’s increasingly hard to achieve cut through. You could look at Cannes quite cynically as the bloated cash cow it has become. But the truly original and well crafted work always shines. The Samsonite press work being one glowing example and the brilliant utility of the Korean Home Plus virtual store being another.

Here’s to next year and greater representation in integrated from the region.

After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music. – Aldous Huxley

Music is constantly on in our office. Rog serves up a diverse mix on the agency stereo and on DJ Thursdays, the playlist is opened up for anyone to take control with a 4 hour playlist. Anything goes and the deal is it can’t be shut down until the playlist has played right to its very end. We have plenty of musos in the office and we are lucky enough to work with  Heineken on the Secret Gallery to bring  the talents of Caribou and Nosja Thing to Singapore.  Music really is one of humankind’s greatest creations. You can’t beat discovering new sounds or old classics. Over the last few weeks we’ve been working on a number of music briefs and I’ve noticed a number of innovations that will redefine how we interact with our music.

Apple shook up the music industry with the iPod and iTunes. But it’s worth remember the grand daddy of portable music was actually a Sony creation. The legendary Walkman. It was an amazing innovation born from technology that had failed testing. An extract from Palgrave MacMillan’s forthcoming book “Finding Good Ideas” recounts the story of Masaru Ibuka’s (the company’s founder) request for something portable to listen to music on long business flights. The engineers at Sony repurposed a failed prototype. It was called the Pressman, a tape recorder originally designed for journalists to use for interviews. Unfortunately the speaker wasn’t good enough for transcription so the product got shelved. The research team simply added headphones to the Pressman and the Walkman was born. Ibuka used it on international flights to listen to Opera and was so impressed he showed it to colleague Akio Morita. Morita had the hunch that young people would enjoy a device that they could take listen to anywhere. Morita and Ibuka pursued their hunch and despite many around them not sharing their vision, they proved them wrong.  The very first the model TPS-L2 was Released on July 1, 1979. 20 years later Sony had sold over 100 million Walkmans. It redefined the world’s relationship with music.

Apple launched iCloud this week and they are banking on it becoming the new digital hub for all of your digital stuff. It will work across the iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, Mac and PC. And most importantly it will be free or at least heavily discounted. They have invested heavily in their server offering and are basically making a land grab. When Apple commits to something as heavily as this it’s likely that others will follow. We’ve seen it happen with the iPad and the slew of tablet devices that have followed. The iPod and iTunes was a massive game changer for the way we all consume music. And music will be a core part of the iCloud offering, iTunes Match will let you upload, store and transfer your ripped CDs or non-iTunes tracks to your cloud library and devices as well. In the keynote Steve Jobs made a statement of intent: “We are demoting the PC and Mac to just be a device and moving the digital hub centre of your digital life to the cloud.” Just as Morita and Ibuka in Japan saw the potential in the Walkman, Jobs and the Apple team in California continue to vision and execute new ways for us to enjoy our music wherever we are.

My iPad has revolutionised the way I enjoy music. It has many music apps that either let me make or explore music. Planatery by San Fran based Bloom Studios is one of my most recent downloads. It turns your music collection into a 3D universe where every planet is an album. Musical artists are depicted as pulsating stars. They are grouped into alphabetical galaxies and each star is orbited by massive album planets. These album planets have surfaces with textures derived from the original CD cover. Like any planet each one is flanked by moons. Each moon orbits at a speed based on the length of the track.  But it doesn’t end there the moons grow in size, depending on how many times you’ve listened to the songs.  Tom Carden of Bloom observes that “The music library is one of those things that pretty much everyone with an Apple device has access to, even if they don’t think of it as a data set like we do ………It’s personal, relevant, interesting but unfortunately only served up by a single app – and that app is no fun!”. And that’s one thing the Bloom guys have certainly done you can now see your music collection as your own personal sonic universe. Their ambition is to link it to a streaming music service so that you can share your universe with others. Perhaps we’ll see this sync with the iCloud in the future?

We’ve all observed how music downloading has shaken up the way the music industry operates. And just this week two artists released new albums in innovative ways to creating buzz and hopefully (for them) sales:

Bjork announced the launch of her new album Biophilia, an album that was “partly recorded” on the iPad,  this follows the path blazed by the last Gorillaz album created by Damon Albarn solely from apps on Apple’s tablet. Biophilia, however takes things a stage further. It’s going to be released as a series of 10 apps. For each of the 10 songs/compositions, there will be “coordinated apps”. The song “Virus” will feature a video of a virus attacking cells. At the same time Bjork’s website will be relaunched and she will start a three-week residency at art-centric Manchester International Festival from the 27th June to 16th July.

The Kaiser Chiefs’ new release The Future is Medieval heralds the arrival of the “world’s first bespoke album”. Ten songs from a choice of 20 for £7.50. You get to choose the 10 songs and then design the album artwork. The band worked with W&K and have created an interesting incentive to encourage purchase. For every version of your album that you sell, you get £1. You even get the HTML code, allowing you to sell the album on your own website. It really feels like the band is trying to give something back. It will be interesting to see how many people actually buy someone else’s version of the album. This approach redefines the traditional album format by giving fans an element of choice and it’s a shrewd marketing ploy as hardcore fans I’m sure will collect all 20.

Innovation in music should always be a constant but it’s worth remembering that no matter how technology evolves the way we discover music, there will be one thing that will always remain – good music is good music.

I’m just about to return from the UK to Singapore after a break that started with ‘work’ on the Johnnie Walker F1 shoot and then turned into ‘play’ as I attended my cousin’s wedding in Cornwall. During my trip to the UK I’ve been subjected to some enforced digital isolation. With limited WIFI and financially crippling data roaming rates on my Singapore mobile I’ve had to take a break from the ‘always on’ world. Now, truth be told, I haven’t totally cut myself off from the online world, I’ve had a few hours here and there. But for three days I was email free. I experienced an initial feeling of loss as my engrained habit to reach and check my iPhone kept kicking in automatically. This apprehension slowly subsided and I succumbed to a refreshing calmness. Decapitating my digital self has allowed me to do some deep thinking. I’ve been liberated. No briefs. No business problems. No screaming emails. I’ve walked along various coastal paths and beaches. I’ve had great conversations with my wife, family and old friends. I also had time to watch a TED talk by Amber Case and to re-read a few chapters of Richard Watson’s book Future Minds. I’ve had a lot of time to do nothing, nothing but absorb and think. The result of this nothingness has made me reflect on my relationship with digital screens.

Amber Case’s TED talk ‘We are all Cyborgs’ is really compelling. It’s a whistle stop tour of her thinking. Case is interested in Cyborg Anthropology. She observes cultures and rituals. And she has noticed that ‘we’ (Homo Sapiens) are changing our behaviour – we are clicking on things and staring at screens. Case acknowledges that tools have always played a massive role throughout the history of mankind’s development. Tools have been a physical modification of the self but in the digital age we are now modifying the mental self and this is a major step change in our evolution.

I love her musings about cell phones being wormholes that mentally allow you to transfer yourself anywhere. This means that we can be in many places at once. We can broadcast our ideas to the world instantly. So now when we visit physical social spaces we are constantly checking our mobile devices to interact with people in our virtual world. This is a product of being open and always available. And it means we all have loads of people who we can access at any moment and who demand attention from us constantly. This all brings on new stresses. She’s concerned that there’s not enough time for self-reflection. If we’re constantly ‘on’ and reacting to the huge number of people who are demanding our attention through our social networks then our sense of self is under threat. Case states that “You need time to reflect to define your self. Kids today have a ‘want it now’ mentality they click buttons and get stuff ‘NOW’. Without downtime they aren’t making space for themselves to consider who they really are.”

Case is obviously a technology evangelist and despite her warning she believes that ultimately machines are helping us to be more human by making it easier to connect with one another. Successful technology doesn’t get in the way it enhances our lives. “Technology is increasing our “human-ness”

Case is pro-tech whilst Richard Watson is a little more wary of technology’s impact on the next generation. Watson makes the case for slow thinking and single tasking as reactions to fast thinking and multi-tasking. In the book ‘Future Minds’ he maintains that we make more effective decisions if we walk away from them and then come back to them later.

Watson talks about ‘Screenagers’ and how Gen Y are using technology in a vastly different way to any previous generation. Screenagers are after instant gratification. This new generation have always been connected, they know nothing other than having the net there for them 24/7. They are able to multitask and screen information quickly. On the downside they have attention deficits. Watson continues “(the) digital era is chipping away at our ability to concentrate – information can be recalled at the click of a mouse ..so why bother to learn anything?”

Since owning an iPhone my wife jokes that there are three people in our relationship (and that’s before the imminent birth of my daughter) C, I and my iPhone. As Watson points out, mobile devices constantly demand our attention they are in danger of turning us into a society of rude impatient and isolated individuals. I particularly like Watson’s point that “ …we have started to use the tools to replace or outsource our thinking – they should enrich our conversations instead of replacing them.”

Watson makes the case for us all taking our brains on little adventures to escape the electronic clutter. He recommends the taking of real holidays for at least a week and cites the example of Bill Gates’ taking himself off twice a year to a secret hideaway for 7 days of seclusion. Theses trips featured no people just reading material. After a few days doing something similar, I can also see the benefits.

For Watson digital technology is a wonderful invention, but he thinks we have started to ask too much of it. “If everything becomes too easy, our minds and our bodies will eventually lose their muscularity, resilience and creativity. Stretching the brain is good – most of us spend most of our days doing what we always do .. .so our learning rate is practically zero…..When a mind is stretched it rarely returns to its original dimensions.”

As I walked and enjoyed the Cornish countryside the words of Case and Watson flowed around my grey matter. I pondered and spent some quality time with their ideas. Which in turn led to me forming a few of my own. It made me consider how much time I invest in screens. I love the iPad. I’m an apple addict. But just chatting, reading and most importantly thinking allowed me to focus on absolutely nothing. And in my nothingness the following occurred:

Curiosity is one of the most important behaviours you need in creative organisations.  We all need inputs to help us create but you have to strike a balance between inputs and outputs. We need balance between our time for info grazing and periods of deep focused thinking. The two need to counterbalance one another.

Equally we also need to find balance elsewhere. It seems we all need to find a life life balance – your virtual life and your physical life need to co-exist. Let your digital self enrich your real self.

Time and space to think are becoming more and more important. If we increase the speed of our thinking too much we end up become more and more self-referential. We follow the same paths because we know they are safe. Innovative thinking doesn’t come from treading the same path over and over again. You need to be prepared to fail.

I’ve always admired Google’s policy of giving employees a percentage of their time to create what ever interests them. If you give this opportunity to your most talented individuals they will reward you with innovative free thinking which wouldn’t have come out of your rigid day to day processes.

Technology is a wonderful tool. Technology is there to be used but it comes with a watch out. At it’s worst it can over simplify and over time it could make us dumber.

Next time you go away – try doing nothing for at least one day. Turn off the phone, leave the laptop at home, lose yourself in your self.

And before you go watch Amber Case’s TED talk and buy a copy of Future Minds.

I’ve just spent a week in our Delhi office. We discussed many things cricket, cricket and The Indian Premier League. We also chatted about the phenomenal change that the country and Delhi itself is experiencing.  Delhi’s airport is an impressive gateway, the metro has linked up the various sectors of the city making the centre much more accessible and luxury apartment blocks are springing up across the metropolis. The recent global events hosted in the country, including the winning of the World Cup for the first time in 28 years, seem to have united the country with a real sense of national pride. Welcoming the world seems to have been good for the city and hospitality is definitely something India does well. This was confirmed by the warm welcome I received from our iris Delhi office.

Ken(CD, iris Delhi) and I chatted about the state of the roads as we drove between client meetings. Snarled traffic and aggressive driving are par for the course. Lane discipline doesn’t seem to exist. At times four lanes become seven. It’s exciting and scary at the same time. It works but it could be so much more efficient. The driving style of many seems to resemble that of an even more aggressive Lewis Hamilton.  Looking into this further and I discovered that India has more traffic fatalities than any country in the world. The growth of the economy has exacerbated the situation. The number of  new drivers from India’s growing middle class has skyrocketed. This leaves the road system and the police ill-equipped to handle the jam.

As we chatted about the road system Ken told me about a really interesting use of Facebook. Halfway through last year, pre-Commonwealth Games, the Delhi traffic police adopted the social network as their new weapon to tackle road safety. They empowered netizens to become digital informants. Delhi –ites are encouraged to report any wrong doing by uploading an image of the violation with location and time details. Looking at the page and you’ll find various types of traffic incidents. They range from cars blocking junctions to helmet less motorcyclists to drivers on mobile phones and illegally parked vehicles.

The Delhi Traffic Police now have a dedicated team of four officers who monitor their Delhi Traffic Police Facebook page. They are there 24/7 so that they can feedback in real-time. The Facebook page has regular posts detailing the number plates that have been prosecuted. This reporting makes people, who have taken the trouble to report a violation, feel like they’re making a difference.

The Hindustan Times reported after the launch and quoted Ajay Chadha, the Special Commissioner of Police. “It’s a big success. We get a lot of suggestions, complaints and comment every moment. The profile aims to network better with the public and seeks help to improve the traffic in the city”

To the doubters who say it is rewarding busy bodies I point to the number of fatalities on India’s roads and the fact that the traffic police, with limited resources, need all the help they can muster. Overnight they increased the number of traffic cops by empowering citizens to take ownership of the problem. There are now over 56,000 Delhi residents who have interacted with the scheme and have become ‘RoboCops’.  It does open the debate about a Big Brother society and how far should ‘the State’ invade our personal social space? Is this the kind of transparency Zuckerberg imagined for Facebook? But, when all said and done this activity is actually saving lives.