Baby t-shirt

I spotted this while hunting down photos for a presentation (on Sartorialist). Reminds me of Eddie Izzard’s circle of cool (starts off at cool gets gradually uncooler until there is that moment between horrendously wrong and totally cool).

Social media is like teen sex…

“Everyone wants to do it. No one knows how. And when its finally done there is surprise its not better.”

Quite. A nice, if slightly foul-mouthed, take on the world of social media marketing from Marta Kagan (based in the US).

Alternative cinema screenings

Seems like anywhere is better to show movies than a teen-infested mall… I spotted Melbourne’s Rooftop Cinema organisation in this months Monocle so thought i’d compile a couple of these alternative ways to screen films.

Melbourne Rooftop Cinema:

The name pretty much describes it: they screen films on a rooftop in Melbourne. Guests sit on deckchairs and watch the likes of Ghostbusters, Heathers and Flashdance. Genius. They also run a rooftop market in the same location. Also cool. Wouldn’t work in Cape Town of course – the screen and half the guest would be blown halfway across the Atlantic. 

Pedal powered cinema:

This has the benefits of saving the planet, toning your ass and powering movies. The pedal powered cinema has been touring around UK festivals for a couple of years. It takes ten bikes to power the thing and is run by The Magnificent Revolution.

Guerilla drive-ins:

As spotted on psfk guerrilla cinema events have been going for years (since the 60s probably). In this incarnation put together by MobMov they show movies from cars with the soundtrack broadcasted over radio via a local FM transmitter.

Lucky Voice: private karaoke bars

Founder of Lastminute.com Martha Lane Fox has launched a new business in the UK based around private karaoke bars called Lucky Voice. Based on the Japanese model it provides private booths for singers rather than the horrendous free for all that British Karaoke bars usually turn into. Given the success of games like Singstar played at home it probably won’t require much imagination for UK consumers to get their heads round the idea. The bars are suitably tech with touchscreen interfaces to select songs and place orders. Lucky Voice currently has five venues around the UK and trading is good despite the recession apparently. Another example of businesses capatilising on the desire for social experiences a bit out of the ordainary.

The times (UK) has an interesting  profile on Martha including details on her new role as Digital Inclusion Champion.

The decline of crocs: death by naffness

The woes of footwear brand Crocs are a lesson to us all to beware of products becoming fads. In a couple of years the brand has gone from being pretty much ubiquitous to its current state of rapid decline. This is my take on what went wrong:

• It went mainstream too quickly: not spending enough time and marketing energy in entrenching the brand with key influncers they quickly turned their back on the brand when overweight suburbanites started wearing them (matched with gym pants) around the mall;
• Sometimes its better to exclude some consumers from your brand (by positioning or price) and sacrafice short-term sales for longevity;
• They forgot that anything you wear is fashion not just function and fashion is a fickle beast that changes its mind on whats cool every couple of hours these days;
• I suspect they assumed that just because sales were soaring in the early years the brand was healthy instead they should have heard warning bells that it was growing too quickly without establishing fashion credentials
• With 120 different styles it sounds like its range got too bloated
• Its massive success prompted largescale copycats and blatant  knockoffs

All very easy to say with hindsight I know…

Also see CNN’s Crocs Lose Their Footing

Twitter treasure hunt for Steri Stumpie

Over the last two weeks Atmosphere has been running Twitter hunts of Steri Stumpie around Cape Town (thanks to help from our interns). It’s a very simple idea: we announce on a Friday morning where we’re going to be on Steri’s twitter feed and what time and the first person to find us gets a bag full of Steri Stumpie goodies. The goodie bag includes: a t-shirt, six steri stumpies, an iron on badge and some stickers (all the design work was done  by King James RSVP). First week one or two people turned up, last friday was around eight people. But it also gives us something that’s easy to run and talk about on the Steri blog.

I think this is a good example of our philosophy that the best social media campaigns are connected to the real world. Certainly it would be much more difficult to run this type of activity without twitter or facebook.

Ask not what your consumers can do for you ask what you can do for your consumers

Thought for the day: People don’t want their worlds to built by brands – they want to build their worlds themselves. But obviously they don’t have the access to cash that brands do.

Most brands spend tens of thousands talking about themselves and just get lost in the clutter . The ones willing to support their consumers achieve their own dreams, create their own stuff, have fun at events without feeling like they’re walking in an ad are going to win attention (and graditude) far more surely?

10 things brands could consider doing (amongst many more):

1. Paying for an up and coming bands tour expenses (maybe give them a branded tour bus?)
2. Bring in some overseas DJs/bands – maybe helping out some of the local festivals to bring over bigger acts (yes i know some brands do this already)
3. Pay for a local band to go and tour (and make it) overseas (maybe they can make a blog of their experience hosted by the brand?)
4. Holding creative workshops (e.g. t-shirt design, photography, djing, cup cake making)
5. Paying for everyone to get in for free to a popular club night?
6. Holding free cinema nights of classic movies people have always wanted to see on the big screen (star wars? the shining? breakfast at tiffanys?)
7. Providing decorations for matric dances
8. Sponsoring a recycling service
9. Free pizza to office workers that have to burn the midnight oil (in a cool branded box)
10. Putting on free transport to big events (e.g. music festival) or discounted taxis on a friday night

Great examples of brands that do this already include Levis gigs and Red Bull’s Music Academy i’m sure a few more…

Sleeping with boys in bands 2.0

Back in my day if you wanted to shag someone in an indie band you had to try and sneak backstage after the gig wearing something skimpy (i’m uh not talking from personal experience here). Youth 2.0 can now just sign on to Better Than A Van where they can volunteer to put bands up in their house.

Kind of like the couchsurfing but with more potential for having your stuff pinched by unwashed long hairs. Sure to appeal. (via The Daily Texan)

Future Sound Of The Economist

The Economist’s Thinking Space is a multimedia tour around the workspaces and personal objects of a diverse group of individuals ranging from the MD of Spotify through to musician Jamie Lidell. It’s a beautifully crafted site that isn’t quite what you expect from The Economist (which is probably the point…). Something about it reminds me of web design in the nineties, maybe its the ambient noises that sound like the start of a Future Sound Of London track and it looks like a Warp records album cover a bit ( this is a compliment by the way).

Morgan Stanley’s intern scores a PR coup

Some nice PR from Morgan Stanley around a report drafted for them by a 15 year old intern on teenagers media usage. This has picked up tons of press coverage from Time Magazine to the FT and Telegraph and turned the intern into an over night media star. Not sure if this happened spontaneously or was planned but it works because it’s a surprising (to some) piece of work that most people wouldn’t expect to come from a (rather boring sounding) company like Morgan Stanley.

For more check out this from AFP and this from the BBC.