My good mate Hemi, the owner of Wakefield Hotel, a cool clothing and footwear shop in Cuba Street, Wellington NZ takes his camera everywhere with him for business and culture inspiration.
Last week he spotted this just around the corner from his own store.
Yes, it’s for real – and a sign of the times maybe?
You just have to admire the operators of this ‘Gentleman’s Club’, don’t you? We’re all living in a retail hard sell “Sale, Sale, Sale” economy now – at least they weren’t advertising an “All you can eat” offer!
For those of you who may be interested in investigating this ‘Sale’ a little further, check out Il Bordello
For the rest of you who want to check out the best range of sneakers and urban threads in Wellington, go and see Hemi at Wakefield Hotel on Cuba!
After all of the fuss over Susan Boyle, it’s easy to forget that other countries also have their own national versions of the ever popular international franchise. There really is a ‘Ukraine’s Got Talent’, and this clip is amazing – yes, it’s over 8 minutes long, and in this era of short, sharp sound bites that may sound like an eternity, but you owe it to yourself to watch this.
Think Rolf Harris, but instead of an old bearded Australian with paste brushes and buckets of paint slapping it around on big canvases, this is Kseniya Simonova, a talented young woman doing the most amazing ‘animations’ with sand on glass.
It is beautiful but very sad, and seems to have some real historical significance to the audience. I want to find out more about the actual story this amazing artist is telling, so if anyone can enlighten me, please do.
UPDATE:
Thanks to Paul Halsall for his comment upon the ‘story’ being told by this artist. He has more specific information about the ‘sand artist’ and the ravages that the Second World War inflicted upon the Ukranian people on his own blog, so check out his post and updates here.
A few months old now, but Seth Godin‘s terrific video presentation from Ted Talks explains how the power of tribes and the Internet change everything we know about advertising, media and “one to many” communications.
The Genie is out of the bottle and it’s too late to try and put it back again.
It’s taken a while, but it looks like Twitter is now a bona fide, mainstream phenomenon, because this month, Time Magazine’s cover story is all about Twitter.
Well done to Twitter, and let’s hope this isn’t a sign that the Twubble is about to burst as early adopters ‘jump ship’ to look for the next cool, edgy, big thing. Probably not this time, because recent research shows that Twitter has (with the exception of ‘Celeb Followers’), got where it is without a lot of support from either Gen Y or the Millenials, probably the most fickle of all groups. No, Twitter has become the SM tool of choice of Gen X and Boomers.
It has become invaluable to users as an ‘interest and link resource’ – once you’ve found key people to follow ( based upon your own interests), you can post and read tweets, and send interesting links to each other and the group. In effect, these fellow Tweeps become part of your ‘global hive research brain’. The power of global micro-bloggers in real time!
This has been out for a couple of months now, but it’s just so cool I wanted to put it up on my blog.This is not science fiction, it’s reality and Sixth Sense is one of the projects from MIT Media Lab.
Video of presentation comes courtesy of TED and forms part of their ongoing series of TEDTalks – watch and be amazed, but I don’t think they’re taking orders yet!
Nothing - numerous psychologists know enough about human behaviour to manipulate and engage people.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock in the last 8 days, you’ll know about, and have viewed the clip from last weekend’s ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ episode. This online video is now arguably the most watched online video clip ever – recent estimates state that the incredibly talented Susan Boyle has had nearly 50 million views in a week – this is based upon the number of people who have viewed the clip on YouTube and other online video sharing sites. Read the rest of this entry »
So, what do I have against Twitter? Nothing. Nothing at all. That’s right, I think Twitter is terrific, and micro-blogging is here to stay.
What I do lose patience with is some of the people who have been bitten by the Twitterbug. Some people just don’t get it. It is too easy to clog up the feeds coming through onto other people’s mobiles and pc’s with inane tweets.
Yesterday I spent the afternoon judging entries for the upcoming CAANZ (Communication Agencies Association of NZ) Media Awards.
I was one of the judges of the finalists in the ‘Integrated Media Campaigns’ category, and it was a tough assignment.
What I found really encouraging was the high standard of all the finalists, across a multitude of categories, but especially those entries from FMCG integrated media campaigns – traditionally, a terribly ‘unsexy’ category.
Can’t say any more other than although we are a small country, the entries I saw showed that NZ continues to punch above it’s wait in marketing comms strategy.
I’ve been asked to speak at the 2nd Digital Media Summit in Auckland on the 11 – 12 March.
Focusing on ‘the challenges and opportunities a digital future brings’, I’ve been asked to speak about the opportunities and threats of UGC and Web 2.0 for marketers – all in 45 mins!
Other subject areas include:
Trends & Directions – Regulation – Virtual Worlds – Social Media & Social Networking – Content – Consumer Needs, Behaviours & Expectations – and Creative Commons. Read the rest of this entry »
Last week he spotted this just around the corner from his own store.
It’s taken a while, but it looks like Twitter is now a bona fide, mainstream phenomenon, because this month, Time Magazine’s cover story is all about Twitter.
