There are exactly one hundred million billion new viral marketing campaigns seeded every 10 minutes - the vast majority are completely dire and destined to fail. So what separates success from failure? Well, the best appear to exhibit similar patterns and by using these patterns in your own campaigns you could be on your way to a free buffet and a drunken snog at next Summer’s Revolution Awards.
I have no idea why this chap isn’t getting more than 250k hits on YouTube. It’s a great lesson executed in an innovative an creative way. Perhaps no matter how well crafted your message is, a dull subject is a dull subject.
Best bit: “Because if you use ‘bold’ it’s old and wrong.”
I love this sketch. It’s by Dave Walker - I’ve tried a tonne of these methods that help you work more effectively, mostly along the lines of GTD. You give it a go and for a while you feel like you have more time and that you are in some way in control of your situation. Then the novelty wears off and you struggle to keep on top of all these things in your life that you are supposed to be doing. Then you get sloppy at it and you don’t bother with your system. When you need it most, it abandons you. But that’s just me I think.
The sketch above just makes me think about the way in which we feel we should organise our life. Since abandoning GTD I feel I have more time on my hands simply by only accepting as much work as I can feasibly handle. It’s been working for me for a while now.
I haven’t had the opportunity to blog much recently. This is mostly down to attending the IA Summit in Miami last week, then the ensuing onslaught of catching up I had to do on on other work. Overall the summit was very good and I’ve returned to work inspired and motivated. The guys at ASIS&T have excelled themselves. I met a tonne of great people that I’m hoping to stay in touch with and will be pestering management to send myself and a couple of other people to the ‘09 summit in Memphis.
If you are in any way involved in the area of user experience I would very much recommend it.
Slideshare really came into its own with this summit and there is a wealth of information on the decks to be found at http://www.slideshare.net/event/ia-summit-08
My new buddy James Kelway at User Pathways has written up a very concise summary of the very entertaining keynote from Jared Spool.
If you’re into anything remotely indie or alternative (and why would you not?) you’ll be positively gushing over Pitchfork.tv which launched last night. One of the biggest music zines on the planet now has a video blog. It seems that there is more and more evidence of music blogs turning to video. Stereogum has one starting up at some point.
There’s a vid of New Media Darlings Radiohead’s Bangers and Mash which features Thom on drums, which, if you’re anything like me, you’ll find hilarious.
Hopefully this means the final nail in the coffin of adverts where big things are knocked over a bit like dominoes.
I think AKQA were responsible for it.
Seen on the excellent Pixel Pod blog
There is this wonderful little invention called Twitter that is currently growing in popularity. At first it sounds fairly dreary, but it’s basically a way of broadcasting exactly what you are doing at any given moment. If you’re familiar with Facebook it’s basically the same as updating your status. You can update your status via SMS, email, online or IM. It’s very easy, which is obviously one of it’s greatest selling points. You can follow people’s tweets and therefore stay abreast of what they are up to. It seems to completely divide people right now, people either love it or loathe it. Marketers might consider it a form of eCRM that can work like email or RSS. Normal people use it as a way of staying in touch with their mates.
Apparently, a quantum leap in the growth of the micro-blogging platform came about because of mass Tweeting at SXSW.
Just as an indication of how close to the tipping point Twitter is, here some a list of surprising Twitter users.
Some interesting stuff here about Twitter tool usage.
Let me know if you have any other interesting users of Twitter.
Stumbled across a lovely little concept today. Apparently, ‘placemaking’ is when town planners and architects create public places such as squares and plazas that draw people simply because they’re attractive and interesting. It’s a great metaphor for clients instead of the usual ‘Build it and they wont necessarily come’.
This is an incredible pixel art impression of satellite images. Apparently, in China there is some law about aerial satellite pictures which this circumvents.
Thanks Emily
I have no idea if this is genuinely something put out by McDonalds in Japan and, if it is, I’m really loathed to share this. But, this is just so absolutely insane that I must.
Please don’t watch if you have epilepsy, you are of a nervous disposition or you hate clowns.
Thanks Bhavic.