Just make more paths

I did a presentation a while back about UCG and how to get that and one of the simplest ways was to make your stuff more available to people. Dragos points out an interesting talk at TED about UCG and what it means culturally and how it should, therefore, be regulated. Find the talk here.

I find it interesting that it links in with my story of people trying to prevent pedestrians from forging paths through an alley and it seems to me that his reply to my then question is simply make more paths for them to cross through :-)

Iasi follow-up

Being in Iasi confirmed some of the assumptions that underline most of my discourse when I meet clients. First that you cannot talk people into thinking that you are cool and that making something catchy does not start from you telling your agency to make something catchy but from you yourself wanting to make something special.

Claudiu told us something about his now famous Budai beer and what stayed with me was the simplicity of the fact that they had never planned this to be a viral. They simply did something they thought would be fun.

One other thing that I thought was marvelous was meeting two lovely ladies with an interesting idea/deed. You can find the idea here and while my innate rejection of crowded spaces makes me think that more advertising is not really necessary, only better advertising, I have to say that I can see the win-win in this combination.

One other thing that we were talking about was the need to get to doing instead of simply talking about stuff. I suffer from the realization that the older you get and the higher up the "agency ladder" the less you get to DO things and the more you get to TALK about how to do things. So hearing about people actually doing things was refreshing. Does anyone have anything they really want to DO?

Iasi rocks

Met all these great people and had some cool local beer, ate American steak in an Irish restaurant with baroque curtains and then discovered something nice in the middle of nowehere. What we talked about later on...i'm bushed right now

I want to read this book

and own some of these, which have been voted on the list of best book cover design 2007. Link via

Confirmation

It's true, Bucharest should not be the norm for what we do. Things are so different when you go 410 kms to the north ... (listening to people in focus groups)

Improved corporate xmas gifts

This is the horrid time of the year when companies start sending you those god awful cards and relaxation toys, xmas decorations, wine bottles and xmas cakes. Maybe someone could try these for a change - paper automata from Cabaret Mechanical Theatre (via Boing Boing)...apparently they're also fun to assemble

Later Update: and wooden ones too :-)

Once said is not enough

Iasi is cold but welcoming - my first impression is that there simply are not enough cross walks although we drove over a few in the neighboring villages. But people seem to compensate by being very decent drivers and stopping to let you cross. there is this feeling of poetry in everything people say because of the accent (yes, I am one of those people who love it because it is nice for storytelling) and the anticipation of good food.

So, feeling generous I think i will not say look, i told you so, but simply direct you to read this pamphlet on coherence and what it means from Richard. Maybe this will clarify some lingering doubts about the much-brandished consistency "as in using the same picture all over the communication".

Preparing for Iasi

I am reading it up on Iasi blogs such as monoranu, maddish, daniel or naturally curious claudiu.

Thanks maddish for this great cat animation which has seriously lessened my determination to get a dog and not a cat...

maybe we can have a planner cat, planner cat, does whatever planner cat does .... tada da ta dada ....

Some reminders

This Saturday, which is tomorrow, I will be in Iasi for a planners meeting. Drop by Arte Cafe in Copou round 19:00 for a chat.
Also, just been told that APG Ro is fully legal (we have the documents and all) and incorporated so, yey!

blog personality

Pretty much a thought of the evening: I am going through a bloglife crisis. This changing of templates is a sign. If you experience the same know that there are no available decent templates I could find (in case you really want to change, check for yourselves here and here)

Life beyond television

I have not had TV since August now and I am finding it an interesting experiment in how brand communication might work if we were not focusing so much on making commercials.

Specifically I find that in Romania brands have no substance other than what is afforded to them by the communication their mother brands do outside the country and which we circulate via e-mail and blogs. There is little to no insight in brand universe if you rely solely on radio, Internet and OOH. We place too little money on making brand universes real in a tangible way, that is why, for me, non TV user now, a newcomer on the banking market in Romania, Millenium Bank is the most valid of all existing brands since they have placed a huge christmas tree in the middle of Bucharest.

There is a lot of OOH and expecially lighted logos on top of buildings but Heineken is up there with a clinic that fixes rectal problems so it's hard to decide who you like best based on size of logo. Locations where I like to hang out are poorly branded, if at all, and as i get my going-out info from aggregators online I do not see the branded posters. Basically without TV, brands have little to no depth to me in Romania.

....?

Packaging

Radu was praising the good sense of a labeling strategy by a clothes manufacturer some time ago, and it was only when running into some counter examples of my own that i realized how often we DO pay attention and get annoyed.

These are (forgive pics taken with lousy 1 MP phone camera) two products whose labeling and instruction methods strike me as appalling.

One is a medication prescribed for mild infections and the other is a face cleaning gel. The medication remarkably says, among others, that side effects might include headaches, nausea and PARANOIA WITH SUICIDAL TENDENCIES, while the gel suggests at the end of its 'how to use' that it can just as well function as shaving cream for men. Now, the more I think about it, the more it becomes clear that Yes, thank you, I would like to know in bold, fat letters if taking your pill is going to make me jump off a bridge screaming "they're after me" or if your cleansing gel is going to give me a beard!!

geesh ....