But what we do understand is that sleep competes with the endless joy of your distant friends status updates, catching up on Mad Men, trying to level up on FIFA, watching TED talks from 2007, mining the new Jamie Oliver app for a recipe to impress your spouse, plowing through all the kindle books you absent mindedly downloaded to your new iPad, getting your 7-minute abs sorted, creating your own dynamic personal brand via your bloggy blawg, just finishing off that one email, indulging in a bit of parenting . . . oh you get the point. Sleep, by comparison is just so sleepy.

This is the challenge faced by Lark, whose device not only is the least alarming alarm clock on the planet, waking you with gentle vibrations at the appointed time, but is also out to make sleep the most powerful secret weapon of all of us who crave accomplishing so much. If you’re well rested, the rest of the list above is easier.

See, the data is in on sleep. It helps you lose weight, do more reps at the gym, concentrate better at work, have better sex, and listen. Wow. This should be easy.

But it’s not, as Julia Hu and her team at Lark are discovering. Sure, they’re off to a flying start — Apple just agreed to stock Lark in all its stores internationally after a successful US test — but there’s a long distance to travel between geeky gadget for the life-hacker crowd and performance enhancing tool of the masses.

The first step is giving people a glimpse into that unknown third of their lives. It’s a classic case of how Challengers need to Make the Invisible Visible.

Lark tracks how long it takes you to fall asleep, how often you wake up (26 times last night!) and the quality of that sleep. Insight into the mystery is the first part of understanding, and understanding the first step in behavior change and the long-term adoption of yet another gadget crowding your bedside table.

It’s early days for the project, but one we are proud to have been involved in from the beginning. We just interviewed Julia Hu at length about the inception and first year of Lark and it is a compelling story that we’ll parcel out in delicious bite-sized pieces over coming months and at length in the new book we’re working on. But for now, Julia gave us the opportunity to announce a worldwide exclusive on our site. Here’s that clip:

Here Perry gives his perspective on how to build brands without advertising and explains Big Fish’s concept of ‘Pack-vertising’ whilst looking at how it was applied to their work on Dorset Cereals.

One of nine newly designed "Dove" A319 planes. Photograph: Geoff Lee/British Airways

Yesterday British Airways and artist Tracey Emin unveiled the first of a set of unique Olympics-inspired plane designs to mark London 2012.

The outside artwork of the nine ‘Dove’ aircraft has been designed by Pascal Anson, from Brighton, who has been mentored by Emin.

The design of the plane, which will be in service for a year, involves using the cockpit for a beak, fuselage and wings for the main body, and the tailfin as a tail. The aircraft will be painted white with gold strokes of paint to represent the feathers.

Painting parts of a British Airways aircraft is nothing new. BA has a history of altering the design of the tailfin and famously upset Margaret Thatcher in 1997 when it redesigned the tailfins without the Union Jack.

It is the first time in their history they have painted the entire aircraft however.

One of the few airlines in the world to consistently paint the entire aircraft is Kulula, the low cost South African airline and subsidiary brand of British Airways.

I wondered firstly, how much of this idea was inspired by their sister brand Kulula originally using their planes in such a way? And secondly to what extent the idea was validated by the success they had had with the idea in the past?

It could all just be coincidence of course, but I’m always interested in this idea of parent brands allowing their subsidiaries to go out and be the Challenger, take risks and experiment, and ultimately validate ideas for their more cautious parent.

One brand who do deliberately use a subsidiary brand to extrapolate learning is O2. You can watch Gav Thompson talking about O2’s relationship with sister brand giffgaff here.

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This put a massive grin on my face this morning. The film tells the story of Monteith a New Zealand cider brand who started randomly putting twigs in their products. This is such an innovative way of telling the story of the freshness of the brand, that not only engages the consumer- but was pretty much free….genius.

Found via Business insider 

Not only was the campaign a huge success for the business in terms of growth but it also generated a huge level of belief internally within the organisation at a time when Walkers were struggling to find a role and voice in the 21st century.

Although the market leader in crisps, internally the organisation had to adopt a Challenger mindset and break a lot of rules and conventions in getting the idea pushed through. One example of this was their need to produce the new flavours in six weeks – a process that had previously taken six months.

Because of the success of what at the time was considered a risky campaign for Walkers, the project is now considered to be a pivitol moment in Walkers recent history for changing their approach to innovation and helping them to ensure that although the number one, they continue to think and behave like a number two.

Here the Marketing Director of Walkers,  Miranda Sambles, shares her three bits of advice on how she managed such a step-changing project.

We’ll be posting more video of Miranda and Walkers in the coming weeks.

In a eatbigfsh workshop we have several ground rules. Two of the key ones are

1) there is no such thing as a bad idea.

2) never say no, say ‘yes and…’ or ‘we could if…’

These are vitally important, firstly because if you don’t say what you consider to be a bad idea for any reason, nobody else can build on it. And secondly, who knows, everyone else may think its the best idea ever, you just hadn’t quite understood the sheer genius of it yet!

I happened upon this infographic of the taxonomy of ideas yesterday on ‘Information is Beautiful’ and found it very ingenius in its simplicity and practicality. I reckon it would be very interesting way of reappraising how you think of an idea using a series of push points, so that you constantly help move your ideas further.

For example – you could take a silly idea, tighten it up a bit – hey now its pretty cool. A odd one may just need some synthesising before it becomes beautiful.

One for the office pin board I think!

There has been a lot of excitement at eatbigfish for Simple, a completely new type of bank run by an eclectic designers, engineers and mathematicians. Bill DeRouchey the Creative director did a really interesting talk at Creative Morning’s in Portland just before Christmas which really is a must see.

Simple, previously SimpleBank, is currently invite only. A sign of their success is that people have been on the waiting list for two years and are still pestering. They are currently keeping it small so they control and fix as quickly as possible and discover as much as they can about the sector whilst they can be at their most nimble.

DeRouchey puts this success chiefly down to ‘opinion’. By having an opinion Simple can create engagement with their consumer. They go as far as saying that a lot of companies try to be human, using real world language and imagery, but unless you create engagement you are still just a “fictional entity” with a friendly tone. Engagement he believes comes from having an opinion on the world, this means that people will have to think.

So they believe “…that banking sucks. So, what if it didn’t suck? Actually what would it be like if it was awesome?”

In order to achieve this goal Simple really has considered every single touchpoint. From ‘safe spend’ totals instead of just your actual balance, to “ridiculously searchable” instantly updated (well within 5 seconds) accounts that make your accounts your life story. So when you need to know what you ate for lunch in the last week and how much it cost, that is completely do-able.

(here is their welcome pack)

On their mission they are also more than willing to sacrifice official banking methods and out of date tech.

“We refuse to spend time on outdated media. Spending resource on backward capability media means we cant use it somewhere else”

And to anyone who has ever designed a website, you will understand and get down on your knees and praise them- this means they don’t support Internet Explorer. They want it right and working. Simple.

And so, so much more; I could literally ramble on forever (and if you saw my first draft I did).

They really do make you think- why the hell isn’t everyone doing this? This is what all banking should be! The mark of a truly inspirational challenger.

Here’s what the original poster on YouTube had to say about this video shoot:

A Night-time Snowboarding Short Lights Up the Last of the Winter Snow

Fashion photographer and filmmaker Jacob Sutton swaps the studio for the slopes of Tignes in the Rhône-Alpes region of south-eastern France, with a luminous after hours short starring Artec pro snowboarder William Hughes. The electrifying film sees Hughes light up the snow-covered French hills in a bespoke L.E.D.-enveloped suit courtesy of designer and electronics whizz John Spatcher. “I was really drawn to the idea of a lone character made of light surfing through darkness,” says Sutton of his costume choice. “I’ve always been excited by unusual ways of lighting things, so it seemed like an exciting idea to make the subject of the film the only light source.” Sutton, who has created work for the likes of Hermès, Burberry and The New York Times, spent three nights on a skidoo with his trusty Red Epic camera at temperatures of -25C to snap Hughes carving effortlessly through the deep snow, even enlisting his own father to help maintain the temperamental suit throughout the demanding shoot. “Filming in the suit was the most surreal thing I’ve done in 20 years of snowboarding,” says Hughes of the charged salopettes. “Luckily there was plenty of vin rouge to keep me warm, and Jacob’s enthusiasm kept everyone going through the cold nights.”

http://www.nowness.com/day/2012/2/16/1893/jacob-sutton-s-l-e-d-surfer#close

I am a little obsessive about writing lists, on a busy week my desk and diary will be covered in giant colour coded post it lists. Sometimes going down to ridiculous detail, for example: write blog post, post blog post. The satisfaction of “tick achieve!” is just too alluring for me to stop.

So when I happened upon listofnote.com, a website of historical lists it was love at first sight. I urge you to go and look there is so many interesting lists, often beautifully hand written and as hilarious as inspiring. But I wanted to share with you a particular list of wartime golf rules by Richmond Golf Club…
1)  Players are asked to collect Bomb and Shrapnel splinters to save these causing damage to the mowing machines.
2)  In competitions, during gunfire, or while bombs are falling, players may take cover without penalty for ceasing play.
3)  The positions of known delayed-action bombs are marked by red flags placed at reasonably, but not guaranteed safe distance therefrom.
4)  Shrapnel/and/or bomb splinters on the Fairways, or in Bunkers within a club’s length of a ball may be moved without penalty, and no penalty shall be incurred if a ball is thereby caused to move accidentally.
5)  A ball moved by enemy action may be replaced, or if lost or destroyed, a ball may be dropped not nearer the hole without penalty.
6)  A ball lying in a crater may be lifted and dropped not nearer the hole, preserving the line to the hole without penalty.
7)  A player whose stroke is affected by the simultaneous explosion of a bomb may play another ball from the same place. Penalty, one stroke.

What I really love about this list of temporary rules, put in place after the outhouses were bombed, is that instead of quitting they not only stayed open, but they saw opportunity in adversity and changed the rules of play.

This is such a simple, funny little example of Outlooking that is guaranteed to make you smile.
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