After trying gain a consensus based on facial expressions and grunts, the usual negotiating language amongst my friends revolves around who fancies something light/dark, or fast/slow. This can be a tricky and very subjective rating system. One persons tongue-in-cheek melodrama could be another’s darkly disturbing horror (I made this mistake recently, but I’ll keep suggesting people watch The Skin I Live In. I don’t think the director is being serious, and it’s beautifully shot and scored)

Though it won’t tell you the kill count for the film*, designer Frederic Brodbeck has written a program which sheds some brilliantly selected light on the real nature of films. In his own words:

“cinemetrics is an experiment to find out if the data that is inherent in the movie can be used to make something visible that otherwise would remain unnoticed”

Cinemetrics analyses visual and audio information taken from a film, and uses it to produce a visual ‘fingerprint’. Seeing a favourite film through such a new lens is fascinating in itself, but it really gets interesting when you see the comparisons between films; The colour palate a director favours, or how a remake has changed or remained true to the original.

It probably won’t help our Sunday afternoon decision making process at all, but at the very least it’s something I can look at while everyone else picks which rom-com I’m going to have to sit through.

* Surprisingly that record is held by gore fest The Lord of the Rings – Return of the King at a whopping 836.

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

Mmmmm, spacious.

As smug and grateful as I was to be able to spend some proper time with the work I wasn’t actually there to luxuriate in contemplative solitude. I was in fact masquerading as an under 25 year old (not very convincingly) to attend the attRAct event organised by REcreative UK and Joanna Brinton.

REcreative UK are an organisation working with five major London galleries with the aim to inspire an interest in contemporary art among young people. Jo had been working with a small group of students to engage with the Hockney show and organise an evening event for their peers to both see and interact with the work.

Hockney takes the colours of his earlier California period and uses them within his later Yorkshire landscapes, so the organising group focussed on that one small element of the Hockney ‘brand’ and exploded it to become the theme of the event. Guests were asked to dress in the pastel palette of LA (I let the side down in a very dreary London grey), we were served a buffet of pizza and guacamole & salsa dips. Fabulously monikered Hocktails, brightly coloured sugary soft drink delights, were served from a Hocktail bar of brown paper palm trees, and the galleries rang with west coast hiphop and beach boys harmonies.

Within the gallery itself the guests engaged with the work through technology, creating ipad and iphone composite ‘paparazzi’ portraits, and cumulating in a flash mob log pile of bodies in front of the vivid centrepiece canvas ‘Winter Timber’.

It was all incredibly joyful and fun and inclusive, with the organising group empowered by their roles to act as advocates for the work, introducing the event and encouraging the other attendees to take part in the activities.

Throughout it was clear that the event was engaging the audience because it had been created with them, rather than for them. So that’s today’s lesson. Collaborate and co-create with your audience in order to create relevant engaging experiences.

That, and someone should make ‘monday muddy puddle’, its blue and it has sherbet grit in it. Fabulous.

With many thanks to attRAct and REcreative UK for the invite.

Oh and if you do see the show spend some time with the video work, its incredible.

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Listening to the news this morning two bulletins on healthcare reform and the rise of obesity, squashed in between a piece about Greek Debt and Banking, make me feel mildly anesthetised. Whether you’re in the business of Health or not, you won’t have escaped the (let’s be frank- quite depressing) news: we’re living longer, but not better, at an ever increasing cost to ourselves- and our governments; pharmaceutical companies are in a frenzy of restructuring, downsizing and merging – trying to work out their new model for doing business and how they can develop truly transformative medicines once again (that don’t cost $1.5bn to get to market!); governments are trying to grapple with huge public health agendas, like tackling the rise of preventable diseases which come at a crippling cost to the care system- that they can’t afford; and all against the backdrop of global financial meltdown and unavoidable austerity. These are not small issues- and they’re not going away.

I came to Healthcare nearly 6 years ago, from a world of marketing cars, crisps and customer services, where these issues seemed borderline- cataclysmic and everyone agreed that pretty radical action was needed. But as I look back– over half a decade later- lots of things have happened, but nothing seems to have really changed: both sides of the pond are struggling with health reform, Pharma has reached the peak year of patent expiries with very little to replace them, and nobody seems to have found any big solutions to our public health issues.

In all of this uncertainty I think that we can bank on two things at least: one, that the traditional way of thinking about these issues (and I include in this Innovation, Strategy, Business Design etc) is not – and will not – get anyone very far…at all: and two, that the organisations most likely to have a real impact on these issues will come from unexpected places- and will all most certainly- think like Challengers.

Fast Company recently published its list of ‘The World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies’, and whilst only a handful of them were in Health, those that were had one thing in common – they all had a Challenger mentality at their heart: whether it was taking the rules of one category (technology) and applying them to transplants (National Marrow Donor Program); or rejecting the Industry expectations about how to develop cancer therapies and looking for another way to treat patients (Genentech)- none of them have realised success through mimicking the industry giants.

At eatbigfish we’re in the business of building brands with beliefs – Challengers that seek to make a difference, by doing things differently. Over the last decade we’ve studied, and worked with, an amazing array of Challenger brands and businesses across all sectors. We’ve already enjoyed some real successes helping several Health companies (including Pharmaceuticals, Consumer Health and Food companies) apply this thinking, and whilst there are some critical differences to navigate – such as the regulatory environment in Pharma – it’s only served to demonstrate that a Challenger approach really can yield different results.

So from Pharmaceuticals to Public Health, Insurance Companies to Pharmacies, we’re taking our learnings from the world of Challenger, our insights about the market, and starting our quest to codify what great Challengers need to do differently, to make a difference in Health. If you’re in the business of Health, and looking to do the same, do get in touch.

There was no way that a small independent start up was ever going to compete with the big brands in this category like North Face and Blacks following that same aspirational model. So Alite took the challenger stance, and where everyone zigged, they made an enlightened zag, building upon what they knew to be true – most campers aren’t going up Everest, or hiking 9 hours a day with all their kit on their backs. Their driving belief became ‘that camping should be simple’. And they targeted ‘beginner campers’, people who like the idea of camping, will maybe go away for a long weekend – but don’t really hike and don’t take the whole thing that seriously.

And to make some real noise in the category Tae Kim, the founder, focussed on one thing he knew to be true about these consumers (being one himself), that camping can also = sex, and more specifically, sex in the woods!

What do you do if your brand is all about ‘sex in the woods’? You need a product that symbolises your point of view. So you create a sleeping bag that is designed to have sex in of course…

You call it the ‘sexy hotness’. You make the fabric soft against naked skin – you make it washable. You give it two zips- so not just two people can zip together, but three or four or… can (whatever your into). You make the lining an encyclopedia of sexual positions. You make the bag roomier for better movement. In fact you even give it an extra zipper so people can completely spread their legs.

To advertise the new product Alite ran singles night in camping style lodges. They staged a world record of the amount of people to zip together in sleeping bags- 69 was the obvious record breaking number!

This created loads of noise around their tiny little start up. Exacerbated by the fact that the product actually “scared” traditional camping shops so much most refused to stock it. “They were so used to using old marketing to advertise to the old audience that they didn’t know what to do with us!” smiles Kim at a Creative Mornings talk in San Francisco. The orders came flying in on their online store – where of course they could offer group discount because doing it alone isn’t as fun!

This example of being so committed to an identity gives me goosebumps. They were so aligned on the message that sacrificed all the conventions of the category and just kept pushing, of course Alite also sell tents and folding chairs and camping stoves, but the ‘sexy hotness’ bag acts as a great symbol of reevaluation. Its not for everyone, and that’s exactly the point.

Its so Challenger it makes me want to do sleeping bag cartwheels!!

Watch the full Creative Mornings talk here:

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Have I got your attention? If I have, it’s because that was the intent behind the construction of each of those sentences: they were all newspaper headlines from the last 18 months.

Insightful people, journalists. Their insight is that a proposition often gains its edge, its command on our attention and its ability to change our perspective on a familiar subject through surprising contrasts. It is the use of ‘than’ here that makes us think differently, because each of these sentences represents a surprising juxtaposition. The journalists are not comparing one mobile phone against another mobile phone, or Heathrow airport against Beijing airport, as we tend to in competitive advertising messages. They are deliberately finding an entirely different kind of reference point on the other side of that ‘than’, and it is this that makes us sit up and give it some notice . And in choosing that very different kind of reference point, they are looking to surprise us by choosing an icon we thought we understood well (– we believe that dolphins are highly intelligent, for instance). So this juxtaposition changes not just our view on one of the two in each pairing, but both of them. And it is this that makes us want to read on, be re-educated about what we thought we knew.

Knowing how to seize our limited attention, change our perspective on a familiar subject, and want to find out more – all in a single sentence. Hmm. Perhaps as brand owners we should spend less time trying to be good marketers, and more time trying to be good journalists. And start by finding a surprising relative.

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This article originally appeared in Campaign Asia Pacific.

Bite is currently number three in the Latvian mobile telecommunications market, but growing fast.

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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And they do. In fact, they send you a photograph every day of what they are up to while you are away. Complete transparency, after all, is the cultural imperative du jour.

This is the photograph they send you on the first day:

Hmm. Looks quiet. Too quiet.

But fret not. There seem to be signs of life by the second morning.

Oh, and wait, there’s more.

By the fourth day the team appear to be really getting into their stride. Here they are playing poker and smoking at the CEO’s desk.

Day five sees them unwinding a little with a pyjama party and watching The Hangover. The team bonding seems to be going well.

You have clearly left the office in excellent hands. It has been time well spent.

But what’s the point?

We do a lot of workshops. We work with a lot of marketers, a lot of companies. And I can genuinely say that I have never come across as engaging an indicator of the relationship between a marketing team, and indeed as engaging an indicator of the vibrancy of a culture. I didn’t see this interchange because anyone showed it to me, I came across it because I saw the Marketing Manager laughing at her phone screen one morning before the workshop started, and asked her what she was laughing at. It was intended to be a private joke; I just overheard it.

The company is Bite Latvia, in whose company we had the considerable pleasure of spending a few days in London last week. Bite are a mobile telco, number three in the Latvian market, with a 17% share, and really picking up some consumer momentum: last year 60% of all switchers changed to Bite. They combine an offer with a very serious intent – products and services that better represent the consumers’ interests – with ideas that aim to generate attention and a smile. (When the government put up VAT recently, for instance, they sent out Vitamin C to their customers to help them brace themselves for it).

What’s the correlation between the spontaneous sending of photographs of oneself playing poker at the CEO’s desk and punching way above your weight in terms of customer growth? I’ll leave that to the stats department.

But ask yourself some relatively traditional questions, looking at this trail of communication:
i) Do this team have stimulating ideas?
ii) Do they work together well?
iii) Do they have a good relationship with their boss and their CEO?
iv) Do they feel empowered by everyone from the CEO downwards to really bring themselves, and everything they have to offer, to work?
v) Would it be rewarding – even downright fun – to work there?
vi) Will they talk to their friends positively about where they work, and the culture there?

I think it’s a pretty good KPI. And a really good KPI for certain kinds of challenger.

We have an interview with the CEO of Bite coming up on the site. That was pretty interesting, too.
Keep your eye on Bite. They’re coming through.