Mobile Money

We've been talking about money a lot at Ignition. And we've been talking a lot about mobile technology. So, in case you missed it here is the fabulous Pago campaign from OMD New Zealand that won the Grand Prix at Cannes this year.

Free Rice

Just came across this very heart-warming website.

It tests your vocabulary. For every correct answer 20 grains of rice are donated through the UN to help end world hunger.

It's fun, educational and worthy.

Try it out

http://www.freerice.com

Trends for 2008

Ok. Been a long time since the last post but back with a bang.

Trendwatching has just released it's 8 trends to capitalize on in 2008 and I strongly recommend you give them a read. http://trendwatching.com/briefing/

The 8 trends are:

Status spheres
Premiumization
Snack Culture
Online Oxygen
Eco-Iconic
Brand Butlers
MIY (make it yourself)
Crowd Mining

Cheers

Gilad

Lost Sculptures

Cera Perdida (Lost Wax) is an ongoing project by Barcelona-based sculptor Tanya Sierra.

Every month Tanya leaves one of her sculptures somewhere in Barcelona for a stranger to find and claim.

Each sculpture has a URL engraved where the finder can get more info about the object. The websites contains a photo-gallery of each lost sculpture as well as messages from people who actually found a sculpture.

The project has been running from January 2007 and will end this December.

• www.ceraperdida.com

I'm thinking there must be a cool application for this kind of idea to build buzz for a campaign???????

Google/Youtube

For months, analysts have been speculating about how the mighty Google is going to make money from YouTube and all kinds of suggestions and schemes about new ad units and formats have been raised. In the fashion of a true innovator, Google has made a lateral move by offering video content as part of its Adsense network.

Now publishers can create video ad units using YouTube content.

It's a fascinating strategic move and it will be interesting to see how it takes off.

Here's a video explanation from the Google team.

Thanks to Ed Cotton for this

Focus Group Testing - Burn!

Funny Sandwiches Energiser

Ingredients: bread, slices of cheese, sausage, a green peas, corn, cucumbers, olives, toothpicks etc.
Task: to make a funny sandwich and to treat a neighbor.
The sandwich subject can be connected with your session theme: a mobile phone, a car, an animal, etc.

Creativity - Women in Art

Knowing that Creativity is an important aspect of what we do, I found the following video facinating!

Hope you enjoy!

http://miraulam.multiply.com/video/item/38/Women_In_Art

Tripwire

Tad Hirsch is a researcher in the Smart Cities Group at MIT's Media Lab, where his work focuses on the intersections between art, activism, and technology.

In 2006 he made the site-specific installation Tripwire, which responds to the relationship between San Jose International Airport and downtown San Jose in California

Hirsch custom-built sensors, placed them inside coconuts and hung them from trees at several public locations to monitor noise produced by overflying aircrafts.

Detection of excessive aircraft noise would cause the sensors to trigger automated telephone calls to the airport's complaint line on behalf of the city's residents and wildlife.

Surely there is a media application here we could use? Time/Place/Noise activation etc? Think along the same lines as the cold weather triggered campaign we ran for Campbell's.

Have a look at this ppt presentation by Swiss researcher Nicolas Nova too.

Sparkplug - Conversation Economy

So, you've received Sparkplug about the Conversation Economy. What do you think? What made you sit up? More importantly, how can we bring some of these ideas to our work?

Trendwatching

The latest Trendwatching briefing is out. Here are the opening few paragraphs of this month's issue:

"We've finally succumbed to the pressure. Many of you have repeatedly asked us about big, demographic trends (kids! boomers! gays! women!), to which our answer has always been that there are so many trend firms doing interesting stuff in this arena, that we don't have anything to add. Except for one insight: that these FOREVER TRENDS have been so thoroughly researched, the only thing left to do with them is to turn them into new products, new services and new experiences for your customers. Which may not be what some of you want to hear from us (what about the numbers, the stats, the predictions?), but again we'll gladly refer you to other firms' excellent in-depth reports.

To make a long story short: for this edition of our monthly trend briefing, we asked our spotters to keep an eye out for interesting new business concepts and products that are specifically aimed at women, the gay community and boomers. We collected and analysed their findings and created a hands-on snapshot of what brands around the world are ALREADY doing to serve these demographics in innovative ways, making good money in the process. We've also added a few business ideas we'd spotted in the past, tracking their progress and in some cases, their demise."

It's well worth checking out.

Go to http://www.trendwatching.com/briefing/index.shtml

And no, I don't get a commission for driving traffic to the site.

Saturday Night

Ok, its' Saturday Night and I really ought to be doing something else with my life but I came across this and thought it was fun. Kind of like the Simpsons & Wedding Crashers thing but not for a film this time.....


http://www.carmex-kiss.de/

Ideas for Charts

We got sent this link which gives lots of ideas on different ways to write charts.

Some of them look better than others.....but could be useful. You just run your mouse over the squares and it previews the chart types for you.


http://www.visual-literacy.org/periodic_table/periodic_table.html#

Take a look and see

OMD Cannes Winners

If you want to see all the OMD Cannes Media Lions winners, go to:


http://www.omdawards.com/01/index.htm

The Lynchmeister

Filmmaker David Lynch on keeping true to ideas. http://www.filmmaking.com/davidlynch.html

I'm pretty sure the guy asking the question at the beginning is/was a porn film director. Don't ask me how I know that (it's not what you think...)

More Trending

Influx Insights is another blog that posts articles about emerging trends. Among the regular good stuff there are a number of downloadable reports (via the Thought Packs on the left hand side) - sign up - download - get inspired.

http://www.influxinsights.com/

Cool Sites/Blogs

http://www.thecoolhunter.net/ads/: the coolest things around the world in design, architecture, fashion, advertising, arts in general

http://www.trendwatching.com/: Independant and opinionated trend firm, scanning the globe for the most promising consumer trends, insights and related hands-on business ideas. They have monthly free trend briefings!

http://www.adverblog.com/: cool ad blog written by a friend of mine from beautiful Italy

Visual Complexity

v. cool site!!

http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/

enjoy :)

"The Difference between Focusing on Problems and Focusing on Solutions "

A lesson about over thinking things!

Case 1
When NASA began the launch of astronauts into space, they found out that
pens would not work at zero gravity (ink won't flow down to the writing
surface). To solve this problem it took them one decade and $12 million.
They developed a pen that worked at zero gravity, upside down, underwater,
on practically any surface including crystal and in a temperature range
from below freezing to over 300 degrees C. And what did the Russians do
when faced with a similar situation...?? They used a pencil.

Case 2
One of the most memorable case studies on Japanese management was the case
of the empty soap box, which happened in one of Japan 's biggest cosmetic
companies. The company received a complaint that a consumer had bought a
soap box that was empty. Immediately the authorities isolated the problem
to the assembly line, which transported all the packaged boxes of soap to
the delivery department. For some reason, one soap box went through the
assembly line empty. Management asked its engineers to solve the problem.
The engineers worked hard to devise an X-ray machine with high-resolution
monitors manned by two people to watch all the soap boxes that passed
through the line to make sure that they were not empty. No doubt, they
worked hard and they worked fast, but the company spent a whopping amount
to do so. But when a rank-and-file employee in a small company was posed
with the same problem, he did not get into complications of X-rays, etc.,
but instead came out with another solution. He bought a strong industrial
electric fan and pointed it at the assembly line. He switched the fan on,
and as each soap box passed the fan, it simply blew the empty boxes out of
the line.

Moral
Always look for simple solutions. Devise the simplest possible solution
that solves the problems.

Lynx

If you haven't seen the full Lynx Jet entry from Cannes last year , have a look - very fun.

What if They Did

Check out this blog :
It is a collection of random ideas generated by a creative couple, who sketch them out on the back of an enveloppe, paper bag, blue cloth or whatever.

It is all great fun, and the ideas are very good ( I particularly like the escalator shoe polish idea.)