ho ho ho... you're fired

omnicom set to cut up to 3,500 jobs

this post is not to pick on omnicom...
just a thought about the nature of the company you work for...

what is the point of giving everything you have to a company in good times... if they aren't prepared to repay it with a decent effort to protect you in uncertain times?

big agencies like omnicom and communications companies like viacom ask workers to be loyal...espouse their values... contribute time for free (weekends, no o.t.), etc...etc..

but when things get uncertain on their end... are they prepared to do the same?

stick with people... even if that means the profit on "thursday" isn't as large as it could be...
...or god forbid lose a little bit of money in the name of investing/contributing to their future relationships with employees...

right now these companies look like they are pro-actively stripping out overhead to "prepare" for what is coming next year...

we like to be proactive too...we like things to be "right sized"...
but it seems to us that we might want our employer to hold off as long as possible in making these kinds of decisions in the spirit of protecting us...

we're not talking about being irresponsible to shareholders...
but maybe shifting some priorities a bit...
...and realigning the values of these businesses to reflect a company not scared of what's going to happen on "thursday"... but confident in years ahead.

it's great working for publicly traded company in good times because the capitalization enables investment in new areas quickly to be on the cutting edge of communications...

unfortunately, these days, to us, it's looking tougher and tougher to work for a publicly traded communications company in uncertain times...

people wonder why some folks at smaller agencies like the barbarian group won't sell for millions to publicly traded holding groups like aegis or interpublic...

we think they realize that their business values are not in alignment with the current state of values inside of companies like omnicom....
and we think this is particularly highlighted in times like these...

a friend of ours at connelly partners in boston told us a couple of weeks ago how the owners just took all the employees and their families to disney world, all expenses paid, because it was important to their culture to invest in their employees and by extension their families...

we aren't really that into disney world at farm...
but on that note, most people we know who work at publicly traded agencies, who haven't had their christmas parties canceled, aren't even allowed to take their significant others to the party because of cost...

kinda makes us think... or ask...

in times like these, what is the role (responcibility?) of the large agency?

How is Stockholm feeling today?

Pretty cool urban art installation in Stockholm

http://www.emotionalcities.com
With the Swedish winter in full swing, an interactive installation is shedding some light on the darkness – as well as on Stockholmers' state of mind.

City's inhabitants are invited to participate in this Emotional Cities lighting exhibition. Anybody can register their current emotional state by answering the question “How are you today?" on the website www.emotionalcities.com.

Visitors to the site report how they are feeling using a scale of seven faces, from frowning to smiley, each coloured to represent a point on the spectrum from violet (sad) to red (happy). The shade of the lights projected on the facades of the five towers at Hötorget changes according to how Stockholmers rate their mood. A median value is calculated for the city, which in turn determines the lights' colour.

Street With a View

We just submitted a similar idea to one of our clients. Imagine mapping a city with art through a mobile app, each piece contextualised to the area or street.

These guys had the same-ish idea but thought about a much simpler and more effective way to implement it.

Lovely

reebok denies all involvement... but the pain train is back and getting out the vote

everyone old enough (or with an internet connection) remembers reebok's superbowl ads from a couple of years ago staring nfl linebacker terry tate....

"terry tate office linebacker" is a high flyer on youtube and by far reebok's highest viewed commercial on the global video site...

that said, although reebok denies involvement, the pain train has returned at returnofterrytate.com.
(denies involvement, but is seemingly fine with someone else using their creative assets... yeah right... nice work)



so tomorrow get out and vote... or that's all she wrote...

music television without the television

farm likes every video ever made online.

why do we need linear mtv again?

farm @ poptech - the economics edition

clay shirky the author of here comes everybody (i read it twice... and i never do that) is talking about generosity...
basically how to design interactions that enable people to do all the little things in the world that add up to a big difference.

this is an area we look at intently at farm... how do you reward people for behavior that rewards the brand?
specifically if the brand is trying to do something great for society like... micro-finance... or open source charity...
how do you super enable the behavior needed to fuel it and spread it?

chris anderson is up there also...
also talking about non-monetary transactions (fancy word for giving)....

this pairing is interesting to me because everyone knows about the anderson's long tail but... but i think shirky has the better more encompassing view with his power law perspective...

farm is always up for a bit of a enomics rumble...

farm @ poptech - the gladwell edition

medium hair malcolm gladwell is talking about his new book outliers.

he's talking about potential...

how many people who have a the potential reach that potential?
how high are capitalization rates in america?
they are low... lower then you think...

medium hair gladwell using high school athletics as an example...
there is low capitalization on athletic college scholarships in intercity high schools...
1 in 6... so inner city high school capitalization is about 16%...

so basically if everyone who could play.. did play...
either the level of play would increase massively in the mlb, nba, nfl, etc...
or..
you would need larger leagues, with more teams for all the good players...

farm loves sports... so either way this sounds good to us...
great stuff...

live.poptech.com

farm @ pop!tech - saving the world

farm is at pop!tech taking in scarcity & abundance.

dr. saul griffith is going through his genius accounting of his personal energy consumption...
and has just lunched wattzon.com... it looks very cool..
sort of an open source, crowd sourcing platform built to benchmark personal energy consumption...
please have a look.

the question he just posed is not "what to do"...
"it's what temperature do we want the earth to be at?"

steaming now at live.poptech.com

what will you do with android?

as of today, android is not just a phone.
today with the launch of the android open source project, it's is an open software stack that enables machine to machine (m2m) communication.

we have to admit there's a small chance this might bring skynet sooner than anticipated...
but farm still thinks it is very cool and will prove to be a big deal in marketing and communications.

farm @ pop!tech

we will be there.
if you know us... say "hi"...
if you don't, just smile.

viral marketing gone wrong

obama iphone application

The Obama camp continues to push the envelope in how campaigns use digital to reach voters with a new down loadable iPhone application that is available through the iTunes store or through the App Store button on iPhones. There are some very cool and useful features and it is well populated with contextually dynamic information. This is one of the first applications I have seen that utilizes the address book in an interesting way: You can call friends from your address book to help get out the vote and it will tick them off to help you keep track of your calls.

Local Positioning System

Nokia are soon to test an indoor GPS system at a shopping mall in Helsinki using their Nokia Maps software and N-Series range of phones. The localised GPS system can guide you to specific stores and services within the centre.
As the technology advances we expect your phone to be able to tell you where to go in the mall based on how you're feeling, what your interests are and what you've been doing. - it'll know this of course, because it's your phone and it's always with you.
Your calendar knows you missed your check up at the dentist so proceed to the third floor to the walk in dental centre. Been taking a lot of pictures recently with your camera-phone? Why not get some of them printed out at the Kodak Centre on the fifth floor.
Nokia Local Positioning System is a direct marketers dream.

It's time for virtual worlds to go to work

LindenLabs have smartly given Secondlife, well a secondlife with the SL grid. An OS that allows developers to close off SL and use it in applications however they wish.

One of the more interesting uses we've seen is ImmersiveWorkspaces by developer Rivers Run Red.
ImmersiveWorkspaces enable people in disparate physical locations to come together in one place for the purpose of collaboration and communication using a suite of web based tools.

Farm spoke to Justin Bovington, CEO of Rivers Run Red

'We're just about to enter a new era of immersive collaboration, the need to reduce travel costs, tap into collective intelligence and create a more open ideas environment. This gives organisations a tangible ROI.'

While we're sticking to iChat for now, maybe we'll hook up for a meeting and some virtual soggy sandwiches and cold coffee soon.

Agent Orange

Rowan Durrant steals up in the dead of night and fixes things that well, need fixing.
Archway is a pretty drab area of London, a place that completely fails as a public space.
Separating a council estate from a tube station the wind rattles past the precinct where kids play and mums look for somewhere to put the shopping down.
In the middle of the precinct was an officially neglected bench.
The support pillars of the bench had broke as had the middle section.
Durrant set to work donning a fluorescent jacket and hard had with angle grinder at the ready.
He calls it Superfixing.
In guerilla art secrecy is key...maybe that's why Durrant's next project involved the Queen, MI6, three police officers and a Lion.

viewzi.com

a nice new way to browse the web...

sm.art

Set up by London's Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, The Design Laboratory is like an MIT labs for the arts world.

With alumni including Alexander McQueen, Stella McCartney and Galliano, the design laboratory offers graduates a space from which to commercialise their work.

Projects have included building new multi-sensory retail kits for adidas and branding for world famous culinary alchemist Heston Blumenthal, owner of last years best restaurant in the world - The Fat Duck.
As we increasingly seek ever diverse talent sets to help us develop products and services for clients, designlab provides a resource for the best in fresh new talent. Every agency struggles to get talent through the door - why force it when it's in the building next door?

thedesignlaboratory.co.uk

future mobile

getting busy around here... 

but over the past couple of days there has been a conversation worth posting...

basically after being asked by a client to prognosticate about mobile technology in the near and far future two things became very clear to us...

1. in the near (and far) future mobile is ultimately about never "not having it with you"

2. in this future the difference between people who "have" and people who "do not have" will be "permissions"

power of we

Kiva.org is a micro lending site that allows individuals to provide loans to the working poor via the internet. I have been a frequent visitor of Kiva over the last few years and one was always able to find a few hundred people or groups looking for a loan at any given time.

A few weeks ago Kiva created this idea of "lending teams." These teams which anyone could make allows you to "credit" your loan to a particular "team" or affinity group so you are now making loans to individuals from a particular "team." Since that change there are typically zero to only a handful of unfinanced loans at any given time because you can now loan as a connected group. The Power of We.

hey you, what's that sound?

The most popular download this week on Nokia's download site mosh...

...a ringtone that makes your sweet n95 sound like an even sweeter iphone

puffy shirt

there's  lots of talk about the seinfeld / bill gates campaign for microsoft by cp+b launching in september... 

(and the $10 million they paid a guy who spent 8 years on tv using a mac...)

hard to have a constructive comment about the creative as no one we know has seen it...

but from a strategic standpoint...

there are many reasons why it will struggle... some funny... some obvious...

(in fact we think the whole thing sounds like a seinfeld episode... with peterman playing bill gates...)

but in reality... you have to look at the objective... 

what is it? 

looking at the hiring of seinfeld, his age and the demo he will work hardest against... 

the best we could figure the goal seems to be appealing to 30-something and 40-something vista resisters...

...in some combination that brings mac down while boosting vista up...

we think both are going to be challenging in the real world of apple v msft product.

microsoft needs to deal with the fact that it's operating system is under-delivering to the same people who were seemingly happy, loyal customers of xp.... 

as opposed to trying to convince everyone it's just some crazy mis-understanding...

microsoft leadership needs to take some personal inventory and focus on the future of their os... make real changes/fixes... 

assuming people don't outright hate you... if you make things better..people will come (or comeback)... it's a fact.

xp customers with little ill-will don't suddenly turn on you because justin long says so...

just like we seriously doubt a talented funny man from the 90's is going to bring them back...

this is bigger than some perceived pr war engineered by steve jobs and tbwa... 

there are real issues... and our guess is it's better to blame msft central marketing than the engineering culture in redmond.

all that said, the ironic thing is... this has happened before... 

when mac "got bad" (remember os 8?) in the 90's people left... 

people that had been seemingly happy, loyal customers left for something they perceived was better... windows.

what did apple do?

plan a advertising response to microsoft's rolling stones powered "start me up" campaign for windows 95!?!?

no... 

they re-embraced design delivering the imac... developed os x... the os at the core of everything they are today.

it's not like apple didn't advertise during this period... 

but more importantly they learned from their mistakes and responded with products that beat the competition... moved the bar forward in a way the consumer could see and feel...

if we were microsoft right now we would be a bit more concerned with getting cp+b involved with windows 7 development and launch than crying over the spilled milk that is vista...

it's not a mis-understanding... a pr bumle... or those poor bastards at mccann... 

the customer has spoken... and they're just not that into you... (or vista)

i must be in the front row!

if you know what that means you were born before the 80's...

as reported in all the ad rags, (after flirting with it a bit) miller lite will return to its most famous (and best) campaign format with the line "taste great, less filling".

we think this is a really smart, long over due, move.... 

and not just because we remember laughing out loud at spots like this and this years ago... and we can all imagine updating the format with current sports icons as well as the cameo opportunities for madden...

we think today, in the connected world we live in, "taste great, less filling" as huge potential for consumer involvement and ownership delivering real time spent with the brand...

or specifically farm believes this has the potential, if enabled, to be bigger than the total sum of the television ads.

many of us have worked on sports brands....

and have used these brands to present a position or an option of positions to consumers in a forum where they can act...

and whether it's "do something like this" or "pick a side -  you're either for this product or that product"...

consumers take the idea and run with it... 

a lot of the time making it their own... making it bigger than the advertising...

so the point of this post is... 

whoever is working on this... please...

think about "taste great, less filling" as an idea first... and then make the funny ads to promote the idea... 

if you do that, it will be larger than advertising and have longevity long after your media money runs out...

my phone is now sick!

a barabarian turned me onto this...

we are farm and we approve this message

check out saysme.tv.

they have canned messages (political television spots) from candidates that you can buy, tag with your support message ("we are farm and we support this message") and put on tv.

yes, real live, your mother can see it, tv.

basically it looks like they have a cost-per-spot deal worked on the back end with the cable soft systems (like spotrunner) so you can buy just one spot... which is cool.

look for the farm obama ad coming soon.

right in anyone's @#$%

i was pulling together a nice farm club mix on muxtape....

you don't present as well as this guy

a lot of my fellow farmers think they are pretty good in the front of the room...

but you're not as good as dick hardt.

the content of this presentation on identity portability, open id, identity 2.0, etc is cool... and has obvious relevance to the overall consumer-centric marketing conversation on farm club...

but the reason for posting this is the presentation... specifically the style and delivery...

check it out.

research as advertising?

this site for uniqlo is interesting because of something that bores the hell out of a lot of cd's i know... research.

this idea is great for many reasons around consumer transparency, social reinforcement, etc... but one of the coolest things to us is it uses the research budget to produce content...

we are guessing uniqlo was going to spend the money to do the research anyway... 

why not shoot the answers on a simple seamless background and produce hundreds of talking head pieces of content?

why not indeed?

this begs the question - hey ebay u.s., why aren't you doing this?

great idea... a bigger than advertising idea from euro and ebay france.

what is farm club?

historically big marketing ideas have been based on advertising...

but in this digital age of connectivity and consumer control farm believes big marketing ideas have to be bigger than advertising...

this is a space for like minded conspirators.

what's interesting?

http://interestingnewyork.com/

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