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.