Rantings

From Wieden+Kennedy:

“We have also created a ground-breaking digital app that introduces the ability to ‘play’ with a television commercial using a mobile phone. The app allows viewers of the film to ‘catch’ the  animated characters as the commercial appears on screen.”

Lovely to see the first blossoms after banging on about it for the last couple of years. I feel a bit less silly now.

Talking 2Screen advertising at Media140 London, October 2009. [07:00 Minutes in.]

The 10 albums that I listened to the most, enjoyed the most or affected me in some way in 2010. The album covers are Spotify links to the albums, where available.

Here we go:

10. Interpol - Interpol

The fourth offering from Interpol perhaps doesn’t even deserve this spot, but I guess some part of me still very much holds onto what I felt when I first listened to Turn On The Bright Lights and there’s enough in here to remind me of that.

If you listen to one track, make it… Memory Serves.

9. Broken Bells - Broken Bells

The debut collaboration between James Mercer of The Shins fame and Danger Mouse is beautiful in many ways. Put it on, close your eyes and you are sitting on a beach, watching the surf hit the shores while the sun is setting.

If you listen to one track, make it… October.

8. Vampire Weekend - Contra

While the self-titled debut was on everyone’s playlists in 2008, Vampire Weekend didn’t really click for me until Contra. Here though, the genre blending is spot on and almost every song stands on its own two feet. Catchy as hell to boot.

If you listen to one track, make it… Giving Up The Gun.

7. Everything Everything - Man Alive

Man Alive is bags of fun and at times, profound. It also sounds fresh, which is quite a feat nowadays. All around, it’s an incredibly strong debut from the British quartet.

If you listen to one track, make it… Suffragette Suffragette.

6. Two Door Cinema Club - Tourist History

Another debut, this time from Northern Ireland. Tourist History for me, is the indie pop album of the year. Clever, fun, just all-round good tunes.

If you listen to one track, make it… I Can Talk.

5. Arcade Fire - The Suburbs

The Suburbs is a story about growing up. No matter where and how you grew up, you’ll find parallels to your own life in there, making Suburbs a very personal experience. Perhaps that’s where its genius lies…

If you listen to one track, make it… The Suburbs.

4. Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

Not convinced it’s a 10.0, but it definitely belongs on this list. Put aside his bullshit and Kanye is still an incredibly clever producer and a great wordsmith. Add to that more collaborations than you can shake a stick at and Dark Fantasy is the best Kanye yet.

If you listen to one track, make it… Monster.

3. Spoon - Transference

Transference is a difficult album to come to after the juggernaut that was Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga. A few listens in however, you find that it sticks with you in quite a different way; it’s subtle yet all encompassing, you’ll find yourself yearning to hear its weird and jagged edges again and again.

If you listen to one track, make it… The Mystery Zone.

2. Plan B - The Defamation of Strickland Banks

Scoff all you want, I don’t care. Ben Drew has created a compelling story, delivered with class and intelligence by a protagonist you can’t help but sympathize with. The lyrics are smart, but playful and the melodies, just right. He thoroughly deserves the commercial success it had.

If you listen to one track, make it… The Recluse. (Though it is a concept album, so you have to listen to the whole thing to get the story.)

1. The Go Find - Everybody Knows It’s Gonna Happen Only Not Tonight

Number one is always the hardest to write or explain; it just is. Everybody Knows has the unique ability to make me remember the past and make me dream of the future, at the same time. This album is below the radar of many, and it deserves to be heard more. It’s not only my top album of 2010, it’s one of my favourite albums, ever.

If you listen to one track, make it… Everybody Knows It’s Gonna Happen Only Not Tonight.

A couple of weeks ago, my mum and I entered a cooking competition called Nom Nom Nom.

We wrote a post about it over at the Nom Nom Nom website. Give it a read.

The competition is now up for public vote and we thought we’d do something a little bit different.

Here’s the deal:

- Vote for us on Nom Nom Nom. We are ‘Like Mother, Like Son - Utku & Armagan’.

- Come back and leave a comment on this post.

- Once voting closes, we’ll pick 4 winners from the comments and invite them to a dinner party at our house in London with the menu we cooked at Nom Nom Nom!

(We’ll arrange a suitable date with the winners.)

Remember, you can vote once a day, and leave a comment once a day to increase your chances!

So get voting, and hopefully, see you soon for dinner!

Utku & Armagan

The brilliance of Wieden + Kennedy’s Old Spice marathon has been written about at length. For me, it’s the best example of content meets social we’ve seen. But it’s something that happened around it which got me really thinking: Old Spice Voicemail.

For the unfamiliar, here’s a short summary. A user called Pandarr on reddit requested an answering machine from Old Spice Man to which he replied with this video:

Then another user on reddit commented:

Couple of hours later, http://oldspicevoicemail.com was live. Since then, there have been countless blog posts and tweets, just about Old Spice Voicemail. It is its own media earning machine.

There’s a couple of really interesting things going on here.

1-) The idea is not too far off from something you can imagine an agency creating around a successful property. iSimples, the meerkat soundboard app got to No. 1 on the App Store in the UK. If Old Spice Voicemail was produced at an agency, it would have taken at least a couple of weeks to build and cost the client probably in multiples of £10k. Old Spice Voicemail was built in hours and didn’t cost W+K or Old Spice (P&G) a penny.

2-) Usually, we as marketers worry about whether people are actually going to watch the ad you spent weeks producing, whether they’ll take part in your crowdsourced campaign and generally whether anyone will give a damn. To command a position where people are not just watching, sharing and engaging but people who don’t know each other are self-organising and willingly spending time, effort and money (domain, hosting) to produce what is essentially a channel for your brand? Stuff of dreams and legends. 

There are a lot of sound ideas around how to bring audiences and brands together online. Play down the role of the brand, provide incentives for users, think about how the brand can work for the audience rather than the other way round. But they’re all based on the idea that we have to convince people first.

Old Spice Voicemail tells us otherwise. Concentrate on connecting with people in ways that resonate with them. Rally the audience around an idea. Entertain and delight them. Just make awesome stuff. And the rest will follow.

Because when you manage to amass fans as passionate as this, anything becomes possible.