Lauren Luke: The Real Deal

For the last year I have been working on a fascinating project. Truly creating a brand from scratch and watching it go to market.

On Monday the first make up kits by You Tube sensation Lauren Luke went on sale on the site bylaurenluke.com. The brand was created by Anomaly and the site by Dare. 

I know a lot of agencies are trying to go down the same avenue as Anomaly in creating their own products. On the one hand it is definitely worth it. The feeling of creating something and watching it grow is very special. But the idea, the marketing, that's the easy bit. The production / distribution / finance - all these things are where it gets hardcore. If you think you can handle that go for it - but it's not for the feint hearted.

Lauren is a single mum from South Shields who first uploaded a make up tutorial to You Tube in the summer of 2007. Just a smidge under two years later she has hew own brand, a range of products, a book deal, a column in the Guardian and a Nintendo DS game deal inked.

All that has been done without a single penny, and I truly mean not a single penny, being spent on media. I remember not too long ago many industry luminaries saying you could never build a brand online. Try telling Lauren that.

It's very easy for us to chalk the launch down as another day in the office but for Lauren this is a genuinely life changing - and brilliant - experience. You never know it might be one for the industry too.

What's going to win the Digital awards this year?

It's about that time, not quite squeaky bum time, because lets face it awards are not as important as football but all the votes for the big awards shows, bar Cannes, will be in. If you were a betting man you could do worse than check out Michael Lebowitz's top 5 campaigns  of the year that he picked out for Forbes magazine.

I judged the Art Directors Club with Michael this year, he was chairman of the One Show and I'm pretty sure headed up Viral at D&AD so there is nothing out there he wouldn't have seen. One piece of work that I hadn't seen on his list was a great banner for Axion a belgian bank. The concept is wonderfully simple, stick a band in a banner. Use the space restriction to your advantage. I really like this. I am on record as saying that banners are dead as a creative medium. This is the only banner campaign I have seen in a year or so that I wish I had done. Maybe there is life in the old dog yet?

What makes it all the more galling is that Flo and I had this idea a few years ago. It was kind of different, it was a mini band that lived in an app that sang the news and stuff like that - but close enough for us to know that we can never resurrect it. Another one bites the dust! And another example of the fact that it's easy to have ideas - what's hard is making them happen. Congratulations to the agency in Belgium for doing just that, I'm sure they will be on a podium near you soon. 

Can Fallon Do Digital?

So today Fallon launched an app called Skimmer. It seems to be a slimmed down version of FriendFeed. It launched and then it promptly crashed. What's the html tag for schadenfreude?

No, that's a cheap jibe. As you will see from my twitter conversation with a few people I think it's genuinely good that Fallon are doing this. The sooner everyone realises that there is no digital vs traditional the better off we will all be. I know it won't make blogs as interesting but I am sure we can all find something else to argue about.

How much would you give me for Cheryl Cole?

So the record companies have pulled music videos from YouTube. I think anyone with half a brain knows that if you want to get free music now you can and YouTube can make or break a star so it seems a little bit silly, but whatever. For me the more interesting question is why record companies think the deserve to get paid what they did before the internet.

I have often wondered why somone like Robbie Williams or Noel Gallagher, or the most annoying one from Girls Aloud feel like they deserve millions of pounds for singing a song. Probably they never dreamed they would but they got lucky and had a good manager and so if you did before, why not now?

There is nothing to suggest that these people are the 'best' at their jobs. There are better singers than Robbie, better guitarists than Noel and better karaoke singers than Cheryl Cole. The record companies seem to think that because they were able to charge 10 quid for a product that everyone knows cost about 10p to produce that they still should be able to. But the internet has changed that. 

Peoples notions of delivery and usage have clearly changed but I don't think people realise that this means there is just not the money about in music anymore. Is that so bad? (same could be said for the Automotive Indsutry)

What's a decent wage for a singer? Someone who works hard and is good at their job, actually enjoys their job. Why should it be 1 million pa. Surely 100k would be ok? No? 

Oh and just in case you were in any doubt about how passionate YouTubers are about music check out this amazing film that makes a track out of YouTube samples

Club Tropicana drinks are free (but how about redesigns?)

No wonder our industry is in such a funk. A while back I stumbled upon the redesign of Tropicana in a store over here. I thought it looked cheap and nasty and so did a few other people after I posted a comment about it on my tumblr. After barely a few months PepsiCo are reverting to the old design. That's a monumental f**k up.

The same branding company - Arnell - that is currently embroiled in the $1m or is it $10m Pepsi redesign farce is behind the Tropicana work. As I said in my original post I could probably write something very lengthy about the complexities of design and meta language and loads of artsy fartsy nonsense (which it seems Peter Arnell is something of a God at) but fundamentally anyone with a brain can surely see that the old design worked well and the new design looks pale by

comparison.

I suppose marketing departments and agencies exist (and make money) through doing things like this but Tropicana is such a strong brand - why fix something that ain't broke? If they felt like they needed to freshen the brand up a little why not pour all that money into New Product Development, CSR or do something cool in the digital space?

I don't get it. Can anyone enlighten me? 

Mark Wnek's awards rant

On the back of Adweek giving R/GA digital Agency of the Year Mark Wnek wrote a drug like rant about the whole awards system and it being bullshit.

I have to say I know a lot of people don't like him (don't really know why, or care, little before my time) but I think he's spot on. I have cut and pasted the full text from Brian Morrissey's blog, which is very good for those of you wanting to know what's going on in the US digital scene. I haven't changed the formatting at all. I think a good narcesque fueled peice of prose should just come as it is...

"I have flu and am bored so here's a feverish rant for you: there is a big problem with the (Anglo-?) American/capitalist need for winners and losers. Somewhere along the line advertising got ensnared in the Oscars/Hall of Fame mentality of ostentatiously awarding skin-deep flashiness as opposed to true, largely unsung fundamental business-affecting performance. Most of the conversations I have with anybody connected to the so-called creative community in ad agencies come around to awards or award-winning work at some point. It has come to the point where agencies at the very least equally develop work for the consideration of advertising juries as for clients and consumers.

"There are creative people in the ad industry who are famous. Are there any famous people in other trades like building or plumbing? The digital community hasn't grown out of this utter bullshit. The digital community has grown up via solving genuine business problems and has an undiluted dedication to creating concrete, game-changing and lasting platforms and connections. Frankly, the medium is irrelevant. The only thing that is relevant is coming up with the right solution at the right time in the right way while being beholden to nothing - BUT NOTHING - but the business/communications/consumer/reputational challenge the paying client is struggling with.

"Such solutions are most often unglamorous. Particularly in the short term - which is why all the best digital people use the word 'lasting' a lot. The great thing about Bob G and R/GA is not Nike Plus. Nike Plus is just a natural outcome of a company that has been thinking deeply and unostentatiously about helping clients with their business for years rather than playing to the crowd (something which, by the way, Crispin were also doing for years before anybody was even talking about them). As a grown-up I would LOVE to see agencies honored for genuinely thinking about (if not feeling for) their clients and their problems rather than being good at promoting themselves via awards junkets.

"Olive Garden (yes, Olive Garden) has a positioning which, as you know, is 'when you're here, you're family'. I don't see anyone jumping up and down and claiming credit for that. It's not Nike, of course. But Olive Garden has had 54 uninterrupted quarters of growth. 54. Clearly there's a business situation at work and a whole collection of supplier (yep, that's what we are, suppliers, not superstars) relationships that is well and truly working. So what I would dearly like to see someone have the balls to do is to have one Agency of the Year and reveal the whole range of complex, unsung, lasting, bottom-line affecting ideas and behaviors - strategic, technological or otherwise - that it brought to bear. Man these antibiotics are weird."

You go Mark. I'll try to remember that while I judge some awards this week. 

Who will be the Digital David Ogilvy?

It's been a while since i posted here, been busy in NY helping Dare set up and all that jazz. Anyway, there is an interestng debate going on over these parts about whether digital creativity is up to scratch or not. Randy Rothenberg, president of the IAB no less, has weighed in saying he thinks we are all sub par and will never reach the level of David Ogilvy or Bill Bernbach. Is he right?

Course he's not. Randy's notion that digital creativity sucks is a pretty weak argument. Who is to say who will be the Bernbachs or the Ogilvy's of digital? It's pretty unlikely that there will be *no one* - the odds just don't stack up.

Obama the star in Brewster’s Millions.

The credit freeze is for suckers. Obama’s marketing budget is now so humongous that he may not actually be able to spend all his millions by Election Day on November 4th.

 
Unlike Richard Prior in Brewster’s Millions though Obama has executed a flawless spend of his dosh, something that has rightly earned him Advertiser of the Year over here. There are a few things that are interesting about this. The first one being that the general consensus is that had a ‘big agency’ been in charge of his marketing campaign they more than likely would have made a pig’s ear of it. That’s not particularly encouraging for the state of the mainstream industry. But I don’t think that’s really news is it? What’s more interesting is how Obama got to rack up another $150 million just last month.

 
We all know about the great things that Obama has done. He’s on Twitter, Flickr, Facebook etc. and just appeared in a few X-Box games. All boxes ticked - and all with serious budgets. This is a digital or social media planner’s wet dream. It’s easy to experiment when you have so much cash though. I wonder if Obama didn’t have so much money would he have played it more safe with all the normal TV boll*cks? I guess we will never know, but I have to think that he would have still done a good proportion of the neat stuff.

The other story was of course the Shepard Fairey poster. This has become the image of the campaign. It’s perfect in every way. It effortlessly makes Obama cool, yet statesmanlike and introduces a whole new generation into politics. What ad agency wouldn’t be proud of a piece of creative like that? Take the coolest street artist around and get him to create content for your client. And if I had a dollar for every brainstorm I had sat in since the poster came where someone has said, “And we could get Shepard Fairey to do X,” then I would be joining Richard Prior on the Brewster’s silliness. But of course no agency came up with the idea. No one from the Obama campaign contacted Shepard. He did it on his own accord. And that’s the killer.

Consumers are tired of being told what to do. There is enough information out there these days on your product, service or cause for people to make up their own minds. They will then act accordingly. So Shepard Fairey created the poster way back in the primaries, stuck it up over LA and charged nothing. He thought it was a good idea, his way of helping a cause he believed in. And all these people that are giving Obama money by the sackloads every day (about $5m a day, every day) are also doing it because they believe in Obama the brand.

So the question is how do you behave as a brand in such a way that people can’t help but want to at the very simplest level, purchase your brand, but go beyond that. Way beyond, so that come the time when you have to slice up your media spend you actually have too much money to spend in too little time. Nice problem to have.

I have a theory that Burton Snowbaords may have achieved this marketing nirvana but that’s another post for another time.

PS. Thanks to Paul Daligan for the Brewster analogy.
 

Flash on the Beach.

If you said flash on the beach to most advertising folk they would probably think about Cannes and a black Amex card, this is not a post about that sort of thing - although I think Florian and I did once see Martin Brooks flash on the beach at five in the morning a few years back in Cannes. No, no. Flash on the Beach was a conference in Brighton (England - see some cool things do still happen in England) where all the top flash bods got together to talk about Flash. There has been a mini sh*tstorm coming out of it that anyone seriously interested in the future of creative communication would do well to take half an hour to read.

For starters, as I know the Brand Republic audience varies wildly from digital know-it-alls to, well, advertising people, Flash is a piece of software, it's really the main bit of software that allows digital practitioners to work their magic. It makes things move and can incorporate video, stills, data etc. It makes thing look flash! I have absolutely no idea how it works.  

The Keynote speaker at FOTB was a chap called Jonathan Harris. He's very clever, he's won lots of awards. He wrapped up the conference by basically saying, it's all well and good what we are doing but it's a bit sh*t and we need to do better. This has rather put some people's noses out of joint. If you follow this link you will see a really interesting snapshot of where future creativity is going. The two main protagonists are Jonathan himself and Joshua Davis (another very clever, awarded chap). Seeing a no-holds-barred debate between them (and a few others) is the modern equivalent of something like Francis Ford Coppola squaring up to Martin Scorcese or Monet having a pop at Van Gogh.

Before you accuse me of wildly exaggerating the importance of these people, this is really the crux of the debate. Both Harris and Davis have had their work shown in art museums, very credible museums, but Harris wonders aloud about his best work:

It doesn't matter what discipline you are in if you want to produce remarkable work these are the questions you must ask yourself.
Digital art, or 'creative' if you work in advertising, is only in it's very infancy but it's fascinating to see this debate unfurl and see the next generation of gifted artists document their feelings for future generations.

A New Brand Manifesto: Do like The Foo.

We’ve been working a fair bit with record companies over here at Another Anomaly. The same questions arise over and over again as they did when working with any other brand, say an airline. What to do in this crazy digital age? How open to be? How to create ‘the buzz’? Having been to a few festivals this year and just returned from the Virgin Mobile Festival it occurred to me that any brand could do a lot worse than copy Dave Grohl’s alt rock band, The Foo Fighters’ strategy.

Make it easy to be likeable.

I don’t really know anyone who actually loves The Foo Fighters. Most people think they are ‘ok’. When I said I was going to see them at VFest my cool music friends said, ‘oh, they will put on a good show’. I don’t think this is exactly the same as saying a girl has a ‘nice personality’ but perhaps close. They are just a band like any other band they have some good songs some not so good songs. Like brands, there are plusses and minuses. But they really work those plusses so that it’s very hard to dislike them.

Be on time.

There is nothing worse than bands turning up late. The crowd get antsy, some of them weren’t even there to see your crappy band anyway. And there has been a lot of bad press lately about being late – why get off on the wrong foot and consistently have to win back favor? Be aware of negative press and avoid any potential pitfalls. The brand equivalent is easy when one thinks of something like an airline but what of something like a chocolate bar? I would say the basics are making sure it’s in stock and in a semi-prominent position on the shelf. Don’t fall at the first hurdle.

Be clear.

Dave Grohl mapped out his intentions for the set after the first song. He said something like, ‘We are gonna completely f**kin rock out for at least fifteen songs.’ He also, very smartly in the context of a 10pm curfew, said, ‘We will keep rocking until they tell us to stop’. Again this is all about knowing the audience and putting they’re minds at rest. There is no debate. Joe Public thinks, ‘ok, they are gonna rock until the end, they would go for more if they could, they are on my side. They are a little controversial, anti-authority. I like this guy!’ This is just managing expectations but so many brands just don’t do it, leading to disappointment.

Stand for Something.

Music people know that the Foo Fighters stand for post-grunge FUN. That in itself would seem like an oxymoron but I would suggest that they created this niche and have creamed it. They are primarily there to entertain and have fun while doing it. They don’t ever stray from that. Every concert is fun. Every video is fun. The best brands, Nike, for example, have a great handle on this. Other brands are all over the shop – look what a mess Starbucks has made from moving away from just making good (better than a normal café) coffee.

Interact more than anyone else.

So all brands interact these days. Well, most at least try to. Not enough I’m afraid. Most singers will talk to the audience, even Thom Yorke said a few things on Friday night when I saw Radiohead in New Jersey. But Dave Grohl kept talking to the audience. He kept running to the very far edges of the stage. No one else did that. He went further, he tried to interact with as many people as possible. He’s not going to get paid any more for that, he doesn’t have to do that - he could just stand there. He could just act like a brand and expect people to come to him, but he doesn’t he goes to them. And he goes demonstratively further than anyone else.  Does your brand do that?

Be enthusiastic

This is a little like the above. But I do feel that so many brands and bands could be more positive in their outlook in life. Look what happened when Dove were positive about real women. Dave Grohl seems like he is one of the happiest men alive (and remember that he was about to give up music completely after Kurt Cobain committed suicide). Happiness is contagious – the flipside is of course that being a miserable so-and-so is also contagious. Being happy is also free.  

Be Collaborative

This is fundamental. Dave Grohl does stuff with other bands – with potential competitors. He plays drums with the Queens of the Stones Age, he gets other people, like Lemmy from Motorhead and Brian May (!) to come up on stage. He’s not afraid to mix it up. He’s open source. This works in two ways. He gains credibility in some circles for playing with QOTSA and Lemmy and other people know he can’t be taking himself too seriously if he starts playing with Brian May. From day one he has always said that Abba were as important to him (and Nirvana) as Black Flag. In their videos they always collaborate with the right people too, whether it be a director or an actor like Jack Black – it’s on brand. Some brands get it right, Puma are a great example but most are too precious thinking they either don’t need to collaborate or it’s beneath them. Wrong.

Be Flexible

Flexibility is also part of this. Different members of the bands play different instruments. Other bands would probably say, ‘we can do that’, but the point is they don’t. The Foo Fighters do and make sure you know about it. Everyone expects companies to be more flexible these days from how you get your coffee to customizing your car on a website before you buy it. This is not a fad, it won’t go away, it will only increase.  So do something about it before it’s too late. Also if flexibility is in your brand’s blood it’s so much easier to react when things go wrong.

Be useful.

Weird one for a rock band but stay with me. At one point Dave Grohl was given a set of keys that someone in the audience had lost. He did a very funny monologue going through what was on the keyring, like a library card and what sort of guy comes to a Foo Fighters gig with their library card and that he was gonna steal his truck and f**k it up etc. Everyone thought it was hilarious (remember – stand for something – FUN) but I bet the guy that lost his keys got them back in the end. So a simple lost and found message, something essentially useful, becomes entertainment. Most brands are terrible at this. I think Virgin Atlantic are the only airline I can think of that at least make an effort in this area.

Leave something extra for real fans.

Much has been written about Easter Eggs – little bits of funs in computer games that the coders make that only die hard fans find out or get access too. Bands can be a little like this too. At one point in the set The Foo Fighters covered ‘Young Man Blues’ by The Who. Taylor Hawkins, the drummer was wearing the same mod target t-shirt that Kieth Moon used to wear. No mention was made of it. They didn’t say it was a Who track but for a few music geeks out there they make the connection which makes them feel special for knowing stuff that other people don’t but also makes the band seem cool. Great brands should reward real fans in unexpected ways and then not make a big deal about it. Random acts of goodness create special bonds that are more likely to last.

Do it all (to be memorable)

My last point. If the Foo Fighters had done just one of the above things I wouldn’t be writing about them. If they had done three I might have maybe told a few people about it. But because they did them all it becomes something special – something memorable, something worth talking about. It’s difficult to do it all. Brand mangers have not been trained this way – they like an easy life (as do agencies). So it’s easier to spend a million bucks on one TV shoot or even a web site than do lots of smaller initiatives, even if together they are cheaper and more effective – look at Red Bull. This is the tanker that needs to be turned around in our business. It’s easy to blame clients but I suspect it’s as much the agencies as anyone else.

Will it work? Well who knows, but what I would say is that every single person I met after the show said they loved it. And I was converted. The Foo Fighters are not a ‘great band’. They are not really critically acclaimed and yet every one of their six albums has been up for a Grammy. So how does that work? They give people more reasons to like them than dislike them and they work hard at it. They may not win every award but they are always in contention. The cumulative effect is that they have longevity. And in this day that’s incredibly important for any brand. Anyone remember The Darkness?

Anyone fancy a free trip to New York? (and want to be on TV)

Together with YCN I am running a little competition for ideas on how we should decorate our very big wall in our very lovely office here in SoHo New York. I don't have any preconceived notions of what I am looking for just something cool, fun, provoking and something that will stand the test of time. The winning design idea will win a free trip (flights and hotel) to New York for three days and get to make the mural here live on Current TV.  The winner will also get to meet Tristan Eaton from Thunderdog Studios and Stephen Bliss senior artist dude for Roskstar games - it's his mug all over the shop on GTA 4. They will be judging along with me and giving tips on how to tackle a big old white wall. I won't be giving any tips on that. I am crap at painting.

 Loads more information on the YCN site. Show us what you got.
 

What does success look like these days?

On the way to work I rode by the apple store just to see what was going on. There is this story about Alex Bogusky primarily judging a creative idea's merit by it's ability to create press (told lots of places but most recently in Nick and Toby's very fine Digital Essay). But seeing as most newspapers will print any old *** these days how can one judge what's a success.   

One way could be whether the cops deem it worthy enough to get involved.  

I hung around for a bit, seems like the cops really shouldn't have bothered though. The queues did stretch round the block up to Houston but I think that was more to do with the fact that they were only letting one person in every 5 mintues. This is either because it takes them too long to process an order or they just want the queue to be there all day for PR.

When you think about the commotion of last year and Anomaly's Gold Effie on the back of the launch it just goes to show some things remain the same in this business: The Power of Being First.

When is a production agency not a production agency?

Short answer to that is when Noah Brier from Naked joins as head of planning. But things are changing folks. The lines are blurring and after all the fuss at Cannes between Gold winning BBDO and non-Gold winning Big SpaceShip it seems like the conversations are just starting.

Some context. Noah is a big brain from Naked in NY. Noah is joining The Barbarian Group - which is also full of big brains but has, until now, rightly or wrongly been labeled as a "Just A Production Company". This is a common enough story. You can read elsewhere what Barbarian have done or not done but the point is that it's companies like them, Big Spaceships and Perfect Fools (whom Mark Chalmers, former ECD of Strawberry Frog recently joined) that are now in the driving seat.

There was a minor spat at Cannes when Big Spaceship didn't win a gold for the work they had done on HBO Voyeur. For sure the awards system should be updated so that production companies can receive the proper credit they deserve - in the same way that it's perfectly clear who directs - and through which company - award winning TV commercials. Anyone who knows Michael at Big Spaceships will know he is not a confrontational kind of guy - he just wanted to start the conversation. It seems to me there are two things worth considering.

Firstly, ad agencies are very used to this relationship. It's identical to the TV process. Creative team come up with an idea. Director and Production Company then, in the best instances, make that idea into something amazing. Everyone knows who the best directors and companies are but it's still the creative team who go up on stage to collect the gong. I was wondering why the film production people don't get annoyed with this but then I worked out that fundamentally their life is a zillion times better than any agency creative. If you are a good director you earn a fortune, more than any creative, actually more than any creative director. You travel around the world shooting in excotic locations on everyone else's money. Life is good, why worry about *** like that? The problem is the digital production people, as a new sector, don't earn anywhere near that kind of cash. It's hard work, for the most part they get treated like *** and so, actually, yeah, it would be nice to get some recognition once in a while....

Secondly however,I don't think most of the people in the good production agencies will be worrying too much. They know they are onto a good thing. With a couple of key hirings, like Noah, or a few 'creatives' (whatever that means these days), client facing project managers etc they will be able to go straight to the client on some jobs and where that's not possible pick and choose the peachy jobs from ad agencies who mostly wouldn't know how to make a gold winning web site if their Cannes expense budget depended on it.

If I was looking for a new job, I know where I would start looking.
 

The Spanish Revolution (and what it means for advertising)

I just won another 20 bucks from a colleague after Spain won the Euro 2008. It's my third in a row on the Spanish. I knew they were going to win straight from the off. If you could bet online over here in the states I would have cleaned up even more. Conventional wisdom had it that the Spanish can never win anything, they bottle it etc etc, that's why loads of people put money on Russia and especially Germany. To me that's just incredibly lazy thinking.

Bookies don't normally get things wrong. Why? Because they take emotion and conventional wisdom out of the equation. They look at the cold hard facts. So Spain were among the pre-tournament favourites - rightly so. Yet when it came to the final loads of people, especially English people, were betting on Germany. Why? Because that's how its always been. And there is a pithy little quote from Gary Lineker about Germany always winning that's just so funny, and 'oh, how true?, don't you just love Gary Lineker?' No. Bollocks.

Anyone capable of seeing things clearly should have been able to see that Spain have not lost a game in 20. This is a new generation who don't give a jot about previous failings. Also those failings are grossly overegged to sell more newspapers. England were very lucky to beat Spain in Euro 96 and how South Korea managed to pay off the referee in the 2000 World Cup and get away with it remains one of sports great mysteries. In fact Spain have been incredibly unlucky over the past 10 years or so. So forgetting all the media hype and sentamentality about Spain and our old foes the Germans it was a no-brainer.

It seems to me that it's the same in our business at the moment. It's easier to think and act as if everything is still the same. That the stereotypes will naturally prevail. In other words TV should lead, digital people don't really have ideas (not proper ideas!), clients are incapable of creativity, creative awards are everything, you get paid by the hour, blah blah blah - the Germans win - that's how it is. Like I said, Lazy Thinking. Slowly but surely pieces of work like Nike+, Uniqclock, Subservient Chicken, Lynx Feather etc and innovative practices like marketing that make money for clients and agencies or entrepreneurial deals will leave Gary Lineker and his traditional agency friends who can write clever little headlines behind once and for good. Like Jay Z giving Noel Gallagher the finger at Glastonbury, things changes, move on. Viva Espana!

 
(PS. Right at the start of this blog, a yeah and half ago, I wrote a post about how I had seen Gordon Brown speak at a conference many years ago and thought he was awful. I couldn't see how he was going to make a good PM as he had no charisma. That post had the most comments I had ever received - probably from all these, die hard Labour supporters who had a pop at me saying that I knew nothing about politics and I should stick to advertising etc etc.

You don't need to know anything about actual policies and the intricacies of real politics to know that someone personally is a dud. It's just a feeling that you get. The best people in our business are able to make snap decisions that usually play out to be correct - one idea is better than another etc etc. But again, just look at the facts. It's incredibly lazy thinking to merely assume that because Gordon was a good Chancellor and he was the new Labour PM that he would be any good. I'm sure loads of people wanted him to be good, to rally behind him but, for me, it was never going to happen.)
 

Swapping the French Riviera for a muddy field in Tennessee

About this time last year I was, frankly, having a whale of a time in a swimming pool in a villa in the south of France, pretending to go the Cannes advertising festival. As all my old chums set off for Cannes I have just returned from a wet field in Manchester, Tennesee and you know what, I couldn't be happier.

Ok, I get these emails inviting me to lunch at Cannes and texts from people on boats and all that la-di-dah and I would be lying if I said I didn't want to be there. Who wouldn't, it's a gas. But having traded a semi high profile job in Advertising for a job at a place that continually needs to remind people that we don't do advertising, where are the perks goddamnit?

Well, I just got back from a most incredible weekend out in Tennesee. We are working with the guys that put on the Bonnaroo music festival. For those of you in the UK, Bonnaroo is like Glastonbury, but bigger - and I am not exaggerating - a zillion times better. We are trying to help them become more of a media entity that exists longer than four glorious days in June.

Brands were relatively inconspicuous at the event. Of course there were sponsorships. Fuse TV had a pretty cool barn where you could charge up phones, use the net, cool off (it's hot, damned hot there) ride a bucking bronco etc. Fruictus had a good tent with hundreds of girls queuing in the morning to get their hair washed while other girls sang karaoke. There was a Nokia tent but it looked so boring we never went in it. Gibson guitars had a great idea - they set up 10 amazing guitars and bose headphones and allowed people to jam to themselves for as long as they liked. I'm not a guitar freak but I would imagine they were pretty pricey. The headphones themselves were worth 200 quid. There was no lock on them or anything. At Glastonbury some scouser would have had them away before a hippy could play the first few chords of 'Stairway...'

So this is of course the challenge. How do you create a meaningful experience that resonates with many without being in your face. I'm nowhere near working that out, especially having left half my brain at the Sigur Ros gig, but it seems simple in theory: be useful and don't be a ***. We'll see next year if we can pull something off for our partners.

Another thing that I noticed was that out of 90,000 people we were the only English people there. This is the first time I have experienced this in the states. You can usually hear or spot some pasty Brit like me lurking in the corner. John Hegarty made the point when he was at BBH NY that to crack the US you had to get out of New York. I think he's right. I assumed there would be loads of New Yorkers on our flight to and from Nashville. Not so. On our return flight we did bump into Sean Avery  (the Ice Hockey equivalent of Theirry Henry) who is very into his music and was also quietly digging Sigur Ros with us. Nice to see an uber celebrity just chilling and genuinely liking great music.

For those of you who are also into music the highlights were The Raconteurs - Jack White and friends on fire. B.B.King, still rocking at 82 years old. My Morning Jacket, a band I had not heard of before getting to the States but who played a five hour set from 12 to 5 in the morning. Bonkers video clip here. And Sigur Ros; where I was lucky enough to be backstage to witness, by all accounts, one of the most impressive festival performances in recent history.

All good stuff. All good stuff I never would have seen had I been packing my bags for Cannes. There's a whole world out there folks.