Five things on Friday #45

Things of note for the week ending November 9th, 2012

1.Heard of Vlad Rodriguez?
Up until earlier this past week, I hadn’t heard the name before either. But loving a bit of pop-culture/movie-driven art as I do, I found him over at So Bad So Good and his work is incredible. The Bladerunner one above is a fave, but his takes on both The Shining and Fight Club have to be worth a look too.

2. Bat for Lashes, covering Rhianna ‘We Found Love’

Blissful.

3. The Girl Who Would Be King
I’ve been following the progress of this book (and Kickstarter project) ever since I first discovered the first part back in June (see item 5) and I must’ve taken my off the ball a little bit because the whole thing is now available for just a few quid over on Amazon.

Blurb:

‘A novel about two teenage girls with superpowers and radically different agendas, destined for a collision that will rock the world:

Separated by thousands of miles, two young women are about to realize their extraordinary powers which will bind their lives together in ways they can’t begin to understand.

Protecting others. Maintaining order. Being good. These are all important things for Bonnie Braverman, even if she doesn’t understand why. Confined to a group home since she survived the car accident that killed both her parents, Bonnie has lived her life until now in self-imposed isolation and silence; but when an opportunity presents itself to help another girl in need, Bonnie has to decide whether to actually use the power she has long suspected she has. Power that frightens her.

Across the country, Lola LeFever is inheriting her own power by sending her mother over a cliff…literally. For Lola the only thing that matters is power; getting it, taking it, and eliminating anyone who would get in the way of her pursuit of it. With her mother dead and nothing to hold her back from the world any longer, Lola sets off to test her own powers on anyone unfortunate enough to cross her. And Lola’s not afraid of anything.

One girl driven to rescue, save, and heal; the other driven to punish, destroy, and kill.

And now they’re about to meet.’

My copy is sat on my Kindle waiting for me as I type.
I’d recommend you go take a look too.

4. Music + Social
I’ve read a couple of really good music posts this week. This first this one from Songkick talks about how they worked with Hot Chip using their ‘Detour‘ product to help book some new (and off-the-beaten-track) destinations for their upcoming tour –

We picked 3 towns they hadn’t headlined before and created a Detour where each of those cities had a chance to create a show on that spare night. We emailed all of the Songkick users in those cities tracking Hot Chip and things started to take off. We wanted to raise 200 pledges to be confident of demand and rapidly all 3 started to get momentum. What happened next though was incredibly exciting. A bunch of superfans in Folkestone decided that they were going to make it happen. As one fan said, “Most bands don’t come to this part of Kent, they tend to stop at London.” They got super proactive and started to email all their friends and even petitioned the local radio station and newspaper. It exploded and went completely viral in a matter of hours through fan to fan word of mouth marketing, Hot Chip sold out.

The post has more (as well as a pretty awesome chart comparing the fans in Folkestone to the rest of the competition) and is well worth a read. It’s a great case study on how activating fans can yield phenomenal results too.

This second post, this time picked up from the guys over at Fresh Networks, talks about how Lady Gaga’s team use the listening data from Spotify to help choose her music set in each different country that she plays.

So simple.
So obvious.
So brilliant.
So go read.

5. The D is silent
Django. Trailer 2. Bring it.

—

Bonuses this week; Sharp suits – amazing (and actual real life) client feedback, turned into hilarious posters (for charity), great stuff; this interview / battle between Jeremy Paxman and Conrad Black is fantastic watching; and Sarah Silverman does an amazingly filthy thing with a relatively harmless iPhone (be warned: kids will be doing this next week).

’til next time.

 

Last updated by James Whatley at November 11, 2012.