Year: 2011

1000heads: Drum Marketing Awards: A Commendation

Good news this Friday, our SKINS team here at 1000heads last night received a commendation for their work on last year’s Tour de Velo campaign.

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=14958820&server=vimeo.com&show_title=0&show_byline=0&show_portrait=0&color=00adef&fullscreen=1&autoplay=0&loop=0

From the entry:

When international recovery and compression sports clothing brand SKINS wanted to replicate the grassroots loyalty they had secured in Australia and the USA in Europe, they knew that word of mouth chimed with both their early underground viral success and their ambitions to be a challenging and empowering brand.

Proving that with SKINS ordinary people can achieve extraordinary things, 1000heads discovered Quentin Field Boden – a 51 year old UK blogger and amateur road cyclist who had grand plans to ride the entire Tour De France route – and made his dream happen. While Quentin trialled SKINS’ new products by cycling the route three days before the professionals, uploading his experiences and engaging with cross-Channel sports communities along the way, a further set of influential cycling enthusiasts in the UK and Australia were sent SKINS products to trial at home through challenges that reflected the hardships of the Tour.

Spanning three countries simultaneously, Tour de Velo dramatically increased traffic to the international SKINS sites, generated high volumes of positive, independent WOM – and positioned SKINS as the company that promoted the voice of the ordinary fan amidst the saturated brand promotions at one of sport’s biggest events.

Congratulations team – a job well done!

It’s snowing in Moscow

Rainy nights in Moscow

Moleskine entry: April 11th, 2011

It’s 9pm local time, I’m staying at the Godzilla Hostel which, while not being shaped like a 240ft tall old school feature creature, is certainly covered from head to toe with numerous bits of Godzilla-themed paraphernalia.

Interesting.

I’m staying with a group of four others: having arrived late to find four of the six beds in the shared room already taken one can assume the number but, hopefully [aside from being the spare wheel], plus the Honcho* we should be a good healthy six-some.

We shall see.
…
..
.

The others are all out at the moment, I’ve only just settled. I guess I could go out and find them..
Actually, think I will.

–

*The word ‘Honcho’, is the name given to the local guide that we’ve been given in each city.
Basically, they rock.

 

Moscow 0.1

En route from Moscow Intl.

Moleskine entry: April 11th, 2011

There’s a larger entry to come later today I’m sure but, it’s 19:50 local time, I’ve been in this taxi for nearly an hour and if the Godzilla Hostel doesn’t actually look like the Japanese legend of old, I am going to be thoroughly, thoroughly disappointed.

That is all.


I’ve been away…

…to sort a few things out.

A few weeks ago I flew to Moscow for a couple of days and from there, caught the train to Beijing (stopping off for a few nights in Ulanbator, Mongolia along the way). The journey itself was perfect and pretty much exactly what I needed.

To put things in perspective: over the past month I’ve jogged around Red Square in the morning snow, galloped across the Mongolian desert in the afternoon sun and – thanks to a midday downpour – got soaked to the skin deep within the Forbidden City. ‘Spectacular’ doesn’t quite do it justice.

There’s much to catch up on [and a fair amount of moleskinerie to write up] but for now, it’s good to be home.

 

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off OST

…or lack thereof

If you have never seen Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, stop reading now. Immediately. Get yourself over to Play or Amazon or something and go get yourself a copy. Order it, download it, watch it and then come back.

Right, everyone else – still here? Good.

Believe it or not I managed to make it to my 17th year without ever seeing this film. My good friend Bodger, upon discovering my apparent deprived childhood would not let me leave his house again until I had seen it. Twice. Needless to say we were late for college that day.

Many, many things have been said about this film – none of which I’m going to try and emulate or even beat (perhaps another time), however one area that’s not touched upon that often is that of the awesome soundtrack to the film.

From the manic synths of Sigue Sigue Sputnik through to the soft, dulcet tones of The Smiths; the Ferris Bueller’s Day Off OST is a wonder to behold. Except… it doesn’t actually exist.

That’s right, perhaps one of the most bizarre yet luminescent and nostalgic collections of music ever to placed into one film was never actually released as an album.
The reason? The director, the supremely talented John Hughes, was worried about the mix of songs being ‘too eclectic’ to see as an album.

According to Wikipedia, he said:

“The only official soundtrack that Ferris Bueller’s Day Off ever had was for the mailing list. A&M was very angry with me over that; they begged me to put one out, but I thought “who’d want all of these songs?” I mean, would kids want “Danke Schoen” and “Oh Yeah” on the same record? They probably already had “Twist and Shout,” or their parents did, and to put all of those together with the more contemporary stuff, like the (English) Beat – I just didn’t think anybody would like it. But I did put together a seven-inch of the two songs I owned the rights to – “Beat City” on one side, and… I forget, one of the other English bands on the soundtrack… and sent that to the mailing list. By ’86, ’87, it was costing us $30 a piece to mail out 100,000 packages. But it was a labor of love.”

Amazing.

Thanks to a mixbag of research and Wikipedia, I’ve managed to hunt down a full track list for what would’ve been the FDO:OST.

  1. “Love Missile F1-11” (Extended Version) by Sigue Sigue Sputnik
  2. “Jeannie” (Theme from I Dream of Jeannie)
  3. “Beat City” by The Flowerpot Men
  4. “Main Title / Rebel Blockade Runner” by John Williams (From, Star Wars)
  5. “Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want” (instrumental) by The Dream Academy (a cover of a song by The Smiths)
  6. “Menuet Célèbre” by (Zagreb Philharmonic Chamber Studio)
  7. “Danke Schoen” by Wayne Newton
  8. “Twist and Shout” by The Beatles
  9. “Radio People” by Zapp
  10. “I’m Afraid” by Blue Room
  11. “Taking the Day Off” by General Public
  12. “The Edge of Forever” by The Dream Academy
  13. “March of the Swivelheads” (a remix of “Rotating Head”) by The (English) Beat
  14. “Oh Yeah” by Yello
  15. “BAD” by Big Audio Dynamite

And – minus a few that I couldn’t find in the library – I’ve managed to throw [most of] them down into a handy little Spotify playlist.

Enjoy.

1000heads: B2B and Social Media – #dellb2b

Last week 1000heads was invited to attend the B2B edition of ‘Social Media Huddle’ hosted by Dell, Google and For Immediate Release [FIR].
The networking event – the third in its series – takes the unconference route in its execution, whereby guests can create their own sessions for others to attend on the day. I’ve been to a few events like this in the past and it can make for a really interesting day as you never quite know what to expect until you arrive.

The #dellb2b event (to give it its proper twitter name) however, had a very specific aim of ‘bringing together senior communications and marketing professionals to exchange and share experiences on B2B social media for their mutual benefit’. Nice.

The big draw in this instance was guest speaker and internationally recognised thought-leader in the social space, Brian Solis.

Brian Solis @ #dellb2b

I’ve known Brian for a few years now but this is the first time I’ve heard him speak in the UK. A master of the soundbite, his talk was insightful and to the point. I’ll post the slides from the day in a second, but first  – here’s a snapshot from my notes and tweets for the day [including key quotes from the man himself] –

Brian Solis
James Whatley

“46% of B2B respondents said social media was perceived as irrelevant to their company”

“By not saying anything in social, you’re saying everything”

“B2B marketing spend will grow from $11m in 2009 to $54m in 2011”

“93% of business buyers believe all companies should have a social media presence”

So basically, what BS is saying is that, when it comes to B2B – believe it or not – you should apply the same rules of listening and engagement that you do to consumers – ie: You listen. You learn. You engage. You create.

“What is the ROI?”

“There is no ROI of social media programs.”
“However, there is definitely ROI for social media programs that are setup to do something”

Again. Not new. But a truism.

Some choice tweets?





All in all,  plenty of food for thought there, raising a number of issues that we’ll come back to another day.

If you’d like to listen to the presentation yourself, Nevile Hobson has kindly posted the audio version and it may well make an interesting accompaniment to Brian’s slides, embedded below.

Dell B2B Huddle UK with Brian Solis

View more presentations from Brian Solis

What do you think?
Interesting? Thought-provoking?
Your comments, as ever, are welcome in the field below –

1000heads: Happy Birthday Twitter

Five years old today –

I said recently that ‘Twitter isn’t the be all and end all‘ but after watching that, you might be tempted to believe otherwise.

Well done guys and happy birthday. Here’s to the next five/ten/fifty years of world-changing global communications.

Follow 1000heads on Twitter

Relationships. Matter.

If you’ve clicked through in the vein hope of finding my next post on why ‘relationship marketing matters to brands’ then sorry, not today. Today is about something else.

Relationships matter.

Your relationships matter. Your family. Your friends. Your loved ones. Your other half. Your soul-mate. The relationships you have with the people that matter, matter.

I would’ve quit my job last year if it would’ve meant saving my relationship. Alas, for me, it was too late. I heard a story today of someone else going through a break up because of work and just last night someone else told let me that, after a particularly bad period, they introduced a work veto; if at any point work gets too much, and has a negative impact on their lives together, then it stops. The work, the fighting. Everything.

Life is too short, too damn complicated and far too sweet to spend it working every God-given day and night on something that – if it really doesn’t make a difference to life or death – really isn’t worth it.

To top it all off, thanks to the endless source of knowledge and amusement that is Stefan Constantinescu, I’ve just seen this –

If this is you, then stop. Right now.

It isn’t worth it.

Relationships matter.

Not the one between you and your client. Nor the one between you and your customers. But the one between you, the love of your life and your kids.

Life is short, make the most of it.
Please.

 

Yes, I’m talking to you.