flatacre

The idea of a Purpose Brand is to first know your purpose and then use that as a strategic focus and filter in everything you do, especially communications - aligning audiences and creating momentum.

via vimeo.com

This may be bleeding edge, but CGI appears to be catching up with you know what.

From principal creator, Jorge Jimenez:

"It shows our latest and final advances on real-time skin rendering (Separable Subsurface Scattering), which enables [one] to quickly render skin in just two post-processing passes. Everything is written from scratch using DirectX 10 and rendered in real-time, from the skin to the film grain…"

Jorge, bless his heart, is open-sourcing the tech behind his creation. Get the details on the Vimeo page.

Ego meet expense account, meet parasitical award show owner.

via youtube.com

*Big Dumb Agency.

Rather than displacing television, the internet, including social media is doing an excellent job of building the medium.

From an article titled, “7 Things You Need to Know About Social TV Right Now,’ the writer provides proof:

Back in the summer of 2009, we tracked everything from Sonia Sotomayor (then a nominee for the Supreme Court) to "Glee" to Major League Baseball to "True Blood." Over time, it dawned on us that more than anything else, TV was driving social. Sotomayor would trend on Twitter only when her confirmation hearings were being televised; a specific team would trend because it was doing great (or sucking) in the game being broadcast at that very moment on ESPN; during prime-time hours in the U.S. and the U.K., Twitter's trending topics list would be all but taken over by TV-related chatter.

Why is this? In a word, behaviour.

Social TV is about watching TV with other people -- think of "50s-era family and friends gathered around an old Magnavox console to catch "I Love Lucy." Only now the living room has gone national.

In fact, it’s reversing problems such as time-shifting.

"We did a survey of our 10,000-person TV-fan panel last year," said TVGuide.com's Tanner, "and what we found is that 20% of them said they are watching more live TV specifically to avoid "social spoilers.'"

It’s not just TV that’s benefiting from social media, but brand campaigns running on TV as well, such as Old Spice. The brand was resurrected on television and only somewhat later extended to social media. However, had there not been a huge spend on TV, the social media effort wouldn’t have even been considered.

Pepsi learned this lesson the hard way last year when they shifted much of their budget away from TV to social media. Pepsi is now in third place behind Diet Coke.

So, contrary to the current crop of vested interest ‘experts’ claiming that traditional media such as TV will give way to social media and that, once again, advertising as we know it is dead, the opposite is happening.

Why is this? Why does TV continue to be so dominate? I think there are a couple of reasons. For one, it’s not about the conversation, it’s about what causes the conversation. And TV is really, really good at that.

For another reason, and not to belabour the point, it’s about behaviour.

People understand the internet differently than other forms of media. For one thing other than your hookup, the content is largely free. For another it’s an information medium first, whether that’s checking up on friends or family, or finding out the latest info or price on something you’re interested in.

People fan brands online mainly to get deals. They don’t recommend brands because they like the brand so much as they like their friends and want them to benefit from what’s on offer.

As a CEO of an online media company recently wrote about in Ad Age:

It's time to face the reality that the Internet sucks as a branding medium. I know that statement will rile up a few people, but I am starting to believe that the Internet may not be the right medium for brand development, at least in its current form. Trust me, it doesn't help my business if TV dollars don't come online, but it appears that online advertising is destined to become the greatest direct response medium in history and the greatest branding disappointment ever. This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone.

The thing is, as an advertising medium, the internet and social media have their own value proposition and purpose. It’s an arrow in the quiver, not the whole quiver. It’s up to smart marketers to integrate these tools in the most effective way possible, based on an idea that can be executed across platforms.

via vimeo.com

All too often brands follow what ever is being done in the category, regardless of whether or not they have a point of difference. Real Estate Developments are notorious for this. That's why it's refreshing to see this video.

via youtube.com

So, let me get this straight. Complete losers who likely have never contributed anything to their own kin, let alone society want to run the world?

via howtobearetronaut.com

“In 1898, Parisian art gallery owner Maurice Joyant photographed his childhood friend Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec defecating on the beach at Le Crotoy, Picardie.

A year later Toulouse-Lautrec was committed to an asylum, and in 1901 he died from complications caused by alcoholism and syphilis.”

via mayomo.com

A stick bomb is a mechanical spring-loaded device constructed out of flat sticks woven together under tension. Other names for stick bombs include Chinese stick puzzles, and frame bombs.

That about concludes my stumbling around stumbled upon today.

via strandbeest.com

via flickr.com

via vladtepesblog.com

via youtube.com

This is just one story out of thousands, throughout the world.

She is one of Brazil's most successful exports; a 1.80 metre (5ft 11in) supermodel whose meteoric rise to catwalk fame has transformed her into one of the wealthiest, most recognisable women on earth.

But Gisele Bündchen's latest project, a lingerie campaign for the Brazilian label Hope, has appalled government officials in her homeland and led to calls for the "sexist" and "stereotyped" adverts to be axed.

The campaign includes several TV spots, one of which features a scantily-clad Bündchen, trying to appease her husband after committing a series of marital blunders: crashing his car, maxing his credit card and, worst of all, inviting his mother-in-law to stay.

Bündchen's solution? To seduce her furious husband, using the company's new underwear line. The advert's voiceover tells viewers: "You're a Brazilian woman – use your charm".

Government officials from the women's secretariat in Brasilia failed to see the funny side, demanding it be pulled from television schedules.

"The campaign promotes the misguided stereotype of a woman as a sexual object of her husband and ignores the major advances we have achieved in deconstructing sexist practices and thinking," the secretariat said this week in a statement.

Officials said they had received at least six complaints from outraged viewers since the campaign went to air on 20 September.

via guardian.co.uk

via youtube.com