Feeding Kat

Missed connections

A little film about one of my favourite blogs - Missed Connections.

Noticings

GREAT idea. I love that Tom and Tom have made this into a game - not just another photo dumping site:

Noticings is a game about learning to look at the world around you.

Cities are wonderful places, and everybody finds different things in them. Some of us like to take pictures of interesting, unusual, or beautiful things we see, but many of use are moving so fast through the urban landscape we don't take in the things around us.

Noticings is a game you play by going a bit slower, and having a look around you. It doesn't require you change your behaviour significantly, or interrupt your routine: you just take photographs of things that you think are interesting, or things you see. You'll get points for just noticing things, and you might get bonuses for interesting coincidences.

 

For example:

My internal monologue will definitely appreciate this. 

Thanks Russell

Natural Confectionary Co.

Genius. Why haven't I seen these before?!

via Ben

Delicious wordstock

Lovely little ads for Wordstock festival (a book and literary festival - sadly, in Portland only).

via WK12

The big warm up

Nice and simple idea. 

Does a great job of educating whilst you donate, making the goal feel big but achievable (milestone measurement down the bottom), and making it feel personal and immediate (you can locate your coat).

Interesting that it's from a clothes retailer too - Lands End.

via adverblog

Shopping Losts

What a nice idea. Simon Attwater makes do with lost shopping lists.

 

via swissmiss

Shocking Barack

Brilliant use of social media to launch Brammo's 100% electric powercycle 'Enertia' (the most energy efficient vehicle in the US). Brammo's director of product development Brian Wismann along with Dave Schiff of CP+B, have begun documenting a ten-day road-trip to meet and present it to the president. With zero budget they use couchsurfing.com to recharge their bodies - and recharge their bikes (about 35c worth of electricity). 

Watch it all here. Or follow them on twitter here.

 



via Alex

Game changing

Interesting little fact brought to my attention by Dan Pink, brought to his attention by Jerry de Jaager and Jim Ericson's new book See New Now:

“A study of the top fifty game-changing innovations over a hundred-year period showed that nearly 80 percent of those innovations were sparked by someone whose primary expertise was outside the field in which the innovation breakthrough took place.”

Paper Nike's

Sweeeet.

Brilliant David Browning

Be Lucky

Great article on what makes lucky people lucky, by Richard Wiseman. 

An excerpt:

• Unlucky people often fail to follow their intuition when making a choice, whereas lucky people tend to respect hunches. Lucky people are interested in how they both think and feel about the various options, rather than simply looking at the rational side of the situation. I think this helps them because gut feelings act as an alarm bell - a reason to consider a decision carefully.

• Unlucky people tend to be creatures of routine. They tend to take the same route to and from work and talk to the same types of people at parties. In contrast, many lucky people try to introduce variety into their lives. For example, one person described how he thought of a colour before arriving at a party and then introduced himself to people wearing that colour. This kind of behaviour boosts the likelihood of chance opportunities by introducing variety.

• Lucky people tend to see the positive side of their ill fortune. They imagine how things could have been worse. In one interview, a lucky volunteer arrived with his leg in a plaster cast and described how he had fallen down a flight of stairs. I asked him whether he still felt lucky and he cheerfully explained that he felt luckier than before. As he pointed out, he could have broken his neck.

Awesome.

Friday Friday Friday

thanks hrrrthrrr

The wedding invite

Great story, told brilliantly. Good to know they're happily married now.

thanks made in england

Theory of Fun

Love love love this new campaign by Volkswagen dubbed 'The Fun Theory'. 

A VW Initiative dedicated to the thought that something as simple as 'fun', is the easiest way to change people’s behaviour for the better. Be it for yourself, for the environment, or for something entirely different, the only thing that matters is that it’s change for the better.

One of the best uses of virals I think I've seen...

Sony soundville

Simple and powerful.

Fallon turned Seydisfjordur in Iceland into an extraordinary sound-system for a week - its 805 residents listened to the sounds of Bob Dylan, Toumani Diabate, Roberto Goyeneche and more...

Love the way this is shot.

via adhunt

My parents were awesome

Excellent idea.

 

Drip Maple Syrup

Mouth. Watering.

Another nice design job by Superficial for high-end, exclusive Canadian maple syrup. Why not?

via lovelypackage

Getting to know Sydney

52 suburbs is a lovely little blog aiming to tackle each of Sydney's 637 suburbs one at a time - looking at each as if it's a new city. I've had a similar (same same but different) idea for a while which I'm hoping to get up and running by December when I'm not in between homes and jobs.. how inspiring!

Via Roma

What lovely packaging.

via thedieline

Smells like...

Despite its name, I Hate Perfume is a lovely creation by Christopher Brosius - a perfumer who rejects the traditional use of perfumes - 'People who smell like everyone else disgust me'. Instead he uses scent to tell stories and capture exact individual experiences and memories.

Interesting as it's easy to overlook how important our sense of smell is - particuarly given that "people with no sense of smell don't get enough nutrition, suffer from depression more frequently and have sex less often than other people" according to a NYTimes article on Brosius. Hmm..

via PSFK

The pitch

I know it's pretty lame for an ad person to be referencing Mad Men, but this pitch for Kodak's new slide projector on the show is seriously moving.

Can't embed due to AMC copyright - but watch it here.

I know it's not always possible, but it makes so much sense to actually use the product as the pitch itself.

Think how dull would this have been on powerpoint?

via adjoke

Tokyo camera style

John Sypal shows us that the photo culture in Tokyo is full of film camera users - by documenting young people with their cameras on the street. Excellent.

via swiss miss

Julian's ass

I've never actually met Julian of The Population (below). But like most people in Sydney Adland, I've not only heard of him, but twittered, shared a few emails with and... well, now become a fan of his on Facebook. He's one of those networked, cluey, digital whiz kids. And a nice one too.

So click here for the story of why Facebook is tattooed on his ass. No doubt these photos will be used as the token 'how social media has become a seamless part of Gen Y's lives' shot in powerpoint presso's for years to come:

Bag o' scraps

Sorry I've been out of action. Have started a new job amongst other life-changing things, so have been a little preoccupied.

Back to it. Love this:

American Apparel is selling scraps from its factory floor for A$16: “Bag-O-Scraps”.

Great for the environment and re-use of 'waste'... and simultaneously brilliant that the ever-lovely Dov Charney gets to charge you $16 for scraps.

Lovely inventive ways to use your scraps:

via Good

Who loves a Honda

Social facebook experiment by Honda - think six degrees of separation. Nice way to help Honda fans share, reflect and feel pride in the love.

 

via branddna

Bonds racey stripes

I'm a Bonds girl through and through. And love that you can't easily backwards strategy their ads by The Campaign Palace. They're fun, necessarily appeal to both sexes without being offensive and have a hell of a lot of personality.

I assume the proposition wouldn't have been much more complex or leading than "Fun undies" for this new one (below) or kaleidoscope or mash.

Similarly, with the successful Skittles ads - was the prop just "Fun candy"? (Let's say 'fun' one more time..)