Think Dangerously

Just came across a great post about dangerous ideas from Northern Planner.What is a dangerous idea? It's not something that puts people in harms way, it's a thought that challenges the way that people think. In 2006, the Edge Foundation asked industry leaders and their responses were quite amazing.

Northern Planner added a few with an ad-specific lens on them. Here are my two favorite:

• It's true that old style advertising dinosaurs could learn a thing or two from the digital brigade, but that goes the other way too. 25years ago, ad agencies made a fortune because clients didn't really know what they did. It was easy too thanks to the hegemony of ITV. It's like that now with digital. There are some brilliant practitioners our there, who graft at finding good ideas that will work. Then there are the charlatans that blind others with jargon and get away with murder. For now, others don't quite understand the technicalities of what they do, but when they catch up, things will change.

• Every agency and client should do a job swap once a year. Both would respect each other more for doing something the other cannot and wouldn't want to. The agency people be refreshed from the short hours, but glad to escape the boredom. The client would come back to the dayjob shattered, glad to escape the relentless pace and chaos, really pissed off at cancelling things at someone else's whim. The agency people would then appreciate that the client has their own internal clients and has to justify everything they do. The client people would be a little more patient, take more care to ask for what they actually want and less inclined to make impossible demands.

I really like the idea of trading places for a week or two. I think we get stuck in our roles and it gets harder - over time - to relate to the clients that we work with. I'd add one more dangerous idea to the list:

• The closer you are to being a true consumer, the stronger you are in advertising (said another way, the less 'experience' you have, the more of a chance to have to be groundbreaking for your client)

Let the debate begin.

Must Watch - PS22

Came across this great video from young music class. When you combine Eye of the Tiger with some random kids and a hilarious solo, you've got user-generated gold.

Although this video isn't ad related, it does show that everything on YouTube doesn't necessarily suck. I think that forward thinking brands will use their agencies to discover great user generated content for them and find a way to use it for themselves. Think about the categories (music, CPG, education, whatever) that would love to attach their message to something like this.



With the sheer amount of UGC out there, maybe we should change our strategies from content creation to content discovery.

SLAPCHOP RAP featuring Vince from ShamWow

User generated content is more often then not better than the original content.

New Nintendo DSI Spot

I saw this last night during the previews of the Movie "Tyson". Good movie but when I got home I wanted to do two things.

1) Find this commercial and share it.
2) Google some classic Mike Tyson quotes and laugh. That guy is ridiculous.

How good and unexpected is this creative twist?