Carman Pirie's Blog

I shall be released

I'm sitting in a sports bar / diner over the lunch hour as I type this... just trying to get a bit of work done while grabbing a bite, etc. It's noisy. Plenty of people chatting, the TV is broadcasting the sporting news of the moment, and the radio is playing to boot. A lot of noise. In an effort to drown out some of it, I put on my iPod while I type... looking like the Apple poster boy in all likelihood.

Then, Bob Dylan's "I Shall Be Released" starts playing. And I hear muted tones of the chatter, the TV, the radio, etc. layered on top of Bob's singing and wonderful harmonica & guitar. It's beautiful. Stunning, in fact.

It's unexpected. Likely narrow in its appeal, too. But it works. It's interesting. It breaks through the clutter, if only for a few minutes. And, at the same time, without the 'clutter', this would not have been possible. If your marketing tactics and strategies look like this, something tells me you're on the right track in today's world.

Human beings don't scale

I seem to recall that Hugh is fond of saying that.

I thought of this when reading a quote from Paul Watson via Doc Searls: Software may let you have 3000 friends but your brain doesn’t.

Connecting to each other

In case you missed it, the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association released a report yesterday. News reports can be found here and here. Among the findings, wireless use is expected to increase 30% by 2010, and Canadians "texted 4.3 billion times during the first half of this year, the same number sent over the entire year in 2006".

I expect that many marketers will look at this and say: "Hey, text messaging is where it's at right now. That's where 'they' are. We need a text messaging strategy!"

I hope they try harder than that.

Of course, this comes at a time when newspapers are fighting for their lives and a fragmented, 500+ channel universe is competing for our attention with diminishing effectiveness. This also happens to come at a time when many of us are actively spending our hard-earned cash on DVRs and satellite radio, just to avoid listening to ads.

The real trend here isn't wireless use or text messaging. The real trend is that, more and more, we're choosing not to connect with companies and their messages. Instead, we're opting to connect with each other.

Little things #2

Again, how you do the little things says a lot about how you do the big things.

It seems like a small compromise I suppose. The conversation (if there was one) probably went something like this: "Hey, it's just a sign. And by the time people see it, they're already a customer. Let's just use the one with the typo. It'll save us the reprinting cost."

Sure. That makes sense. But, if you can't get a simple sign right, can I trust you to park my $100K auto?

Olympic logo inspiration?

Back in June, I (and countless others) blogged about London's 2012 Olympics logo. The original post is here.

During my recent trip to New York, I can't help but wonder if the $800K+ logo was perhaps inspired by the Westin New York at Times Square.

Here's the logo:

Here's the hotel:

You decide.

This and that for 10.4.2007

Some discussion on CBC yesterday about QR codes (read more here) and 'crowd sourcing' or 'people-powered customer service'... more here.

What a fantastic mashup this would be. QR codes in-store that link to customer-powered reviews and advice rather than the massaged PR babble of coporate websites.

On another note, Microsoft is getting serious about the ad game. James and Hugh explain.