This is one of the best articles that I have read on the psychology of social media.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/magazine/07awareness-t.html?_r=3&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

From Hugh MacLeod, www.gapingvoid.com

http://russelldavies.typepad.com/planning/2006/06/the_tyranny_of_.html

Found this on Russell Davies’ blog this morning…he talks about how branding is not about the Big Idea, but a bucket of smaller ideas…especially in light of social media which is broadly integrated.

Russell Davies writes…The thing that make these idea buckets work is the precise opposite of what people usually look for in Big Ideas. They’re vague - which means they can accommodate all sorts of other, often contradictory thoughts. The vagueness means they’re hard to codify, which means they exist in conversation, images and bits of film, which lends itself to idea creation, and which means they’re hard to smelt down into an ordinary Big Idea. They’re often emergent – no-one sits down and creates them as the future of the company, because that’s impossible. They grow out of philosophy, sometimes via advertising, sometimes as other things, but they’re adopted and emerge as an expression of the idea bucket rather than imposed as such.

Another excerpt offers some ideas…

1.    Starting doing stuff. Start executing things which seem right. Do it quickly and do it often. Don’t cling onto anything, good or bad. Don’t repeat much. Take what was good and do it differently.

2.    Look for the patterns that emerge. Look for the phrases that people use to describe what you/they are doing. Collect the things that seem to work as summaries. Notice them, put them in a drawer, don’t turn them into CI guidelines.

3.    Try not to write too much down. Manage the brand through conversation and impressionistic media – videos, stories, images, heroes. Not through mandates, best practise or benchmarking.

4.    Don’t be media neutral. Favour the things that are rich with experience and texture - events, retail, social media, film. And relegate the things that are thin and specific. Because the rich stuff is more likely to help you move forward.

5.    And something else and something else.

There is now a small camera that fits over your ear and takes photos when you are happy and angry.

http://www.psfk.com/2008/06/camera-feeds-on-emotions.html

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/Page/document/video/vs?id=RTGAM.20080625.wvtower0625

http://www.psfk.com/2008/05/using-microbes-to-eat-plastic-bags.html

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080523.re-laneway-0523/BNStory/RealEstate

I saw his work this evening at the Confederation Centre Art Gallery.

“The history of art is reflected in MacKay’s superb drawing and painting style as well as the figures, the poses, the compositions, the cropping, the lighting and the mysterious ambience. This effect is achieved by an original layering technique which begins with a colour slide transformed into a black-and-white laser copy that is, in turn, reinterpreted with charcoal and pastel in a very vigorous drawing style. The surface of the drawing is brushed and splattered with melted wax that is overlaid and highlighted with oil paint. The resulting texture is visceral and contrasts with the literalness of the image.” — Monique Westra, from The Talented Mr. MacKay  http://www.allanhardingmackay.ca/source.html#image

I attended a session this evening with Rick Hancox, one of the best documentary filmmakers in Canada who teaches a film course at Concordia University. He was introduced to film by American filmmaker George Sensel who taught in Prince Edward Island. Rick went on to study film and photography at New York University and Ohio University. He is currently working on a film about his father and the last year of his life. http://rickhancox.com/index.htm

The New York Times shows American spending on the 200 categories that form the Consumer Price Index with colour coding that shows price increases over the last year. The article is entitled “All of Inflation’s Little Parts”.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/05/03/business/20080403_SPENDING_GRAPHIC.html