striving for inclusion

“It’s not just my creation at this point, and it hasn’t been really for a long time, “I wanted it to be our creation. Once you set that in motion, it’s a large community of people gathered around a core set of values."

Bruce Springsteen

What do we do now? Help Obama during first 100 days in office

The above clip was the inspiration;

Obama is the side chosen;

Facu is the partner in crime;

the work is: WhatDoWeDoNow

It's very beta, so if anybody wants to help or shoot it down, chip in.

weapon of choice pt 4: stuck for inspiration

Oasis are mad for the Beatles.

Little Steven has love for garage rock.

Nickelback are stuck in the Seatle grunge sound.



When it comes to inspiration I have to admit I am also stuck.



Certain albums, movies, books always seem to offer up deeper insight than the last time I checked them out.



Same goes for the era in advertising called "the creative revolution". The time of Bernbach, Krone, Lois, Koenig, Callaway, Della Femina, Gossage.



Although the current times offer up a great deal of stimuli, food for thought and are truly interesting times, when in comes to all out-aim for another universe- type inspiration the 60's are my era.



Perhaps it's the fact that they were pioneers, troublemakers and the art of advertising was held in higher esteem. Sure it's a sentimental view, and there was shite back then, but still..



But strip all that away and what get's me everytime is the power and abundance of the ideas. Some would say that it was also the era of the mass media, and you could buy your way into popular demand.



Perhaps. But mostly thought it is the sheer audacity and freshness (after all these years) that stands out. There is no need to contexualize the work (like say some of the work that was done prior). There is no need to explain the thinking behind it. it speaks for itself.

So here's to the brave admen and brave clients, to sharp ideas and great execution.

And here's to hoping that the next decade out shines the 1960's. It's about time, don't you think.

the power of words

Watching a regional football derby yesterday it struck me: these players were more ferocious, more physical, more inclined to play rough, to do whatever it took to win that derby not because of what the derby meant to both teams. It was because of what the word derby means. period.


It is this implicitness, the context of the word that these players understood. The reff understood, the crowd understood. Derby = hard play, full of fouls, at breakneck pace. More was allowed, because of the frame it was presented in.


Briefing is one of those words that lately has frustrated me. If say the agency we work with gives feedback about the briefing they received it somehow always revolves around questions of format, channel choice, pay off. It seems that the auto pilot kicks in whenever they hear the word briefing, and it takes them back to when they learned about it in school. Briefing = ......


Words. Context. We often glance over it, but once you get down to the nitty gritty of it, it is powerfull. Especially when the implicit meaning is understood but not articulated. When the illusion of civility is upheld or explicitly removed.



They can grant us room to grow or close our way of thinking down.


Exploring vs Drilling for oil


Immigrant vs illigal Alien


Words dictacte so much of the space we can, allow ourselves to take, and can help us articulate the reasons behind actions not explicitly mentioned, that a dictionary is this marketeers new friend. Perhaps obvious to some, but important enough to me to repeat.

House MD or Doctor Melfi

McCain and Obama. Bare with me. From an archetypical point of view.

the US/Western voter is a Hyperchondriac (compared to 90% of the people of the world, in terms of problems)

Obama is the Therapist.

McCain is the Surgeon.

O is centered around the mind and emotions. 

He talks and he listens. He is a chance for all the people to wallow in their own sorrow and to feel bad together. dream of better together. He is sympathetic. He wants to get to the root of it all and change us, it. He wants us to reach our full potential. But what he does not mention to much, but what people instinctively do know is that profound change is a long and hard road to travel. It takes guts to look at oneself and say, I do not measure up, I need to change. He knows that the problems patients talk about are not the root, that the solutions that they ask for are patchwork at best. He must educate and change.

But in reality there is no clear game plan from his side, it's a bit ambigious. We know it's cureable, but there is now easy one fit's all solution. it's a combo of medicine and therapy. It takes time. 

And like the great Soprano's have shown us, It's not always up to the physician, but the patient, whether one get's better.

Most (and please do not see this as a lightharted attempt to make fun of menatal illness,) people who see someone about their problems,  just wanna have an excuse " I am depressed, give me medication" or hear " It's not your fault, your childhood was bad" and then walk out with a solution.

Positive Change does not come easy. Negative Change does. Negative stuff impacts us way more than the good. Think sickness, death, pain etc. Negative is profound yet instant. Positive is fleeting yet longterm.

Enter the Surgeon. he talks about the body.

M says: mam/sir, you are ill. Boom. Negative. But the good news is, I am a Surgeon and I know what is wrong and how to fix it. Let's cut it out. He validates and than goes into default mode, whatever the problem. You don't know, because at that time the patient is asleep.

The fix is quick, but the recovery takes time. See how it's framed nice. Sure, you do not mind the long recovery, if the fix is immediate. 

You like this. it's straight talk. No flip flop. this it what you wanna hear. Perhaps not what you need, perhaps so.

And so what do you as a hypochondriac do? U want validation of your problem!

The validation comes in the form of the solution u get. A scar to prove it was real after all, or a mirror held up that you that confronts you with the fact that it's all in your mind and it wll take time to deal with that? Both hurt, one on the outside and not for long, the other on the inside and long.

Real change or illusion of change. 

If you ask the people at QVC, they'd laugh at the fact that you even have to ask.

right to healthy food

I know this is a bit of a western train of thought, but amma go with it anyways.

Why does the constitution in most western world countries not have a garantuee in it with regards to healthy food? with epidemic proportions, it seems that the basic right to food (as part of the right to shelter, water, freedom of speech, etc) needs some re-evaluating.

Food in itself has become something of an abstract thought. That what most of us consume today, would not be recognized just a couple of generations ago.

This in itself is not evil. But the elements of food have not changed as dramatically as the form in which it is being presented.

So should there be a garantuee in the constitution?

Well for one it would kickstart checks and balances principles. If it's a right, it will have advocates and governamental protection.

Secondly it would also serve as a prerequisite whenever the west starts to export democracy again. Whick they/we will always keep doing. So the kids in the EU to be countries than would have some inbuild protection, when the socities there get all the aillments of luxury we now face in the West.

On the other hand: how to define and enforce it? food is culture and culture does not always paint in broad strokes.

I know for a fact that my father used to be laughed at by his Dutch pittbosses when he used to eat garlic at lunch. It was considered a weed and not very good for you. Times do change, as now the Dutch eat it almost as much. 

So if we are to garantuee the right to healthy food, perhaps we should look at it from a reverse angle, the obligation to produce food or feeding elements, that in the tradition of medicine: Do no harm. Food that has an Darwin-esque quality to it. Food that has been around for more than two generations. If you have a food that has been around for more than 2 generations, you could argue that the negative effects of the food are outweighed by the postive ones, thus adding to the survival of the species, with adjustments possible for cultural difference.

So in short order: we get all the old folks and put in front of them dishes. if they don't know them they are gone. of course this would hurt the world economy, but that's an added bonus ;)

crackpot thinking or something to it?

one for the books

filed this one under..."hé I thought of that also a while back, but different. "

still a nice idea: blank2clothe

Lost in translation

The web is discriminating. The victim is: ME! In all seriousness, I have noticed the last couple of weeks that somehow I do not translate well on to the www. Whether it is via this blog, comments elsewhere or skype talks, important elements of the person I am are getting lost when I digitze myself.

2.0 is funny that way. In many ways it strips people down to the core of their being; their inner personality. And that's where I run into trouble. Not that I don't have one ( I actually think quite highly of myself, hah), but it's just words (in my case) that are used to convey who I am and what I believe. The physicality of human interaction is left out.

I feel I am being robbed of instinct. The web stripped me of the ambiguity I thrive on in real life. A certain look you give, a pause you take while speaking, how you walk in to a room, the fact that I am 6"7 or left handed. Gone.

Recently I played some poker online. And I went down in flames. It was clinical, without context and safe. Yet when seated at a table in a real life cash game, I hold my own, being able to fully explore the one element 2.0 is advocating, but I am missing; the human element. Does this expose me lacking fundamental math skills required for this game or exposes me to be a good soft skill player? How do you make such a judgement about a person? Do we start keeping tabs about online and off line feelings towards one another?

Would a nice template, some more pics, tweets, tags, clouds and streams enhance me on the web? Perhaps.. and yes the offline versions of tags and pics etc, are clothing and haircuts, make up etc, so If I do not translate well I should use the tools at hand better (get a make over of sorts), but there is still the loss of that ambiguity of flesh.

So what's my point: Will the web, like a great poetry translation, ever capture the nunaces of the meaning of people and convey them to full effect, or will it stay what it is now: a part of the picture that is editable to make you more or less than you really are. And if it stays this ways, but keeps gaining importance, where do I, we go from here?

fiending for it; what Kobe can teach business

So it's the finals of the NBA. Boston vs LA. Game 1 was for Boston.

But that's ok, it is after all a best of seven.

So why this post: well because my fav sports writer Scoop Jackson analysed Kobe Bryant and in the process tells us what it takes to be succesfull.

I will leave you with the opening paragraph, the rest you can read here

There's a term used in the community called "thirsty."
It means what you think it means, but it's now being used in different contexts. Only to make a point of the extremes to which some people will go to get what they want. More severely, what they need. Kobe Bryant, for lack of more sophisticated terminology, is thirsty.
His thirst for another NBA title is that of an amplitude we may not have ever seen before. Not in sports, business, crime, corruption or politics. Keeping it community: He's thirsty like a fiend

Have a nice weekend

stick and stones may break my bones, but don't forget about words

this post may seem abit all over the place, but since I will be out of orbit for a while I just wanted to put some stuff out there that has been festering in my mind of late.


I have noticed a sublte change in my vocabulary when talking to clients or when talking to creatives. To better make sense of where clients should go or what way creatives should view the problem the following changes have been slipping into my vocab and briefing.

1)Coherence vs Consistency


This one has been here some time now, but it's relevance still is great. It is not about the right CMYK codes or the right dimensions of the logo. it's about stuff making sense when it's out there. it shoud fit together like a music album, more then a math formula. the sum of the parts shoud be you (the brand, company, etc) but the individual parts should also be enjoyable on there own and still ouze some of your flavour. which brings me to the second vocab change...


2)Gestalt vs tone of voice

This is by no means a new distinction, but to me it's more and more important/back in vogue. Product parity makes for a use of advertising human emotions, but advertising parity and a lack of attention makes for the need to be recognizable in al the things you do. Gestalt is an old theory explained here. But the basic difference is that tone of voice is about presentation of one self. Funny, sarcastic, cool whatever. Gestalt is about owning something. it's about having a unique (tangible?) quality that cannot be applied to something else. all this is basically been influenced by me reading more about design, art, city plannig etc. Apple being a very easy example of this, particulary with their iphone, pod, ads.

See one can have a romantic feel attached to anything (almost),but for many the feeling of seeing the city lights of Paris from the Eiffel tower is not something that can be transported. That particular zone is owned by the Eiffel tower, due to it's physical elements. So while it's may be contrary to say coherence is more important then consistency and then to say non portable elements are more important then portable, I can just say, yes and yes. Can't explain it better yet. but you gotta be like a diamond, with many facets but still one diamond.


3) Finite solutions vs Infinite

It's all about this generation, this era. the sky is not the limit. How can you make a difference now without trowing everything at the problem but the kitchen sink. restrictions, discrimination are a couple of tools/ideas that are needed more and more to create something that has focus and leaves no burden for the next group to come along.

3)bold ideas vs Big ideas.
Can't realy put my finger on this one but it actually feels the most important. For me when I use the word big this is what I kinda think of.


The complicated, intricate elaborate scheme. Which is great, and can be/is still very usefull. Bold thinking on the other hand gives me a whole different feel, point of entry.

Bold makes me think of



or this



Perhaps this all is thin thinking and not very clear, but somehow bold can be /mostly is big, but big does not always mean bold. perhaps there is more of an rebelious streak to bold ideas then to a big idea. this one I will need to come back to...continue

4)Politics vs people

due to the nature of the problems challenges and demands of the current and future world, politics is more and more important. While the rise of the consumer/prosumer is a much talked about and has had great impact, politics is where the pendelum of true power is swinging back to. it's a realisation that we will not solve growing fuel prices, shortages in food. We, people, are firestarters, we are able to make things roll, but the big Mo come from running with the elected wolves. so what does this all mean? Reading fine print, finding pressure points to help people activate politicians that can move mountains, doing the non sexy stuff. while not every product lends it'self for all out politics, actualy every product does lend its self for politics. now matter how small we all leave a footprint that effects someone.

SO ask yourself, what small print can we use to make changes that riplle through society? just by thinking more about politics, (not ideoligical, but more practical), gets juices flowing that normaly don't move much.


anyways, these are words that have been changing my thinking and actions, as well as the actions of clients. If anybody has some other words that they feel have changed their points of entry into discussions, let me know...


I leave you now with some nice music and a not so sublte message. Dovidjenja!

Heard about the guy
who fell off a skyscraper?
On his way down past each floor,
he kept saying to reassure himself:
"So far so good...
"so far so good..."
How you fall doesn't matter. It's how you land!

Interesting Amsterdam

Just got my ticket for Interesting Amsterdam !!

So all you guys and gals wanting to see some random but interesting stuff, go on over to pinkair, and book yourself a ticket..

Fraai magazine; free online mag for creativity

For anybody looking for some inspiration, creativity, and what not go here

As they put it themselves:

So here we are: FRAAI magazine, issue 1; the prototype. We got some great creative inspiration ready for you. A cover story on Art. Lebedev Studio. We got Fraai’s Favourites; compilations of inspiring artists and designers who receive our seal of approval. Furthermore; Creative Columns, Fraai News, An Interview Six Feet Under, That’s Fraai’s and a lot more creative content

Small trivia for when chatting up the ladies: fraai actually means pretty/good looking in Dutch. Bet they did that on purpose...poncy bastards ;-)

what if..there was a new type of photo album?

picture courtesy memorylanemedia

"She sent out for one of those short, plump little cakes called petites madeleines, which look as though they had been moulded in the fluted scallop of a pilgrim's shell. And soon, mechanically, weary after a dull day with the prospect of a depressing morrow, I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid, and the crumbs with it, touched my palate than a shudder ran through my whole body, and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary changes that were taking place…at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory…”

Perhaps some one can help me with this, because I have been thinking about storytelling,

mem(e)ories and... photo albums;

More and more I (and a lot of people are) am creating memories via not only photo's, but blog posts, text messages, emails etc..

But if I wanna share and file it all, and my mum wants to have her friends look at all the memories, there is no one album that fulfills this need of mine.

There is virtual sharing, blogging and filing, but it lacks the physicality of being able to sit next to a person and leading them past memory lane, adding those little details/stories that are triggered as you relive memories and pass them on to loved ones...

So.....what if there was a hybrid : A Memory album

Basically an album/book/ where I could place (upload to) all my text messages, photo's (digital and prints), mails, posts (and all the feedback, which is a great part of the fun of sharing), twitter entries, postcards, e-cards etc... so I can tell grandkids (lord willin') about the memories they hold for me?

Maybe because I work at a publishing company that I just love the feeling of a book or a magazine placed in my hands.....Maybe I have just not searched very well yet and this type of album is in production already...

Anyways...I can't find it yet....so does anybody have alternatives, or feedback for me?

what if...we collectively expressed our individuality

image courtesy http://www.exactitudes.com/

This post is most def not rocket science but the following hit me:

Why is there not a growth in collective blogs? Doing some basic research (?) shows that blogs are basically social clusters.

Example: Musings of an opinionated sod, is connected to punk planning, to fredrik sarnblad, to

in my atmosphere, to she sees red, to the kevin bacon (egg, beans and chips) of planning russell davies.

Besides the personalized templates, twitters, delicious and last fm thingies and some egotripping, why not all join in on one blog?

It seems to me that the most fun is bouncing ideas of one another and replying on comments.

Yes there is such a thing as a blog roll, and there is facebook and the like, but still...

Perhaps I am just to lazy, but what if everybody just got the same space and posted??

if you like the idea and have a decent name...please post a comment... If you have objections, please tell me those also..

playing for a better future

Free Rice was and is a great succes. in it's slipstream comes this , village the game. Or as they say in their own words:

"Instead of being mayor, be an entrepreneur. Build and run companies that transform lives. Village is a realtime strategy game for the PC that immerses the player into the role of an entrepreneur building companies to bring prosperity to the villages of the Third World. "

rules for radicals, or start ups, or small companies, or just about anybody who wants to change stuff

So, wanting to learn more about the strategies being used by Barack Obama...I stumbled on to this nice blast from the past....

The rules for radicals by Saul Alinsky....It's pretty self explanitory...hope u can use them...

Some of these rules are ruthless, but they work. Here are the rules to be aware of:

RULE 1: "Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have." Power is derived from 2 main sources - money and people. "Have-Nots" must build power from flesh and blood. (These are two things of which there is a plentiful supply. Government and corporations always have a difficult time appealing to people, and usually do so almost exclusively with economic arguments.)

RULE 2: "Never go outside the expertise of your people." It results in confusion, fear and retreat. Feeling secure adds to the backbone of anyone. (Organizations under attack wonder why radicals don't address the "real" issues. This is why. They avoid things with which they have no knowledge.)

RULE 3: "Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy." Look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty. (This happens all the time. Watch how many organizations under attack are blind-sided by seemingly irrelevant arguments that they are then forced to address.)

RULE 4: "Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules." If the rule is that every letter gets a reply, send 30,000 letters. You can kill them with this because no one can possibly obey all of their own rules. (This is a serious rule. The besieged entity's very credibility and reputation is at stake, because if activists catch it lying or not living up to its commitments, they can continue to chip away at the damage.)

RULE 5: "Ridicule is man's most potent weapon." There is no defense. It's irrational. It's infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions. (Pretty crude, rude and mean, huh? They want to create anger and fear.)

RULE 6: "A good tactic is one your people enjoy." They'll keep doing it without urging and come back to do more. They're doing their thing, and will even suggest better ones. (Radical activists, in this sense, are no different that any other human being. We all avoid "un-fun" activities, and but we revel at and enjoy the ones that work and bring results.)

RULE 7: "A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag." Don't become old news. (Even radical activists get bored. So to keep them excited and involved, organizers are constantly coming up with new tactics.)

RULE 8: "Keep the pressure on. Never let up." Keep trying new things to keep the opposition off balance. As the opposition masters one approach, hit them from the flank with something new. (Attack, attack, attack from all sides, never giving the reeling organization a chance to rest, regroup, recover and re-strategize.)

RULE 9: "The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself." Imagination and ego can dream up many more consequences than any activist. (Perception is reality. Large organizations always prepare a worst-case scenario, something that may be furthest from the activists' minds. The upshot is that the organization will expend enormous time and energy, creating in its own collective mind the direst of conclusions. The possibilities can easily poison the mind and result in demoralization.)

RULE 10: "If you push a negative hard enough, it will push through and become a positive." Violence from the other side can win the public to your side because the public sympathizes with the underdog. (Unions used this tactic. Peaceful [albeit loud] demonstrations during the heyday of unions in the early to mid-20th Century incurred management's wrath, often in the form of violence that eventually brought public sympathy to their side.)

RULE 11: "The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative." Never let the enemy score points because you're caught without a solution to the problem. (Old saw: If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. Activist organizations have an agenda, and their strategy is to hold a place at the table, to be given a forum to wield their power. So, they have to have a compromise solution.)

RULE 12: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it." Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.)

note to self: grasshopper

Until you've got a better answer, you copy. I copied Bob Gage for five years. And Bob originally copied Paul Rand and Rand originally copied a German typographer called JanTschichold.”

Helmut Krone

google generation don't do search

A new UK report on the habits of the "Google Generation" is out. You can download the whole thing here...

The main point of the report are:

• They like to cut-and-paste. "There is a lot of anecdotal evidence and plagiarism is a serious issue."
  


• They prefer visual information over text. "But text is still important... For library interfaces, there is evidence that multimedia can quickly lose its appeal, providing short-term novelty."
  


• They multitask all the time. "It is likely that being exposed to online media early in life may help to develop good parallel processing skills."

same game different name

A while back Grant McCracken wrote an interesting post about geeks and playas..


I would propose that they are not ying and yang of popular culture, but momentary features of a larger thing. They just happen to capture a timeless mass appeal want and need in a way that fits: getting laid that is...

Larger thing

They both belong to what can be called (as stated by Mr Bruckheimer the producer) the process-culture that we are currently living in. People love to know the how and the what of stuff. If say the 80's and early 90's where the era of High concept ( as invented by the late Don Simpson) the late nineties and 2000 are the age of process (or as John Grant called it, the age of Apollo).

Constant change
Playa/pimp and geek in the this era = the martial arts expert/businessman/sports hero and funny sidekick in the 80's (think nick nolte and eddy murphy, tom arnold and arnold Schwarzenegger, maverick and his sidekick in top gun, sam malone and norm). Bruce Willis in Die Hard could be seen as the transitional form from modern to post modern hero..(but that is a different post for another time).

But the playa and the geek have a method to their madness...it is not pure action..more thinking on your feet. The difference is complexity. The story behind the story. Like MTV's Made show, Do you wanna come in, Heroes, Sopranos, Lost and all the other examples. In the 80's people wanted the hero to win, now we wanna know how he does it, why he does it and what he is doing when he is not a hero. but a hero is still a hero.

Sign of times

It swings back and forth, complexity and simplicity. In times that are good, people are laizes faire, in times that are rough, they want a sense of control. In areas of great data supply we want to be able to make sense of it all, where as in area's where there little data around people want to be able to visualize a better ending, not worry about the pitfalls of how to get there. Not yet anyway.

Would be interesting to see what the top American shows around the world are, and to compare them to the feeling about the future in countries around the world.

I would not be surprised to see a correlation between optimism + lack of data and a need for result shows (like top gun and rambo, which are still huge movies in eastern Europe) and on the other side pessimism + data overload and a need for process shows. If anyone has some data..it is more then welcome.

Note to self: a sense of awe

"We use all of the five senses to create the sense of a sixth one"

Criss Angel, Mind Freak