The Society Of The Spectacle

Google shut down the Wave last week. After much geek fanfare and frankly completely nutty clamour for Wave Invites (Yes, I was one of them I admit), Wave never really got off the ground, and accepting defeat with a good grace, Google closed it’s doors. I’m sure some of the learnings from the site will be put into a myriad of other projects that Google has germinating at any one time. Who knows? Maybe the next great Wave idea might spring out of the bizarre and the brilliant ideas that exist in the GOOLLERY. Here, all manner of strange and wonderful Experiments using Google brands and technology are curated. From the fascinating ‘Manhatta’ (Manhattan mapped from way back in 1609) to the ‘Revolving Internet‘ it’s a (literally) head spinning ride.

Check ‘em all out here.

I recently received a few invites for the new start up Pinterest. It’s not like there are a famine of start up invites, but this one caught my eye for a few simple reasons.

Firstly, the design is sparky and super clean. Following on from the top notch user experience that Tumblr provides, this felt (and is) super easy to use. Tonally it follows on from this clean design with a cool little tagline. “Catalog, create, share”. The actual experience of using it, felt much easier than using Dropular, or FFFFound. But obviously as yet, do not have the same cachet that these two do in the creative community. This brings me onto the final, most compelling point. While something like Dropular acts as self curated, but increasingly long list way of finding things that inspire you, Pinterest has the potential to make that process much faster. The ‘pin it’ button that you are encouraged to have on your bookmarks bar makes the whole process of ‘pinning’ something that much easier and behaviorally, more compelling. In sight, in mind as it were. The tagging system also has the hallmarks of Tumblr (e.g dead easy) and each pin is linked back to the original source. Providing a useful journey back through your pinning process, in the end, it feels and acts like a less tucked away version of delicious (which for me, serves more and more as a backup archive)

The ability to set up specific boards related to theme instantly created little micro communities of shard interest. Similar to the way Spotify Social now can create little sub groups of interest and passions, based around the music people love. It’s the killer point of difference, that I hope with a little tweaking (customised pin boards templates anyone??) Could be turn out to be a real treat. You can follow the Pinterest team at their Posterous here. (There was a meet up earlier this week at the Droog store for ‘Pinners’ as well.) I’ll be expecting one soon in London!

Thanks to (@lueni for the original invite)

Fashion brands embracing digital has in the last year become a real hot digital topic. Luxury brands have, in the past been notorious for their lack of forward thinking when it came to integrating digital into their marketing. Well, things started to change in 2009, with the (previously reported) Art Of The Trench from Burberry, the brand pushed home their digital breakthrough with the streaming (in 3D!) of their shows live from Paris, New York and Tokyo Fashion Weeks.

A subtext of the Art Of the Trench was the appropriation of Fashion bloggers by the major brands, for example, the Art Of The Trench featured Spectacle fave the Sartorialist and his wonderful pictures. Louis Vuitton, has taken another Spectacle fave The Selby, and giving him a really interesting platform to explore the ‘Journey Of A Man’s Wardrobe’.

The Journey seems simple enough, follow around and document the story of Louis Vuitton menswear, from it’s inception in the Paris studios of LV, to the shows construction, the craftsmanship, and the flair that goes into each garment. Mark Selby’s photo’s are simple, truthful and engaging. They help frame the entire experience in a calm loucheness that you would expect from a brand with such heritage and quality associated with it.

The digital experience is also rather engaging, it might not have the breadth that the art of the trench campaign. (You can’t share any of this content to your social networks, which seems strange for something that has had such effort and scale put behind it. But as the cities visited and the stories grow, this is certainly one to keep your eye on and shows how hard luxury brands now have to work to engage and spread their digital to their audience.

Image from Stéfan’s Flickr

2010 has started with a bang for the worlds biggest search engine. Firstly, on Sunday, at the most watched Superbowl in history, Google paid $5 million to screen it’s 60 second ‘Parisian Love’ ad. Probably one of the best of the Superbowl ads, it’s simplicity showed the power and scope of Google’s search engine business. It was significant in other ways too. It was the first time Google had ever advertised it’s search engine. This was pounced on by commentators, bloggers and Google watchers as an admission of the pressures Google find’s itself under from Facebook in one corner and the emerging Microsoft Bing search engine.

Events this week have in fact revealed the opposite to be true. Yes, the facts remain Google has lost some market share to it’s rivals, but like any huge global corporation, Google’s not just got it’s finger firmly inserted in one pie, it’s sticky fingers are everywhere, and just like the after the opening credits of Star Wars have rolled, Google’s advancement into almost every single area of your web experience starts to look alot more like the Star Destroyer looming into view. (more…)

Another nice bit of Crowdsourcing, (Thanks It’s Nice That for this one) this time to produce a video, similar to the Sour video seen last September. Comissioned for the group C-Mon & Kypski This one uses photos taken of users posing in the same way to the members of the band. Apart from the fact it’s a nice way to generate play (and buzz) for your single, it shows how easy it can be to get people engaged in your content by giving them a little bit to play with. Interestingly, the director, Roel Wouters is using Crowdflower to help facilitate the process. Keep up to date with progress here.

Images taken from the ‘coversourcing’ tag on flickr.

It seems the crowdsourcing debate is as fiery as ever. This time sparked by the inevitable controversy that CP+B (Crispin Porter Bogusky for those that don’t know) have generated by using Crowdspring for a logo for the a new motorcycle project. (more…)

Ten days. Lots of things happen in ten days. For me? A few lessons learned and spirits galvanized, the scent of something new and inspiring around the corner meant that the spectacle had to take a few days off to reflect, re-charge and be ready for what is sure to be an interesting autumn. So it seems like a fitting time to share some fantastically inspiring work form the vaults of Vimeo. I’ve collected these over the past few months and have been trying to find the right context for them ever since. So sit back and be inspired by these works.

Something short, sweet and stunning.

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I went to see Moon over the weekend and mighty good it is too. Starring Sam Rockwell as a lunar employee who after three years working on his own to maintain and mine the Moon the fuel that has solved the energy crisis (Th film is set in the near future) finds out all is not as it seems… (more…)

Via Brian Morrissey’s blog I found out about this fantastic idea from Nike and Lance Armstrong’s Livestrong Foundation. It’s a great example of digital media and physical experience meeting. Creating an idea that is viral yet has a permanence to it, namely in the form of chalk messages sprayed onto the road in front of the cyclists during the Tour De France (more…)

Image from What Makes The Pie Shops Flickr

Over at talent imitates, genius steals, i found this engrossing piece of branded content from the consistently excellent Honda. (more…)