Rory Sutherland: Life lessons from an ad man

The power of perceived value. Insightful and tremendously interesting view into our industry.

Poetry is when you make new things familiar and familiar things new. So, as ad men & women, we are truly poets!

Did You Know 4.0

Update to the original "Shift Happens" video. This Fall 2009 version includes facts & stats focusing on the changing media landscape, including convergence and technology.

¡ʇno ʇı ʞɔǝɥɔ

Flip your text upside down with the new Ben & Jerry FB App / ddɐ qɟ ʎɹɹǝɾ & uǝq ʍǝu ǝɥʇ ɥʇıʍ uʍop ǝpısdn ʇxǝʇ ɹnoʎ dılɟ

Vintage TV Ads

Free collection of vintage TV ads from Duke University

2009 Themes // Ideas Are Awesome

View more documents from Paul Isakson.

Balance Your Media Diet

"Practicing good nutrition keeps your mind sharp, your body fit, and your life long. The same could be said for consuming media. (Seriously, knowledge is power.) When you add it all up, the average American spends roughly nine hours a day glued to some kind of screen, and like your diet, quality is as important as quantity. Here are Wired's suggested servings for optimal media health."

Why Do People Go Online?

“Ruder Finn’s Intent Index is an ongoing online research study that provides a comprehensive analysis of the underlying motivations or reasons people go online – their intent.

Major intent categories list and prioritize specific activities people perform to fulfill their intent online. The Intent Index compares and contrasts intents for separate groups including men, women, youth, and seniors.

The Intent Index underscores the emerging trend that people’s online behavior is better explained and understood by similarities in intent rather than demographic differences between them. This has profound implications for professionals embarking on PR, advertising and marketing campaigns.”

Daily Internet Activities, 2000-2009

Daily Internet Activities, 2000-2009 | Pew Internet & American Life Project

Anatomy of An Ideal Planner

via The Royal Society of Account Planning

Inspired Genius Ted Talk

Elizabeth Gilbert muses on the impossible things we expect from artists and geniuses -- and shares the radical idea that, instead of the rare person "being" a genius, all of us "have" a genius. It's a funny, personal and surprisingly moving talk.

Most Contagious 2008

Contagious Magazine's roundup of the most contagious stuff of 2008.

Another good presentation about the current advertising shift.

Psfk Conference Singapore Sunshine Presentation 1.3

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own.

Google Reader On The Go

Tabbloid: Ever feel strapped for time in the morning and wish you could take your Google Reader newsfeed with you for your daily commute? Now you can with this new service from HP that allows you to compile your RSS feed into a printer-ready PDF document that's akin to a personalized magazine. With so many of us living in transit, this is certainly an efficient way to make use of downtime.

Need A Lift?

Forty Inspirational Speeches from the Movies in Two Minutes [via Overthinkingit]

Wordle Word Clouds

Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like - the one above is from my delicious tags.

Make It Simple

(via FFFFOUND!)

The Initiative of Interest

(via FFFFOUND!)

Creative Problem Solving

A recent post from Paul Isakson has brought us back to the basics on creative problem solving. Rather than diving head first for the "single most inspiring idea we can communicate", let's take a step up and start digging deeper into the issues facing our clients' brands. (It might not even be what they're asking for.) He reminds us:

Start by accurately define the problem(s), taking into account all of the objectives and challenges, and then begin looking for the most successful, effective and valuable solution(s).

(image credit)

What's Next In Media

View Upload your own

Neil Perkin's excellent presentation on where media is today and where he sees it heading.

Social Media in Plain English

Social Media in Plain English from leelefever on Vimeo.

Emotional Brands

(via Tom Fishburne's Brand Camp)

searchme: New Visual Search Engine

There's a better way to search than by looking at a dozen links with snippets on a page. searchme is an efficient new search engine that lets you scan resulting pages visually.

The Workers Plea

(via adliterate)

Brand Tags

Brand Tags has just been launched as a "collective experiment in brand perception". The idea is simple enough: "a brand exists entirely in people's heads." This is what you see on the site:It's a really cool project & great use of technology-as-research. All you do is type the first thing that comes to mind for each logo (each time you hit "submit," a new logo comes up). As soon as you submit, each featured brand has its own tag cloud, representing the collective perception and thoughts of that brand. The more times a word or phrase is typed by people, the bigger it shows up in the tag cloud.

How To Work Better

(via WeHeartIt)

Facebook Lexicon

Similar to Google Trends, Facebook Lexicon allows you to see buzz and create a trend graph for different words and (two-word) phrases on Facebook Walls. For more details, check out PSFK's feature or the Unofficial Facebook Lexicon blog for some interesting trends and observations.

Go Beyond The Explanation

(via FFFFOUND!)

Trendpedia

Trendpedia: Compare trends across blogs by keyword.

New research tool allows users to search the blogosphere by topic or keyword to see where, when, & what is being said. Found content is organized in a "trendline" that shows the popularity over the course of 3 months. Trendlines can be posted to webpages & social networking profiles, & the site even allows users to do comparison searches, e.g. American Eagle vs. Abercrombie & Fitch. Useful resource to monitor the perceptions of products and services among consumers.

Planning Advice II

(via FFFFOUND!)

Trendrr | Data Tracking and Comparison

Wanna check out a site's popularity over time? How about graphing an artist's plays on YouTube or MySpace or even find out how often people write blog posts about each prez candidate? Trendrr provides you with the tools to simply track, graph, compare and mash up all kinds of online data. The free tool allows you to identify trends across social graphs and networks, track engagement metrics, and look at what is really happening in real time.

Trendrr makes graphing even more simple by including a drag-and-drop scratchpad that lets you edit and compare graphs with ease. Don't miss the gallery of popular graphs, which are often informative and sometimes just funny.