As God is placed in the centre of the Paradise, in the Branding Comedy is the Consumer to stay in the centre of the system and he represents something to be reached by the brands, which are the real protagonist of the book. The Branding Comedy is divided in three sections, like the original Comedy. In each circle are placed the brands, depending on their sins and virtues, their positive/negative values or simply their real position in the market. In fact, as Dante uses the ancient symbols and allegories to describe the medieval world, in the same way logos and brands represent the symbols of today, carrying loads of different values and characterizations.
I am one of those people who really likes the idea of eating locally grown fruits and veggies. l seek out restaurants and markets that specialize in them. So, I was really excited to catch an article on a new expression of this, in, of all things, an airline magazine. (I know, if I care this much about transporting foods I really should confine my travel to mule or paddle boat or something, but I don’t.)
Farmers’ markets have long been frequented by chefs as a source for amazing local in-season produce. Now, there are restaurants popping up all over the US that actually encourage patrons to share the best of their own backyards. Foraging is not a new idea, my dogs do this all the time. They scour the back yard for the best sticks and bugs my neighborhood has to offer. But, now restaurants are creating their own foraging culture.
Localvore “Foraging” ranges from chef’s literally exploring the land near their restaurants for useful edible items to sending out harvest calls for crops from home gardens. The resulting daily specials with true “just picked” flavors sound positively delightful.
Eating local is a great idea however it comes to fruition, but I must admit the idea of bringing something from my garden to be transformed by a food virtuoso into something both imaginative and delectable sounds absolutely dreamy to me.
What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
- from “Leisure,” by W.H. Davies
Yesterday’s Play Me, I’m Yours post has inspired me to share my very favorite article with you. It is about an experiment to test people’s capacity for beauty, and it won a Pulitzer prize. It’s a long read…takes me about a half hour, but I highly recommend it if you have the time.
Essentially, The Washington Post wondered what would happen if you placed a world-famous musician playing renowned classical works into the context of DC’s morning subway rush hour. The musician was Joshua Bell and the location was L’Enfant Plaza in the DC Metro. Here are a few excerpts:
In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?”
In the three-quarters of an hour that Joshua Bell played, seven people stopped what they were doing to hang around and take in the performance, at least for a minute. Twenty-seven gave money, most of them on the run — for a total of $32 and change. That leaves the 1,070 people who hurried by, oblivious, many only three feet away, few even turning to look.
…the explosion in technology has perversely limited, not expanded, our exposure to new experiences. Increasingly, we get our news from sources that think as we already do. And with iPods, we hear what we already know; we program our own playlists.
The song that Calvin Myint [a passerby who did not notice Bell] was listening to [on his iPod] was “Just Like Heaven,” by the British rock band The Cure. It’s a terrific song, actually…It’s about failing to see the beauty of what’s plainly in front of your eyes.
…John Lane writes about the loss of the appreciation for beauty in the modern world. The experiment at L’Enfant Plaza may be symptomatic of that, he said — not because people didn’t have the capacity to understand beauty, but because it was irrelevant to them.
But not everyone was so distracted.
Every single time a child walked past, he or she tried to stop and watch.
“Really. It was that kind of experience. It was a treat, just a brilliant, incredible way to start the day.”
“It was the most astonishing thing I’ve ever seen in Washington,” Furukawa says. “Joshua Bell was standing there playing at rush hour, and people were not stopping, and not even looking, and some were flipping quarters at him! Quarters!”
I wonder how different the situation would have been had they also asked Bell to play the evening rush, where people are theoretically less pressed for time and more receptive to breaking their routine to watch a street musician.
Saturday I found myself dancing along to the cutest band that ever there was, who happen to be from Ypsilanti, Michigan, right next door to where I grew up, and just a wee bit west of Metro Detroit.
Oh, poor Detroit.
The whole state is suffering terrible economic times, with one of the highest unemployment rates in the country; much of its woes concentrated in Detroit. How many news items about the area have you seen that feature an endless image parade of decrepit, boarded-up homes? It’s really like that, and it didn’t used to be.
Sufjan Steven’s 2003 song, Detroit, Lift Up Your Weary Head (Restore, Rebuild, Reconsider!) describes Detroit as “Once a great place, now a prison,” perhaps alluding to people being too financially insecure to be able to leave. Interestingly, in the background of the last chorus he repeats “Hesitate to burn the buildings,” but that is exactly the city’s plan to revive itself.
“The basis of Detroit’s new plan is essentially the shrinking of a city. While it seems counter intuitive to most city planners: making a city smaller instead of bigger…what’s left is a bold plan to concentrate the city population…Mayor Bing has implemented a task force to oversee the destruction of over 3,000 homes in the next few months alone, with the goal of removing 10,000 during his four-year term. 77 public parks are also on the list to close. Trash cans will be removed, events canceled and the once-groomed lawns and gardens will return to the wilderness…A large city with vast open space is an unknown.”
Bulldozing half a city and rebuilding it is a risky move, and it will be interesting to see what will become of the once-great Motor City. Will it be able to start from scratch, to rebuild itself into modernity like the European capitols after the world wars? Or will southeastern Michigan be reclaimed by meadows?
Long gone are the days when a consumers relied on “their” newspaper and “their” news station to provide them with all of the daily happenings he or she needed to know. In our era of instant gratification, we want information as fast as possible, with the source as a secondary issue.
A recent study by the Pew Research Center reveals what we already thought to be true: the leads in social media news differ greatly from those in the mainstream press. What is interesting, however, is the difference between social medias. Twitter appeals more to those looking for a technology update, while blogs, as well as the mainstream news, focus more on politics and government.
Today’s consumer is used to, and many times prefers, utilizing a variety of sources, Twitter, Facebook, CNN, etc. based on the interest of that particular person on the news on a particular subject. More often than not, a person will consult multiple news sources to ensure that it is indeed valid.
While the consumer may not feel affiliated with a certain news source, he or she is much more attached to the messenger. For example, if Katie Couric switched from CBS to a rival station, odds are the viewer would still see Couric as a valuable information source and rely on her, regardless of location.
Spotify is a service wherein you can apparently listen to a library of 8 million songs whenever you like, so far only available in seven countries in Europe. Damn you international Twitter friends for getting all the cool stuff first!
Anyways, so it’s like, mobile access to tons of licensed music all the time, and Spotify reports to “compensate the artists fairly,” which according to this lovely infographic, is a pretty seriously low rate on return, considerably worse than comparable streamers Rhapsody or Last.fm.
BUT it sounds like a pretty good deal for the users, not to mention easy-to-use…seems like Spotify could be the harbinger of that New Digital Music Revolution we’ve been hearing is coming ever since iPods were a thing.
Look at how much fun these young people are having sharing music!
HQ recently had the opportunity to leverage our digital marketing and brand design strengths to pitch and ultimately win the agency of record assignment for the Cincinnati based, Buffalo Wings and Rings restaurant chain. What’s even better is the fact that we will continue to leverage our passion for all things food to help build this nation-wide, 54 restaurant business (and who doesn’t like wings?).
For 2010, our efforts will be focused on developing an integrated campaign utilizing social media, loyalty, customer advocacy as well as both traditional and non-traditional media launching later this summer. Our recent return from the Buffalo Wings & Rings annual franchisee meeting in New Orleans, LA gave us a great chance to hear directly from the dedicated front line teams of owners throughout the US.
“Buffalo Wings & Rings is a different kind of restaurant brand centered on catching up and connecting,” says Roger David, CEO of BWR. “Families and friends choose us because of the unique BWR experience. We want our marketing to reflect and build on that experience and sense of engagement. As a leader in experiential marketing, consumer connection and new media technologies, HyperQuake is well positioned to help us.”
Thanks Roger and the entire Buffalo Wings & Rings team. We look forward to helping build your business and our own knowledge of your 45 wing sauce/heat combos in the future.
But as is probably not unexpected, the subject matter of Fairey’s pieces have been pretty seriously divisive here in the middle Midwest. Some responses have been positive and thoughtful:
“Many people, when they saw [the Silverton mural] and we talked about what it meant, thought it was beautiful,” Wade said. “We talked about how depicting disturbing images is not the same as condoning them.” Source
Fairey’s Silverton mural, pre-paintover
Other responses have been with outrage and paint. Both the Pike Street and Madisonville murals have now been covered over with white paint. Amusingly, while the Pike Street removal was carried out by the owners of the building the mural is on, the Madisonville mural was NOT authorized to be painted over, and the incident is being referred to as vandalism against the mural. So, wait…is Shepard a vandal, or are the people painting over his work the vandals?
“I think adults will see [the Pike Street mural] as a commentary on war, but kids will see it as a school kid carrying a big rifle,” [one local resident] said. “On the other hand, I think its removal is a travesty. It’s an awful commentary on the lack of tolerance in our society.” Source
If anyone ever wants to take me to ROFLcon I will be all over that.
Till then, you can check out a video by Motherboard talking with some of the speakers of the event, including I Can Has Cheezburger, Regretsy, Autotune the News and more. It’s an interesting look into the humor, industry and downsides Interweb LOLz can have on the lives of those not intending to become viral sensations. Watch the video.
I like reading books like Strunk and White’s Elements of Style and pretending like I’m going to remember anything I read there.
I like debating the semantics of whether words like “impactful” are or should be real words.
Confession: I worry about the proliferation of blogs watering down the art of writing. Much like everyone suddenly having access to a zillion fonts when desktop publishing arrived lead to some pretty heinously-styled documents (I’m guilty of more than a few), so too being “published” instantly online whenever you want tends to cause people to lean more into “can” than “should,” and while I admire the democracy of a medium equally available to everyone to express themselves, I often find myself chiding that there is a right way to do it. There is a right way to break the rules. There’s also a right way to spell “you’re”.
The instantness of the Internet is the guilty temptress here: you just type it all out and hit “Publish” and that’s it, onward to the next e-task. The world goes so fast now that it does often seem a waste to stop and reread to make sure you’re really saying what you wanted to say.
Though not a trained writer in any sense of the word (there are definitely some wonky commas in this post), I think it’s important for designers to be able to properly write. There is a huge divide between understanding what you’re doing in your own head, and being able to write about it in such a way that makes your viewers or clients understand in the same way.
So I say, have a voice, a distinct writing style. Say your piece as concisely as possible (Strunk and White reference!). Have fun with it, but most importantly, take your time.
