Influx Insights Weblog

the brits and american culture

Influx Insights — 2008-04-28T21:17:40Z

"Grand Theft Auto IV is such a simultaneously adoring and insightful take on modern America that it almost had to come from somewhere else.

The game’s main production studio is in Edinburgh, and Rockstar’s leaders, the brothers Dan and Sam Houser, are British expatriates who moved to New York to indulge their fascination with urban American culture.

Their success places them firmly among the distinguished cast of Britons from Mick Jagger and Keith Richards through Tina Brown who have flourished by identifying key elements of American culture, repackaging them for mass consumption and selling them back at a markup."

NYT

Posted by Ed Cotton

no boundaries for acne

Influx Insights — 2008-01-06T21:13:34Z

Sweden is a country that’s been on everyone’s agenda for the past few years.

People have been marveling at the entrepreneurship and creativity coming out of the place, which is due to the deep pool of talent and the emergence of a new “can do” attitude.

In the last year or so, digital agencies Farfar and North Kingdom have been setting the world alight.

Acne is perhaps the godfather of this latest phase of Swedish creativity.

It’s a company that defies conventional wisdom, because it creates both products and communication in a variety of formats.

The “Factory-like” collective is best known for its Acne Jeans brand, was founded in 1996 by four friends, Jesper Kouthoofd, Thomas Skun Skoging, Mats Johansson and Jonny Johansson.

Acne’s empire now spans a film company, an ad agency, a web design company, a toy company and even a magazine.

The jeans brand is the beacon of the group. It sets to the tone, the mood and the trends and helps build the connections and relationships for the rest of the company, but it also reacts and responds to what the other units are doing. Think of it as a dynamic feedback loop. The jeans brand has its own stores across Europe, including a flagship in Berlin and is sold in over 400 stores worldwide.

The ad agency has worked for MTV, Virgin and even a competitor to its jeans brand, H&M.

Acne Film is a commercial production house and has created ads for the likes of Comcast, Dodge, Garmin and Nike.

The magazine, Acne Paper, documents the worlds of creativity, fashion and style.

The digital agency, one of the newest ventures, has already worked for the likes of SAS, VW and Volvo.

With ad agencies currently struggling to define themselves, their stragey appears limited to focusing on driving revenue by owning every element of the communication mix.

Acne starts with creativity and ideas and works it out from there, a nightmare proposition for most senior agency management and holding company CFOs. However, perhaps the time is now right for new Acnes to emerge, led by individuals with limited or no real agency experience.

It appears that Acne’s secret is to leverage the cult of cool across a variety of different creative disciplines and areas.

It’s a concept that would be way too risky for most agencies to conceive because there’s always an inherent concern for any brand trading on cool, how long can it last?

Here’s how Acne explains its vision.

When Acne was created in 1996 the initial idea was to build brands, own as well as others', within the fields of fashion, entertainment and technology. Although all members of the collective are independent entities acting in their own right in various fields of creativity, they all share the same vision and culture. This vision combines art and industry in equal measures, whether this is through clothing, film, printed matter or a global advertising campaign.

Posted by Ed Cotton

knowledge is power

Influx Insights — 2007-12-17T19:32:15Z

In the relentless quest to be cooler than everyone else, the world of the urban hipster has been slammed for some time and the "slamming" has become an industry in its own right.

This t-shirt, available for sale on Threadless sums up the irony perfectly.

The copy promoting the t-shirt is pretty good as well.

"Is this type tee a badge of honor highlighting the wearer's unique tastes in off-the-beaten-path music and other such awesomeness ignored by mainstream culture, an ironic indictment of others who condemn you for listening to a band once they sell fifty copies of their first album, or just about having imaginary marching bands cascading through your head at all times of the night and day? YES!"

Posted by Ed Cotton

zune can't buy cool

Influx Insights — 2007-12-05T08:43:43Z

Brand cool is an elusive thing.

The coolest brands don’t have to try hard because cool is part of their DNA, they are used by the right people and seem to find themselves in the right places.

It’s all so natural and seamless there’s nothing forced about it.

The brand just is.

Then there are brands that try to buy cool.

They force open the doors, offer everyone piles of cash and hope that the name association of other people’s cool rubs off on the brand.

Trying too hard to be cool makes you a pretender and a poser.

The cool people won’t find you interesting, they may show up to your parties and drink your free booze, but they won’t use your product,

In fact, you may find many of the free products you gave them, unused and still in their nice boxes in said cool people's desk drawers.

Zune maybe doing some great stuff- cool, beautiful ads, great work with artists, fantastic parties, but it can’t rely on others to make it interesting, it needs to be interesting itself.

Zune can do this by doing some interesting and sadly we’ve yet to see it, but…….

Posted by Ed Cotton

influx quote of the day- mark parker-ceo-nike

Influx Insights — 2007-10-25T04:25:38Z

"I have a personal interest in popular culture and the influence of culture on the consumer landscape.."

Quoted in the Wall Street Journal today

Posted by Ed Cotton

is you next ad about to be turned into a product?

Influx Insights — 2007-08-01T19:18:37Z

In the last 24 months, we’ve seen lots of brands try to recruit consumers to create ads on their behalf.

However, what if you subvert and twist the system a little?

We saw that with some negative ads created for Chevy

What if you push further to a subverted consumer-created product?

This is the case with the Prada Ironic Advertisment Wallet, created by a 17 year old girl and sold on the Etsy website.

Here’s how she describes her merchandise.

“This wallet is ironic. Why, you ask? Well, the Prada image is an advertisement plucked from the very pages of VOGUE magazine -- yes, literally. Typically, an item with a brand as prestigious as Prada would be extremely expensive. Advertising feeds into this prestige and brand-name popularity. By taking the advertisement and -- rather than buying a Prada product -- turning it instead into a product in and of itself with that brand-name on it, we have succesfully usurped the entire silly Brand system. We have taken their advertising and turned it into a handcrafted, DIY duct-tape and paper wallet.

The irony is that the product is a wallet.

The owner of this wallet will hold his/her money in this fabulous, handmade wallet with the Prada brand name on it -- but although he/she touts this brand proudly, no money actually went to it.Instead it goes directly to the lovely maker of the wallet, me.”

Lia. Irony queen and brilliant anti-consumerism activist.

OK, let's twist this back, what if you let consumers make their own versions of your products and get paid for it?

Via Bubble Generation

Posted by Ed Cotton

the new yorker picks up on parkour

Influx Insights — 2007-06-14T18:17:17Z

"Parkour, a made-up word, cousin to the French parcours, which means “route,” is a quasi commando system of leaps, vaults, rolls, and landings designed to help a person avoid or surmount whatever lies in his path—a vocabulary, that is, to be employed in finding one’s way among obstacles. Parkour goes over walls, not around them; it takes the stair rail, not the stairs."

New Yorker

Most viewed YouTube Parkour video

Old Nike spot featuring Parkour

rethinking gladwell's model of influence

Influx Insights — 2007-03-24T00:38:07Z

Work by Duncan Watts and Peter Dodds of Columbia University is turning one of marketing's unwritten laws and one of Malcolm Gladwell's pet theories on its head.

Their thinking has made HBR's list of Breakthrough Ideas for 2007.

For years, marketers have tried to identify and influence leading edge consumers who they believe have the power to influence others.

It's the thought that ideas are spread by trickling down from the top of the pyramid; from niches to the mainstream.

Dodds and Page believe ideas spread in a different manner.

"Understanding that trends in public opinion are driven not by a few influentials influencing everyone else but by many easily influenced people influencing one another should change how companies incorporate social influence into their marketing campaigns. Because the ultimate impact of any individual highly influential or not depends on decisions made by people one, two, or more steps away from her or him, word-of-mouth marketing strategies shouldn't focus on finding supposed influentials. Rather, marketing dollars might better be directed toward helping large numbers of ordinary people possibly with Web-based social networking tools to reach and influence others just like them."

Obviously, it's the web and new social networks that change everything, they compress the gestation of an idea and often shortens its life.

Dodds and Page's "easily influenced people, influencing each other", refers to the millions of people across the Long Tail.

These people will determine the ultimate success of an idea, but it's important to recognize that they don't work entirely alone, but often in concert with specific influencers.

This is the thinking put forward by David Armano of Digitas, that makes a great deal of sense.

The challenge for marketers is to understand the complexity implicit in this new model. It involves a thorough understanding of the online and offline landscape that you are launching your new idea into.

Marketers need to look closely at the landscape to check if there are influencers and determine who they are and ensure the right tools are available to encourage everyone to help spread the idea.

Gladwell's idea shouldn't be written off just yet, but it needs to be re-considered and blended with the latest thinking by Armano, Watts and Dodds.

the new generation gap- communication and persona

Influx Insights — 2007-03-24T00:38:07Z

If anyone is looking for a primer on the generation gap between teens, twentysomethings and the 30pluses, they could do worse than read Emily Nussbaum well researched and amazingly comprehensive piece in this month's New York Magazine.

Emily highlights the 3 changes that define the generation gap.

1. They think of themselves as having an audience
2. They have archived their adolescence
3. Their skin is thicker than yours

She goes on to conclude:

"Right now the big question for anyone of my generation seems to be, endlessly, "Why would anyone do that?"This is not a meaningful question for a 16-year-old. The benefits are obvious: The public life is fun. It's creative. It's where their friends are. It's theater, but it's also community: In this linked, logged world, you have a place to think out loud and be listened to, to meet strangers and go deeper with friends. And, yes, there are all sorts of crappy side effects: the passive-aggressive drama ("you know who you are!"), the shaming outbursts, the chill a person can feel in cyberspace on a particularly bad day. There are lousy side effects of most social changes (see feminism, democracy, the creation of the interstate highway system). But the real question is, as with any revolution, which side are you on?"

take a cultural tour- it could save your job

Influx Insights — 2007-03-24T00:38:07Z

Last September, Grant McCracken wrote a great piece on the dismissal of MTV's Mr. Freston by Viacom's head honcho, Mr.Redstone.

McCracken's thesis was Freston was fired because he wasn't sufficiently in-tune with contemporary culture.

Others speculated it was because he failed to buy MySpace, which is the same sort of the thing.

If anyone is scared about being fired because they don't know the wonders of WOW (World of Warcraft) or Second Life, they should fret no longer, because there's a virtual tour agency ready to take you around both these worlds.

So the next time your youngest employee asks you about these new environments, you can sound like you know what you are talking about.

Synthtravels, has tours available for both Second Life and World of Warcraft and they have avatars ready and waiting to show around. Quite where they take you, we aren't yet sure, but we plan to take a tour and report back.

Anyway, it's a smart idea and there should be other tour guides taking the uninitiated round the worlds of Digg, MySpace, Facebook, Flickr and Delicious.

At Influx, we offer this kind of service, but for the real world. Influx's unit EMERGE runs what it calls "cultural tours", where it takes brand teams out to meet with the faces and places that comprise emerging culture.

If you are interested in doing this anywhere in the world, please let us know and we will help you out .

If we were smart, we would be adding virtual world tours to EMERGE's list.

recent stories on emerging trends

Influx Insights — 2007-03-24T00:38:07Z

Listed below are links to some of the most recent posts over at our sister blog, Emerge Trends.

EMERGE provides custom trend reporting, cultural tours, bespoke research and strategic advisory services to help clients and agencies connect with emerging culture.

For more details on EMERGE's services, please contact James Friedman, email jfriedman@bssp.com

six of 2006: Music- Emerge's music picks from 2006

interview with the founder of Socialight- a service bringing social networking to mobile phones

six of 2006: film- Emerge's film picks of the year

blip festival-review of the recent 8-bit music and art festival

review of a the Journal- a new magazine

nme makes a mess of its cool list

gotta love Arcade Fire- the Canadian bands teams up with Bono's RED

has sneaker fanaticism gone too mainstream?

a profile of UVA- the cutting edge London-based artists collective

a review of foundations- a new documentary the explores the new york art scene in the 70s and 80s

socialmedia burnout

Influx Insights — 2007-03-24T00:38:07Z

Alloy has just published a report and is touting the need for advertisers to get to grips with and understand the importance of social media .

" Brands endeavoring to reach this influential audience as advertisers look to use the power of youth connectivity -- and the evolving definition of 'friend' -- to enable online propagation of their messages,"

Samantha Skey, SVP of strategic marketing for Alloy

At the same time, Ellen Lee at the San Francisco Chronicle have done a nice investigative piece on social media, finding that burnout and fatigue starting to emerge on the scene.

Some users are starting to feel that just keeping up with their online contacts is a chore and questioning the value of the time that they are spending online.

One quote from the article perfectly illustrates how people are starting to question the ridiculous extremes of social media.

"Caro kept an online cat diary for six months and hooked up her cats with about 50 friends each. "At that point, I thought, 'Who cares?' " she said. "Who cares if my cats have friends?"

Some observers look at teens and suggest that multi-tasking and online behavior are things that they grew up with an adapt to, coping and managing are things that they take in their stride.

Its important to consider that this is a movement that started as a cool way for bands to link to fans, exploded in 24 months to become "the way" to connect your friendship network for millions of people. It was fueled by a time by cool, but that halo of cool can't last forever and the movement is bound to be showing some growing pains.

In the end Alloy has a point, this thing is not going away overnight. Its become inextricably woven into the social connectivity of life and people are just trying to learn how to adapt.

Eventually, things will calm down and people will understand the importance of balancing their real social worlds with their online ones.

recently on emerge trends

Influx Insights — 2007-03-24T00:38:07Z

Our sister blog EMERGETRENDS, from our EMERGE cultural-trends unit, has posted the following stories in the past few days.

Germans Do it Better- Developments in the German DJ Mix Scene

The Launch of "Good"- A Magazine with a Conscience

Terror Chic- Steven Miesel's Controversial Shoot for Vogue Italia

The Beachies- the Beatles/Beach Boys Mash-Up

the mainstreaming of the tattoo

Influx Insights — 2007-03-24T00:38:07Z

David Brooks in a recent New York Times Select article (available to members only) that the tattoo was now so mainstream that everyone has one and therefore its power as a totem of individuality and rebellion has been somewhat diluted.

"The most delightful thing about the whole tattoo fad. A cadre of fashion-forward types thought they were doing something to separate themselves from the vanilla middle classes but are now discovering that the signs etched into their skins are absolutely mainstream. They are at the beach looking across the acres of similar markings and learning there is nothing more conformist than displays of individuality, nothing more risk-free than rebellion, nothing more conservative than youth culture."

Influx decided to see if Brooks was right and this weekend attended the San Francisco Body Arts Expo, to see if the suburban Target Moms and Home Depot Dads where out in force getting their tats done.

Once we had fought our way around the drunk and felonfights video booths, we found an extraordinary cross section of society; there were teen girls who had small tattoos on their ankles and nothing else, but in equal measure there were lots of people who had taken the whole thing to 11.

Those keen to show that when the masses pour in, they take it to the next level. A crowd gathered around a woman who was getting a bolt put in her neck, there were lots of full body tattoos, but what was most interesting was to see the range of sub-cultures represented; Latinos, Asians, bikers, gays and lesbians, 50s throwback rockers, hippies, Yakuza wannabes, etc.

So Brooks maybe right that just having a tattoo is no longer a symbol of rebellion, but those looking for rebellion make moves to the world of body modification. However, Brooks is missing a point, the tattoo is still a powerful symbol of individuality, something that people are looking for more of these days.

At the Expo the range and diversity of the art was astounding. So for the people who really get the culture, rather than those who get a tattoo for a bet one drunken night in Vegas, it's about how they represent your personality and/or affiliation to your tribal sub-culture.

So it may be a mass-market phenomenon, lots of people have tattoos, like they have clothing, but it's what they are and what they represent that's the important thing.

Photos can be seen here.

Influx Insights Weblog

the brits and american culture

no boundaries for acne

knowledge is power

zune can't buy cool

influx quote of the day- mark parker-ceo-nike

is you next ad about to be turned into a product?

the new yorker picks up on parkour

rethinking gladwell's model of influence

the new generation gap- communication and persona

take a cultural tour- it could save your job

recent stories on emerging trends

socialmedia burnout

recent posts on emerge trends

recently on emerge trends

the mainstreaming of the tattoo