Leo Burnett - Cultural Fuel

Found a great article that reminds us of how there are side effects of our use of digital technologies, or the social web. Not just when it comes to privacy issues, but actually our growth as human beings.

No question, the web is probably the most amazing thing ever. But, in our quest to tailor everything to our needs - thanks to the great feedback mechanism that is the web - we forget that we lose out on the positive side of randomness and “uncustomizability”. Among other things, creative ideas, in fact, also grow amidst randomness. Just imagine being in a brainstorm with only the people that fit your social media profile. It would be a horrible brainstorm. Removing randomness, and allow preselection, and planning for everything that might suit our imagined needs also lets us become self-fulfilling prophecies, if not caricatures of ourselves.

Dalton Conley, op-ed contributer to the NYT, and dean of social sciences at New York University, makes this a topic using an example of his, when he met his first roommate in college.

I am sad that most of my students will not experience what I did back when Mark Zuckerberg was in diapers. While the Internet has made it easy to reconnect with the lost Tonys of our lives, it has made it a lot more difficult to meet them in the first place, by taking a lot of randomness out of life. We tend to value order and control over randomness, but when we lose randomness, we also lose serendipity.

Read it the whole thing here.

Via Jeff Brooks

Since I just blogged about Flash, here goes HTML 5, also found on Pixelgangster. Good to see the Flash company take HTML 5 seriously instead trying to avoid the seemingly inevitable.

(via)

So I guess we have all probably been expecting this from Google… A Catalog app that aggregates the worlds leading brands and retailers under one little screen, providing a rich, interactive shopping experience, that will also deliver Google a whole new revenue stream

The app allows you to flip through catalogue pages as you’d expect, and extends that to detailing out each product, playing videos and other rich content, while providing a “Buy Now” button to launch the brands e-comm store or “Find A Store” button which instantly maps locations with directions.

So who’s on board so far? Urban Outfitters, Williams-Sonoma, Sephora, Macys, Bloomingdales, Crate&Barrel, Lands’ End, Nordstrom, Patagonia, UGG and many many of others!

Aden Hepburn

Interesting Article over on the Agency Collaboration Blog about the trend that agencies are starting to become incubators, and why.

In some ways, it’s easier for agencies to become incubators than venture capitalists.  The capital requirements are much lower (YCombinator invests $20,000 per company; a traditional VC fund generally requires at least $20 million in capital), and because the market is still relatively new, it’s easier for new entrants to break in.

As traditional agencies have a harder time to eek out profitable margins against specialised agencies, this seems to make sense in order to start making money for thinking/initiating that getting paid for a specialized implementation job.

Via Edward Stokajovic

Nike+ City Runs from yesyesno on Vimeo.

BMW posted its half year earnings at a record high this year. In fact, the company has never had a better 6 months in its entire history. For this reason, it is positive to observe the company continuing to spend some of that profit for worthy causes. But not only is CSR type activities, but rather in collective creative community platforms, such as the one just launched with the Guggenheim in NY.

The BMW Guggenheim Lab is a mobile travelling idea lab that takes on the challenges of cities and urban planning with a variety of disciplinary backgrounds. Also, it invites residents to participate.

It is not a new idea, but simple and timely. The trend of collaborative community projects has shown much hope and success especially in NY where such projects as the Highline have received much attention.

Download the latest Cultural Fuel Trend Report June/July 2011 here

Interesting read by Shea Bennett about Google+. It’s refreshing to hear some naysaying when most commentators are too risk-averse to make early calls, but generally evangelize the holy b-jesus out of Google+.

Granted, the article is posted on Allfacebook.com, the unoffical Facebook blog, but still, Shea goes as far as attacking some of Google+ most touted features, such as circles, and also blasts social media celebs such as Robert Scoble as being responsible for ruining everything, and repeating the much heard diagnosis that Google+ is just Friendfeed all over again. Death sentence.

If you haven’t had enough of Google+ articles yet, make this the one you read.

Ever try writing a style guide for every sound aspect of a brand.

via Peda

Here’s a fascinating example of building demand for your future consumers through play - the Toyota Backseat Driver.  It’s a smartphone application that allows you to drive a virtual car while riding in a real car - and the virtual ride is linked by GPS to your actual driving route, including the passing of virtual landmarks.  Playing the game earns you points to customize your virtual car.

It’s some fun creative work from Party in Japan

Via Japan Trends/C Scout