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.
Yeah, it’s been a slow month on the blog here. I was on paternity leave (yes, we do take them in Europe). So, funnily enough, I just have some parenting trends to report on.
First off, ever since that “Go to F*** to Sleep” book came out, everyone’s in a tizzy. In Germany, STERN magazine caught their cue and made a big deal about how research shows that kids really don’t want perfect parents. Really? Thanks for being Prussian about it, but it’s not like you ever have the option to get perfect parents, so here’s toasting to stating the obvious.
However, being a new parent myself, I can’t say a little pressure release wouldn’t help. Is our society bent on providing perfection to mitigate risk for our kids? Yeah. Apart from the whole notion being an impossible endeavor perpetuating mishigas in the first place - it also isn’t healthy. Learning from mistakes is what makes great individuals stand out. Not that this should give parents a wildcard for abandoning their role decreed by nature - but it calls for another book called “Parents? Just f****** relax”. For, as many things you are trying to do right (as you should), just as many will go “wrong”.
Now, if you have any business with brands in the toddler, kids, adolescent area, this means that you could provide some relief for parents as opposed to creating more tasks and reminders for parents to do their jobs. Yet this is what most brands do, admonishing already stressed out, already caring people to go ‘the extra mile’. Go easy on the “solutions” you might have for parents. Provide peace of mind instead. Rest assured, parents are still gonna worry enough about their offspring no matter what you do to give them 5 minutes off.
All of this is encapsulated amazingly well - and quite subliminally clear - when you listen to Werner Herzog read the oh so famed book.
Thanks to Ninja and Sung for the parental inspiration.
Okay, this is about the craziest technological trend I have spotted in a while. Robotic furniture that is self-powered through the electricity generated from the living and dying of insects, rodents and other small animals, using microbial fuel cells. The product category is called Carnivorous Domestic Entertainment Robots. “Huh?”, you say? That’s what I said. Check it out:
It looks like this video was posted to Vimeo 2 years ago already. I am surprised this interesting trend hasn’t caught on and that I hadn’t heard about it before. I would have expected to see first implementations ready for sale at Ligne Roset? Joking and issues of taste aside, I would love to see the marketing brief for this one.
As usual there is a lot of ‘tweeting’ going on about business models for twitter, but I like Twitterboy’s take on it. He’s a Twitter content provider.
For a nominal fee, he’ll tweet for you, placing you in “awesome locations/situations, saying genuinely interesting and thought-provoking things”.
You inform him of your interests/reasons for being on Twitter, and pick one of his plans - three Tweets for $1.99; full profile takeover for $30; whatever.
I love how the microblogging trend has slipped from a fun thing to do in downtime, to a raison d’étre, to a chore, to a service you can subscribe to.
Who knew content design could fit in so small a space?
Notice an increase in the trend to have professional quality output from amateurs?
Many people note that with the advances in digital camera equipment/technology that now most average people on the street can take a pretty decent picture - slowly eroding the point of difference between my shooting and an expert with professional photographer equipment. Now granted - good equipment doesn’t make up for having no skill - as this photo clearly shows:
That said, HP is taking on magazine publishing in much the same way. Following the lead from BookSurge, which was Amazon’s self-publishing service, MagCloud lets you upload a PDF of your magazine and – well, and that’s about it. You get a magazine out of it. And they feature it for others to subscribe to it, so you might actually sell a copy or two.
The service uses HP Indigo technology for individual printing on demand to print the magazine, then they mail it and handle subscription management for you. All you have to do is put something together that people will want to buy in brilliant full-color on 80lb paper with saddle-stitched covers.
Can’t you see this trend moving to having suburbanites expecting to have their YouTube video turned into a professionally-shot film, complete with popcorn, viewing room and red carpet premiere?
Check out the professional magazine-on-demand at MagCloud.com.
