Influx

Used to be that celebrities owed it to brands to help make them famous and keep them in the spotlight. They still do, but it's going to be a different relationship moving forward. Soccer star Lionel Messi just went onto Facebook and got 7 million "likes" in a matter of hours. The ability for...

Christopher Poole has already made a name for himself with 4chan, the site that generates huge male traffic because of the freedom and anonymity it provides its users.He's now onto his next venture, Canvas, which applies some of his core learning about the target in a different space.Canvas, is as...

This weekend in NYC, there was a "Pop-Up Flea Market". It was an idea that combines the notion of temporary space with the opportunity to seemingly purchase low cost/used items. The reality was somewhat different- it was a pop-up store for men's apparel and footwear and featured a mix of small hand...

I just noticed a Tweet from Dan Pink- it was another one about The Simpsons and Banksy, but his description seemed so apt- "A Cultural Cage Match" is exactly what it was and a way really powerful stories are created. I remember ad legend Jim Riswold stopping by the agency and talking about mashing...

The big challenge if your a marketer of domestic beer is your scale and ubiquity can be both a blessing and curse. The downside of mass is that you lose your cool pretty fast. While domestics have experimented with more upscale/premium lines and a little bit of packaging innovation, they haven't...

"Well, let’s be practical. The company is still Freshjive. It’s just that none of our product will have any of our logos or even our name AT ALL. Not even in the labels. And after the turn of the year, no promotional material, nor our website will have any logos. It’s...

Mission Street Food is a pop-up restaurant concept located in The Mission neighborhood of San Francisco. For the last six months, it's been the talk of the town and way beyond, because it shows an almost telepathic understanding of what the twenty-something crowd is looking for from food right...

Nokia is trying hard to be seen as an open organization. This website is a good example of a company that's opening its people and process up for public view. If you happen to be interested in working for the company, a huge fan of Nokia or work in a related field, this can be good stuff to see. In...

Springwise has a great example of a new company that's made Twitter integral to its business model. Kogi Korean BBQ is a food van that travels around LA serving an interesting hybrid- Korean BBQ served in Mexican style tacos. The twist here is that to find out where the van is going to be, you have...

"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...

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...

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...

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...

"I have a personal interest in popular culture and the influence of culture on the consumer landscape.."Quoted in the Wall Street Journal todayPosted by Ed Cotton

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 ChevyWhat if you push further to a subverted consumer-created product?This is the...