Serendipity Book

"Let's make a sawng" with Weezer

Geek band Weezer have really been putting the internet to good use lately to generate interest in their upcoming album.

First they gave us a video recreating the greatest hits of the net.

Then, while everyone else is asking why they didn't think of doing that, Weezer's lead singer Rivers Cuomo has been off harnessing the power of mass creativity to write a song with his fans on YouTube.

Rivers' version of the resulting song, '80s Radio', can be found here. Alternatively, you can hear the versions done by some of his collaborators.

Aside: I wonder who owns the copyright to this?

Offside: Can the moustache REALLY be making a come back? I thought the rule was that moustaches can only be worn ironically and even then they must only be grown to raise money for charity and must be cut off immediately after the fundraiser?

Portraits created from bar codes

Scott Blake makes portraits from bar codes. By hand.

Renewed calls for transparency on tipping

It seems that my local branch of Pizza Express in Wimbledon is at the centre of a row about the lack of transparency in the way that restaurants distribute the tips given to staff.

It has been alleged that some restaurants (the example given by the BBC was Tootsies) keep up to 60% of the tips given to staff and the money that staff do receive is used to make up their salaries to the minimum wage.

Pizza Express (whose website proclaims that it's "a place where people matter") stands accused of firing a whistleblower for revealing that they take an 8% rake from tips.
Surely it is about time that those in the hospitality industry realised that they cannot continue these sharp practices without causing damage to their reputations?

As Dave Turnbull, a rep for the Unite union said: "I’m sure Pizza Express customers expect that the tips they leave for good service go to the staff and would be upset that the restaurant are creaming money off the top." Too right.

HiPPOs kill ideas

An acronym you may not have come across which was used recently in a presentation by Jonathan Rosenberg, SVP product management and marketing at Google ...

Avoid HiPPOs: A hippo kills more people than any other animal. In business, hippos kill more products & ideas than anyone, A hippo is the highest paid person’s opinion. Hippos say “I think…”

Via David Knox (a blogging P&G Brand Manager!)

A Millward Brown LINK test for Gorilla?

Meanwhile over on Millward Brown's blog, the ever provocative Charles Frith has challenged the normally unflappable Nigel Hollis to use MB's proprietary pre-testing system to test and improve upon Cadbury's "Gorilla" and make the results public!

So far Nigel has chosen to stonewall a bit by saying that it had already been successfully LINK tested but that he could not confirm or deny the results it got or whether it was changed as a result of the test. Intriguing. Perhaps someone (Mike?) could have a quiet word with Phil Rumbold and ask him to release the learnings to the industry for the greater good.

Charles suggested testing an ad that has not been tested before.  Nigel's comments on an earlier post suggested that he would be up for the challenge. Any suggestions?

The story of David Ogilvy

Note to self.

Remember to set the PVR for another potential treat this weekend: there is a documentary on BBC Four on Saturday night about the life and work of David Ogilvy:

"David Ogilvy's advertising agency started out in 1948 with no clients and two members of staff, and became the largest advertising conglomerate in the world. This documentary reveals Ogilvy's extremes and eccentricities through interviews with individuals whose lives he touched: those who knew him and worked with him during the conception of some of his most famous campaigns."

I hope it's better than the recycled pap that is 'Hard Sell'.

A tribute to Paul Rand

A 4 minute short film celebrating the work of the graphic designer Paul Rand (most famous for the IBM, abc and Enron logos). The film was created for his posthumous induction to the One Club Hall of Fame last year.

Making stuff and thinking about it

A haiku by MIT's John Maeda set in type by the Mississippi-based Public Design Center:

The Secret of Happiness

The philosopher Dan Dennett started his 2002 talk at TED with this statement which contrasts painfully with much of the self-help pop-psych blah-blah orthodoxy on happiness today:
"Find something more important than you are and dedicate your life to it."

Image: a serene lion pictured in Fisherman's Wharf, SF

Frank Gehry: "Healthy Insecurity"

Frank Gehry describes the healthy insecurity he still feels when he embarks on new projects:

"For me every day is a new thing. I approach every project with a new insecurity almost like the first project I ever did. I get the sweats. I start working. I don't know where I'm going. If I knew where I was going I wouldn't do it. When I can predict or plan it I don't do it - I discard it. So I approach it with trepidation. Obviously over time I have a lot more confidence that it's going to be OK. I approach project work with what I think is a healthy insecurity."

From a conversation with Richard Saul Wurman at TED 2002

Image: my photo of the entrance to the building Gehry designed for Chiat/Day in LA taken in 2005