Social Hallucinations

Be Kind Rewind Sweded Trailer

This is so cool. Michel Gondry sweded his trailer. It can't get better.



Tags: be kind rewind, swede, Michel Gondry

Be Kind Rewind

I've seen today Be Kind Rewind and I loved the movie for its appreciation of creativity and freedom of interpretation and expression. The movie creates the new phenomena called "sweding", that originates from Sweden, like Sweden country and is about "re-making something from scratch using whatever you can get your hands on". Sweding is some kind of mashup.  It is about being free, enjoying creativity and fellowship. Creating something new and unique without investing tons of cash and having fancy equipments. This the creativity that derives its advantage from being curious, ready to challenge norms and have some fun. Simple things we oversee. Could imagine shooting Rush Hour 2 in the playground in a day? Yes, Michel Gondry shows it is possible,

Great movie with lot of laughs and inspiration for every day routine struggles.



You must visit film website to experience you Internet being erased and learn more about sweding.

Here is the trailer



Tags: be kind rewind, movie, Gondry, Jack Black

Billion Here, Billion There, Billion Everywhere...And What?

Actually nothing as things are getting worse and we aren't becoming wiser with age and experience. Lord Leverhulme was aware already in 19th century that half of his marketing budget was wasted as he expressed it:

“I know that half of my advertising budget is wasted, but I’m not sure which half”

Over 100 years later, things haven't improved at all. According to The Global Marketing Effectiveness Report that surveyed 3,000 marketing professionals across the globe,  65% of marketing spend had no effect on consumers in 2007.
The report's findings should be wake up call for all involved in marketing and advertising:
- 65% of all marketing spend in 2007 had no effect on consumers.
- Estimated wastage rates varied from 45% for business-to-business marketers, through to 65% for business-to-consumer
- Just one in ten of respondents have automated systems in place to track the effectiveness of their spend
- Of the 55% of marketers who do track the results of their spending, 80% do so manually, spending hours capturing, compiling and analyzing data.

- Questioned on strategy, 70% of marketers believe that short-term revenue-boosting and lead-generation campaigns are more important than long-term intangible brand building (15%). A clear indication that marketers are under pressure more than ever before to generate results
- Tracking marketing effectiveness topped the 2008 wish lists of 35% of marketers, and made the top three for 70%.
We have reached the point of very huge wastage of the billions dollars invested in marketing. Those money bring no effect due to old-fashioned methods and stereotypes used. Times has changed, people haven't changed as such but we've gained very valuable knowledge about people and their behavior which we choose to oversee and keep on pouring money down the drain stuck to routines and fearing to challenge the way we think. After all "no one has ever been fired for using TV"

It is time we get it and stop just talking about it but do something to improve the results and reduce wastage. 65% doesn't sound to scary but when you translate it into advertising dollars spend each year across the globe to sell the products people don't need in a way people don't want, you get scared and makes you believe even stronger that

"If advertisers spent the same amount of money on improving their products as they do on advertising,” he said, “then they wouldn't have to advertise them.”

found at  WARC

Picture by Joshua Davis

Tags: marketing, advertising, WARC

Wave Principles and Stock Markets

U.S.economy is according to some on the verge of the recession, according to others it is already in recession. The stock markets are falling down. Not only in USA, they are falling down across the globe.

Breaking News Alert from NYT

Stock Markets in Europe Plunge 7 Percent

Stocks Open Sharply Lower Despite Interest-Rate Cut

Asian Stock Markets Plunge for Second Day

The experts outdo one another in economical prophecies. Media sound the alarm about the inflation. Everyone across the world seems to be touched by the  problems. I think it is very interesting to observe. It reminds me of the snowball effect.  The more it rolls the bigger it gets.

It is like with Elliott waves that show the collective investor (or crowd) psychology and interactions move from optimism to pessimism and back again. These swings create patterns, as evidenced in the price movements of a market at every degree of trend.

 

   

       

From R.N. Elliott's essay, "The Basis of the Wave Principle," October 1940.       

 

"The wave patterns are an organizing principle for myriad social behaviors, ranging from newspaper sales figures to the fortunes of national leaders. The reason Elliott waves can tell us all this is simply because they are direct reflection of human psychology - the rhythms of human emotion, as Elliott puts it."  (I know what you'll do next summer, New Scientist, 31st August 2002).

Interesting how the herd behavior and emotions influence even the stocks market. It is incredible to see how everythink is linked and depend on one another.

 

Tags: stock markets, elliott waves, herd

Drink, Eat and Have Sex asThose Will Not Kill You...

This is le' cool ad that made med laugh out loud. Awesome.



Fount at Adriana's Blog

Tags: advertising

The Age of Conversation 2008

After the great success of bloggers' book Age of Conversation, Drew and Gavin who stood behind the idea, announced last week the new project - time to exceed Age of Conversation! They called authors to join and make a second book.

The topic of the new book is up to you. Everyone is invited to decide and there are three themes to choose from:

1) Marketing Manifesto
2) Why Don't People Get It?
3) My Marketing Tragedy (and what I learned)

You may vote for your top choice via SurveyMonkey - Click Here to take survey

Would you like to become a part of the project and co-author the book? Read the post and e-mail Drew to tell him that you're in.

All proceeds of the book will be donated to Variety, the Children's Charity.

Great initiative!



Tags: age of conversation, social media

Cirlce? Do You have it in Square?

No words needed. Just watch where your focus group can take you



Tags: focus group, draft fcb

Bad Ideas

This is a good week starter - think about it when entering the office.



It is almost impossible not to agree. I've dropped watching TV for some time ago. Its stupidity is killing me, and makes me shout at TV screen due to plenty of bad ideas, so I use TV in very small doses and only if necessary, primarily for research reasons.

I am totally fan of Gapingvoid and his brilliant and witty remarks. They pinch and punch and show the naked truth. It can hurt but it surely open the eyes too. Love it!

Tags: ideas, gapingvoid

Music, 80-ties and Social Sharing

I have found a pretty cool site where you can mix your music - Mixaloo. It made me think about those Friday evening when I was together with my friend recording music on tape player (Kasprzak - communism's technology miracle) from the most popular and only music radio chart. We have created this way tapes with mixed music that allowed us not only to learn English but also have a contact with the Western world. Then we exchange the tapes in the school to compare one another music tastes and also hoping to get a new song we didn't mange to record. This was 80-ties way of social sharing.

Things hasn't change drastically since then. Youth still define their identity through music and share it, though there are more powerful and faster ways of doing so, like Mixaloo or MySpace, but the idea behind is still the same. It is about being with others and being like others. When I look back at my teens years and compare them with nowadays teenagers, I must admit I have that feeling that teenagers didn't change. Being teenager is about the same issues today as it was 20 years ago. What's different is that teens today live in the different environment. Environment that is powered by technology and suffers from over-supply of choices and possibilities.

It all made me pretty sentimental and I have created by 80-ties play list - enjoy.

(on the picture you can see my teenager pride - my Kasprzak stereo)

Pre-Testing of Ads and Their Effectviness

Advertisers love to test advertising. Just to minimize the risk and ask so called consumers about branding, logo, music, etc. so they can afterwards ad advertising agency to add more packshots and increase logo 25%, so the branding is more clear. It seems like doing so, advertising not only waste money but increase the risk for advertising to ineffective. According to Les Binet and Peter Field data, published in Market Leader, ads that have not been quantitatively pre-tested have a 71% chance of being effective and ads that have been pre-tested have only a 44% chance of success.


It can be the lower chance of success for the pre-tested ads is the result of listening to consumers post-rationalization that has not too much to do with reality - "most of we know, we don't know we know", so we try to sound clever and evaluate advertising which isn't always mirror reality.

via Serendipity Book

Tags: advertising, testing, research, effectiveness

Quote of the Day

"I warn you against believing that advertising is a science."

                                                                                                                                       Bill Bernbach

Tags: advertising, Bill Bernbach

Price Influences Wine Taste

I love this story. I have told it to all people I know and who believe that humans are very rational. Hell, no! We are far from being rational and this research is a good example of our irrationality. Brain can work very mysterious ways. Researchers at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the California Institute of Technology found out that people’s brains experience more pleasure when they think they are drinking a $45 wine instead of a $5 bottle when in fact it the same wine.  People actually experience wine to taste better, they don't rationalize that the better taste is connected with the higher price.

"What we document is that price is not just about inferences of quality, but it can actually affect real quality," said Baba Shiv, a professor of marketing who co-authored a paper titled "Marketing Actions Can Modulate Neural Representations of Experienced Pleasantness," published online Jan. 14 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "So, in essence, [price] is changing people's experiences with a product and, therefore, the outcomes from consuming this product."

There are a lot of available studies showing that people value and enjoy product more, the higher the price. Of course the line is thin here and one can risk that too high price levels actually scares people instead of attracting them to buy product.

Cheers! And keep on hallucinating. Expensive wine is tasting delicious.


Via Stanford News Service

Picture by Jeff Kubina

Tags: research, neuromarketing, wine, price

Welcome to Social Hallucinations

Tuesday, 15th January, 2008 - social hallucinations were brought to live. Social hallucinations aren't new as such. I've just opened the door to the room filled with things that don't exist. We hallucinate day after day. Selling and buying products that don't exist. Saying things no one believes in, even you. This is liquid reality where hallucinations are the staff of life. I am living in liquid reality where all modem structures are being dissolved and nothing new is being created. Humans have to reconstruct, deconstruct and redefine themselves all the time. It is impossible to have stable, one-faced identity. There are no fast norms you can refer to and feel safe. So, in order to live up to the mashed-up times, I've decided to re-baptize my blog. Social Hallucinations that go hand in hand med liquid reality. Rebirth. Instantly seeking for inspiration and new frame of reference.

OK. I've changed the name of my blog. Why? I love changes, changes keeps me going and add the new energy to my actions. It is like at least once or twice a year I must rearrange my apartment to create the new room for thinking and get some fresh into air into my environment. I am reconstructing my blogging "I" in hope for new loads of creativity invading my brain.

"All affirmations are true in some sense, false in some sense, meaningless in some sense, true and false in some sense, true and meaningless in some sense, false and meaningless in some sense, and true and false and meaningless in some sense” (Sri Syadasti)

Btw. Media Blog it was pretty boring and generic! :-)

Social Hallucinations got also new domain and you can also find me here: www.socialhallucinations.com

Tags: blog, social hallucinations

   

       

   

Ads That Made me Laugh Today

It's been a long time since I posted some cool ads that impress me or makes me laugh. The Mail commercial will definitely make you laugh. The Girls vs. Boys war gives pretty good picture about things the different sexes like.



I like also this Pepsi ad. It is pretty energetic.



Tags: advertising, pepsi, the mail, the war of sexes

Train Your Brain

I just couldn't remember whether I've written about this service or not. I couldn't exactly remember whether I have been on the site before either. I guess it means I should not only become a member but also upgrade my account and train my brain on Lumosity.com. It is a brain fitness program that should help you to to improve your brain performance through a series of exercises. Program is developed in cooperation with leading neuroscientists from Stanford and UCSF  and the exercises are proven to have statistically significant effects in improving memory and attention.
I guess Lumosity will become a part of my breakfast.

Tags: brain, brain fitness