LOVE are big fans of Life On The Pea Harvest, the blog of Colin Wright, agricultural manager at Bird’s Eye as he managed the annual harvest of Bird’s Eye peas. We’ve referred to it loads of times with clients, if they were wavering a bit about starting their own company blog.  It was strangely addictive - part education, part soap opera - but it was blogging at its best. It felt honest and true - the real musings of a dedicated, passionate bunch of people.  It even had typos and bad grammar - it was that good. 

But then it stopped.  It didn’t slowly wind down.  It just - stopped.  There we were sharing the musings of Colin during his Yorkshire Stroll and the problems that the wet weather was creating for potato lifting, then - nothing. 

I wrote to ‘Colin’ and I got a prompt response back from ‘Martin’ at Tullo Marshall Warren informing me that because the pea harvest finished, the blog had stopped.

No law against that, but like Misery, if somethings gonna end - maybe
you need to manage us delicately out of pea-world and back into boring reality.

PS - What’s the blogworld etiquette for ending a blog?  Any good stories of uproar and grief at the demise of a particular blog ?

Posted by Jonathan Rigby

A product at the beginning of its Hype Cycle.  Don’t expect too much work from Apple fans today - they’ll all be on the demo site.

Posted by LOVE. 

You can’t beat a good old product lifecycle.  The Hype Cycle is a new one to us. It’s a "graphic representation of the Public Relations impact of new technologies" and there are 5 phases :-

1. Technology Trigger - "eureka, a technology breakthrough"
2. Peak Of Inflated Expectations - "it’s incredible/stupendous, check it out"
3. Trough Of Disillusionment - "it’s not that good"
4. Slope Of Enlightenment - "hang on, it’s better than I thought"
5. Plateau Of Productivity - "I can’t remember life before it - what’s next?"

According to a variety of reports, Second Life is in the Trough Of Disillusionment phase and having failed to really get into it after a few attempts, I have to agree. 

I need a few new triggers to take me into my Slope Of Enlightenment phase like the one provided by Steve Prentice - "I trained as a biologist and I’ve been seeing all the behavioural, societal problems that I’d expect to see on an isolated Pacific island as populations grow.  You’ve got social disruption, crime, a whole range of social positioning - that’s just a society growing up."

At last, something interesting happening in Second Life.  See you there.

Posted by Jonathan Rigby

This made us smile.  From David + Phoebe.

We love Apple.  Some people don’t, but we do and it was a truly great day when the Apple Store opened in the Arndale.  I’m not sure if this is just an Apple Manchester thing, but do you know when you go to a restaurant and it’s pretty standard for the waiter to bring that hand-held device to your table to pay the bill?  Well at Apple Manchester, this standard little machine is pushed as a major service benefit called "bringing the till to you". I wasn’t allowed to walk the 7 feet to the counter.  The Apple assistant insisted on carrying a hand-held payment device to me and making me pay in the middle of the store.  Trouble was, I wanted to pay by cash and the device doesn’t do cash.  The assistant was broken with disappointment.  Does customer service sometimes go too far?

Sometimes there’s a very thin line between brands that change service policy for ‘environmental responsibility’ reasons and those who do it for ‘let’s save ourselves a bit of cash’ reasons.  A good example is our local gym, who’ve taken to severely restricting the number of towels they hand out (unless you pay) as part of their policy ‘to consider the environmental impact of towel usage’.  I’m sure they’re doing it with the most honourable of intentions, but is there a term/name for brands that seek to save cash under the umbrella of environmental responsibility or some other social excuse?  Eco-Pirates? Goody-Baddies? Guilt Rippers?

Posted by Jonathan Rigby

Foolishly I goaded Russ about one of his Nike+ runs.  He challenged me to a 10k race.  This weekend we both made it out there (albeit many miles apart) and he beat me by over a minute. You can see the clever Nike+ comparison over at Russell’s blog.  Back on this blog, humble pie is being eaten in large quantities.  Must…..try….and….run….fas….ter…….must….stop…..goading..

Posted by Jonathan Rigby

There are loads of conversations about the future structure of creative agencies – and quite a lot of concensus that future agencies should be actual or virtual ‘houses’ managed by fewer people who oversee and employ from an eclectic and diverse creative talent pool of ‘creators’ and ‘makers’ on a project by project basis.

It’s like a utopian vision – a bohemian dream.  It’ll be so – fun and perfect.  Wont it ?   

Bohemian dens will emerge – places where clever, talented people will just ‘hang-out’ and chat and create – and wait for a job from the re-styled creative agency houses.  These dens will resemble old-style Parisian bars packed with Impressionist artists and writers trying to make a living.

The re-styled creative agency houses will be fun factories – packed with all the production facilities anyone could ever need to create or ‘make’ – studios, recording facilities, film cameras – it’ll be like a techie geeks bedroom on a vast scale.

Every morning the person with the keys to the agency fun factory will drop in at the bohemian dens and hand-pick a selection of ‘eclectic talents’ – the lucky few who’ve managed to secure themselves a days labour.

And at the end of the day, the plucky eclectic talent will say.  “But occasional work isn’t enough for me to survive.  I need something more regular – like a full time job.”

And the manager of the fun factory will say “oh dear, we can’t charge healthy monthly fee retainers because we don’t have full time employee names to construct a legitimate fee proposal”

And clients will say “we do lots of little projects nowadays, so why do I need to keep going back to the same agency creation house when I can go anywhere to get the talent to do that.”

And then we’ll all wonder whether this fine utopian vision of the future of our industry will actually work at all – because at the end of the day, our finance directors and shareholders need us to make money – and sadly no-one has come up with an agency structure that is future proof, fun and profitable.

Posted by Jonathan Rigby

For 47 consecutive days in the run up to Xmas I asked my wife to buy me either an Xbox 360 (with Gears Of War) or an acoustic guitar.  So imagine my crushing disappointment when the gift wrapped present she gave me looked nothing like the shape of either.   Instead she bought me the stuff I need for that Nike Plus running thing.  And what a brilliantly superb decision she made - so much better than my predictable pressie ideas.  It’s wicked - especially because you can compare the speed and quality of runs with other people in public.

Take this comparison, for example.  This is a run published by Russell - a pathetic 4.48km in 30 mins and 12 secs at an average pace of 6.44/km.

Compare this to a jaw-droppingly athletic 6.49km completed by moi at an eye-blistering pace of 6.35mins per km (a whole 9 seconds per km faster than Russ) in a time of 42 mins and 45 seconds - making me just 4 times slower than the world record holder.

Anyone fancy a race?  I reckon you could beat either of us running backwards wearing a bear outfit after drinking 10 pints of Stella.

Posted by Jonathan Rigby

Let’s be honest.  It’s a bit of a struggle getting going this week.  So we were delighted by the fresh approach to pitching provided by a potential new client.  Basically the client has gone through our website and blog in detail to get a feel for our approach and our personality.  She then called us up and had a long conversation with us about whether we’d be interested in the project.  Finally she asked us to send her a few pieces of our work that she thought were appropriate and she’s going to pitch us internally against 2 other agencies to the rest of her team.  No wasteful and expensive weeks of pitching for the 3 agencies.  No drawn out decision making process for the shortlist.  Just a client who knows what she wants and is using information that is already out there to make an informed decision with minimum fuss.  Let’s hope other clients catch on.

Posted by Jonathan Rigby