Rob and I will be taking a break for the next couple of weeks. We’ll be back in full force on January 5th, but for now we’re going to enjoy a well earned rest.

We’re happy that you came along for the ride in 2008 and we hope you enjoyed reading TMTYL as much as we enjoyed writing it.

We wish you the best this holiday season. Have a wonderful and safe New Year’s Eve celebration as well!

For now we’ll fly off in our odd sci-fi advertising space wagon and dream of odd new things to tell in the new year.

Sincerely yours,

Freddie and Rob

When I came back from Singapore I had the pleasure of finally flying an Airbus A380 – the largest commercial airliner in the world.

I was deeply impressed with the aircraft. It flew gracefully. It was incredibly quiet. The cabin was amazing and spacious.

All these things withstanding, probably because I’m a massive nerd, I was most impressed with the in-flight entertainment system.

 Read More »

At best, people have ambivalent feeling about clowns.

On one end of the spectrum, there’s the relatively benign Bozo the Clown, a historic television favorite whose name implied entertaining, well-meaning buffoonery. There’s also the sad beauty of the crying clown of the opera Paglicci. Then, at the other end, the worst nightmare of anyone suffering from full-blown coulrophobia — the “scary clown.”

Pretty much any way you look at it, there’s not a lot of upside to being called a clown. So imagine my feelings when my PR firm sent me this post they found on Twitter about my company’s recent attendance at an Adobe trade show:

“I thought Sapient was a mgmt consulting co? They’re the booth next to us at Adobe Max and they’re complete clowns” –Message posted on Twitter by [name withheld], November 19, 2008

Read the rest of this article at AdAge.com.

9 out of 10 ads feature westerners.

I just spent the weekend in Singapore. It took 31 hours to get there. Thankfully I’m taking a pit stop in London on the way back to Miami.

I can honestly say that I love Singapore and could imagine myself living there. It has all the western amenities that I’m familiar with but with a heavy dose Asia. The reason I say a heavy dose – is because the western influence was really surprising to me.

Everything is in English (with Mandarin subtitles in some places) – even the road signs have the same design style as US road signs (green with a white ring – same font). The first day I got there I walked out the front door of my hotel and I didn’t stop walking for about 3 hours. I walked all the way to Orchard Road: the primary shopping district for the city-state. Along the way I made a point of walking down all kinds of side alleys with rows of asian food stalls. The authentic local food smelled great, looked great (aside from one shop advertising “Pig Organ Soup” as the name of the place), and made me feel for a moment that I was truly abroad.

Once I got back onto any main thoroughfare things started to change. I started to notice a patern in their advertising. All the ads that featured photography typically featured westerners. This really perplexed me.

I considered all kinds of alternatives. Is it because the culture here holds western culture in high regard? Was it just because they love western celebrities or was it that brands just were not investing in local celebrities for budget reasons?

I ended up asking as many locals as I could. They varied in descent from Chinese, Malay, to Indonesian. I was surprised by their response. Some claimed they just thought westerners “looked better”, other said they loved the western celebrities, but when I pressed the issue further they agreed that they would like to see more of their own celebrities, athletes, and actors in these ads.

I think there is a missed opportunity there for marketers. Why is no one there catching on to this? Am I missing something – if anyone has any insight please post a comment.

-Freddie

A different kind of digital ecosystem....

Even though in most regions of the world, half of the top 20 websites are social media sites, companies rely primarily on web statistics and click-through rates on media campaigns to judge the health of their brands in the online world.

People are discussing your company, brands, products and services, and potentially even talking about YOU or your top people all over the digital ecosystem in places far outside of your control. Doesn’t it make sense that there are many more conversations, probably in high exponential multiples, about these subjects on sites that you have nothing to do with your business?

We’ve seen all the blunders big companies make by not monitoring and — more importantly — not reacting intelligently and expeditiously on social upheaval in the digital space. Can you business reputation afford that kind of negativity in today’s market???

 Read More »