bcplanners - Tumblr blog

[bcplanners]

Tweet this: Giving to others and orienting yourself to a larger purpose can result in more creativity and enhanced work performance. –Professor Jennifer Aaker Read the New York Times article.

Tweet this: Trusting employees with the freedom and resources to excel leads to...

[bcplanners]

"I don’t have any good ideas" That’s a common mantra among those that say that they want to leap, but haven’t, and aren’t, and won’t. What they’re actually saying is, “I don’t have any ideas that are guaranteed to work, and not only that, are guaranteed to cause no criticism or moments when I’m sure the whole thing is going to fall apart.”

Seth Godin, wise as ever, tells it like it is.

To solve this paradox, he wrote a wonderful children’s book for grownups about vulnerability and the creative life. 

(via explore-blog)

[bcplanners]

Confidence is about yourself, while enthusiasm is about something else. Confidence is impressive, while enthusiasm is infectious. Confidence is serious, while enthusiasm is fun. And fun wins.

Tina Roth Eisenberg, founder of Swiss Miss, on her “personal superpower” of enthusiasm in her altogether heartening 99u talk.

Explore another side of this concept with Anna Deavere Smith on confidence vs. self-esteem. 

(via explore-blog)

[bcplanners]

One of the very best uses of neuromarketing that we’ve seen. Awesome stuff from British Airways. 

British Airways’ New Blanket Will Measure Your Mood

[bcplanners]

Michael Fanuele, Fallon: Making brands cultural again

Michael Fanuele, Chief Strategy Officer at Fallon, served as a Final Round judge for the 2014 North American Effie Awards. Hear what he’s most excited about for the industry in the coming year, from elevating brands culturally to cutting-edge neuroscience.

[bcplanners]

Dan Hon: The Thing About People

An excerpt from Dan Hon’s daily episode that we highly suggest subscribing to, this section is particularly salient for planners who are constantly on a quest to understand people. It’s nice to remember that they’re (we’re) not just numbers, and in fact, that numbers can’t do them (us) justice.

The other thing that strikes me about the whole people-are-visual thing is this: pictures, images, photographs -- they can all convey subtlety in a very easy to understand and parse way. That sort of subtlety either requires someone who's very good at writing, or someone who's very good and understanding and picking apart hidden meaning from multiple textual sources. But a photograph? A photograph can do that *instantly*.

What I'm getting at is this: databases are terrible things for telling us about humans when we're reduced to *fields*. We're vague things that don't operate on a binary continuum -- we can hardly keep our minds or opinions straight from one moment to the next. So to reduce us to n (whether n is small or very large) fields in a database that are boolean or VARCHARs or whatever, doesn't really do us service and, my gut tells me, insufficient in terms of modeling us on a personal level. 

All this is to say is this: perhaps it was something like the cheap availability of easily scaleable storage, where you could just keep provisioning s3 buckets to store all of those images and you didn't have to worry about buying all of those 3U disk servers, but when you're dealing with *people* and *people things*, photographs convey a lot of nuance that is hard to render in Unicode or ASCII and that is still hard for computers to understand.

I can say, for example, that I'm a fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation and I could write a whole screeds about what I like and don't like about it, but if you want to understand me as a *person*, this is a pretty efficient way of going about it. 

And that type of array of images -- lots of them -- especially when they're picked by me and curated by me to show off different aspects of my personality (just like, say, on Tinder) communicates a lot more about me, a lot more quickly, than a lot of words.

[bcplanners]

I have a big piece of advice! Stop “aspiring”!!!!! Your aspirations end now!!!! […] The freaking coolest thing about living in the year 20XX is that you don’t have to have anyone’s permission…. Just start making whatever you want! Don’t save your good ideas for some big-wig executives or networks. Just do them right now! Don’t be precious with your ideas, just put them out there.

Ian Jone-Quartey’s advice to aspiring animators works for anybody who wants to make things. Recommended. (via austinkleon)

[bcplanners]

Top Shelf Tuesdays

Welcome back to Top Shelf Tuesdays, our series that’s meant to rebrand Tuesday in an effort to make the world look just a little bit brighter. Now put some ice in a glass and check out this cool shit. 

40 Maps That Explain the Internet http://bit.ly/1knWxYn

The Truth About Instagram Selfies and #NoFilter Fakers http://usat.ly/1ht1G1h

How #Blessed Became the Hot New Hashtag http://nyti.ms/1jPnOx8

The always-entertaining Newcastle is back again: The brand will send it's first 50,000 new followers $1 for their trouble http://bit.ly/1outP6C

The Psychology Behind Why It's Normal to be Upset About Sunday's Game of Thrones...Event (SPOILERS) http://nym.ag/1kuiJiv 

SpaceX's New Space Shuttle Could Lead to Intergalactic Tourism http://bit.ly/1x3mwZi

The Trend That's Still (Unfortunately) Captivating Japanese Teens http://thecut.io/1kHHJOz  

And of course, a top-shelf drink to top off your Tuesday. 

In honor of traditional Japanese culture -- rather than cultural appropriation -- here's a cocktail with sake as the star. 

If you happen to be in Seattle like our usual  mixologist, the locally-made Scrappy's orange bitters would be great in this cocktail. Hat tip to Seattle Magazine for this week's recipe. 

[bcplanners]

This Week in Procrastireads

It’s Friday afternoon. We all know you’re watching the clock, watching your Twitter feed, or watching that dot on the wall that you’ve never noticed before. But you could be doing something better.

That’s why we’ve compiled a list of longreads that caught our eye this week. We call them ProcrastiReads. You’re welcome, Friday (and Raj).

Internship Inspiration:

How to Get Ahead At Your Creative Job—From a Guy Who Went from “Daily Show” Intern to Head Writer http://bit.ly/RMjho6

Craft:

MDC's challenge: 'Everything you know about advertising is going to be useless on Monday' http://bit.ly/1jBSmSP

Integrative Ideas and Social Brands http://bit.ly/1gE66l2

3 Ways to Re-Frame Your Category (And Win) http://linkd.in/1nyeEgz

A Neuroscientist’s Quest: What Causes Creative Breakthroughs? http://nyr.kr/SiC7Eb

Nissan’s Social Strategy Case Study – And It’s An Ad, Too http://bit.ly/1rqy88l

Mary Meeker's Big Deck on Key Internet Trends http://bit.ly/1iAU0og

Culture:

Just Because It Doesn’t Suck Doesn’t Make It Your Passion http://bit.ly/1gK4Ixq

‘Selling Out’ is Meaningless http://bit.ly/1rgZptK

The Female Sociopath http://bit.ly/1kheUbr

Peer Pressure Can Be a Lifesaver http://nyti.ms/1iBdBoa

The Art of Anticipation http://bit.ly/1mFXXMG

The Case Against Sharing http://bit.ly/1mShycC

[bcplanners]

GIFtastic advice from Neil deGrasse Tyson on what makes a great soundbite.

via brainpickings

[bcplanners]

Off The Bookshelf: On Generosity

Adam Grant, author of the must-read book that's changing the way important people view generosity in the workplace, went in search of generous celebrities. He found this instead. Check out Give and Take and other great reads on culture and planning on the StratLab Bookshelf!

[bcplanners]

Inspiring Creativity -- A Liberatum Film Presented by illy 

Through the authentic interpretation and responses from [leading creative personalities], the overall project communicates what inspires creative thinking and behaviors for nurturing inspiration, while provoking thoughts on how culture, society, and technology continue to affect creativity.

[bcplanners]

Top Shelf Tuesdays

Welcome back to Top Shelf Tuesdays, our series that's meant to rebrand Tuesday in an effort to make the world look just a little bit brighter. Now put some ice in a glass and check out this cool shit. 

Russian Bank takes advantage of fitness tracking trend, rewards customers for working out with higher interest rates because "healthy is the new wealthy." http://bit.ly/1pgInds

Billboard and Twitter team up for Trending 140 -- a natural evolution of music charts for the social age http://bit.ly/1nsRl7V

Gap is betting big on the trend they're calling "Soft Dressing," by which we mean they're hoping you'll wear your yoga pants all day everyday. [Editor's Note: #NotMad] http://bit.ly/1gyxktb

Hilarious short film flips the script on sexism with "The Oppressed Majority" http://bit.ly/1nxuBko

This week in amazing packaging: Malaysian tea company BOH and M&C Saatchi are using edible tea ink to showcase the calming effect of chamomile. http://bit.ly/1jZe33U

Last week we saw that emojis are up for interpretation, well stickers aren't, and they're changing the way we communicate. Way to be on trend, CS Chat 2015! http://nyti.ms/1tM2X59

And of course, a top-shelf drink to top off your Tuesday. 

We think the Russian Bank's incentive program is awesome (and that it should make its way stateside -- hello, obesity epidemic!), so we salute them with this vodka drink. We promise, it's not as weird as it sounds. 

[bcplanners]

This Cisco Billboard Changes Messages Depending on Traffic Conditions

[bcplanners]

This is a perfect example of what Robin Sloan (author of Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore) has termed a flip-flop:

the flip-flop(n.) the process of pushing a work of art or craft from the physical world to the digital world and back again — maybe more than once

The trend marries the physical with the digital in an effort to embrace the past and the present at the same time.

The past/present dichotomy is also visible in another recent trend: colorizing history.

Gizmodo examines whether this recent explosion in colorized photos is good or bad for history. It's a good question, but I'm prone to agree with the notion that "if a colorized image can spark interest in history, great."

Trendspotting: Where Past Meets Present

A GIF of a Vine of a Video of a Mechanical Flipbook of a GIF of a Roller Coaster

[bcplanners]

This Week in ProcrastiReads

It’s Friday afternoon. We all know you’re watching the clock, watching your Twitter feed, or watching that dot on the wall that you’ve never noticed before. But you could be doing something better. 

That’s why we’ve compiled a list of longreads that caught our eye this week. We call them ProcrastiReads. You’re welcome, Friday. 

Craft:

Behavioural Economics – Implications for Research and Planning http://bit.ly/1jsujtR

The Shareable Advertising Manual’s Interview with Ogilvy’s Ivan Pejcic http://bit.ly/1hhDXvg 

There’s the First Ad http://bit.ly/1gpPiOA 

An Oldie But A Goodie: Mark Pollard’s How to Shape Your Next Strategy http://bit.ly/1lIUBVC 

Culture:

Why That Video Went Viral http://nyti.ms/1vToLxO

I’m a Man Who Plays as a Woman in Games, And I’m Definitely Not Alone http://bit.ly/1kxgQ44

In Dogs’ Play, Researchers See Honesty and Deceit, Perhaps Something Like Morality http://wapo.st/1gXoeXJ

My Favourite Waste of Time: Why Candy Crush and Angry Birds Are So Addicting http://bit.ly/1ngejil

For Millennials, Happy is the New Edgy http://t.co/MrRREwSckU

The Life and Times of  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ http://bit.ly/1m2XDFM

And hey, even if you are still busy, ProcrastiReads work just as well as a cure for this weekend’s inevitable boredom. 

[bcplanners]

Twitter: The Built-In Bullshit Detector?

Here's a quick one:

Via Vox

New research suggests that young people are actually less likely to trust misinformation they got via Twitter, compared to information they read on a normal text interface.

On the face of it, this is interesting. What makes young people more able to "call bullshit" on false Twitter stories? 

In reality, I think it says more about young people's relationship with mainstream media. We've talked about it at length in a few different Brandcenter settings, but it's no secret that young people are disappointed with traditional news outlets. 

We're disappointed because we're supposed to be able to trust news from those traditional sources -- but time and time again, that trust has been tested: when CNN gets something wrong, when Fox and MSNBC are inherently biased, when it's left to John Oliver to present the statistically representative climate change debate.

On Twitter, though, we expect to have to filter out the bullshit. It's simply a different relationship.