one very very simple idea for you today, courtesy of the department of coffee and social affairs on Leather Lane (go hang out there if you havent, its very nice and not at all pretentiously threatening like its near neighbour “Prufrock” (nothing says “come in and hang out” like a TS Eliot reference eh))

anyhow, it is the day when anything goes, or certainly it is deemed socially acceptable for girls to ask their men to marry them . . . so i quite like this exhortation from my coffee friends and i dare you all, all 700 of you, go on get out and try something new today . . .

MMM is coming

Satellite of love
Satellite of love

as Lou Reed once sang

so, i spent an exceedingly pleasant few hours in the environs of Gillingham over the weekend . . . playing hockey on the oldest, sandiest astro i’ve seen in a long while – thats not that interesting – or maybe it is

maybe its an indication of the lack of investment that is going on in towns out there beyond W1, maybe the experience is an indication that not everyone is walking around apple maxed up and instead they are riding their 50cc motorbikes round and round our nice shiny middle class cars in a slightly threatening manner . . . maybe we should be asking ourselves this

if i went and sat in the high street of croydon, watford, wycombe, hemel or wondered down to the local playing fields what would i see . . . would i see people voraciously engaging in branded content or a load of bored youths and broke housewives who dont give a damn about most of my brands ? possibly neither, but you wont know unless you get out there . . .

MMM is coming

this week’s ideas will be all about dust (or stimulus in the olde worlde parlance) and the myriad places that can come from, this is because we’re celebrating the countdown to March Method Madness (so important its even got capital letters)

to start us off, the other day i was completely unable to even get started on a hairy problem . . . so i buggered off and went wondering around the west end

now whilst we wouldnt highly recommend W1 as a good source of real world inspiration, in this instance it came up trumps

below are three photos see if you can tell me for which brands . . .

thats right, only one of those is in any way distinctive

now there are a couple of interesting things in here:

1) what happens when your lovingly crafted brand gets into the hands of the retailers ? does it undermine everything you’ve done

2) the increasing prevalence of brand partnerships (on which, more later)