Archive for December, 2009
that time of year again
Its now been three years since I started this blog, so thanks again for reading and commenting - and have a lovely Christmas.
mental notes for 2010
I think some quite exciting things are going to happen next year at work on the Insight front, which should hopefully mean new ways of working and new skill sets for me.
But however things end up, there are a few things (if not actual Resolutions, then at least a bit of a mental note about stuff to focus on) that I’ll be taking forward into my work in 2010, some of which I already subscribe to, some of which I need to work harder on:
- the ‘consumer’ is an individual (like me)
- if you aren’t helping, get out of the way
- powerpoint – less words and more pictures please
- work is about what you contribute, not how many hours you sit behind a computer
- interestingness is for sharing
- working in marketing is rarely life or death – and probably a lot more fun than accounting, so enjoy it while it lasts (but don’t put up with any rubbish)
P-p-p-pick up a festive trend
Trend fans, I can report that this Christmas its all about Penguins.
As of this morning, my haul of Christmas cards had penguins outnumbering robins 3 to 1.
Pablo the Penguin is apparently going to be the new Percy Pig at M&S:
Santa even took his penguin friends with him to open the Harrods Christmas department (in August, so I think the snow might be courtesy of photoshop):
Want to be in with the in-crowd this Christmas? Looks like you need the Pingu boxed set:
smoothies bearing festive gifts
I’ve had something nice arrive in the post from Innocent, the smoothie people, every Christmas since I signed up for their email newsletter in 2003ish. In 2005 they sent me a tiny Christmas tree in the post (maybe 4 inches long). This year it has finally reached a height suitable for planting out in the garden.
Since then, they’ve sent me mistletoe, self assembly paper christmas trees and snowmen for my desk and once, memorably, a pair of pants that had innocent embroidered on them, which took a bit of explaining when I opened the parcel in the middle of the office…
I still have a big soft spot for Innocent as a brand – they might have got a bit big and corporate, but they still try to behave like a company run by three enthusiastic blokes.
seek and ye shall find at the top of the stairs
My parents moved into the current family home a couple of years before I was born, so it is now bursting at the seams with nearly 35 years of accumulated stuff.
As well as providing a great visual history of the last 35 years of packaging design, the house is a bit like the Room of Requirement in Harry Potter – if you think hard enough about why you really need something, it turns up in a nearby cupboard. Silver cake stand for summer party cupcakes? Middle cupboard on the landing. Stapler? Five staplers and 13,000 staples (no, I’m not exaggerating) found in a draw in the dining room.
On the non-fiction front, what the house lacks in depth, it makes up for in breadth, producing the out of print economic prophecy of our current financial difficulties, as well as somewhat dated volumes on subjects as diverse as falconry, garden pond maintenance and Tenerife, circa 1972. I’m fast becoming the creative department’s go-to-girl for vintage cookery, nature and countryside books for shoots (we have one of those upmarket everything-you-never-knew-you-needed catalogue clients).
It strikes me that as we all move house more frequently, as storage space is at a premium and as we are all busy decluttering and ebaying, the kind of practical hoarding that my family seems to specialise in is dying out.
Buy shares in prop hire companies now.
top social campaigns of 2009
Forgot to visit youtube or read any blogs in the last 12 months?
Nick Burcher has created a mashup of what he calls the most noteworthy social campaigns of 2009:
Nick’s post also has loads of links to background details if you are looking for case studies – and a Susan Boyle free version of the mashup too.
Packing ‘em in – today’s open plan means shrinking space
Telegraph newsroom photo by victoriapeckham on flickr
I’ve been ranting about Creative Spaces, open plan and working-where-you-work-best for a couple of years now (examples here, here and here).
I stumbled on a piece in the Wall Street Journal today which reported that the average new workstation designed by global architecture firm HOK Group has shrunk from 64 sq ft to 48 in the last five years.
It does make sense in these cash strapped and cautious times to try and fit more people into less space – and if you subscribe to google’s philosophy that information flows fastest amongst knowledge workers when you pack them in, the news that the average height of desk partitions has shrunk from 5ft to less than 4ft in the same period will not surprise you.
To my mind, there’s something rather depressing about seeing a room full of Dilbert style cubicles – or equally a corridor of closed office doors. Neither really inspires its occupants to great collaboration and creativity, but the properly open plan model is imperfect too.
Right now, I’m sitting in my very open plan office without desk, wall or any other kind of dividers. It’s a fairly quiet afternoon here, but I’m still trying to tune out four rather loud telephone conversations and two meetings within immediate earshot and if I look up from my screen I’m close enough to the co-worker opposite me to use her watch for timekeeping.
I’ve also got a funny feeling that I’m going to be catching her cold in the not too distant future. According to research released in January 09, the extra noise and a lack of personal space in an open plan environment leads to “shocking” effects on our physical and mental health and makes us less productive.
There must be a happy medium – but I think its some kind of complicated balancing act / trade off between structure, privacy and personal space, vs. communication, collaboration and creativity.
this week, I have mostly been writing:
- two horsey magazine features (just finished, due out next month)
- two blog posts for work’s online PR specialism (here and here)
- an Insight piece on the New Age of Generosity (email me if you’d like a copy)
I keep worrying that I’ll accidentally send my thoughts on work/horse/life balance to a client and the latest figures on the take up of reputation monitoring to Horse magazine…
Santa baby, stick an aggregator under my tree, for me
Trying yet again to flick round hotmail, bloglines, twitter, facebook and wordpress in the time it takes to drink a cup of coffee before work starts properly in the morning, it struck me that what I really need is an aggregator.
Imagine just one, single website. With just one login. That would tell me what is going on with all my favourite social media, email and RSS accounts.
Looking back through my archives, it seems that I tried and failed to just integrate the social networking bits of my life over two years ago. And still no solution is in sight.
Santa? Hurry down the NPD lab tonight.
