Disqus - Friends of eaonp

Re: Twitterfall

charlesfrith — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:05:57 -0000

Comprehensive but still at odds with my main assertion Adam. Here's why. I'm debating my political position from logic and not evidence. I don't have the evidence (but (I do have the resources) to rebuff any assertion that climate change is taking place. But I do have logic. Do I know Climate change is taking place? Well it's irrelevant. Climate change has always taken place and to conclusively prove that our behaviour is impacting the earths environment is futile. But its a reasonably hermetically sealed proposition to say that infinite consumption (and economic growth model) points towards our own demise as a species. Unless say nano bio technology enables us to diminish our own size and consumption of finite non durables. That's a far out idea but its one of my best.

“Once we realize that imperfect understanding is the human condition, there is no shame in being wrong, only in failing to correct our mistakes.” — George Soros

So what is the correction of our mistakes Adam? Just some sort of scientific conclusion that points towards volcanic activity as the source of climate change without leaving a solution for the poisoning and consumption of the planet's finite resources? That would be the definitive example cutting of our noses to spite our face.

I do agree that its likely our fate is inescapable (war is probably the most likely outcome in the fight for resources) but to blithely continue as we are, is simply not motivating for me as a lifestyle. Neither is contesting what you highlight as often bogus scientific practices to elevate the climate change bogeyman. I'll say it one last time. I see a logic problem. Not an evidenced based discussion. The final evidence is in the final analysis. It's too late then. That's why I walk the earth like Kung Fu and a morally superior swagger ;)

Re: Twitterfall

charlesfrith — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 04:20:59 -0000

Yes lets do climate change. Although I will say that the Chomsky movie you watched is a bit of a pop culture one designed to get the kids involved and it's a little primary for your needs. Chomsky is most compelling in big long series of paragraphs during speeches. His magic works in that way and the movie is little more then a vignette of soundbites despite railing against that very topic. I also feel you didn't really acknowledge the points I made about the social utility of Twitter but then I don't feel we're on opposite sides of the pitch but probably quibbling about the rules of the game.

Unlike Climate Change :)

I know your position. Or rather I know enough of your position to disagree though even that has changed somewhat today. I'll explain. We've never discussed the issue though we've discussed other issues in the past but I read pretty much most of what you do or at least have a quick scan through disruptive stuff. I'm not so much into the economic porn nowadays as everything that needs to be said has been said. Though some of the bloggers I respect are getting increasingly punchy about the greed by Goldman et al. Which would have been heresy a couple of years ago.

Anyway, I guess I should say that I'm going through a waterfall of recontextualising a lot of what I think. Somebody sent me The New Noah e book which I speed read just now and it's a bit more brutal in conclusion than I have been to date. But lets wind back because I'm sure you might misunderstand me too. I'm not sure about climate change either. I'm pretty sure about a dirty world. It's a fact that the Eastern coast of China is swathed in rotten pollution and that the oceans are housing continental sized pools of tiny floating plastic debris. I don't like that. I think it's not important to prove climate change I think its important to live an examined life which would mean having a position on excessive waste, finite resources and yes carbon output. Whether its provable or not long ago failed to motivate me.

I guess I'm seeing some exploitation of the carbon footprint/trading issue by the usual money obsessed through your bookmarks and feeds and assuming you're getting irate over an issue which to me feels irrelevant. It doesn't take a Copernicus to observe that we have finite resources and we're treating them as if they're infinite. I don't see what's wrong with having a frugal and considered approach to consumption. I also think there's lots of ways to make it a profitable model for all involved although not profitable in the sense that we were raised. We can easily shift value from fiat currency to other attractive ideas and I always think advertising is useful in that context. Let's face it. Brainwashing got us into this mess and brainwashing can get us out of it?

Or have I completely misunderstood you? Either way. I prefer having this discussion in a public forum as you never know. Maybe someone else will fall off the tree of lurking and join in :) Unlikely though. I do have a delicious Goldman Hong Kong story for you that I'll need some discretion over how I share it with you but it should chime with you given your understanding of psychopathy....Come the revolution Adam. Brace yourself ;)

Re: Green Is Green

charlesfrith — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 22:11:12 -0000

I'm having a lot of trouble living in the present. It's pretty data intensive if you knew how much trouble comes my way so I am trying to avoid predictions but as a self confessed smart arse (who needs a new speech as my good friend just informed me) I still think I know a bit about where thing are heading. Anway...I'm feeling guilty (it's the bloody Catholic altar boy in me) about being so feisty with you and you've been gracious so sorry about any calumny I threw your way because I do it all the time hoping somebody will take the bait (they rarely do) but you did and that's neat....Anyway. If I'm confessing I should let you know that I always said your work is top notch when I worked for JWT in three different countries...but then people always said .."yeah, we know" ...but nobody does anything about it and that's why I'm obsessed with change. So are you going to help me? ;)

Re: Twitterfall

charlesfrith — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 10:33:26 -0000

Great comment. Perhaps we should slug out our Green issues here too :) In any case I do feel some natural responses. I think we're heading into a golden age. It's not techno utopianism but the benefits of the information so out weigh the drawbacks that I'm hopeful for what I see as a diminished group think ordained by MSM. I revisted manufacturing consent by Noam Chomsky and really it's not hard to see how easy it is to scare whole countries into knee jerk reactions. i mean, if it were down to the Twitterati we wouldn't be in Iraq or Afghanistan. Frankly Twitter does a better job than MI6 when assessing intelligence through collective intelligence. Going back to the secret services it's an insult to the intelligence isn't it? I ripped that off a memorable Punch cover and I love it a lot. Erm..what else. OK of course there's going to be mistakes. There will be examples of mob rule group think where we'll hang some Gary Glitter figure only to find out at a later stage that the person is innocent. But, and this is a dangerous statement. It's all for the good. Humans are fallible and we learn from our mistakes. Maybe slowly, but in the big picture of things I'm hopeful. Just be ready for injustices on twitter because we'll regret them. But the track record so far isn't too bad no?

Re: Twitterfall

charlesfrith — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 09:56:24 -0000

Hey Adam. It's a bit short and stuffed with people who don't know or don't know they don't know but it's important to know the other side ;)

Re: X - Rated

charlesfrith — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 16:24:19 -0000

Bummer. I love long comments. I love any comments actually. Bit of a comment slut me ;)

Re: The Client's A Wanker

charlesfrith — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 16:19:55 -0000

Ha..ha. Great to see some client talent in the blogosphere. If only we could have a humorous take on market research blogging. But then charisma bypasses don't make for compelling content but it would be the ultimate link test :) Keep up the great work.

Re: Green Is Green

charlesfrith — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 02:59:52 -0000

As if by magic Marian my friends at The Independent are running this story about Green equates to religion. Which I think supports my point that Blue has faded into the background. Any thoughts?

http://bit.ly/4vuMhj

Re: X - Rated

charlesfrith — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 04:51:50 -0000

If 9/11 hadn't happened Rob. I think her death was the single most culturally important event of our generation. Put aside that I felt rotten about her premature death because it was so unexpected and because paradoxically I didn't take any interest in her documented life apart from the Royal Wedding (which was magnificent) and so we're left with a woman who took on the establishment, was effectively the essence of a kinder gentler Britain that John Major espoused and I think most importantly her death confronted a lot of people with something the British dont do at all well. Their emotions. (Actually had a talk about this with my French loathing French neighbour who pointed out we're cold. Anyway. You're right. They fucked her alive and they fucked her dead corpse. People are often flawed but she was beautifully so. The only other member of Royalty I've seen who had that special star quality was the Crown Prince's wife in Siam. Alleged to bath in milk I can verify her skin was extraordinary on sight. A useless piece of information. I'm drawing up my list for you too Rob.

Oh. One last thing. I don't watch telly. I find it limits my thinking although to be fair it also means I come up with ad strategies that have already been done :)

Re: Green Is Green

charlesfrith — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 16:35:03 -0000

Thank you for dropping by Marian. I appreciate you taking a stand and sticking to your guns. I accept your points that water is a bigger issue although if we are going to take a chronological view of resources I'd say that oil may have sparked the beginning of the next world war already (those are the words of others I'm quoting when I've talked about the 4th world war being an information war) so black is the colour in that instance but of course I take your point. I think the charlatan word was a bit harsh so I'll take that back however I think one of the key qualities of future watching and possibly more interesting is to explain the points that we are absolutely sure we don't know about. In any case. Once again thanks for dropping by. I'm usually frustrated that the shots I take at others aren't taken up and so I'm happy you've seen fit to reply. One last point that I want to reiterate is that conspicuous consumption is or should be a relic and its extraordinarily hard to feel 'validated' in life without actually buying stuff. Try it for just a few days to see how powerful it is and so I'm passionate that we have a huge education job for people to feel that it's not a case of I consume therefore I am but more about I am and therefore we matter. :)

Re: Synovate in Sok Kwu Wan

charlesfrith — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 08:35:54 -0000

OK I haven't articulated myself quite well. That plus I don't want to give everything away as I'm talking to a few people about better research methodology. But here's a crucial point. When I say research what we don't know I mean that current research is to discover something that isn't known and then becomes known. But if the research were structured to leave that unknown...unknown (sorry for sounding like Rumsfeld at this point) then creatively it opens up expansive creative elbow room. Rather that have the research become a didactic weapon for knocking all the interesting bits off we should be saying research proves that this is the area where we need to be in order to be intersting. But we can't articulate it. Only creative can bring it to life. Picasso talked like this with sculpture (I think it was Picasso) He said anything that doesn't look like the a lion I chip away at until I have a sculpture of a lion. This is a crude way to say that I think research should be defining what isn't the answer but leaving the answer in the hands of the creatives. I'll check out those links now. Thanks for that Subbu.

Re: Synovate in Sok Kwu Wan

charlesfrith — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 13:57:16 -0000

Hi Subbu. Great comment and link. I've acutely aware that my thought processes are unfinished because I need to research my hypothesis but something tells me I'm right anyway. How about this as a starter. Why don't we stop research to discover something we need to know? Why don't we research to discover what we can then conclusively say 'we don't know'. That's a great starting point for creativity. People are rubbish at saying why something is better but very good at knowing that something is better. I've listened to people from all walks of life talk about why a wine, movie or book is fantastic and yet when I ask them to break it down (these are ad hoc situations, not forced depth interviews or focus groups) they tend to provide rational explanations that are invariably extremely thin. If we changed the process to filter out what we can identify as true ie. We know X% prefer route A, but we know that Y Variable contributes towards that but how we don't know then it's a great place to kick off creative processes again. Any thoughts? It probably doesn't make much sense here but there's something powerful in using a methodology that is all about proving where we're wrong and not right. Counterintuitive but intuitively I think it's a great place to be. Context is everything so I'd probably need to provide an example for it all to hang together coherently in peoples minds. Maybe I need to think that through on a better example.

Re: Synovate in Sok Kwu Wan

charlesfrith — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 02:06:24 -0000

I've got some radical ideas for improving research Simon. I'm pitching a few companies in the region but I'm expecting resistance to change so I doubt any will move the business forward. And as you know I think Asia made mistakes by lifting, wholesale Western research methodologies so they're not going to adopt new stuff if the West hasn't done it yet. But in any case. If there's no biting here I'd like to talk you through my radical idea for a less iterative and more fruitful research process. You up for it? It's dangerous but exciting too.

Re: Real Time Search

charlesfrith — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 16:48:07 -0000

I kick myself Adam. I had a lot of loose change lying around last year but erm..well I shouldn't have left it lying around. I'll take a guess that Gold goes at 2000 bucks an ounce within three years to five years.

Re: Helge Tennø

charlesfrith — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 00:06:02 -0000

I look forward to that Lee.

Re: She comes in colours everywhere - (Social media metrics)

charlesfrith — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 06:43:45 -0000

OK I've failed at explaining it but in any case I did go off on one and also took a pop at GREEDY Rupert Murdoch so it's my fault. It's very easy. We need to measure media immersion. Video, messenger, webcam are all different. We can do it. I offer content/webcam/video/blogs/news/commenting/social media smorgasbord and so it needs to be graded by neuroscience. Depth of immersion because depth equals engagement. But the hook is that we don't ask the content providers (Youtube, Facebook, Blogger, Wordpress, Camfrog) to assume that all eyeballs are the same. Hand the data over to the citizens and let them take a choice about how they barter that 'attention economy' they are giving. Why don't we do this on Skype. I'm sure there are lots of gaps bkkcharles cefrith@hotmail.com and of course my first name dot my last name at gmail :)

Re: Goldman Sachs 2009 bonuses to double 2008’s; $23 billion could buy 115 million iPhones, or send 460,000 to Harvard

charlesfrith — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 18:00:52 -0000

Bravo. Awesome comment.

Re: She comes in colours everywhere - (Social media metrics)

charlesfrith — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 08:56:35 -0000

Thanks for your comment and I will check out your post though instinctively if you're looking to measure what they achieve I suspect you're looking for empirical evidence of causal behaviour change which is like saying "I'll lend you a tenner" but I want you to show me a marked improvement in the way you speak to me" or "Compliment me every hour" starting within the next 60 minutes.

Life isn't like that and frankly I doubt it will ever be like that as we wave goodbye to Homo Economicus and begin to learn more about behavioural economics. The principle is simply put, about what goes around comes around. If we allow the quarterly report quantitative narcissists to put a time or benchmark metric on it, it all goes pear shaped; because like Heisenberg suggested it just disrupts the whole gig on observation and I think Zeus Jones pointed out that just naming the metric diminishes its credibilty (I'll dig that out if you want more). I'll have more to say once I've read your post. Thanks for your comment.

Re: She comes in colours everywhere - (Social media metrics)

charlesfrith — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 08:17:47 -0000

Thanks so much Mark. Always an honour when praise comes from those I admire most. I think your point about involvment and velocity are bang on the money. I also can share that of all the advertising for water I've seen in my life, the reason why Volvic is the best bottled water brand for me is that they gave it away on the London underground one hot summers day back in 2007. So they have me as a customer for their kindness and courtesy. Timing is crucial. There's a bunch of stuff in this post that I left out because as you can see it was all to easy to slope off and take a pop at News International or whatever. But again thanks for your comment I think the days of how we evaluate eyeballs is begging for a complete revolution. But everyone seems to be in deer in headlights paralysis when it comes to making the first move. I guess I should elaborate on how to colour code the media using neuroscience. Not cause and effect quantification but just how many colours are there to this digital social network rainbow. Also how much are they worth from an egagement point of view. Again. Thanks Mark :)

Re: Timeless Marketing Classics - Charles Frith

charlesfrith — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 09:12:59 -0000

Thanks Rob. I am back. I've not felt this good since Beijing and London. Got some cracking posts coming up that I've been distilling in my head for a while. Really hope we can do Thursday but if not my diary is empty because I neglected to check if any agencies are left in HK before I moved here ;) Sloppy attention to detail, I know, but Guangzhou isn't too far away...and I'm up for it :)

Re: Watch This

charlesfrith — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 13:02:43 -0000

It's compelling stuff but for more on how food is utterly central to how we operate I'd check out Rob Paterson's blog too Adam. Lots of learnings from history for the future over there.

Re: Timeless Marketing Classics - Charles Frith

charlesfrith — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 23:24:25 -0000

I'll be honest there was a whole paragraph that I couldn't decipher myself Graeme ;)

Re: Tweet Readings

charlesfrith — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 22:24:03 -0000

Hey, I have a new email address (exploring myspace things):

charlesfrith@myspace.com

Drop me a line!
-Charles

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Re: Human Behaviour

charlesfrith — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 04:13:00 -0000

I haven't checked the veracity of the commercial but it looks kosher. I got it from one of my feeds but I don't know where. You can embed it too.

Re: Jet Set Flip Flop

charlesfrith — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 04:11:47 -0000

Gutted. Thought I was on to something. Sad bastard I am. OK where's the headhunters in Sydney. Can I crash at yours? :)