4 Fuks Saké

Burger Porn War

Draw a circle on a map around Shoreditch and Soho. If you know people that live and work in it, you’ll be familiar with the terms "Five Guys" and "Shake Shack" from your social media feeds.

George Osborne goes to Byron. Everyone that hates George Osborne, is currently calling judgement on the two rival - authentic but slightly more expensive - burger chains. The tool of judgement is the smartphone.

There's only one way to call who is winning the war. Who is pulling in the largest volume of burger porn from its customers, measured by Instagram and Vine posts?

Early scores on the doors suggest two things:

1. Five Guys is on the back foot.

2. No-one is using Vine

Instagram

#ShakeShackuk 410

#Fiveguysuk 235

Vine

#shakeshackuk 0

#Fiveguysuk 2

(Written for Daily Espress)

Information v Intelligence

What do you get if a cross a Tory cabinet minister with a French new wave cinema starlet? Ordinarily a court order – but in this instance, something thought provoking.

First, Jeremy Hunt – a man not shy of a camera and a headline – has gone and done a Diana. The Health Secretary has got himself a surgical gown, a pair of latex gloves and a freelance photographer; and distributed images of himself working as a shift nurse in an A&E unit. (Presumably not one of the 14 underperforming hospitals earmarked in last week’s review).

Hunt’s angle though is admirable. How is he supposed to tackle thousands of complaints he receives over citizens’ treatment in the hands of the NHS without working on the front line himself? Cristina Odone in the Telegraph makes the point crisply: “The only way to learn is to do.” Correct (to a point).

Yes, we can learn by experience. Another way to learn is to convert information into knowledge.

Astrid Berges-Frisbey (pictured for reference) is the 27 year old French-Spanish actress and star of Juliette. Juliette – according to The Guardian – is the latest in a new wave of European films that depicts the stories of life for young people living against a backdrop of austerity and Eurozone meltdown.

The “grey-eyed and chain-smoking” actress (presumably not Lambert & Butler) looked out of the window wistfully and said, “We have more tools, more choices, and yet we live as if constantly paralysed.” Spot on love, (I’d say if I were her agent or northern).

In short, what she is hinting at is an argument being put forward by many others – including Baroness Greenfield. Her view is that our brains are beginning to function differently. Our click-click, always online, never satisfied information gathering is relentless, without allowing it to pause, permeate and be converted into knowledge (in the way that traditional education via reading and study, does). We sit smoking fags looking out of windows flicking an iPhone pouring thousands of images into our brain, but less and less of it is sinking in.

In short, what Hunt, Berges-Frisbey and Greenfield are showing us is that we’d do well to recognise the difference between information and intelligence. Getting a grip of Twitter and your RSS feeds is all well and good – but what you do with it is what counts.  

"Do Me A Favour Instagram. Oh, You Have."

5 times a week I'll use the phrase 'Oh for fuck's sake." It's been eight months since I've done that and then felt compelled to write something on my blog with the same name. It's Instagram again.

I refer you to my April post, about Silicon Valley entrepreneurs' ingenuity at duping people who wear expensive trainers for their own commercial gain. This week, they've said they're going to sell photos of your kids to McDonalds, who'll in turn advertise Big Macs. That's what I've understood it to be anyway. 

Four things.

1. This bloke nails it, citing this collective sense of self-delusion. Search #coffee and look: there's your shot of a latte, filtered in Hudson, alongside 450,000 others. 

2. Your photo was rubbish. Instagram made it look nicer, so much so, that you felt compelled to share it with others. As far as I'm aware, you haven't paid them since you opened your account.

3. Instagram have been stupid. The more avid a user of social media you are, the greater your propensity to attention seek. So attention seekers (their core audience) pour through social T&Cs with the meticulousness of a Manhattan lawyer. They do it for their own benefit, not the crowd. I don't believe Facebook and Instagram want to sell pictures of my kids to Exxon, nor do I think lawyers will allow them to. If they can, who's the bell end for putting them there in the first place? Howevere, if they want to sell pictures of my uncooked ribeyes or empty espresso cups, that's a fair deal for me.

4. If you don't like it, vote with your feet. Go to Flickr's new app or the next photo sharing network you've yet to hear of. They'll end up doing the same thing to you.

Democracy. Rubbish Commercially.

Ever so slightly nauseated this week by The Guardian's decision to publish its newslist. "You can help us make the news." "Have your say." All that bullshit. It's the sort of move that grants some swooning at a Haymarket conference with words like "progressive," "open" and "bold experiment," bandied around.

I love The Guardian and its variety of digital and paper products. I'm 38 years old, work in something media related and crucially, know who Korn are. On that basis, it's the only paper I'm allowed to buy. The only downside to The Guardian unfortunately is that for all its cleverness - the bastard hemorrhages money.

If you want to make money one day (retain readership, properly monetise that large global audience etc) don't cheapen the product. Handing the editorship of the paper over to bored people in train carriages with smartphones seems counter to what you ought to be paying for. I'd like to hand my money over to an editor, who selects some great writing and presents it to me in a nice typeface on a couple of screens and on paper. I'm not giving it to the bloke sat next to me.

Walkman, b. February 2, 1983. d. today, 2010.

February 2, 1983. My 10th birthday and arguably the greatest birthday present of my life. My parents - still freshly divorced - knew they had to make Christmas and birthday count. The early to mid 80s boom in consumer spending allied to a messy separation was the perfect storm. 

And so it was, I unwrapped the paper, genuinely oblivious to what lay beneath. The paper peeled back and a silver and blue box marked Panasonic winked at me. Inside, the main body of the product was hugged by a pair of headphones with blue foam. I hadn't asked for it - but my parents had second guessed me. I opened it up and inserted the Ever Ready batteries. We had a student lodger - Nick Carter, 9 years my senior. He handed me a TDK - C90 of Duran Duran's 'Rio,' nodded sagely, and said, "try this."

I put the headphones on, pressed the play button in hard, and the opening swooshing sounds of the title track kicked in. In stereo. I'd never heard anything like it in my life. The future had arrived. 

The Sony Walkman. What a brand. What a monumental fuck up. 

World Cup Fever: Symptom #3

Guardian World Cup TV from Wieden + Kennedy London on Vimeo.

This is lovely. From W + K who look like worthy winners of the World Cup before it's even kicked off. 

Just really need one of those wallcharts. (For my son obviously). 

A Quality Newspaper.

An endearing Sun promo celebrating 40 years of the 'UK's favourite handheld,' with respect to Apple.

Social Media Guru

Courtesy of @FinchFactor and @matt_creamer (whoever they are). And why can't they spell their names properly?

Save Time & Money.

Here's an opportunity to give yourself a break filling your "packed" schedule of procrastination at conferences and seminars. Just watch this, and then go and do some real client work in social media for 6 months. It's all you need. They'll be another one in the spring.

Big Business

Big Brother "axed" says The Sun. Before you take the piss, was it your idea to knock up a portakabin and then make £25million a year? The format deserves to go down as one of the great business achievements in television history.

Channel 4 and Endemol deserve nothing but respect for devising a format that is commercially stupendous, and still looks ahead of its time, (even if the content it produces has become just a little predictable). Its simplicity is everything. Stick some people in a box, peer at them via your TV, mobile, computer or tabloid newspaper and then persuade people to spend more money sending texts, making calls, buying the sponsor's products. People do.

Endemol CEO Tim Hincks says Big Brother "is the only really convincing multiplatform idea and format in the UK". He could add the world - the format has been exported to over 70 countries. In reality, there are shit loads of them - but Hincks' people showed them the path to gold.

Can't wait to see the back of it myself. And that's nothing but pure jealousy.