Very clever use of YouTube.

Who needs a website these days!

Seeding is increasingly important in today’s digital world. However, seeding isn’t working. Good seeding is rare and most of time treated like media buying.

If things aren’t done in a right way from a seeders perspective, it is the same from a bloggers perspective as some saw here the opportunity to participate in a vicious business model. As Paul Boutin from Wired puts it, “The blogosphere, once a freshwater oasis of folksy self-expression and clever thought, has been flooded by a tsunami of paid bilge.”

Of course you could argue that good content will always spread, the reality of things is that you will need some solid seeding thoughts beyond the send to a friend button.

Here is the main issue: ‘Industrial seeding’ isn’t talking to the real actors of the web anymore. It is talking to people that transformed their blogs into magazines. These aren’t the genuine actors of the blogosphere, all they are interested in are financial deals not content.  By doing so these bloggers have lost their only real power: credibility. The problem isn’t therefore about the blogosphere not being right to spread new ideas but more about finding the genuine actors of the web.

Indeed finding the right persons or groups take a lot of time and often require people with connections within these communities not a media buying agency.  Moving forward, seeding should be considered earlier in the process to allow enough time for research, making the right connections. If you are short on time anyway, sources like the Social Media Library (for the UK) are interesting and will give you an idea of the persons to contact.

Of course the two main things to remember are: great content is paramount and be transparent and collaborative when contacting bloggers.

[Pic Via]

The recent French law called Hadopi bill is a total nonsense. The law is supposed to resolve piracy by canceling the users Internet access after three illegal downloads. Have a read at this article from the Guardian if you want to have a better understanding of the law.

The law is wrong on many levels but mainly because it doesn’t take into consideration the reality of things, it is only made to solve problems on a short-term basis. It is focused on the causes and isn’t answering the real issue: the business models used by the music and film industries aren’t working anymore.

And as Philippe Maltere wrote, P2P may well disappear in France, however illegal downloads will still exit with Rapidshare, Megaupload and likes.

This law is just smoke and mirrors and meant to please a few people in the French media industry. After all the next presidential elections is just happening in 3 years time.

(Source via Transnet | pic via)

How surreal is that? Lance Armstrong telling the world that his bike got stolen on Twitter! Just trying to help.

Anyway probably not the best post to get back into blogging however I’ve been quite disconnected recently so I had to use Metro as a source.

Great documentary about the campaign, the use of digital…

Happy New Year to everyone that read and/or commented on the blog in 2008. I don’t have any predictions for 2009, I’ll leave that to Paco Rabanne, I only have a personal one. 2009 is going to be about making stuff happen that I can promise.

To celebrate the New Year you can enjoy some great French flair tries from the last 30 years!

I have just discovered Carbon Made a couple of days ago, it is a great simple website to create your portfolio, so I thought I’d give it a go. Click here. I’ve added a couple of projects I worked on when I was at Duke. I think it is a little less shameless than posting about them on the blog!

Nicolas Bard, one of the managing partners at Naked in France asked French bloggers to name their top 3 creative agencies in the world. As Alex tagged me I am playing along with the meme.

Creativity is such a subjective concept. Although our industry is changing and everyone is talking about engagement vs. messages, the principle of a great idea well executed is still true. What has changed though is that we aren’t only judging a result, a visual or a movie but the entire creative process.

Anyway back to the original question. As I am biased I can’t really mention the Brooklyn Brothers can I? Ok I have but I am still going to name three other agencies!

Number 3: Ideo
Ideo is not exactly an agency, in their own words their ‘focus lies at the intersection of insight and inspiration, and is informed by business, technology, and culture.’ They are the kind of place that inspires the entire industry because they are doers at heart. I love their principles: Inspiration, Iteration and storytelling.

Number 2: Anomaly
Founded in 2004, Anomaly is one of these agencies that go beyond traditional distinction in a genuine way. “When a client comes in with an advertising problem, Anomaly addresses it more broadly as a business issue, analyzing everything from design to product development.” I love the work they did for Converse; it is a great example of an agency understanding a client heritage. They are good at crafting things as well: “half of Anomaly’s business is doing client work, the other half is building brands from scratch.”

Number 1: Droga5
Similar model here, small, flexible, people from unconventional background… They have a great ability to put brands in a cultural context; their work for Ecko, Unicef and Guitar Hero is representative of that. I also love the fact they have everyone participating on their website.

[Pic via]

(click here for a larger image)

Now this is what I call a branded utility. Great idea by the Danish fashion brand Noa Noa: a ‘good washing tips’ magnet to have next to your washing machine. Simple, useful and filling a void.

Being in Paris this week I’ve discovered this great sculpture done by the French artist Fabien Chalon. In a way it summarize quite nicely what I have been talking about on the blog, the whole movement / inertia thing.

Located in the middle of Gare du Nord, the biggest train station in Europe, the sculpture called ‘Le monde en marche’ (the world in movement) gets to work every 30 minutes with a black and white film, a travelling ball and the sculpture in movement. You can watch the video below to see it working. The rest of the time, the sculpture doesn’t move but a massive video screen displays people passing by it.

I love the contrast between busy people walking in the station and the ones that take the time to stop and look at the world moving around them.

[Pic via]