Those Busy Weeks

It’s almost a record, I haven’t been able to write anything remotely intelligent for quite a while now. You see, for me a week is too much already. It’s because I keep starting drafts but never finish any, reason why there are about 800 of those bloody things in my dashboard that never see the daylight. A lot of things go unsaid, not like anyone follows this but anyway.

Uni-wise I’ve started that long reading list (sort of) by finishing three books in about three days out of which two were spent cooking an imperfect apple crumble (rather sour) and the other visiting the MoSI in Manchester. In that respect, advertising books are amazing, they put me to sleep in five minutes or less so that myth about reading before bed is absolute rubbish. I don’t remember any of it the next day. 

Instead I find that reading on the bus is far more interesting, among things like:

 

• Watching what parents (mums) do to their kids when they cry
• Counting the number of men that actually help their wives with shopping or let them struggle (more of the latter)
• Counting the number of men that give their seats to women or the elderly (heated debate in the Metro from a few days ago where everyone agreed that man or woman, no one should be allowed any seat, fight for your right to be seated)
• Listening to French hip-hop and their slang;
• Observing this strange 60s trend in dresses that has taken over the female working force.
• Observing the amount of women that never dye their roots.
• Shopping in this ASDA undergoing some changes and hearing everyone complain that they’re making the store bigger – till they introduced a deli take-away thing that shut everyone up;
• Noticing that women don’t carry shopping baskets by dragging them along hitting and bruising your knees on the way (like I do) but by holding them like the reputed Birkin.
• Following the amount of bills E.On likes to send me, counted three in a week already!

Apart from that everything’s going pretty good. I even got my first assignment and started working on the essay which is due at the end of next month. Things are getting a bit tight now. But I’m in a phase where I love the work I’m doing and snapped out of whatever had been making me feel down. Feeling so good, I might actually buy a Nintendo DS! (I hate anything with a stylus)

links for 2008-09-20

• “Glamping”: Glamorous Camping
• Sorin Paslaru: De ce sa nu ne temem (prea tare) de criza
  "Ce criza mai poate veni aici, unde suntem de 20 de ani (sau de 70 de ani) intr-o vesnica criza? Pentru ca nu cred ca poate cineva tagadui ca: infrastructura e in criza, piata de resurse umane e in criza, sanatatea e in criza, invatamantul e in criza, agricultura, nu mai vorbim, e in criza. [...] A vorbi de criza in Romania este cum ai vorbi despre vreme. "

Over my Head

…and the reading list for this year, blogging probably won’t be happening as often

• Yeshin, T. (2006) Advertising
• Butterfield, L. (2003) Advalue, Twenty ways advertising works for business, Butterworth Heinemann: Oxford
• Goddard, A, The Language of Advertising, 2nd Edition, Routledge: London. (reading this again)
• Hackley, C. (2005) Advertising and Promotion – Communicating Brands, Sage: London
• Jones, J.P. (2004) Fables, Fashions, and Facts About Advertising, Sage: London
• Lash, S. & Urry, J. (2002) Economies of Signs & Space, Sage: London
• Mackay, A.R. (2005) The Practice of Advertising, 5th Edition, Elsevier Butterworth Heinemann: Oxford. 
• O’Keefe, D. J. (2002) Persuasion Theory & Research, 2nd Edition, Sage: London. 
• O’Shaughnessy, J. & O’Shaughnessy, N.J. (2004) Persuasion in Advertising, Routledge: London.
• Elliott,R.,& Percy,L.,(2007) Startegic brand management, Oxford,OUP 
• Haig,M.,(2004) Brand Royalty: How the World’s Top 100 Brands Thrive and Survive London, Kogan-Page
• de Chernatony, L., & McDonald, M., (2003), Creating Powerful Brands, 3^rd Edition Oxford, Butterworth-Heineman. 
• Aaker, D.A.,(1996) Building Strong Brands New York, Free Press
• Anholt, S., (2002) Brand New Justice: The Upside of Global Branding, Oxford, Butterworth-Heineman.
• Davis, S.M. (2000), Brand Asset Management, San Francisco, Jossey-Bass,
• de Chernatony, L., (2006) From Brand Vision to Brand evaluation 2^nd Edition Oxford, Butterworth-Heineman.
• Ind, N ( 2001), Living the brand, London, Kogan Page
• Kapferer, N-J (2004)The new strategic brand management, London, Kogan Page
• McDonald, M., (2002), Marketing Plans, 5^th Edition Oxford, Butterworth-Heineman.
• Ford,D. (Ed), (2002),  The Business Marketing Course, London, Wiley
• Ford, D. (Ed), (2002), Managing Business Relationships, London, Wiley 
• Ford, D. (Ed), (2002), Understanding Business Marketing and Purchasing 3^rd.Ed., London, Thompson Learning 
• Cohen, R. and Kennedy, P. (2007) Global Sociology, London, Palgrave
• Desmond, J. (2003) Consuming Behaviour, Hampshire, Palgrave
• Bocock, R. (2001) Consumption, London, Routledge
• Corrigan, P. (1997) The Sociology of Consumption, London, Sage
• Gabriel, Y and Lang, T (1995), The Unmanageable Consumer, London: Sage
• Abbott, D (1998), Culture and Identity, London: Hodder and Stoughton
• Eric Spiekermann, and E. M. Ginger (1993) Stop Stealing Sheep and Find Out How Type Works, Adobe Press/Hayden Books
• Cooper, R. and Press, M. (1994) The Design Agenda: A Guide to Successful Design Management, Chichester, John Willey & Sons Ltd
• Newark, Q. (2002) What is Graphic Design?, Switzerland, RotoVision
• Lidwell, W., Holden, K., Butler, J. (2003) Universal Principles of Design, Massachusetts, Rockport
• Gordon, B., Gordon, M. (2002) The Complete Guide to Digital Graphic Design, London, Thames and Hudson
• Olins, W. (2003) Wally Olins on Brand, Thames and Hudson
• Ellen Lupton & Abbott Miller (1996)  Design Writing Research: Writing on Graphic Design, London: Phaidon
• Edward Tufte (1990) Envisioning Information, Cheshire, CT: Graphics Press
• Bierut, M. & Helfand, J. (1999) Looking Closer 3: Classic Writing on Graphic Design, Allworth Press
• Fletcher, A. (2001) The Art of Looking Sideways, Phaidon Press, London
• Tapp, A. (2005) Principles of Direct and Database Marketing, (3^rd edition), Harlow, England, Prentice Hall
• Bird, D. (1998) Commonsense Direct Marketing, London, Kogan Page
• Chaffey, D., Mayer, R., Johnston, K. and Ellis-Chadwick, F. (2000) Internet Marketing, Harlow, England, Prentice Hall
• Evans, M. (2004) Exploring Direct and Relationship Marketing, 
• McCorkell, G. (2000)  Direct and Database Marketing, (2^nd edition), London, Kogan Page
• Sargeant, A. and West, D. (2001) Direct and Interactive Marketing, Oxford, Oxford University Press
• Stone, M. (2003) The Definitive Guide to Direct and Interactive Marketing, Harlow, Prentice Hall
• Laudon & Laudon, (2004), Management Information Systems (8E), Prentice Hall 
• Daft, R., (2001), Organisational Theory and Design, South Western College Publishing
• Laudon & Laudon, (2000), Organisation & Technology in the Networked Enterprise (6^th Ed), Prentice Hall
• Aho, K., (2003), Macromedia MX Suite, Tutorials and Projects, Course Technology
• Muller, R., (2003), Developing Web Sites with Macromedia Flash MX, Course Technology
• Lindsay, J., Patel, P., Shuman, J., (2003), Macromedia Flash MX, Macromedia Education
• Laudon & Laudon, (2004), Management Information Systems (8E), Prentice Hall 
• Daft, R., (2001), Organisational Theory and Design, South Western College Publishing
• Laudon & Laudon, (2000), Organisation & Technology in the Networked Enterprise (6^th Ed), Prentice Hall
• Aho, K., (2003), Macromedia MX Suite, Tutorials and Projects, Course Technology
• Muller, R., (2003), Developing Web Sites with Macromedia Flash MX, Course Technology
• Lindsay, J., Patel, P., Shuman, J., (2003), Macromedia Flash MX, Macromedia Education
• Chaffey, D., Brocij, P., (2003).  Business Information Systems:  London:  Financial Times, Prentice Hall.
• Curtis, G and Cobham, D. (2002). Business Information Systems: Analysis, Design and Practice, Financial Times, Prentice Hall.
• Moscove, S. (2003)., Core Concepts of Accounting Information Systems, Wiley.
• McGivern. Y. (2006) Practice of Market and Social Research. Pearson Education. London
• Cooper, D and Schindler, P. (2006) Marketing Research.  McGraw-Hill.
• Malhotra, N. K. and Birks, D. F. (2003)  Marketing Research: An Applied Approach, (European edition), Harlow, Pearson Education 
• Argyle, M (1983) The Psychology of Interpersonal Behaviour (4th edition or later), London, Penguin
• Burnes, B. (2000): Managing Change: a strategic approach to organisational dynamics (3^rd ed), Harlow, Pearson Education
• Guirdham, M. (2002)  Interpersonal Behaviour at Work, (3^rd ed), Harlow, Pearson Education
• Hargie, O, and Dickson, D (2003): Skilled Interpersonal Communication (3rd edition), London, Routledge
• Hayes, J (2002) Interpersonal Skills at Work (2^nd edition), Hove, Routledge
• Huczynski, A and Buchanan, D (2004): Organisational Behaviour (5^th ed), Harlow, Pearson Education
• Lee, A. (compiler) (2004) Personal Aspects of Management, Harlow, Pearson Education (Custom published book)
• Mullins, L.J. (2002) Management and Organisational Behaviour (6th ed.), Harlow, Pearson Education
• Murdock, A. and Scutt, C. N. (2003) Personal Effectiveness (3^rd ed), Oxford, Butterworth-Heinemann
• Pedler, M, Burgoyne, J, Boydell, T (1986): A Manager’s Guide to Self Development (2nd ed or later) Maidenhead, McGraw Hill
• Senior, B. (2002) Organisational Change (2^nd ed), Harlow, Pearson Education
• Torrington, D., Hall, L., Taylor, S. (2002): Human Resource Management, Harlow, Pearson Education
• McGoldrick, P. (2002) Retail Marketing (2^nd edition), London, McGraw-Hill
• Bevan, J. (2001) The Rise and Fall of Marks and Spencer, London, Profile Books
• Competition Commission (2000) Supermarkets: A Report on the Supply of Groceries From Multiple Stores in the UK (oooh)
• Corstjens, J. and Cosrtjens, M. (1999) Store Wars: The Battle for Mindspace and Shelfspace , Chichester, John Wiley
• Diamond, J. and Pintel, G. (2001) Retail Buying, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, Prentice Hall
• Goworek, H. (2001) Fashion Buying, Oxford, Blackwell
• Jackson, T. and Shaw, D. (2001) Mastering Fashion Buying and Merchandising Management, London, MacMillan
• Reynold, J. and Cuthbertson, C. (eds) (2004) Retail Strategy: The View from the Bridge, London, Elsevier
• Seth, A. and Randall, G. (2001) The Grocers: The Rise and Rise of the Supermarket Chains, London, Kogan Page
• Varley, R. (2001) Retail Product Management, London, Routledge

links for 2008-09-14

• Alitalia 'running out of fuel'
  "The unions earlier quoted him as saying flights could not be "guaranteed" because we cannot "get fuel"."

  Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi blamed "political" motives for the failure.

• Staţiunea tineretului, când „cool“, când „cocălăreală“
  "Misiunea le este vizibil îngreunată de şirul obscen de oameni care acoperă drumul de aici spre plajă. Masculii, o serie interminabilă de clone ale lui Cristiano Ronaldo, cu frizuri de pui ce-şi aşteaptă liniştiţi căsăpirea: moţ în faţă, chică în spate, ras scurt pe margini. Ăia mişto şi cu imaginaţie au investit bani şi şi-au vopsit părul. Blond auriu, frumos. Fetele, copii fidele după prietenele lor de cartier: slipuri adâncite în toate perspectivele spaţiale, cercei tip „roată de tractor“, rimel şi ruj, ca să arate sexos la plajă, aur pe gât, buric şi urechi. La soare te poţi uita. "

links for 2008-09-13

• A Lidl parmesan goes a long way
  "I was in the unfamiliar country of Nostia and Alesto, Golden Sun basmati rice, Putinoff vodka, Nixe tuna steaks and Iraklidis antipasti. They may all be "premium products" but advertising and my mother never told me so."
• Românii, îngrijoraţi de dependenţa energetică
  "Majoritatea românilor (73%) crede că dependenţa energetică le va afecta viaţa în următorii 10 ani, într-o mai mare măsură decât o criză economică (70%), fundamentalismul islamic (33%), terorismul sau programul nuclear al Iranului"
• Counting Rupees: Does controversy sell?
  "One of the main arguments against banning games is that they make them even more popular, causing people to take notice of the title and thus spurring more sales than if it had been ignored in the first place."
  (tags: money business games banning)

links for 2008-09-12

• Greutăţile unei emigrante la 60 de ani în Italia
  "Nu am putut nicoidată să mă răzvrătesc, pentru că vârsta nu-mi mai permitea”

links for 2008-09-11

• Cum petrec fetele gratis prin Vama Veche
  "„E mişto aici. Că primeşti fără să ţi se ceară nimic în schimb. Acum vreo trei ani am băut cu o prietenă toată noaptea din sticle care ne apăreau în faţă. A fost una dintre cele mai funny nopţi de când vin aici“, zâmbeşte fata. " – Din pacate
• Why rednecks may rule the world
  "We fry things nobody ever considered friable – things like cupcakes, banana sandwiches and batter dipped artificial cheese…even pickles" ROFL
  (tags: us humor)
• Women 'more prone to nightmares'
  "This fits in with what's in the literature. "
• 9/11 survivors put off evacuation to shut down computers
  "More than 90% of survivors of the 9/11 terror attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York delayed evacuating the buildings in order to carry out tasks such as saving their work, shutting down computers, changing shoes and visiting the bathroom"
  (tags: humans panic reaction life habits)
• What I've Learnt – Mikhail Gorbachev
  "Reagan was twenty years older than I was. He was the age of my mother. So there was a generation gap. During one of our talks, he tried to lecture me and moralize. I said to him, "Mr. President, you are not my teacher, and I am not your student. You are not a prosecutor, and I am not a defendant. So let's not subject each other to lectures. Let's talk frankly and address the issues. If you want to lecture, we might as well wrap it up, because there's really nothing to talk about." He got a little upset. Not long after that, he said, "Why don't we go on a first-name basis? You call me Ron and I'll call you Mikhail." That was an important step."
  (tags: history politics people personalities)

Am I Bothered, etc.

Picture totally unrelated

This is a mean blog entry so if you feel that you’re easily offended keep calm, carry on and press alt+f4.

These last days I was sorting through my internet spam (my RSS reader) and my real life spam (my letter inbox) in an attempt to get rid of all the things I don’t really need to know about or want to know. Sadly some of them can’t be filtered, like what comes through my door but thankfully others can.

A while ago I’d have been ecstatic about finding an RSS feed for some content I absolutely loved and if it had no RSS then it just wasn’t worthy of reading, really. Gone were the days of bookmarking pages in folders on my browser’s bookmark folder and visiting them daily in hope for new content. After a while, even that got old and I started wishing for more specific RSS feeds, even from my favourite blogs, as they were focusing around one main theme but including categories too diverse. While I would have been missing out on some great posts, in my head this risk was deemed totally acceptable in order to stay sane while Google Reader merely showed 1000+ and not my real count of unread posts. And no, I didn’t want that Greasemonkey script that displayed the real number either.

Gave up on most feeds after a while, carried on reading the rest then realised that most popular blogs (in the US since the UK has absolutely rubbish ones apart from personal/industry ones) have run out of content or that they’ve become more and more clinical in their approach to news. Facts, facts, facts, no personal opinion whatsoever because we don’t want to offend our readers. Unless you’re talking about celebrity blogs like The Superficial and such.

Then came things like friendfeed, another thing I could stuff into my RSS reader, with content my friends created, uploaded, put just about anywhere. My friends were then split into people that did not give a f*** or gave too much of a f***.

I’m glad people from uni don’t read my blog. Or at least I hope they don’t. My content is just that boring, anyway, and I love writing about work and school in my spare time, how sad and hopeless to have that as a hobby, eh? I’m happy they stick to facebook, most of them overusing it maybe, which is nice because you get to see how people interact with websites and what they do, presented with a social networking website that does everything. Some don’t post videos on YouTube, they do on facebook. They don’t post pictures on flickr, they do on facebook. Most don’t have a blog (hardly know anyone) so they’d have no posts to integrate with friendfeed. They update their status but they don’t use twitter.

Fake following was then invented for friendfeed.

It’s nice considering everything ’social networking and web 2.0′ turned to be a competition. On last.fm it’s about what and how much music you listen to. On facebook it might be the number of friends you’ve got. Who cares if you’ve got 60 when I have 622? Numerically speaking I’m just blowing you away, regardless of whether I speak to those people or not and yours might be this ‘circle of trust’ and not having your pet as a friend on it. Since it’s a shallow environment, trying to convince anyone of the futility of competition is like advertising Big Macs on runways and modelling agencies. Even if you’re right, no one cares.

Going back to fake following, it offered you the sane option of being nice to your friends and looking interested while not giving a f*** actually. Technically being mean and selfish.

It was an useful option of appearing interested when you weren’t in case your friends were generating so much content you just couldn’t or didn’t want to keep up with. Most of the time I’ll take a look at someone’s ‘Summer Pictures’ album on facebook and close the page within 30 seconds because well, yeah, that’s all there is to it. I wish that news feed would have some thumbs up/thumbs down rating system but instead they gave us ‘more of this’ and ‘less of this’ to apply to our facebook loving friends. On the other hand:

• All application boxes on profiles have been moved to a separate tab that I can check only if I want to
• “More news like this” and “Less news like this” doesn’t seem to work as it should but it helps.
• “Ignore all invitations from this person” when the same old people send e-drinks, e-toys, e-quiz invites I really don’t want.

Where I’m getting is that everyone allowing us to generate content and plaster it all over the internet has eventually got us fed up with things. Fed up with a new ’social networking’ website, cheap imitations of websites that were hits a while ago and so on. We overshare because we’ve got so many places that can satisfy our need to take pictures, videos, write stories of our life, whether in 140 characters or not and oversharing, once started, can’t be stopped (the ‘Internet is free, I’ll take up as much space as I want to syndrome’). And it’s also not nice to tell your friends that they’re abusing it when you’re part of the vast majority of people that gets offended when someone tells them things they don’t want to hear. Then you just have to remove some of it from your life in a subtle manner – not giving up on them completely, but just because you’re not exactly in sync with each other. New for me is not new for him and viceversa.

Maybe it’s all science fiction but I see more and more people giving up on personal blogs because they’ve found twitter or something. Maybe they’re out of inspiration to write posts or MAYBE we’re just entering this  stage where actually caring about what people do, say, experience becomes more important than competing with them.

IKEA Slogans For Free

The Kaiser has kindly pointed out a German IKEA campaign involving Nils, waiting for September to come (it already came and he’s still there, I found him with a lady) and go for some new furniture. 

In the UK, they’re doing this catalogue contest which lets people have a go and say how much they think all the products highlighted as new in the 2009 catalogue cost (a sum total). As a tie breaker in case two people get the answer right, they have to come up with the next IKEA slogan, to follow the current ‘Home is the most important place in the world’ one.

This is funny as their slogan, along with any other ‘make a house a home’ was so much related to the mortgage crisis and house prices going down, in an attempt to stop people from selling their house. In an unstable market, as Surowiecki pointed out, people tend to herd and buy when others buy, sell when they do. One person sells their house, everyone suddenly sells theirs. The push to make your house a home, not just shelter above your head, a place you care about was high so people wouldn’t want to let go of something they put a lot of money, effort and affection into.

So the new IKEA slogan, if they do resort to something a competition winner will say, should be really clever. Predict housing trends perhaps. 

links for 2008-09-08

• 'We're married, we just don't have sex'
  "On our wedding night, we invited friends over to play Scrabble. I just couldn't see why anyone would go to so much trouble just to have sex."
  (tags: lifestyle sex interesting asexuality)
• Angelina Jolie Dies for Our Sins – Esquire
  She always wants to know what she's talking about: 'This is what the morning looks like in this village. This is what nighttime looks like. This is what it's like to be a woman. This is what it's like to feed a family. This is what it's like not to. This is what it sounds like if you can't.'
  (tags: women questions insight learning)
• Cigarettes: Killing Russia softly – International Herald Tribune
  "Fifty percent of citizens are smoking in this country," Medvedev said. "That's the highest rate in the world. I would not even mention alcohol." – The average life expectancy of male Russians hovers around 60
  (tags: russia smoking lifestyle convictions)
• Online Anonymity – Esquire
  "Everyone has a ratio of satisfaction and frustration. What makes the Internet different is that it's so easy to express this frustration. Sometimes, people are too cowardly to assert themselves in person. They don't want to be shouted down, or they may know that what they're saying is absurd. But for those kinds of people, the anonymous empowerment of the Internet is like a drug. They're not just expressing anger, but authority."
• Why the fascination with the end of the world?
  "It is deeply appealing at a psychological level because the idea of meaninglessness is deeply threatening. Human societies have always tried to create some kind of framework of meaning to give history and our own personal lives some kind of significance."
  (tags: world society culture beliefs)
• The Permission Problem: Financial Page: The New Yorker
  "If a valuable asset (a grazing field, say) is held in common, each individual will try to exploit as much of it as possible. Villagers will send all their cows out to graze at the same time, and soon the field will be useless. When there’s no ownership, the pursuit of individual self-interest can make everyone worse off."
  (tags: society politics newyorker surowiecki property rights)