Two Cool Websites

I found a few websites with very cool, original designs.

http://www.diegodsousa.com/

http://waterlife.nfb.ca/

Stay Inspired!

Cheers,
Maurice
www.voiceone.fi

Mind-bending music of the week: John Boswell

Absolutely brilliant! These are two seriously cool sampling mash-ups by John Boswell. He mixes Auto-tune and documentary footage from some of the greatest contemporary voices in science.  

Symphony of Science 'We are all connected' ft. Carl Sagan, Richard Feynman, Neil deGrasse Tyson & Bill Nye


Carl Sagan - 'A Glorious Dawn' featuring Stephen Hawking


Stay inspired!

Cheers,
Maurice
www.voiceone.fi

Question of the week: What if...there was no internet?

Cracked.com, the online version of the infamous spoof magazine, is running a photoshop contest called The World of Tomorrow (If the Internet Disappeared Today). It's a great question which I've explored a few times in my Business English classes.

• How long would you be able to work without the internet?  What then?
• How would it affect your life?
  
• How would it affect society?the economy? politics? television? different industries? etc.
• Would it necessarily be a bad thing?
  

The ramifications are endless. Take a few minutes to think about it. (eg. You wouldn't even be reading this.)
Here's a few selections from the contest:

 Stay inspired!

Cheers,
Maurice
www.voiceone.fi

Creativity Technique: Random Pictures

There are many avenues toward creating new ideas. One classic creativity technique, Random Pictures, relies on the human mind's innate desire to find connections, patterns, rythms, sequences between two or more disparate visuals, words, concepts, notes, movements, etc.

Random Pictures aims to do just that by juxtaposing different images next to each other or in sequence. Our brain will naturally try and find any patterns, connections, etc.

Flickr is a great place to find pictures for this. All you need to do is enter a word search for 'interesting', 'creative', 'idea', 'new', etc. and you'll find hundreds of thought-enducing pictures. The linked picture below is called the Creative Commons Creativity Poster. You can expand it into a full poster at Flickr.

We use Random Pictures in our Marketing English Plus and Creativity seminars. And I can tell you it does work especially with
Visual Learners and people with an art or design background.

Stay inspired!

Cheers,
Maurice
www.voiceone.fi

You have to be willing to try and fail...to try and succeed

If you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got.

I'm not sure who originally coined that phrase, but I think it has a lot of relevance to the issue of creativity. You need to take chances. Push the edge. Be willing to fail. Here's a great motivational video on "great failures":



Stay inspired!

Cheers,
Maurice
www.voiceone.fi

Powering Europe with Solar Energy from the Sahara

OK, I know it is rather naive to assume that we can solve all the world's problems with technology. But, you have to admit that when you hear stories like this one, maybe technology can solve a heck of lot of it. This really gives me hope for the future.

I had originally heard some mention of this some while back on BBC World. The interviewee was "talking" about building solar plants in North Africa. And I've heard bits and pieces about "soon-to-arrive" solar plants in the US southwest. Now, check out this New Scientist article from yesterday:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427311.400-solar-superpower-should-europe-run-on-sahara-sun.html
I think this says it all: "The project could meet 15% of Europe's energy needs by 2050."

While I agree it does create some new and unusual dynamics with political relationships with North African countries, isn't this an avenue worth considering? Personally, I think it would be great to see a net economic negative (little ag, low commerce, few resources) turned into a net positive (commercially viable source of green electricity). It's worth thinking about!

Stay inspired!

Cheers,
Maurice
www.voiceone.fi

TED lecture of the Week: Rory Sutherland

Like many of you, I'm a big fan of the TED lectures. I visit their site as often I can. Just about all of the videos I've seen have been inspiring. I thought I'd share a recent one I saw with Rory Sutherland from the Ogilvy Group. The crux of the lecture deals with how the perceived value of something can in fact be more important and satisfying than its "real" value. Sutherland is very funny and brings up some great ideas and stories. I really liked the branding of the potato in Germany and the veil in Turkey. 



Stay inspired!

Cheers,
Maurice
www.voiceone.fi

Book of the Week: Buy-ology by Martin Lindstrom

Since a Finnish edition is finally out in stores, I thought it would be worth commenting on Martin Lindstrom's Buy-ology book.


The English edition has been out since Oct 2008, and had considerable hype--before, during and after its launch. Now, I really like the book mostly as it generates some really mind-blowing and occasionally scary ideas about the future of advertising.

First on the negative, as some critics have pointed out, Lindstrom does rehash some material from his earlier masterwork--BRANDsense (I'd recommend reading this one as well) and he is at times guilty of shameless self-promotion.

On the positive, this opens up some major issues for discussion -- ethically, socially, politically, culturally and so forth. The general concept of the book was to scientifically quantify how advertising really affects our brain. To accomplish this, researchers used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and steady state topography (SST) to monitor volunteer's brains while they viewed targeted ads.

One point I often mention in my Marketing English Plus classes is about cigarette warning labels. Coming from Canada where they have some of the most visually abhorrent warning labels showing blackened lungs, mouth cancer, etc., I had assumed like most others that these labels did the trick. But, apparently not. Lindstrom's team showed that when smokers saw cigarette warning labels, the same part of the brain lit up as when they saw someone else smoking. Nicotine craving! Even though, the volunteers usually stated that the labels had made them feel less likely to smoke, the brain scans showed otherwise.

While Lindstrom oftens says in the book that he is doing this out of pure curiosity, I'm a bit skeptical given the fact that he has set up a new company backed by a lot of US business heavyweights to help Fortune 500 companies research the efficacy of their own advertising. Where this leads is anyone's guess, but I personally think we will be seeing some very highly effective marketing and political campaigns on the near horizon. Is this right or wrong? I'll leave that to you to debate.

Stay inspired!

Cheers,
Maurice
www.voiceone.fi

The Fun Theory by Volkswagen

I've always liked Volkswagen from their advertising to their car design. How can you not love the old school Beetle and hippie camper van? Once again they are leading by creative thinking. They've come up with this cool new initiative called The Fun Theory. You can find it here: http://www.rolighetsteorin.se/en/

People will take the right action if you make it fun. If you watch the videos below, you have to agree they have a point.
 





Stay inspired!

Cheers,
Maurice
www.voiceone.fi

Our New Creativity Blog

Welcome to our New Creativity Blog!

We will be discussing everything related to creativity, innovation, brainstorming, problem-solving and more.

If it makes us pause and think, you'll see it here.

Creativity is a big part of our business and our clients. We do copywriting (big and small), creativity seminars, creativity software and highly innovative language classes. We thought we'd share things we've seen, heard about and done. It may inspire you, but it has already inspired us.

Stay inspired!

Cheers,

Maurice
www.voiceone.fi