LifeDeluxe

Did curiosity kill the cat?

It is only when you are in the thick of interviewing people to come and work for you that you get a chance to distill what it actually is that you are looking for..outside of approporiate experience, 'fit' and so on.

The winner for me has always been an enduring sense of curiosity. To want to pick things up and have a look. To want to find how something works or to want to think about the possibilities...these are what I think I really value when it comes down to it, and it is somehting you can't go on a course to get....so it was good to read Steve Rubel @ Micropersuaion talking about what he thought the most essential career skills were.

"So as I thought about it, the most important "tool" you can have today in business is insatiable curiosity. The minute you lose it, you're dead."

So it wasn't curiosity that killed the cat after all.

Honk if you love Argent

...is easily my favourite ad from this extraordinary piece at Ironic Sans where every ad in Times Square was  photograhed this weekend. You can also get the bigger versions at Flickr here.

Not sure what is says about clutter, or indeed the creative use of this particular bit of outdoor inventory, but it sure is big (if not very clever) and brash and invasive and interruptive and untargeted and I bet it works brilliantly.

Especially when it comes to thinking of Times Square as a publishing platform in it's own right, and the growing recogniton of how people propagate messages they see / experience when they are visitng or passing through.

Completely Lost

I saw this as I drove through Leeds on Thursday on my way North and sad to say, it was the straw that broke the proverbial. All this week, everywhere I look, I have been goaded by Sky about Lost and the fact that they stole it from C4 and put it behind bars. I am banned from the island, banned from the hatch and banned from the conversation. So what if it is literally incredible, it soothes and entertains me and now I can't see it without paying and putting a dish on my house....which hurts. And all of these ads just wipe your face in it.

But there is always a spot of yang for every ying and maybe Murdoch has just bitten off a bit too much in the US over OJ Simpson? You can but wish.

As for me, I think I have been forced into the hands of the pirates.

Catching up...

From mediaguadian, "Yum! Brands, the world's largest fast food company with more than 34,000 restaurants in over 100 countries, today unveils its latest marketing stunt - an image of Colonel Sanders on a horizontal billboard that is visible from space".

Which is nice.

More stuff about widgets at Micropersuasion and the lovely looking and working stuff from Labpixies who are doing some interesting things with advertsisers.

And also from Micropersuasion a chance to get my 2nd second life business plan some seed capital. I know we go not to conquer but to learn, but some cash to help that learning might be nice!

"In an effort to foster entrepreneurialism within Second Life, Edelman and The Electric Sheep Company are teaming up to sponsor a Second Life Business Plan competition"

All the details are here.

And then there was this tiny and somewhat thin bit of reserach that seemed to pop up and go away announcing how important blogs were becoming to advertisers.

"An Ipsos MORI poll found that the Internet journals are a more trusted source of information than TV advertising or e-mail marketing.

But among their European counterparts, Britons are the least switched on to web logs."

The research claimed "Ipsos MORI found a direct link between blogs, or user-generated content, and people's intentions to buy goods or services.

Any company that fails to come up to standard should beware. The blog is replacing word of mouth for endorsing or condemning a product or service."