Thursday, July 23, 2009

CLab Hot Spot

Check out our latest video blog to find out about the next big trends!

cLab HOT spot 2 from Philip Moore on Vimeo.

Monday, July 13, 2009

Teens and Media

We just came across this article in the Financial Times, and wondered why was this "scribble" such a sensation. At CultureLab we have been knowing this for the last 2 and a half years. We guess it is finally sinking in to mainstream media and to the older generation that yeah, things are changing fundamentally. This is why Clients hire us, because we fully understand how young consumers use media and what is relevant to them.

Read this:

Note by 'teenage scribbler' causes sensation
By Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson in New York
Published: July 12 2009 23:32 | Last updated: July 12 2009 23:32
A research note written by a 15-year-old, who was not born when former UK chancellor Nigel Lawson dismissed London analysts as “teenage scribblers”, has become the talk of middle-aged media executives and investors.

Morgan Stanley’s European media analysts asked Matthew Robson, one of the bank’s interns from a London school, to describe his friends’ media habits. His report proved to be “one of the clearest and most thought-provoking insights we have seen. So we published it,” said Edward Hill-Wood, head of the team.

The response was enormous. “We’ve had dozens and dozens of fund managers, and several CEOs, e-mailing and calling all day,” said Mr Hill-Wood, 35, estimating that the note had generated five or six times more feedback than the team’s usual reports.

However, he made no claims for its statistical rigour.

As elderly media moguls gathered at the Allen & Co conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, to fawn over Twitter and fret over their business models, Mr Robson set out a sobering case that tomorrow’s consumers are using more and more media but are unwilling to pay for it.

“Teenagers do not use Twitter,” he pronounced. Updating the micro-blogging service from mobile phones costs valuable credit, he wrote, and “they realise that no one is viewing their profile, so their tweets are pointless”.

His peers find it hard to make time for regular television, and would rather listen to advert-free music on websites such as Last.fm than tune into traditional radio. Even online, teens find advertising “extremely annoying and pointless”.

Their time and money is spent instead on cinema, concerts and video game consoles which, he said, now double as a more attractive vehicle for chatting with friends than the phone.

Mr Robson had little comfort for struggling print publishers, saying no teenager he knew regularly reads a newspaper since most “cannot be bothered to read pages and pages of text” rather than see summaries online or on television.

Executives and investors have grown fascinated by the opinions of teenagers. Rupert Murdoch, 78, has described himself as a “digital immigrant” and his young daughters as “digital natives”, while UBS pulled in an 18-year-old three years ago to demonstrate MySpace to portfolio managers.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

R.I.P. Michael Jackson-A Tribute

It is an understatement to say that the media has been obsessed for the last couple of weeks with the death of MJ, however, today, as we celebrate his life it feels so real, so final and so solemn. More than likely we will never see this level of superstardom again. We are sad about this for sure but there are some lessons that MJ taught us that are relevant to us in the agency world and to those of us who want to succeed in connecting to people across all cultures.

MJ was rooted in the 60's era of struggle and Black upward mobility . He was from the rough, steel town of Gary, Indiana, and his father Joe was determined to make sure that his family had a better life. Self determination and the thirst for a better life is what many people in the world desire, and that is probably one of the reasons why MJ connected on that global level. He was symbolic of how pure talent combined with stellar work ethic can take you to the top.

If not for Joe's determination to insure that his family had a better life, we probably would have never known the Jackson 5 or ultimately the "Off the Wall/Thriller" era Michael Jackson. It is well documented that Joe was not always fair or loving but he did instill in MJ, that drive and discipline. MJ's God given talent combined with his ambition, drive and discipline were a HUGE reason for his global success.

MJ is perhaps the greatest example of someone who connected with humanity on a global level, he was a trailblazer and generated excitement from Moscow, to Dakar, to Anchorage to Sao Paulo. I challenge anyone to name another artist who generated so much excitement on every single continent amongst almost every single ethnicity. It is unprecedented and more than likely will never happen again. His demonstrated compassion for the world and yes, children all over the world was a big reason for his global connection.

The dude broke down barriers. He found a way around barriers and maintained impeccable standards. If you were drafted by MJ to produce something for him, write something for him, choreograph for him,or film something for him, you were automatically put into that exceptional category. His high standards for production in music video, choreography and music production are what helped him break down those barriers. MTV did not play Black artist before MJ's Billie Jean but the production standards on that video made it undeniable!

Finally, MJ brought the electricity! The dance moves, the staging, the precision, on point vocals, etc. Sometimes it seems like many performers forget the performing aspect, and the idea of giving it your all. MJ always gave it his all when on stage. There is something to be said about the hysteria he generated at shows. The world is going to miss that electricity!

The world is going to miss MJJ.

Monday, July 6, 2009

The wonders of Technology

We all know the wonders of the iPhone and its constant revolutionizing of not only phone and technology, but also the world, But it still astounds and excites us here at CultureLab all the amazing things it can do, especially the fact that people are now able to videotape and produce music videos on it in a very high tech way!

Check out the music video that someone created!