Maurice Saatchi, executive director of M&C Saatchi has had a revelation on saving advertising (He doesn’t say that in the article but someone is going to have to show companies ‘the way’ and why not Saatchi). Why is advertising dying? Oh this stupid thing we have called technology. Yeah, technology is making things difficult for the Saachi brains. His solution? See below:

What I am describing here is a new business model for marketing, appropriate to the digital age. In this model, companies compete for global ownership of one word in the public mind.

Woah.

For example, the word “search” is now owned by Google. For 20 years, “favourite” was owned by British Airways. Sony used to own “innovation”, but that word has probably now been taken by Apple. Royal Bank of Scotland, in its US marketing, will soon own “action”. The same applies to political parties or countries – Britain’s Labour party won three elections with the word “new”. America’s one-word equity is “freedom”.

More woah. Innovation has ‘probably’ been taken by Apple? I never knew Sony had it? It must be great to be at the top of the company and can afford to just make shit up.
Oh and Maurice has made a really nasty, bloated Flash site for his new paradigm. Ooof that is nasty! Why not carry over the simplicity of one word equity and make a simple, clear site?
Truly Amazing. Great rhetoric there, mister Saachi guy.

From the set, 8.15 – 8.16.2007

from the set, 8.7 – 8.15.2007

Let me clarify. Through word of mouth someone found me and asked for help on their website. I visited their existing site and it’s horrendous. It’s just plain 1997-old-stale-HTML nasty. My gut said, delete this email now and move on.
Then I decided not to do this. I wrote a quick, blunt email back to this person on where their site is failing. Just quick bullet points. It was harsh, but it was meant as constructive criticism and I told them that.
They heard me, and wanted to talk on the phone. We talked, I told them how I work, what you get for when you hire me – the whole process.
The bottom line is, if you’re a designer, you want success stories in your portfolio. Nothing says success more than taking lead and turning it into gold. This isn’t always easy. I let my clients know that I demand quality on both sides my projects. I will listen to them if they listen to me. Clients need to understand how to heed to design – and I’m not talking about fonts or grids. I’m talking about why I did certain things. How what I’ve done to their site will impact their business.
So next time a poorly designed site comes your way… consider it. If the client is on board with your vision, make some gold.

Shots from this weekend – About Town 8.5.2007.

Microformats: Social Network Portability (via Zeldman)

Why does every single social network community site make you:

• re-enter all your personal profile info (name, email, birthday, URL etc.)?
• re-add all your friends?

In addition, why do you have to:

• re-turn off notifications?
• re-specify privacy preferences?
• re-block people you don’t want to interact with?

These are great questions. It makes me this of this great parody site, Useless Account.

Flickr photo set: Commute 7.31.07

Most of the time on Daily Exhaust, I like to post meaningful information, links and design I find inspiring. Other times I feel the need to clarify bullshit I hear in the news. I also love photography, so I’ll link to photographs I took or photos taken by other talented photographers.
This post is none of the above. This has to do with one of the cute t-shirt models for Snorg Tees. Doing a quick Google search on her revealed I’m a little late to this crush on Alice (that’s her name). It looks like shelflifegraphics.com has made Alice Miss Snorg Universe. I’m not going to argue.
If she would stop popping up all over the Internet in banner ads I wouldn’t have this crush.
Sue me, I’m a guy.

Windows Vista has ruined Alt-Tab (via Design Feed)- Well, look at that. They sure have!
What the hell is that? It looks like Microsoft smashed together the ALT-TAB function and Exposé from OS X. It’s like breeding a Doberman Pinscher with a Dachshund. Ooof!

The New York Times has a great article in this Sunday’s paper about urban exploration, Children of Darkness. Seeing photos of decaying historic artifacts and hidden landmarks reminds you of the layered history of New York. We don’t have any Stone Henge’s, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a fascinating, layered story beneath the surface of the five boroughs.

JACOB RIIS, Photo of Bandit’s Roost in Manhattan’s Five Points, 1888

I was never interested in history, of any type, until a few years ago, after seeing Martin Scorcese’s film, Gangs of New York. My interest stemmed from the fact that my father is from Queens, NY and his father’s family came to the United States from Ireland at the turn of the 19th century. I remember walking out of the movie theatre on 11th Street and 3rd Avenue, realized all that had taken place on this very ground over 100 years ago. I literally got chills.
Since then, I’ve come to thoroughly enjoy history. Though learning about New York’s past, I’ve obviously learned more about the history of all sorts of other countries, filling in the Big Picture better in my brain. It’s all connected.
I recently picked up The Five Points, by Tyler Anbinder, which is great as well as New York, Then and Now, by Edward B. Watson.

I dropped my car off at my parents house in New Jersey yesterday, and took the train back in. Most of the photos I shot lomo-style, from the hip, guesstimating good shots and hoping for the best. Unexpecting shots are always the best.
The complete set: In Transit 7.27.2007

Pretty Afro, Herald Square, originally uploaded by combustionchamber.

man in transit, originally uploaded by combustionchamber.

no downtime, originally uploaded by combustionchamber.

I love the pop culture obsessed world we live in. Any time a celebrity buys a cookie or picks their nose, the media has to report on it.
Well, CNN was not able to be in the crowd for a Beyonce concert when she took a spill on the stage. What they were able to do was make a video of a YouTube video of the occurrence .

I like how mainstream, “professional” news organizations feel the need to recycle shitty, meaningless news on pop culture taken by 13 year olds in the audience of a lip synced concert.
I think I’ll pull out my camera and make a video of the CNN video of the YouTube video. It can be like a big mixed-media art project. Then I’ll upload it to Brightcove and embed it on my blog. Yeah! BEAT THAT!
On a sidenote, I noticed that this video was removed from YouTube. So how does CNN come into the picture regarding copyright violations, if any? Is their video-of-a-video in violation?
Do I really care about any of this?

Copan diggin’ Frank’s apartment, originally uploaded by combustionchamber.

I was reading an article over at TechCrunch, Could Microsoft Knock Off Yahoo To Become Google’s Biggest Competitor?, and it wasn’t the main story that caught my attention, but something in the second paragraph:

Despite a $100 million Crispin, Porter + Bogusky advertising campaign, Ask saw its share of the search market decrease from 3.5% to 3.3%, although to be fair to Ask, Compete recorded a 2.6% rise in traffic.

This just proves that advertising will only get you so far – you still have to have a product that works well. There’s thousands of sites and applications on the web that are hugely successful that don’t have advertising budgets. $100 million is a lot of money if your marketshare went up 3% and is depressing if your marketshare actually went down.