ZZ Corner || Ocassional notes in English

Seth Godin talks @ Google

Great performance from 2006, that combines few main ideas from his books "All Marketers Are Liars" and "Purple Cow" with insights on why Google is so successful. 48 minutes.

  

Where the Hell is Matt? - 33 million clicks on YouTube

Where the Hell is Matt? - this is one of most popular questions on YouTube last few years. 

This is the story about one of the most popular videos in the World. Or to be more precise - about two videos that together in two years has got more than 33 millions of clicks and gave its author great opportunity to travel all around the World for free. 

Video game programmer Matt (Matther "Matt" Harding) has and accidental tradition - visiting different countries instead of just taking pictures in landmark places he was recording on his camcorder a short "dance". After few short videos for friends and colleagues he found a sponsor -  Stride ("Ridiculously Long Lasting Gum" from Cadbury) that was ready to sponsor his comparably low-budget project in 2006. 

June 20, 2006. On YouTube, Vimeo, Google Video this video was uploaded: 

Matt quickly became one of biggest Internet celebrities - as of today (13/11/2008) this video is watched on YouTube 11'882'878 times. Viral marketing experts estimate that total view (with copies and other placements) is well over 20 million. 

Popularity grew and in last 14 months another project was created covering 42 countries. This time Matt, being celebrity, announced his trip plan and asked everybody who wanted to join dance with him at particular time and particular palace.  There is the story:

In just 5 months in YouTube it is watched 11'676'000 times and the number is rapidly growing. Besides of this video on YouTube you can find several Matt performances in conferences that most probably gives additional travel opportunities. 

But in general it is all about the rule I am using so often - "Do What You Like! Like What You Do". And, of course, have a bit of luck :) 

Call Steve Jobs to fix the economy

One more insightful and witty article from NYTimes columnist and one of leading thinkers on globalization and environmental issues Thomas Friedman. Although it is about General Motors (and all US auto industry in US) being in crisis and asking for $25bn government intervention to ... "to enable the car companies to retool for innovation" (WOW!), in fact it also stresses few really important aspects of why the economy in general and many companies in particular are in the crisis now.

The article "How To Fix the Flat World" is long ad must read, there are just two quotes: 

"Lastly, somebody ought to call Steve Jobs, who doesn’t need to be bribed to do innovation, and ask him if he’d like to do national service and run a car company for a year. I’d bet it wouldn’t take him much longer than that to come up with the G.M. iCar."

"How could these companies be so bad for so long? Clearly the combination of a very un-innovative business culture, visionless management and overly generous labor contracts explains a lot of it. .... Therefore, instead of focusing on making money by innovating around fuel efficiency, productivity and design, G.M. threw way too much energy into lobbying and maneuvering to protect its gas guzzlers."

Reading the last quote I had dejaVu feeling for over 60 seconds - this is not the first time somebody calls Steve Jobs to fix the US economy. My RSS feeds helped to figure out in next 60 seconds and there it is.

Few weeks ago (a week before elections) the leading BusinessWeek Design and Innovation commentator, author of great blog and great advocate of design & innovation economy Bruce Nushbaum in article "Barack Obama's Cabinet Fix for Innovation" gave this (great) recommendation:

" .... Second, create a Cabinet seat for Innovation to push an innovation agenda for the economy. We need a powerful figure to align government policy on innovation. My two choices here are David Kelley, founder of IDEO and the D-School at Stanford and, of course, Steve Jobs. Since they are close friends, choosing one gets the nation two brilliant minds who know how innovation works—and how to get it done to maximize growth. 

Innovation is about more than technology and science (Apple’s R&D budget is among the lowest of the top “tech” companies). It’s a methodology that increasingly is based on collaborative networks and ecosystems that are global. Innovation is as much about sociology and anthropology as it is about technology. Kelley and Jobs understand that."

Can you imagine the world where the most influential country in the world would be run also either by Steve Jobs or IDEOs David Kelley? I would love to see this happening. But lets hope that at least one of these two sources are on Obamas transition team reading list because bringing innovation and designing skills (skills, that starts with understanding people and what they need or aim for) is are skills so much lacking in governments and many big organizations. 

Starbucks: Its Bigger Than Coffee

A day after US elections I run into the beautiful, simple and really insigtful Starbucks TVC on YouTube. Great idea, great endline ("insight") - "Its Bigger Than Coffee". So Starbucks.

Today from BusinessWeek publikācijas just get know that it is BBDO NewYork and there is a word that idea comes from David Lubars himself. So I cant resist sharing it. 

Rives, the poet of Internet age @ great Orange TVC

Great Orange TVC featuring amazing perfomer, poet, storyteller and in a way also multimedia artist Rives. 

You can watch it HD in Orange Romania webpage. And there is also great behind the scenes film. 

And I am adding one of Rives greatest performances that I already covered in Latvian version of my blog  few weeks ago - the story of SMS age. 

This week I have watched good dozen of his perfomances and there is one that I love most of all - "If I controlled the Internet":