If this were a comic from the 60's that's what would appear on your screen after The Punch launched itself today. Rather excitedly, I can announce I've been asked to write a fortnightly piece. I'll be linking my articles here and my first is about the death of the book. I've been told my massive ego should cushion the hurtful comments. Suppose we'll have to wait and see....
After six months of working on the pitch for L'Oreal Brandstorm, we placed third at the national finals. We nailed our presentation and I'm pretty happy. It means we don't make it to Paris, but the good news is I have my life back again and it means this blog might receive a little more attention. For those interested here is our presentation...
The latest piece of mine in the student magazine from Monash Caulfield, Esperanto. ...
In my last past I spoke of how essentially anonymous people were getting together on Facebook and collaborating. In this case, I was referring to the creation of content around a developing meme. Now we can take things to the next level, where collaboration is helping to solve crime. The case in point is the Missing Kane Dadson Facebook Group. Now sitting at over 3,000 members, through the power of collaboration people have been able to work faster than the police investigation in gathering clues. Suggestions and comments posted on the wall have lead to spreading word of mouth and opened up new information that can be used by police. Last year in a similar situation, members of the group Missing Britt Lapthorn uploaded photos related to the case that other people were able to tag which lead to new leads of questioning. The group still has 18,000 members. Social media is more than just brands trying to engage with consumers. Or a group of people creating their own lolcats. Social media has more potential than I think anyone realises....
By now I'm sure you've seen this video...
A few months back I drove home to see thick black smoke billowing out of my neighbour's car parked on the street. I quickly jumped out of my car to investigate the burning vehicle. By this stage a small crowd had appeared that was slowly creeping forward to get a better look. After a minute the car actually exploded. No one was hurt but what interested me was the curiosity of the viewers, myself included. Instead of running away from the fire, people were running towards it. And thus is the nature of audiences. In a recent conversation between myself and Oscar Nicholson, I realised this is the nature of how I blog. I cause controversy. I write about not only provocative issues but in a provocative manner too. I stir the pot and I start fires. But I do this to start conversations. Unfortunately people aren't attracted to a car that isn't on fire. A blog post that isn't controversial gets less readers and far less comments. People rarely comment on something if they simply agree. I do realise the shortfall of this; that once the fire's out, the people leave. I suppose I hope I've got enough good content to keep them around after everything's been extinguished. But I'm not going to kid myself, I can't consistently and regularly produce good, thought provoking content. So from time to time I'll start a fire. I make no apologies for the burns or damage caused. This is the nature of a Joker....
A guest post of mine over at Adspace Pioneers....
Julian Cole took it upon himself to break the Slurpee Challange and see how fast he could down a large Slurpee...
Today I received an SMS informing me of my grade on a recent piece of assessment. Maybe the University isn't as far behind as I thought. Although I bet the lecturer and the course coordinator don't know anything about it, let alone encouraged this great piece of initiative by the tutor. Even better, it was a High Distinction. Take that students who actually put in effort and remain sober the night before you hand in your assignments....
Hello Zac, I’m with the DVR Research Institute. Tomorrow, on May 1 we will be publishing results from a research project we conducted among 200 leading advertising executives on their strategic response to the increase in DVR viewership. Since Pigs Don’t Fly has been recognized as one of the most influential marketing blogs, we would like to share some EXCLUSIVE CONTENT with you from our study. With the upfront negotiations coming up, I thought that it may be interesting for your readers to take a glimpse at our extensive study. Below the main body of this email I have included an overview of our methodology, key themes in the study and a few of our findings. I have also included a summary of one of our findings that we are sharing exclusively with a limited number of very influential bloggers. Please feel free to post it in Pigs Don’t Fly , or contact me if you’d like to get a bit more information on this. The email said I was free to post it here on this blog so I have. But seriously, what is this rubbish? Just because this blog occasionally talks about the change of media consumption doesn't mean I give a shit about the spam you send me. Other bloggers might be able to use it, but if I don't want it then it's spam. And just because it's personalised with my name doesn't mean it's not unsolicited and unwanted. If you've got an attention to detail like me you'll see they couldn't even copy and paste correctly with extra spaces around the words "Pigs Don't Fly". I normally wouldn't give a shit but I'm starting to get one or two of these a week. If you can't offer me genuine value then gtfo....
