what is global warming?

Hey y’ulle. I’ve noticed a lot of people talking about this thing called ‘Global Warming’ lately. They also talk about ‘sustainability‘ and ‘going green‘. Apparently it’s all because of some consumer fad called ‘Recycling‘. I read on some trend blog that Recycling is the 80s Shoulder Pad Fad reinterpreted. Not sure I should buy into it. My personal brand says I should stick to trends and ignore fads.

“You a fad / that means it somethin’ that we already had / but once you gone / you don’t come back” – Dr Dre featured in Eminem’s Anthem for a Generation “Encore”

I just did some research and according to The Diesel Global World Report, Global Warming is gonna be rad. Diesel has paid an artist to render their findings so that you can better get an idea of what will happen when Global Warming hits. These are the results:

Can't wait for the ice caps to melt.

Gonna go make a nest on a building.

Can't wait for the endless summer.

Not sure what everyone’s on about. Just looks like the world will eventually become one big beach, which is what we’ve all been working for, anyway. Also, I heard at some blog party that all the ‘green this, green that’ is just a viral campaign for Hyperrama. Nice one. They’ll probably win a Loerie Grand Eagle Prix for it.

Guess I don’t want to be completely out of what’s in, you know? I’ve been thinking about how I can tastefully incorporate this new socially-aware movement into my life so it makes me look like a person who is ‘responsible, enlightened and aware‘. Maybe I should get some hemp socks from Woolworths or some Hemp Hand Cream from the Body Shop and just tell myself that the tube isn’t made of lead. Maybe I can preach to my friends but just ignore the fact that I drive a Hummer. Like I said, don’t want to get too into this fad coz it’s about to tip mainstream any minute now, like pencil skirts.

feeling stale. going to reinvent myself as some form of trendy reflux.

reflux is in y’ulle! i know because i read a book by kreative missionary visionary dion chang and the title is trend flux 2009. so get stuffing your white rolls from woolies and your burgers and your strawberry pavlova (hey, not really sure what causes reflux as have never been pregnant before, but being pregnant is another trend – set by MIA / Gwen Stefani / Nicole Richie (choose your own psychographic role model, am not phased) – so expect an increase in ‘girls 4getting to take their pill oops’ – and ‘miracle pregnancies’ – “i WAS taking my pill! i promise!” and “fuck i got so drunk last night at Assembly that i forgot to take my pill“).

"I went off my pill because it gives me cramps and it's not natural. I am going to go drink at Gandalf's and then have sex with my random, lonely-as-me guy friend, and then masturbate after, just to really give those sperm a chance."

should i get pregnant? should i go off the pill because ‘it’s unnatural‘ and it ‘makes me bloated’ and ‘it makes me moody and fills my face with pimples’, even though it’s 2k9 now and yasmin was invented 10 years ago, so we all know girls who go off the pill are doing so only because they find the risk of getting pregnant when they have sex with their boyfriends / their best friends / their classmates at AFDA a turn on.

"I can't come unless there's a possibility of me getting pregnant." - M.I.A? maybe Anon.

has the possibility of getting pregnant ever turned you on? wish i could get pregnant and then donate the baby to a good cause. not sure if there are any good causes that need healthy babies. maybe someone should start a Replacement Workforce For All Those People Who Have Died And Will Die Of AIDS just so Telkom has someone to employ to throw a cog in their generator that they can blame when we exceed our power capacity in 20 years time.

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Back to Reflux and other things that will be hot in 2k9 (note i didn’t get these from the trend reflux book by Dion Change, i just got them off some arb website but it doesn’t matter because all trends came from the same arb mothership website):

– Being classy. “Classism is the new racism”. Does this give me license to discriminate? Just want to be ‘trendy’ y’ulle. Just want ppl to know i am better than them through my ‘social badging‘ or my ‘exclusive knowledge of how brandy is made’. Apparently knowledge about products is the new social currency. Am going to google Apple just now and learn everything there is to know about Steve Jobs so i can make my friends feel bad about themselves.

Fact #1: Apple was invented in 70 BC as an alternative to the slabs of stone that Moses wrote the 10 Commodores on, but there wasn't a market until 2 000 years later.

– the 90s. the 90s is the new 80s. this would explain all the Kurt Cobain Converse floating around my mall home. yes, i live in a mall, y’ulle. malls are like the new ‘gated communities’ or ‘security complexes’. wonder what i can steal from the 90s to incorporate into my personal brand. shortlist: having ‘i’m blue da-ba-dee da-ba-da’ as my ringtone; wearing blue lipstick and humming ‘i’m blue da-ba-dee da-ba-da’ round the office; trading my black car in for a blue one and pumping ‘i’m blue da-ba-dee da-ba-da’ from the subwoofers. which one do y’ulle think best enhances my PB?

– twitter goes mainstream. uh-ohs. this means an increase in ppl twittering about how drunk they got last night / how crazy last night was / what a f*cked up time they had last night / how they 4got to take their pill last night / how they are really enjoying ‘Through the Storm’ by Lynne Spears. quick, time to evacuate twitter. tell all your trendleader / thought pioneering friends. this ship is sinking. if you are mainstream, quick, sign up for twitter while humming ‘I will go down with this ship’ by 90s star Dido.

Tweep recovering from a hangover from her night at Assembly, wondering if she's pregnant.

– big government will be cool. guess we all have Obamalove to thank for this. wish we had an Obamalove. just so y’ulle don’t think i’ve given up the cause, i’m still emailing Kanye West trying to convince him to come and be President of SouthAfricanland as his next piece of ‘high art’. not sure whether this trend applies in safricanland. especially since the ruling party keeps smacktalking its own president. sigh. I wish America would buy us and then everything would be okay. not likely in these harsh economic times.

other arb things i think will be in (note: these are my hypotheses and do not come off some arb website):

– being a trendwatcher / trend guru / trend collaborator / trend consultant / marketing consultant / web2.0 consultant / iPhone 2.0 consultant. Basically if you can’t hack it in the real world, pick any one of the titles above and start a blog and you’ll be a- for away.

– suicide. just coz money doesn’t matter any more. like queen said, nothing really matters, to me.

– adopting a web celeb for your brand. feeding them. treating them to VIP consumer experiences. and then watching them blog about your brand. feels good, doesn’t it? tamagotchi 2.0.

– falling pregnant ‘accidentally’. because of the rise of organic, females in their mid-twenties who have not yet completed degrees or found jobs will choose this option because they think it will give them more options. outwardly, they will say they have issues putting hormones into their bodies because it is ‘unnatural’ and non-organic. time for phramaceuticals to go organic.

– britney spears. like she says, all of the boys and all of the girls are begging to F-U-C-K her (track 6, Circus). Parting thought:

Sing with me: "All i wanna do is xxxx and xxx and take your monay."

i want a man who gets together with his choir buddies and drinks brandy in tea cups before breaking into a solo. and if i didn’t want a man like that, i would want to BE a man like that.

big, f-ing NOT. but what the hell was klipdrift thinking? that they would make The Great South African Ad? that they would with one fell, swooping television disaster wreak havoc upon attitudes that judge a bunch of men singing songs and clutching teacups as lame? did they think they were going to Change History? i will eat my own hair – all of it – in front of the person who shows me any culture or subculture in the world that aspires to sing in a male choir and drink brandy in tea cups.

Nothing like a spot of brandy eh chaps? Toodle-loo!

well, maybe i am being a little hasty. klipdrift could be starting a trend right under my nose. maybe i am being narrow-minded and ‘not open to new things’. maybe i ‘live under a rock’ and this is ‘what the men of today are vibing to’. it could very well be the case. living out here at the bleeding edge is almost like being a late majority laggard. on the bleeding edge the trends reach you so early you don’t even know they’re trends. same vibe on the laggard side except well… you get the picture.

This curve's about facebook but you'll find facebook in every trend so *shrug*

“Never underestimate your audience. Most of the time they are smarter than you simply by virtue of the fact that they don’t give a shit about what you have to say.” – David Ogilvie

maybe i just have inherent issues with men harmonising. too many bishops eisteddfods will do that to you. sometimes i wake up sweating from a nightmare where four pubescent boys are serenading me alternately with Elton John and James. my boyfriend has had to unpick the sheets from my semi-epileptic claws. men should never harmonise, unless all men involved are Justin Timberlake.

JT: would never be caught dead drinking anything out a teacup. 'cept maybe Grey Goose.

are you peeing in the pool? because we put that stuff in that makes the water turn red when you do. so we’ll know it’s you. just so you know.

as some of you may know, i have left facebook. not completely – i haven’t deleted my account – but i won’t be logging in again any time soon, and i have joined the Facebook Suicide cult which means from 12 December you will no longer be able to write on my wall or send me your stupid applications. which begs the questions….

“But Alex, how will this affect your online presence? Isn’t deleting your facebook taking a huge swipe at all the hard blogging you’ve done so far? Can you still be a credible new media consultant without a facebook account? You must be hanging out online SOMEWHERE, so where is it?”

My answer to this relevant line of questioning would be:

Facebook is for laggards. If you don’t know what laggards are, here’s a handy little graph all of us fall onto in some way, whether you like it or not.

This could be you.

Before you start telling me how unique you are and how you don’t buy into society’s idea of who you are and what other people think, let me stop you by saying, i don’t give a shit, because every product you ever buy and every service you ever buy into and every magazine you pick up and read or even gloss over, will place you somewhere on one of these graphs. denying it would be like denying god, or jacob zuma. you might not agree with them, or like them, but they are as real as the macbook you’re staring at. and now you know.

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Question: For those of you who ARE concerned with where you fall on Roger’s Curve of Adoption, do you think it’s only right for companies and services to place a warning on what they’re selling, kind of like the health warnings on cigarette packs?

What? You just dropped 2k on these? Sucks for you. Don't you remember Fergie singing about these babies way back when? "Seven Jeans, True Religion, I say no but they keep giving." That was back when she was still part of Black Eyed Peas. That was MY HUMPS. Almost 3 years ago. And you thought they would make you cool? Don't say you didn't, because how else do you explain dropping 2k on jeans? It's okay. If anyone notices just say you're 'going retro for summer'. Also, if you bring up the 'Being uncool is the new cool trend' in conversation while wearing these you might be able to loop yourself back in time to early majority. But be warned - that's only going to keep you safe for about a month before you're right back in late majority. Trends move fast, yo.

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BACK TO THE TOPIC:

So, as i was saying, I’m not on facebook. And I’ve given you my reason. So I guess the new question is WHERE ARE THE INNOVATORS RIGHT NOW? They’re here.

Even though this moment this post goes live, they will have to find somewhere else to be. But hey. Sometimes its good to take a break from innovating and just sit pretty like bullfrogs in the crisp cool waters of the Early Majority Pool. We’ll have about 6 months in there before the Late Majorities start peeing in it, and then the neighbourhood will eventually go stale as the Laggards move in, bring their waterwinged kids and coolerboxes full of the Diesel SFW XXX video. Enjoy it while it lasts.

existential crisis: should i send myself the Asp application?

I don't want to live on your friendslist anymore. Life has no meaning.

so i’ve been thinking a lot about committing facebook suicide. i mean, it used to be fun, but now that i’ve been clean for so long it just feels a bit irrelevant to my life.it wasn’t always this way. i was once a junkie too, online pretty much all day, commenting on walls, sending people growing gifts. i never stooped so low as to send the What is your Stripper Name app, and i am proud to say that i was never desperate enough to add the Zombie vs Werewolves app, but i was right in there. i was poking back.

One of the world's most devastating wars. Ever. There are some who say the Poke War of 2007 is what's responsible for the present crash of the world's economy.

then, i changed jobs, and my new employer blocked facebook all day except for an hour at lunch. and not even the withdrawal pangs could keep me at my desk at lunch just to check facebook. turns out it was for the best, because once i’d had a long enough break i realised just what a shadow of myself i’d become (ok quite a pretty, airbrushed, pouting shadow, but still a shadow), slave to this glorified message board.

Look how hot I am.

Me in Real Life Book.

the thing is, so many of my friends are still hooked and very much caught up in its web. and, like some of my smoker friends who know that I’ve quit, they continue to offer me cigarettes in the form of L’il Green Patch application invites, to which i am always tempted to respond:

Don't send me apps. Srsly. If I wanted it I'd already have it.

The only reason I can see to keep my account open is to provide people with a place they can go to find my email address and my web addresses. maybe i should delete everything except my most basic information. but even that seems like too much effort.to me, facebook is one of those 2007 fads. the online equivalent of the palestinian scarf or the shutter shades.

I just don't want to be in a committed scarf relationship right now. But you will always be in my heart.

An ancient relic. Yes people used to actually wear these. You can find fossils in Margate from the Loerie Awards back in 2008.

i am still in a quandary about what the right thing to do is. i am worried that if i commit facebook suicide my facebook life insurance won’t pay out and i will go to facebook hell. or does facebook send its unhappy souls to facebook heaven? what is facebook heaven? is it filled with pokes and pouts? hopefully no one reading this knows the answer to that question.

african fashion blog of the month: Bella Naija

i’ve been doing some work on fashion trends in Nigeria and Ghana over the past month and Bella Naija has been one of my favourite blogs to hit. always on the look out for fellow African bloggers – this is my shout out to her.

notes from my googlereader

i’ve only just got into google reader. and if i was completely honest i’d name this post ‘notes from my delicious’ but where googlereader wins is that i actually check it whereas i’m not great at checking my delicious network. we’re busy developing and changes our IT structures at work, and are in the process of building a social networking type system as a brief submission alternative to email for our grasses – very exciting but i won’t say too much just yet as we’re just about to test it. we’re also exploring getting our office onto a google server and synchronising our calendars etc etc so i’ve been playing around with google, and i’m pleasantly surprised.

anyhow googlereader pulls all your RSS feeds from your favourite sites into an email type format, which you can open while you’re logged into your email, so it’s a lot easier than trying to check all those sites again or even remember what they are. here’s what googlereader brought me this week:

oh the irony: a short article about beijing’s fakes market developing its own ‘Silk Street’ brand.

silicon valley insider talks about how perhaps people don’t value music enough to pay for it in any format, on an article on the slowing of digital music sales.

i’ve been talking to a lot of our clients about personal branding lately, and this company that you can hire to get photographers to follow you around as if you are famous is a great example of this trend manifested.

an article about how much of your positioning is in your price tag, especially if you sell wine.

a thought-provoking argument from the guardian about how facebook’s on a mission to take over the world. i mean, how much do we know about the company anyway? (not dissing, just saying)

and then on the topic, this speaks about the popularity of virtual or ‘concept’ products, and how consumers are as much into buying stories as they are things.

garsh! we actually have a fashion industry. now who’s gonna invest in these guys?

i found this great resource for some young graduates from fedisa. some choice extracts:

found via ultimate sa online fashion resource ifashion.co.za

dear santa clause (friends, family, associates, colleagues, people who want to impress me)

this frikkin rad ghost towel. you can buy it here. don’t be afraid of shopping online, it’s all going to be okay.

the nintendo wii will buy you my unconditional loyalty for about 6 months. includes me picking up your phonecalls every single time you call. you can get it at Musica, Look & Listen, those types of places. If you’re looking to add2 months to that deal you can throw in a game (Wario Ware, Harry Potter).

a pair of these Ray Ban Wayfarers will get you a place on my facebook friends list, with at least 1 wall post a month that somehow glorifies me and makes you look cool. white frames also accepted.

any kind of artwork from kronk.

*Update***

The world’s most expensive Christmas cocktail, called ‘The Flawless’ which comes at a mere £35,000 a glass from Modiva nightclub in London. Described as “warming and refreshing, but that is not the main reason for the exorbitant cost: at the bottom of the crystal glass is an 11-carat white diamond ring.”

Sounds good to me.

Next on the list is Pleo. See post above for more details.

To be continued.

websites that have been eating up my time.

Creativity Online is like the Daily News for anyone who works in and around the ad industry. Filled with interesting snacks of marketing related info.

Stormhoek’s just won an award for doing some innovative marketing. This is their blog, which is good reading. It’ll make you relook how you approach your product’s positioning, and rightly so. Big up to these guys and the work they’ve done with Cerebra.

Mike Stopforth’s blog is always worth checking out, especially if you’re confused by the whole web 2.0 thing (what does that really mean? etc etc). Dig around here for some easily accessible information and case studies, in normal, non-tech speak. Super cool.

There’s been talk of RCRD LBL  for a while now but it’s finally up and running. If you’re single and lame like me you’ll want to set aside a friday night – okay, a sunday afternoon – for this gem. For those genuinely interested in the music industry.

And then I’m still twittering. This program is something you’ll only get into digging once you bother to sign up and use it. But it’s making marketers all abuzz at the moment since the word ‘micro marketing’ came onto the scene.

And lastly, Superfuture is not new, but it keeps me coming back. You’ll see why.

cool stuff i’ve seen around

sneaker goodness, old pic of mine from a shoot. shoes and legs belonged to Leannie, the stylist on  set.

wolf shirt! i want to start a wolf shirt picture collection, send me yours if you have any. this was in a strange little bar in pretoria on my first night in joburg.

emma brought these back from topshop in london, but they didn’t fit her so she was giving them away. sadly they didn’t fit me either.

another rad thing from the design files of my friends jean and stuart, this giant rubber duck was floating in their pool at their housewarming, also from @Home. it doesn’t look giant but it’s big, trust me.

second night in second life

i’m not really feeling it yet. my connection is quite slow though, it’s taking a long to to render my surroundings. especially in the busy places – like “The Shelter” – where you can be eased into how it works and learn basic stuff like How To Dance. so i end up hanging at places like this:

what is this?i vaguely remember clicking ‘little japan’ and then ‘teleport’. you click a lot of things in this game. guess this is it. it’s listed as a ‘Popular Place’ according to traffic. above the panda there were some words saying ‘Panda Store Teleport’ and then i right-clicked it and found myself in a mall of sorts, advertising everywhere, so much so that it made me feel nauseous. i quite literally got lost in this one store window – wait, a store window – for 5 minutes.

it appears that sometimes the screen goes just goes all wonky and your legs stop moving and you bumble around in this arb world going what the hell is going on, and then you walk out the store window. it was like a bad dream. i still don’t have any friends. but i do have leopard skin boots and i’ve let my hair down. and that’s about all i can stomach tonight.

sa cool kids: nonhle tema

a while ago we were approached by Legit to identify a super cool up-and-coming sassy lady to become the face of the brand. after going through a whole lot of so-so’s, we all decided on Nonhle, who’s currently bubbling up all sorts of fuss from her role as presenter on Channel O, and all the fun stuff that goes with that, like hanging with Hollywood:

here’s nonhle snug under rihanna’s umbrella. and here she is during a makeup session:

and here’s a nice little write up nonhle’s progress got on Suga’s Bloggiwood local schleb blog, which is where i got these images too. i reckon nonhle’s only going to get bigger round these parts. that’s if she doesn’t get snapped up the in states since she’s there all the time.