…just a quick link to an article in QSR Magazine featuring your’s truly:

http://www.qsrmagazine.com/promotions/buzz-about-bonnaroo

Thanks for reading. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

This is really not that surprising…just a stark and somewhat depressing fact of the job search process.

Still, according to a new report by The Ladders, which included some nifty eye tracking software, a typical recruiter spends an average of 6 seconds on each job applicant’s resume before making an assessment of the candidate:

During evaluations, eye tracking software was employed, and they found that the recruiters spent about six seconds on a resume looking for six main things: name, current company and title, previous company and title, previous position start and end dates, current position start and end dates, and eduction. After that, it was a crapshoot.

So that’s it, job seekers. 6 seconds. Better make the most of it.

(Here’s an image of the typical eye tracking software’s results)

The full research report can be found here.

Ever notice that some of the most innovative, imaginative and – yes – ballsy marketing seems to come from across The Pond? It’s as if American creatives are paralyzed by the fear of ever offending anyone. Some times the things that resonate the most are the things that challenge our comfort levels:

Adweek has already noted that “Here’s another marketing stunt for the ‘Could never happen in America’ file.” It comes to us from Belgium, to be exact. As of today, this clip has already been viewed over 8 million times.

Did a TV network built for and marketed to middle America’s housewives spawn the next hip trend?

Is food the new new wave?

Did the demise of the music industry make us all better eaters?

Some interesting recent reads about the subject, first from Bon Apetit:

It would take a book’s worth of research to back up this claim, but it does make sense. Disposable income is a zero-sum game (especially when our economy isn’t looking so hot), and the advent of $0 (albeit illegally pirated) music freed up the money of culturally hungry twenty-somethings. Young celebrity chefs are often compared to rock stars (even if the rock star life rarely includes working one’s way up from line cook, working 12-hour shifts, and waking up at the crack of dawn), and what you eat has, to some degree, replaced what you listen to as an index of subcultural cred.

And then of course there’s this excellent study of how Gen Y spends 25% of its income on being the friendly neighborhood foodie:

Lately, however, food has become a defining obsession among a wide swath of the young and urbane. It is not golf or opera. It’s more like indie rock. Just like the music of, say, Drag City bands on a nineties campus, food is now viewed as a legitimate option for a hobby, a topic of endless discussion, a playground for one-upmanship, and a measuring stick of cool….

My answers to the above questions: No, Yes, and The Jury Is Still Out.

As I scour the net and specifically the Trades every week for stories and insights into new trends I’ve found that it’s not a bad idea to simply list them all as a weekly recap. You know, a sort of running list of notables. So this then is the start of my The Week In Review section. I’ll do my best top keep it up to date. But let’s be honest…weekly posts might be asking a lot.

TECHNOLOGY & INNOVATION

• Mobile app giant Zynga bought OMGPOP for $200 million [Venture Beat]
• Hipstamatic announced exclusive integration partnership with Instagram [Fast Company]
• Paypal unveiled PayPal Here device which allows small businesses to accept credit and debit cards through mobile devices [Huff Po]
• Create your own Bespoke Liquor via Alchemist Dream online store [PSFK]

MUSIC NEWS & INNOVATION

• Spotify unveiled 12 New Apps on its platform, including: Def Jam, Warner, Matador, Domino [Billboard Biz]
• Billboard’s Hot 100 Singles Chart starts tracking online listening [NYT]
• Nike turned a building into a music app at SXSW [evolver.fm]
• FanFueled attracts major music clients to their Social Ticketing and Fan Engagement platform [hypebot]
• Beats (by Dre) Audio in talks to acquire MOG [VentureBeat]

MARKETING

• YouTube platform is promoting users to make environmental pledges for Earth Hour [Fast Company]
• Nokia created an interactive technology lab dome at SXSW [Into Mobile]
• British Airline launches a Pintrest contest to giveaway free flights [PSFK]
• Intel launches an international experimental campaign called “Ultrabook Temptations” featuring a series of six light-hearted social experiments [Adverblog]

BEST PRACTICES

• 5 Ways Spotify is pioneering the hyper-social business model [Mashable]
• Apple’s lead designer reveals the secrets behind products & processes [PSFK]
• 12 Top Community Managers Share Their Tips for Better Engagement [Mashable]

Last week marked the ten year anniversary of a dark day in American history and all of our lives. There’s no need to rehash what transpired on September 11^th, 2001. I have no interest in dragging this blog into the gutter of political discourse or to turn it into a diary spilling out my personal memories of that day. If you want any of that stuff there are thousands of blogs that will oblige you. I’m here to talk music, marketing and innovation. That’s what I built UNPOP for.

So that brings me to an essay I read not long after September 11^th in Magnet Magazine titled “It’s Oh So Quite” and can be found here. I read it over and over, scanned it, saved it, and filed it away in the back of my mind.  But surprisingly the premise kept on finding its way to the front and fairly soon after first reading it I realized that it could have a profound effect on how I do my business. It does.

“It’s Oh So Quite” talks about The Great American Noise, something that we’re all very familiar with – whether consciously or not.  It’s American Idol and Kanye West vs. Taylor Swift and the great mystery of the wardrobe malfunction and Charlie Sheen and the 24 hour news cycle and everything in between. Back in 2001, when Phil Sheridan wrote this article, it was Fred Durst and The View and Shondra Levy and N’Sync. It was filler and noise. And we as a culture ate it up – and unfortunately still do – like manna from heaven.

But for one short but intense period in our culture, in a response to the greatest horror that any of us could ever imagine, we stopped and closed out all the noise…and took a collective deep breath:

For a few days, maybe a week or so, our popular culture was frozen like a VHS tape after someone hits pause. Moron Nation got a big piece of duct tape wrapped around its mouth.

Jesus, was it liberating! But it didn’t last very long.

What “It’s Oh So Quiet” taught me was that now it’s up to us all individually to fight the Great American Noise one by one because, barring another catastrophic national event, we as a culture-on-steroids won’t be able to do it collectively. So I’ve made it a lifelong goal to filter it out in my life. Which can be problematic for me since my chosen profession is to find the cross section of art and commerce and market it.  I attempt to leverage music, art and pop culture for brands and their consumer-focused messages. Ironic, huh?

But what I learned is that doing what I do and staying true to the authenticity of art are not mutually exclusive and, while often can be a struggle, it’s not impossible to achieve.

First, I’ve gotten help from the demise of the music industry. Where as a decade or so ago most bands would have turned their backs on partnering with brands in profound ways, now it’s embraced. The lack of a record sales marketplace has forced musicians’ hands on this. Well, wasn’t I lucky?

But second, and more importantly, I’ve made it a lifelong mission to market smartly, creatively, authentically, and most importantly vigorously.  Meaning, too many marketers are lazy and reach for the lowest hanging fruit. I want to deliver big ideas…transformative ideas…resounding ideas. Initiatives and projects and programs that make people stop in their tracks and say ‘wow, that’s pretty fucking cool!’ And one thing I have learned about our culture in the last ten years is that people are more cynical and more aware when they’re being marketed to. We may not be fully and consciously cognizant of the Great American Noise as it fills our culture, but we sure are aware of bullshit. And, if you ask me, laziness in marketing simply feeds the Great American Noise.

So it’s all about finding profound ideas to reach people in authentic ways and, if a brand must be involved, then let’s do it right. Otherwise, we’re just adding to the Noise.

PDF of the Magnet article available here.

I’m not a religious man but I’ve always said that Charles Bukowski, Tom Waits and Nick Cave comprise my own personal holy trinity. But I have to add Steve Albini to that mix, of course.

So how did I miss this?

that’s right, here’s what I’ve been listening to this year:

KANYE WEST – My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

LCD SOUNDSYSTEM – This Is Happening

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The last few days have seen a series of articles written about Brooklyn and I for one am surprised it took so long for the press to figure things out.  It all started with this Crain’s article and then the New York Times took it to another level with “Brooklyn: The Brand”. The Village Voice also jumped in on the action. All good reads!

As someone who grew up in Brooklyn and still visits it on a weekly basis I feel both amused and proud that Brooklyn is suddenly getting all this attention, especially from corporate America.  My memories of the largest and most populous borough of New York are significantly less ‘Disney’ and less accessible to mainstream America.  It was rough growing up in Brooklyn back in the day.  There’s a reason why Spike Lee dubbed it ‘Crooklyn’ and trust me when I say that I’ve lived that part of Brooklyn first hand.

But gone are the days of tough guys, hard knocks, and shadiness – at least on the surface.  Where Manhattanites referred to us all at B&T trash and no one cared to cross the East River to visit us, now suddenly it’s a badge of honor to say that one lives in Brooklyn.  A decade ago the arts and music communities began to transplant their scenes into Williamsburg and Red Hook and now name brands and corporate giants are following suit.  To be honest, I’m not quite sure what to think of it.  It’s not the Brooklyn that I remember but it’s also not too bad, is it?

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