Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.

Planning for Good - activating the Plannersphere

Mark and I have been working to set up the UK branch of Planning For Good.

It's taken a little longer to get off the ground than perhaps we'd have liked, mainly due to the fact that both of us are working like idiots and always seem to be on a plane, train or automobile to some place or other.

Luckily Michelle is now helping us - have a read of her blog Grad In The City, its good stuff - so hopefully we may be able to actually be able to set up PFG sessions and email people with the right details.

Anyway, with that in mind the next session of Planning For Good is on:

THURSDAY 8TH MAY

3PM

THE BREAKFAST CLUB, Soho (Unless someone can offer up a room in a central agency and maybe some coffee and tea!)

In case you don't know about Planning For Good, take a look at the UK Blog.

PFG was started in the US based out of a frustration that Planner & Friends can sometimes feel - namely that if they have to re-segment the dog food market/pickle market/chewing gum market for the hundredth time they might scream (sorry any dog food/pickle/chewing gum clients who might be reading this post!)

In a nutshell once a month we are asking people in the industry (and by "the industry" I mean media, PR, digital, experiential, advertising etc) to give up 90 minutes of their working week to spend time on a live not for profit client brief.

It will be a live brief, from a client with a budget so if any of the comms solutions presented to clients are actually bought then agencies stand a chance to actually produce the idea and make some money.

Anyway, the request that I am posting to you is - can you help spread the work about PFG and the session on the 8th May.

I am hoping that this is Web 2.0 collaboration in action...

Fingers crossed, see you there.

Will be posting the brief in the next few days as soon as we get it from the States.

Also if you have any not for profit clients that you think that we should be talking to for future briefs can you post or email and let me know.

Thanks!

Clio - Content and Contact

I LOVED being a part of the judging of the Clio Awards last week.

It was led by Johnny from Anomaly: Faris from Naked New York; Robert Wong the Global Creative Director of Google, Icaro Daria (the most awarded creative in the world last year apparently) and me.

Inspiring people; inspiring work.

Brilliant to be able to see such imaginative, innovative work from all over the world. We are NDA-ed until May and the award show in Miami, but once we are  allowed to Faris and I are  blog it and talk through the panel's thinking and reasons for specific award judgements that we made.

It was a hard one to judge, we were looking at everything from ARGs to full length feature films to blogs to bizarre pop-up Japanese retail stores and ice skating Japanese dogs (I kid you not!). How can you possibly compare stuff like that? I think that the criteria for people entering this category was stuff that people were really proud of but had no idea what traditional category it fitted into.

Chop'd is the new Innocent

I think that  Chop'd could be the new Innocent.

Both Chop'd and Innocent have really understood the current desire to have really good fresh food fast.  Busy urban professionals want  stuff that tastes amazing, but is also healthy. They are looking for  companies with clear ethics but one that doesn't feel too worthy.

When Innocent started back in 1999 Richard, Adam and Jon always talked about the way in which they were helping people to be a bit healthier, in a small and manageable way on a daily basis.  Chop'd is doing a similar thing - like providing free filtered water ( "refill not landfill"), tasty superfoods and a open and transparent approach to marketing.

.

I  had one question for them.  For all their good "green" words, I kept on seeing people throw all their rubbish into one bin and I wondered what their recycling strategy was, was a Chop'd person physically going thru all the rubbish?

So I emailed them and asked them.

Within 15 minutes this is the email that I got back:

Amelia,

Thanks.

What were you doing up at St Pancras? You guys work out of Westminster, no?

(I know at second hand some of the VCCP crew through their WCRS days - all positive feedback, don't worry!)

Glad you like the muesli. My mum brought me up on it. It's really good energy food: fast fruit sugars to pick you up then slow release oats to see you through to lunch.

Maybe try our porridge next time. Its equally different, and in summer is great with yoghurt and raspberries, mmmmm.

We are currently transitioning from PET (Polyethylene terephthalate) to rPET (recycled PET) packaging. All our salad bowls are now rPET. We hope our cups and bottles and cutlery soon will be too. We are also hoping that by 2009 we can 'close the recycling loop'.

Our manufacturers and suppliers are currently working on a plan to collect used bowls and other disposables (at the same time as delivering clean ones), to melt down and turn back into clean ones. In the meantime, we sort our instore waste, as you will hopefully have noticed at St Pancras, which the landlords then recycle accordingly.

It's just a real shame so many of our customers ignore the sorting signs and chuck any old waste in any old hole. We'll get them there in time, don't worry!

I don't know if you'd be interested in occasional lunch deliveries to VCCP, eg for internal meetings, but I know our Curzon Street team already enjoy cycling round St James Park and delivering to another couple of Westminster firms from time to time.

Thanks again for your feedback and enquiry. Please keep it coming.
Always nice to chat with customers, even if it is by email and not over a coffee!

Happy breakfasting (and lunching)

jasper wight
managing director

...................
It was a great email to receive. Really personal, really engaged and really informative.   Exactly the kind of honest answer that I was looking for. I guess that the challenge will be to keep up that kind of content and contact as and when they grow bigger.

Anyway, the food is incredibly tasty. Give it a go if you are close to Canary Wharf/Curzon Street/Spitalfields or St Pancras.

 

Thanks to Educated Community on Flickr for the images.

 

Web 1.0 Vs Web 2.0

I often get asked about the difference between Web 1 and Web 2

This is my new favourite answer:

Web 1.0 was invented to allow physicists to share research papers.
Web 2.0 was created to allow people to share pictures of cute cats.

Hat tip: Ethan Zuckerman