While you can’t judge a book by its cover, we often judge food by its packaging. One dollars worth of spaghetti sure looks a million dollars with a bit of fancy pants wrapping doesn’t it…Never underestimate the importance of appearance when it comes to food, or anything for that matter…

Why do pet care companies always put an animal on the front of their pet food? The dog can’t read but the owner can. Why are we packaging pet food for the pet? They know what dogs look like, talk to them in their own language.

I’d take a premium supermarket pet food brand & stick it in a stylish black tin with silver labeling & discrete branding with no visual reference to animals. Risky you say? I doubt it.

And another thing… why do washing detergents all use bright colours & show water or clean clothes? We make our decisions on what detergent to buy on the perceived quality of the brand. In the absence of any
laundry powders which don’t present pictures of clouds or water gushing through logos, let’s be honest, we pick the one we think looks more sophisticated or innovative or expensive than the rest.

Why not take washing powder & stick it in a metal canister that sits proudly on the laundry shelf instead of embarrassingly in the cupboard? Or better still, cook some good looking detergent granules &
put the stuff in a stylish transparent container.

For a fresh spin on packaging, make it design-orientated not product-orientated. Just because you’re selling pasta doesn’t mean you need a fat Italian & a bunch of tomatoes on the front. Lord, this is 2008.

Gum is always about taste. A nihilist doesn’t believe in anything. Nihilist gum doesn’t believe in flavour. Which begs the question..why chew it?

A counter trend can often be the most convincing way to get someone to try a product because for every go-with-the-grain consumer, there’s a million nosy parkers who want to try something new.

If we were to push this kind of reasoning to the extreme . . .well then, If restaurants are always about service, could you create a restaurant which goes against the grain of service? Instead of making you feel at home & treating you like a welcome patron, they abuse you and ridicule your food decisions..

If you don’t understand the menu they call you a philistine, if you don’t order enough they call you a tight-ass anorexic & if you don’t tip big they point out the cheapskate to all the other patrons. Dining becomes a combat sport. Welcome to the game, its survivor restaurant-style.

Assume for a moment that you are the marketing director of a large confectionery company. While everyone else is focusing on higher end premium bite size indulgence, you decide to launch the largest single
serve chocolate bar in the world. It is big & chunky and it proudly displays its calorie count on the front next to the name :: Fattyboombah. Nice huh?

For every trend there’s a counter trend. Look at the research, chuck it away & do the exact opposite. Imagine what you think people want and offer something completely contrary. The truth of the matter is that people are contradictory. A large percentage of Americans may disapprove of the reporting of a political sex scandal but you can bet that the circulation of trashmags increases when one is on the cover! So embrace the contradictions, scope out the challenge and then just close your eyes and pick a side….

Julian Cole, a digital strategist at Naked Communications has just created a new list profiling the top 50 Australian marketing pioneer blogs to shed some light on the Australian Marketing Blogosphere and connect us with some great Australian Marketing thinkers.

He uses a combination of ranking stats- (Google Page Ranks (10), Technorati Authority (10), Technoati Blog Reactions (10), Alexa Page Ranking (10), Bloglines (10) and has also added a Pioneer score (10) which is a subjective score reflecting the blogs ability to have pioneering thoughts about Marketing.

The list can be found here on his blog and will be published in the August edition of Marketing Magazine.

It’s definitely worth a look, my personal fave, the man who encourages more of us to get out there and engage, participate and connect Servant of Chaos comes in at number # 2. Yours truly makes its humble debut at number # 20.

Nice one Jules.

								Total
1	Banner Blog	6	6	8	6	8	9	43
2	Servant of Chaos	9	5	8	6	6	5	39
3	Duncans Tv Adland	6	5	7	6	8	5	37
4	Corporate Engagement	8	5	5	4	5	8	35
5	Better Communication Results	8	3	6	5	6	6	34
6	Young PR	7	5	6	5	5	6	34
7	Small Business Branding	7	3	0	8	7	8	33
8	Get Shouty	8	5	7	5	4	4	33
9	Personlize Media	8	5	4	4	4	5	30
10	Brand DNA	6	4	6	5	5	4	30
11	PR Disasters	7	5	4	4	4	5	29
12	Ettf.net	6	5	5	4	4	3	27
13	1+1=3	5	3	5	4	5	5	27
14	Business of Marketing & Branding	6	5	6	4	4	1	26
15	Media Hunter	7	2	6	4	3	3	25
16	Australian SEO Blog	4	4	5	4	6	1	24
17	Wide Open Spaces	8	5	4	3	3	1	24
18	The Marketer	7	3	6	4	3	0	23
19	Three Billion	6	4	0	4	4	5	23
20	Innovation Feeder	6	5	3	3	3	2	22
21	Campaign Brief	6	4	0	3	5	3	21
22	EcioLab	7	5	2	3	3	0	20
23	Adspace-Pioneers	7	3	3	3	2	2	20
24	Publicity Queen	8	4	1	1	2	3	19
25	Filter Media	6	4	0	2	3	3	18
26	Marketing Easy	6	3	0	3	5	1	18
27	Hothouse	6	4	1	2	4	1	18
28	Mark Neely’s Blog - 3rd Horizon	7	3	2	2	3	0	17
29	Lexy Klain	7	3	1	3	2	1	17
30	Peter Sheahan	6	4	0	1	4	2	17
31	In my atmosphere	6	4	0	3	2	1	16
32	Elbow Grease	4	4	0	3	2	3	16
33	Falkayn	5	4	2	0	2	1	14
34	Pigs Don’t Fly	6	4	1	1	2	0	14
35	Diffusion	7	4	0	1	1	1	14
36	Australian Small Business	6	3	0	0	4	0	13
37	The Jason Recliner	4	4	1	2	1	1	13
38	The Wayfarer	7	3	0	1	1	1	13
39	Adnotes	6	3	1	1	2	0	13
40	Ryan’s View	6	4	0	2	1	0	13
41	B&T	7	4	0	1	1	0	13
42	Zero Budget Marketing Ideas	6	3	1	1	1	0	12
43	Blackwatch	5	3	0	0	0	3	11
44	Fresh Chat	5	2	1	1	1	1	11
45	Latin Ocean	5	2	1	1	1	1	11
46	Arrow Internet SEO	7	2	0	0	1	1	11
47	The Sticky Report	7	0	1	2	0	0	10
48	Naked Communications-The Flasher	8	0	0	1	0	1	10
49	Pixel Paddock	5	1	0	1	0	1	8
50	Send up a larger room	7	0	0	1	0	0	8

The wiki defines it as : An unconference is a conference where the content of the sessions is created and managed by the participants (generally day-by-day during the course of the event) rather than by one or more organizers in advance of the event. The term is primarily used in the geek community.

So where did it come from?

It all began one rainy day in the USA around 1984 with the first unofficial Hackers conference. In techland they have a regular conference called “Foo camps” where geeks get together & geek out over whatever they’re into at that moment. The problem is, Foo camps were always invitational which meant that there was an element of exclusivity around who was able to attend & who wasn’t. Thus, the idea of Barcamps was born. Barcamps began as a reaction to the exclusive elitest Foo camps. The idea was basically that people with a strong interest would publicly post their passion in meeting other like-minded folks and then the interested parties would self-organize a gathering. where everyone was welcome. Unlike the Foo, Barcamps were open to anyone & everyone & represented one of the very first unconferences.

Basically an “unconference” is everything a normal stuffy suity type conference is not - it’s open to anyone, anyone can come & anyone can speak. It disposes of the podiums, the rigid structure, the exclusive & polished speakers and the formalities in favour of a more democratised process where even the great unwashed may share their passions with the rest of us. (more…)

What makes one person think more innovatively than another?

Most people spend their time doing stuff. Selling shoes, marketing hammers, securing distribution, balancing nutritional value with taste and so on and so on. So to sit down one afternoon & just decide that you’d like to think more innovatively is kind of like deciding that you’d like to paint a masterpiece without the paints or the canvas, or even the subject matter. In order to be more innovative you need to prepare your brain with the tools it needs & you need to garner the stimulus, the
subject matter if you will. Then how you interpret that subject matter will determine what kind of masterpiece you’ll create.

Some people seem to be naturally more creative just like some people are better musicians or artists. But there’s a big difference between people who are mediocre, bloody good and those who are brilliant. When it comes to innovation like everything else, there’s no reason why most of us can’t be bloody good if we set about learning the skills in the same way we would for music or art.

Picture the person in your head who you think is the cat’s pijamas. They’re more creative, more lateral, they see things and make connections that you don’t. They approach opportunities from different angles and they change things. Can you picture them? Are they better looking than you too? Some people have all the luck…

The truth is, those people that seem to be more creative or more innovative than you, it’s generally because they spend most of their time looking at things differently. If I’m asked to help companies innovate, I find it easier to come in & look at a category in a completely new way. That’s because I’m not bogged down with the details of how to sell in a product to stores, or pitch for company funding, or create a media strategy or control a budget. You know, the hard stuff.

I spend most of my waking hours trying to think differently & innovate - create new brand positioning, new revenue streams, to imagine a new space or think about what the future might be. The point being, that if you put aside some time each week to concentrate on being more innovative, you’ll find it easier too.

The best way to start being more innovative is to force yourself to start thinking differently. To start imagining ‘what if?’ rather than just being concerned with ‘what is’. That means taking some time to expose yourself to new ideas & thinking. It also helps to start gathering together a bunch of tools that will help you ask the right questions & force your brain to think differently.

It doesn’t have to feel like homework, it doesn’t have to take a huge amount of time out of your day. You could start by checking out of the site links on this site each day. Pick a blog or a site that sounds interesting, visit a new one each day and ask yourself : What is interesting about this site? What could I learn from this site? How is this site different or similar to my business or the issues we face? or the people we reach? or the sorts of ideas we’re looking for?

Being innovative is about making new connections, it’s about jumping from one space to another, it’s about putting a new lens on existing research or points of view. It doesn’t have to be a big shift, it might just be a little bit different. Sometimes that’s all you need.

This site has a whole bunch of brainfood but don’t stop there :: there’s a whole world wide web of non-work related mind candy goodness that will put some buzz in your uptop muscle. So go, hang your balls out in the wind and try something new.

MELBOURNE’S hottest restaurant isn’t in The Age Good Food Guide, it changes location weekly, and with a waiting list of 4000, it’s booked out for the next year.

Zingara Cucina — Italian for “Gypsy Kitchen” — is Australia’s first “underground” restaurant. It is unlicensed, illegal and transient, but has won the kind of word-of-mouth accolades most legitimate establishments only dream about.

And with the identity of the people behind it a secret, it’s also the city’s biggest culinary mystery.

It began almost three years ago when dinner parties held for friends by the operator and chef developed a cult following. Now, Zingara has developed into a weekly dining experience, roaming inner-city locations from car parks to lanes, rooftops, bridges, beaches and galleries.

The chef will not reveal his identity except to say he is not a professional, was taught to cook by his Italian grandmother and mother, and works in an advertising agency during the day. He says that “fine dining has become boring”.

“The whole concept is around conviviality and creating that feeling you get when you have a nice meal with like-minded people. It’s not about making money, but about enjoying good food and good wine,” he says.

Entry is by invitation only — each guest gets two referrals to pass on to friends — and diners are told the location via email or SMS the night before.

A diner who has experienced Zingara Cucina — he asked to remain anonymous, although he will reveal he is a chef at a well-regarded CBD restaurant — described the experience as “phenomenal”.

“I’d go once a week if I could, to be frank, because it’s an incredible experience … the presentation, the food, which was as good as any two or three-chef’s-hat restaurant in Melbourne.”

At this particular dinner, held several months ago in an obscure city lane, guests were fed rustic Italian fare including handmade ravioli in sage butter with crushed pinenuts, and whole suckling pig — “all really simple flavours that were extrapolated in a beautiful way” — and serenaded between courses by an opera singer.

The diner estimates the meal would have cost $150 in any other restaurant, although Zingara diners are asked to pay what they see fit.

Story taken from The Age

There is also a gypsy  kitchen in the US which does a similar thing - Gypsy Dinners

By Steve Rubel

Published: September 03, 2007

With the lazy days of summer officially behind us, now is when many start thinking seriously about their career plans. For those who are deeply interested in both technology and marketing, this is your time. A new kind of career is emerging: Enter the Geek Marketer.

While hard statistics are hard to come by, anecdotally I can tell you that dozens of Fortune 500 companies — including some of our clients — are recruiting Geek Marketers either from within or outside. That’s not their specific title, of course. However, it is their role.

With CEOs demanding accountability and time spent online climbing, chief marketing officers are on a push to embed technology into every facet of their strategy. But marketers and technologists are not exactly two peas in a pod. They speak different languages. Marketers like GRPs (gross ratings points). Geeks like APIs (application protocol interfaces). Dilbert mercifully pokes at these differences. It’s all very Mars and Venus.

Enter Geek Marketers. These cross-trained specialists are fluent in both worlds and bridge them. They are marketers by trade, yet they also have a hard-core interest in technology and social anthropology. As curious individuals, they are constantly studying how digital advances are changing our culture and media. Armed with these insights, they regularly apply them in a marketing context by working closely with brand teams to codify new best practices.

Geek Marketers create competitive advantage through rapid-fire testing and learning. The people I know in this role are shepherding the development, testing and measurement of all kinds of groundbreaking marketing programs. Their pilots span from the simple, such as building RSS feeds, to the complex, creating multifaceted community programs. Often they are paired with people like me, who are in a similar role on the agency side.

This may sound like the trendy occupation du jour, but something tells me the position has staying power. To be sure, the entire industry is innovating and everyone’s technical acumen is slowly rising. Still, Geek Marketers are freed to live just a little bit further out on the edge than most. And with no end in sight for what technology can do to transform business, they can continue to play a key role.

Article from Ad Age

Geek 2.0 image from Logic + Emotion

In Surry Hills one guy is reinventing the idea of the evening meal by opening his space for a weekly gathering of friends & strangers. So grab yourself a seat, pass the wine & pitch in because this is neighbourhood dining at it’s very best.

There are thousands of normal restaurants in Sydney.
This is not one of them.

This innovative restaurant is run by a friend of mine locally in Surry Hills. The project is called Table for 20. The idea behind this project is to create a completely new experience in the dining market. Bucking the trend fancy restaurants & one hat wonders, this is family-orientated communal neighbourhood dining at its best. The restaurant is housed at 182 Campbell St in Surry Hills, in a building owned by Hope St, a local Surry Hills charity. 10% of the takings each night go to Hope St to support them in the work that they do with less fortunate people in the Surry Hills area.

The experience plays out as a neighbourhood supper where local people come & pay a modest set fee to dine at the communal tables.
As is Michael Fantuz’s specialty, the food is festive Italian with a twist. Fantuz is a man who clearly loves his food and can constantly be seen
running up and down tables dishing out a vintage olive oil or rare Buffalo Mozzarella or even a plum mustard which we enjoyed on the night we were
there. The food is undoubtedly exceptional, but unlike other restaurants, Fantuz shuns the idea of food reviewers and would instead prefer them to
come & make a contribution to the mission. “I have no need for fancy hats or stars” Fantuz says, “I’ve finally found an opportunity to do what I love and
help out people along the way.”

The $40 - $50 meal includes three courses - a starter, main and dessert. If you’re lucky, you’ll arrive on one of the nights where Michael’s mother has been
commissioned to create her famous homemade Tirimisu. It’s certainly worth the wait!

Anyone who lives in Sydney will agree there’s no shortage of good restaurants but the one thing the 2010 area was really lacking was somewhere low key where you can just come and have a feed, open a bottle of wine, meet a few people and have a laugh. Sometimes people get so caught up in their day-to-day lives that they just stick to their immediate groups because that they have time for. Social isolation or social poverty is a symptom of the times we live in.

So Table for 20 is a weekly gathering of friends and strangers, locals in your hood. It also throws open the doors for a few of the Hope Street guys who would not normally have the opportunity for a night out at a restaurant. It gives them a chance to interact with other locals from the neighbourhood, and feel part of the wider community. It’s nice to see an innovative self sustaining social ventures rather than just a new brand of salty snacks isn’t it…

Check out the blog & join us for dinner :: http://www.tablefor20.blogspot.com