Bad news sure travels at lightening fast broadband speed

The team at Mustard were shocked at the passing of the King of Pop, Michael Jackson.  May he rest in peace.

We were even more surprised by the speed and succintness in which the author of http://www.ismichaeljacksonalive.com was able to provide an answer to the major question being posed on cyberspace at the moment. Within an hour of the news hitting the press!

Pad’s birthday-avoidance attempt is foiled!

Lyndon (aka “Pad”), Mustard’s beloved Creative Director, was looking to celebrate his birthday today… quietly.  So, naturally we took the opportunity to decorate his workspace to ensure the appropriate attention was reflected his way.

Until he unwraps his gift, let’s hope that ball lightning is a myth.

Bing’s TV Ad “Manifesto” launched

As Google’s dominance as a search engine is nigh on absolute, the challenge for the marketer’s of Bing is (aptly) to communicate its relevance into a market place happily served by the ubiquitous magical white page of search results.

Inherently, there is nothing wrong with Google search. Most times we find what we want in seconds – usually within a couple of clicks.  In fact, Google’s dominance is both perception and reality. They have made a business out of being a technical think tank and attracting some of the best minds on the planet to work for them.  For Bing to challenge them on “better accuracy” would be somewhat on the kamikaze side.

So the team at Bing have clearly sought to make a weakness out of the search giant’s best known feature benefit – its hundreds and thousands of its returned search results.  The attribute that best communicates this idea is Bing’s use of a 5+ page pagination for search results compared to Google’s 10+.  It’s subtle. As is the idea.

Targetting the category of people who have a vague idea of what they’re looking for definitely can extends the usage occasion for search to include the bored or the brainless – and lets face it, we all feel a little like we need someone else to give us inspiration and directions on tedious search tasks sometimes.

But it is disappointing. The marketing is slick, and the stock archive footage is very pretty.  But the message is logical, not emotional and therefore, wallpaper.

Furthermore, the adage that actions speak louder than words is made abundently clear to anyone who, based on the initial promise of a “difference” are led to try the service.  Beyond the optimistic and vibrant homepage, Bing’s SERPs are styled in the familiar Google-esque blue, green and grey link palette. With the core content looking so similar to its major competitor, surely Bing has committed the ultimate cardinal sin of not living up to its promise of “difference”, and instead, simply joined the masses of Google replicants battling it out for the <20% of search traffic that isn’t Google initiated.

The meme that mobilised an economy.

When we learned earlier this year that we’d “all” be getting an early tax payment to help avoid a recession by stimulating the economy, the social networks were all aflutter.

In the past few weeks, nary a day goes by where we haven’t seen someone tweet, post or nettalk about their stimulus package, receiving stimulus, being stimulated.. (oh the joys of double entendres… its so netgen). In fact, the (now) misnamed “Rudd’s $950 Stimulus Package” group on Facebook still has over 41,500 fans!

So it is for this reason that I want to personally shake the hand of the person who crafted the meme “Stimulus Package.” Because by harnessing this irresistable phrase and propagating its usage in the windfall context, we may just have managed to talk ourselves out of a technical recession.

Depression 2.0 Fashion

At a recent invitation-only movie screening in Melbourne, I was struck by how much the fashion-forward crowd seemed to blend into a sea of depression-era grey.

Indeed, a walk through Chadstone Shopping Centre also featured mannequins sporting a look that was reminiscent of the 1930’s.  Retailers in (colder) metro cities seem to be offering for winter darker and muted tones and shades, heavily buttoned overcoats and duffles, chunky knits,  baggy vintage style dresses, lace ups, boots, cardigans, large beads, argyle, long scarves, cloche hats and beanies.

And  no other item offers us a more obvious nod to this  era in fashion than the iconic, and suddenly ubiquitous pageboy hat (pictured).  Assuming you’re in a cold metro climate, look out the window and I’ll bet you can spot one in the crowd right now – they’re so hot right now.

So is it my imagination, or are we determined to dress the part through the recession?

Google Wave. Ripple or Tsunami?

Is this the way you'll be communicating later this year?

At the same time that Microsoft got their bing bling on, Google announced the personal communication and collaboration tool which they have branded, the instantly marketable moniker -  “Google Wave”.

In typical Google tradition, Wave will be open source for developers to experiment with and create addons and apps for. It will also be written for HTML 5.

Wave is a mashup of email, instant messaging, social networking and a wiki.  In addition to its social application, the Google Wave team are also hoping the wave will catch on in the business community as an application for collaborative documentation.

It’s also a local innovation, engineered by the same team that developed Google Maps out of Sydney.   Go Aussie.

With a suite of innovative features and functionality, the in-browser application offers as its irresistable publicity proposition, “Wave will be the new Email”.

Much has been written of the supposed extinction of email particularly in the age of social networking and instant messaging. However, after viewing the developer demo, we are prepared to catch Wave-fever, for 5 main reasons.

1. Firstly, it’s faster than email – as it appears to be based on instant messaging conventions and user-experience principles.
2. Secondly, every “wave” can be edited, viewed or responded to by multiple invited recipient simultaneously – also in visible real time.
3. Thirdly, there is private messaging built in, as well as permission and view setting options meaning that each collaborators Wave experiences will be uniquely their own.
4. Fourthly, each “Wave” moves to the top with each update contributed by any of the recipients of the “Wave”. This means instead of lots and lots of communications, you just have the most recently updated/relevant version.
5. And then, there’s the “playback” feature which allows you to see each wave, update by update on a scroller-based timeline.

And so on.

As an in-browser application, Wave will undoubtedly become a major reason for Google’s  influence in the inevitable global cloud computing ecosystem of the future.

But is it the category killer for email – a 40 year old paradigm?  Is it more hype than hero? Or, to add a bit of paranoia to the mix, did the product take its name and inspiration from a young-adult literary reference?

We can’t wait to see what happens!

The semantic search battle begins. Bing it on!

It's coming, per your request.

Microsoft, today unveiled its much anticipated semantic search engine -  or “decision engine” as the marketing spin would have you refer to it. Its called Bing, and its soooo Web 3.0.

Bing relies on key words and algorithms to provide results for online searches that tries to deduce what you are searching for. The engine introduces some lovely click candy to the mix, intended to give its users  a more seamless, on the page experience to help them make key decisions such as where they are going to eat that night, how to get there, and so on.

Its a bold idea, and will require a significant branding job to detach the new brand from the cynicism that surrounds the behemoth company. How will Google and Yahoo respond, and can Microsoft convince the world that they should be empowered to tell us how and what to think?  Set up your RSS feeds, now – this is one to watch.

For the full mind programming, view the publicity video here:  http://www.decisionengine.com/Default.html

Huxley v Orwell – who had the right idea?

We stumbled across this fantastic  comparison between George Orwell’s vision of the future, circa 1984, and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.  So who was right? You be the judge…. check it out here.

Like everything worth reading these days, it’s satirical , it’s short and it’s filled with cartoons!

Clear the tumbleweeds, we’re feeding the blog again!

The team at Mustard have had a very satisfying couple of months.  We’ve picked  up some new talent to join our team, and the studio has been humming with the sound of finished art and whiteboards squeaking with rapid idea plots. Yeah, it’s been sweet.

And so, it should come as no surprise, that the Mustard blog has been charring away on the backburner of late, which is a shame, because you’ve missed out on some way awesome content.

We have discovered that blogging is a luxury for an agency who also manages social marketing for  clients, but its certainly something we’re going to try to indulge in a bit more – it’s cathartic and it’s fun.

At a recent leadership conference some of our colleagues and clients attended,  we learned that apparently if you do something 21 times repetitively, it becomes a habit.   We’re going to give that theory a good test over the next few weeks.  Stay tuned.

Pluto is a planet today

The hunk of rock formerly known as "Planet Pluto"

When it comes to celebrating interstellar success, Illinois is on a bit of roll, particularly since one of its residents became the President of the United States.

Today, March 13, 2009, has officially been  declared ‘Pluto Day’ by the US state. Honouring the planet former planet with planetary status for a single day. The discoverer, Clyde Tombaugh,  was born and raised in the farming village of Streator in Illinois… bless wikipedia.

Having grown up with 9 planets in the solar system, admitedly, I’ve got a soft spot for that rock at the end of our celestial neighbourhood.