On Friday, Anti-Nowhere League played at the Underworld in Camden Town. ANL is one of my favourite bands of all time. I have never seen them play live because they don’t seem to make it to the West Coast of America very often. Needless to say, I was incredibly excited for this show. I arrived before Mi Mujer and found the pub to be completely lit by candles and candles only. In my naïveté I assumed it was a Halloween stunt and thought, ‘how annoying’. ‘Surely drinking by candles lost its charm by the industrial revolution’.

Turns out that the power was off because of something outside of World’s End control affected the whole area they are situated in. While I cursed my luck I patiently waited for Mi Mujer and checked the signs continually being taped to pillars, doors and walls regarding updates to the show. Mi Mujer arrived, and like magic, the power was restored. She has the effect on me where I see lights when she enters a room, but didn’t realize it would extend to the London power grid. It’s a good thing she showed up because a men’s toilet in Camden Town without lighting is something I don’t want to venture into again—I questioned every puddle on the floor.

Anti-Nowhere League played and we had a great time. We were befriended by a Scottish punk well into his late 40’s with piercings and tattoos covering his body. He had some interesting tattoos on his head with skulls and the like, and bizarrely, a giant Spiderman slinging a web above his ear. His best one was a full back piece of the ANL emblem of the raised fist and spiked ball. So I spent much of the night shouting lyrics, throwing my hands in the air and jumping about. The rest was spent pretending I understood a drunk late-40’s Scottish punk’s ramblings above the noise of the band. My hearing is rubbish, which I blame on both spending too many years in an engine room in the navy and going to too many punk rock shows, so my normal response when people talk is to nod my head, smile and say “Oh, yeah”. It works pretty well.

Afterwards, Mi Mujer told me that Animal reminded her of Elvis which took me by surprise. I know Elvis was a bit risqué but he didn’t sing about being a sexual pervert and hating everybody. Goes to show that what is dangerous and taboo one day will become cute and nostalgic in a couple decades. No surprise really—my grandma was a flapper.

AMV BBDO, the agency responsible for some great Guinness ads, has hidden their newest advertisement. Where is it hidden? Well, that’s for you to find out. Seriously. You need to find the ad.Will this work? Of course it will. Many intrepid surfers—or a cynic might say, people with broadband and far too much time on their hands—will seek it out. Eventually it will be found. Spoils, riches and rewards will be talked about. Locations will be revealed. Pints of Guinness will be bought.

This works because Guinness is a strong brand. The advertisements have proven to be water-cooler topics and people now expect their ads to be good. Instead of complaining about ads interrupting their lives, they will actively seek it out.

For you Indiana Jones types, read this PDF from the Mayor and then watch the video.

Like any blogger I check my Technorati rank and occasionally look up how “effective” my blog is via Google and various other tools available. I would like to think it is more of an idle curiosity than anything else as I don’t have advertisements on my blog and I’m not doing this to make money.

There is nothing altruistic about my non-profit blogging status. I’m sure, if I followed all of the advice and templates out there, I could make a few sheckles. My lack of attempting to do so could be chalked up to laziness, apathy or that I do have a day job that I like. The reality is just that I want to blog how I want to blog and not make posts ad nauseum about SEO and schemes to generate links to increase ranking.

I have nothing against people who do make money blogging. To the contrary, more power to them. They are disciplined and focused and I have to admire the entrepreneurial spirit they exhibit. But is blogging to make money really all it’s cracked up to be?

I visit many other DoFollow sites and other blogs via links and Technorati. I like blogs, and I like having one to be part of the club. Yet I often find myself getting tired of reading post after post giving advice on how to make money with a blog posting about how to make money with a blog posting about how to make money with a blog.

Not all blogs do this and even many blogs that offer advice and tips on making money blogging also have compelling content. But I am starting to believe that many blogs are built around their ads, with actual content bringing up the rear in the echelon of priorities. I like many blogs with ads and many without. All of the blogs that I like have good and original content, and that is what I like about them.

I often wonder if the bloggers that put such an emphasis on their own page ranks for ad revenue ever bother clicking on ads themselves. How often do any of us click on an ad in a blog? I work in advertising and I think it’s a poor approach because of its lack of focus. Of course with somewhere near 100 million blogs, that one in a million click happens often enough every day to encourage it.

How about selling Chalupas to Mexicans? Taco Bell is moving into Mexico. So far only one location has been announced but more are likely to follow.

There are a lot of naysayers on this for reasons both obvious:

“It’s like Mexicans coming up and trying to sell us hot dogs.”

And absurd:

“We’re putting up a fence so they can’t get through, but we’re going to push tacos through the fence. It’s offensive.”

I’m not guaranteeing it will work, although I think it will, but it definitely won’t fail for the reasons that people are saying. These people seem to be under the assumption that Taco Bell is Mexican food and it really isn’t. Taco Bell is drunk food. It’s eaten at 2 in the morning and regretted the next day and that is something that is universal.

Besides, it’s not as crazy as trying to sell frappuccinos in Milan right, Starbucks?

Advertising Taco Bell Mexico

I kept thinking something wasn’t quite right this morning. It was dogging me as soon as I headed out to work. Then I had a nagging feeling as I ran to my train that something was off. Later when walking to my bus it surfaced again.

When I got to work I went to the gents and after a moment of confusion realized my boxers were on backwards.

I need to start drinking my coffee before I get dressed.

Well it was an exciting ride. England lost to South Africa last night, as was expected, 15-6. While they didn’t get to keep the cup, they did leave their mark by making it much further than anyone believed. It was a good game, not as exciting as the Argentina v. France one the other night, but still good.

Now that rugby is finished I can continue cheering for West Ham and the Seahawks. I’m used to end of season disappointment.

Please turn the collars of your polo shirts down. You might also want to reconsider wearing pink shirts. It makes you looks like a nation of the preppy bad guys from Molly Ringwald movies.

While I’m at it, wearing sunglasses indoors or at night doesn’t make you look cool. It just makes you look like a jackass. It can also be dangerous, as Craig David shows here by walking into a car door testicles first.

Real life often seems to interfere with posting on a real regular schedule. I’ve been very busy lately, but the weekend is here, so this is a chance to catch up.

England beat France in rugby of course, and tomorrow they play South Africa for the cup. I’m really looking forward to it and the match could be one for the books if England pulls it out. South Africa is favoured of course, but England has always been the underdog in this world cup, and that seems to encourage them.

Tonight Mi Mujer and I watched Argentina thoroughly beat France for the third place finish. It was an exciting game and Argentina just dominated. I’m happy they won because they aren’t one of the standard rugby countries and it shakes things up a bit. Mi Mujer wanted them to win because they’re her cousins and she’ll always cheer for the teams that speak Spanish.

I have been kept busy this past week preparing a pitch to get a new client. I enjoyed working on it because it’s a different kind of service than we normally advertise so it allowed for some different creativity. It was challenging in that they are essentially middle men and they had two distinct and different target audiences. Of course they only want one campaign to reach all of them.

We pitched on Thursday and I started to get a bad feeling when we started in on market research and their response was incredulous. Essentially half of what we based our concepts on wasn’t what they were looking for and ran in a different direction than what they think the customer believes and wants. I’m pretty sure my art director was thinking the same thing I was: Oh, bollocks.

One of the concepts we pitched was particularly bold and aggressive. We believed they needed to differentiate themselves from their competitors because they all do the same thing. All of them say “We are fast, reliable and offer a good service.” Yeah. Since this client was first in mind in the UK and well respected but fairly unknown in Europe and the States, we created a position for them to really own the field. They could stand out from all the other companies that just blurred into an identical mass. This was on brief for what our creative department was given. Their response was “We don’t want to seem too cocky.” Oh, bollocks.

My beloved Seahawks lost against the Steelers on Sunday. The worst part is that Mack Strong is forced to retire due to injury that could cause spinal damage. I’m happy that he seems to have dodged the bullet of permanent damage and I wish him nothing but the best. He was a fantastic player and the Seahawks benefited greatly from his plays. Alexander is a great running back and with Strong blocking for him the results were always amazing to watch.

Now if my adopted West Ham could just shake the curse of injuries that they are under…

The Rugby World Cup has proven to be more interesting than I expected. England is still in it and Australia and heavily favoured New Zealand aren’t. I admit, as a Yank, I don’t know a whole lot about rugby. I view it from my experience of American football so at times it makes sense and at times it veers off into bizzaro world. I am happy that England is still in it especially when all the nay-sayers — read English people — were predicting an early and humiliating exit. I have no idea if they’ll make it to the finals or win the cup again, but I will be watching the match against France this weekend. So go England! Yay rugby!

Cartoon from xkcd of course.

Rugby Seahawks

The Taste Spain festival will be taking place in London from the 12th to the 19th of October. I’m looking forward to this and will try to sample a few of the events. Spanish guitar, flamenco dancing, tapas and Spanish food is on offer. Really, who could ask for more?

London Spanish Food