No big “come and get yours” sign, but subtle self discovery. I was the first person to arrive and it took me a few seconds to twig why so many names were on the bookshelf.

To give the public what they didn’t know they wanted

This post by Seth Godin today summarises this point terrifically, where he explains the magical, intangible elements  that make for great marketing, and how easy it is to kill them. Referring to a great little restaurant, he says:

…it’s the hand-fitted gestalt of thousands of little decisions made by caring management out to make a difference. Usually, when a business like this gets bigger or turns into a chain, marketers make what feel like smart compromises. The MBAs collide with the mystical, and the place gets boring. “Why do we need 14 free salsas when we can get away with six?”

So it was with delight that I got this message from Amazon when starting the Returns process. That’s customer service good enough for me to tell everyone in ear-shot in the office.

This video was created as an official response to the Newsweek article calling Grand Rapids a “dying city.” We disagreed strongly, and wanted to create a video that encompasses the passion and energy we all feel is growing exponentially, in this great city.

It’s fantastic publicity for the tracking software used, Hidden. Had this been a deliberate PR stunt, it would have been genius.

In late 2005 as those much loved icons of London had been decommissioned en masse, I’d dreamily floated the idea of turning one into a roaming studio. And yet, I was in unchartered waters when my boss said, “well, sort one out then”.

So it was on a rain-splattered day in December 2005 that I found myself handing over £8,000 and collecting RML 2573 from some Godforsaken windswept depot in South London. Showbiz indeed.

Here you can see the transformation in a series of rather shoddy shots, culminating in an appearance of the breakfast show team at Gray’s School in June 2006

Bonus detail for bus fans – the renovation was by Southeast Coachworks

reissued by Grove Press after being out of print for 45 years

Via BoingBoing

Be sure to choose your childhood postcode.

link via the next web

• Use of story
  Appreciation of stories is hard-wired into our beings, and this is a good yarn with arcs, conflict, ambition and resolution. We’re being fed a brand story, but in such an engaging way that we accept it.
• Breaking media format
  They’ve made an ad that is six and a half minutes long. Up until recently, such a length would have been laughably prohibitive, and indeed the days of 60 or even 90 second spectaculars seemed to be on the wane. But of course nowadays, good content spreads on digital channels where media cost is free and not constrained by programming breaks or convention.

thanks to the excellent Word magazine for the spot

Planet of the Apps is a great name for a conference. Getting noticed always matters

If they didn’t, then credit is still due to them as a testamant to the power of their campaign idea

I wrote last year about how staying likeable would help lessen worries about Google’s size and influence. After a year of fairly flat launches (Wave, Buzz), it’s good to see they’ve got their playfulness back (and some cool products too).

Meanwhile, facebook is the new 200lb gorilla that could do with a refresher in the importance of likeability. The current concerns about privacy seems to be getting real traction.