Author Archives: Ana

The ultimate Bro app that all the bros around the world will be grateful for

If you consider yourself a Bro, then you definitely need this app. It automatically texts your girlfriend at periodic intervals while you are hanging around the keg and watching that ball game. Get yours here.

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We could have totally predicted the Normcore coming

Amid all the cries for “authenticity,” “uniqueness,” “difference” the real cool comes under the trend Normcore. It adheres to the principles of blending in vs. standing out, melting into the crowd instead of attracting attention, and being just like everyone else.

It is an expected and, honestly, quite welcome backlash to the crazy advertising machine telling us we are unique, just like everybody else. Credits go to K-Hole for coining the term that captures a general attitude of “the self-aware, stylized blandness. It’s an attitude embracing sameness deliberately as a new way of being cool, rather than striving for “difference” or “authenticity.” In fashion, though, this manifests itself in ardently ordinary clothes. Mall clothes. Blank clothes. The kind of dad-brand non-style you might have once associated with Jerry Seinfeld, but transposed on a Cooper Union student with William Gibson glasses.”

Gotta go buy my Uniqlo hoodie now. In gray, of course.

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Scough is the answer to your prayers, you public transport-taking humans

For everyone who lives in New York and rides the subway, this is a godsent idea. But first: how many times you turned your head in disgust trying to remain civil and at the same time cursing the person next to you on a crowded car who didn’t cover their mouth when coughing? Well, yes.

Enter the Sough. It’s a nice-looking scarf (forget those surgical masks) with a hidden filter that purifies the air we are breathing, on the subway and off. It fends the germs away, and when placed directly over the mouth, allows its wearer to breathe in the bacteria-free air (or nearly.)

Get yours here!

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Oscar’s night with Twitter in tow

According to Nielsen, the average age of Oscar’s viewer is 51. That’s kinda AARP audience, so it’s not surprising that it doesn’t attract the flurry of brand activity that, say, Super Bowl or Grammy’s do. Still, for those who are watching, Twitter is the primary companion of this evening’s festivities. Knowing that, Twitter partnered with Poptip, a social surveys company and E! Online, to create a card tracking the popularity of Oscar nominees.

Those who follow E! Online on Twitter can vote in real time for the nominees, and Poptip notes the results. Expect a lot of good data coming out of it, even if your favorites aren’t chosen.

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“Just Add Value,” my advice to planners everywhere

I was lucky enough to be interviewed at Julian Cole’s Planning Salon, where I talked about the role of planners in the new advertising ecosystem where digital-first brands, startups and traditional brands all vie for customers and profit. See more details here.

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Did you know that your selfie reveals your bra size? And did you know there’s a business in this?

ThirdLove (the name is a bit of a stretch, but let’s disregard that for now) is an app that allows women to easily find bras that fit them, completely remotely.

The technology seems to work, and this being the case, the whole thing sounds pretty revolutionary. Virtual fitting can push e-Commerce on a completely new level. Described as “quick and impressively accurate,” the app uses advanced image recognition technology employing computer vision and image recognition algorithms to size up women’s body shape and size in relation to the selfies on her smarphone. It’s the ultimate personalized shopping experience, literally in the hands of consumers. Best part is, the ThirdLove doesn’t only recommend the best bras, it actually makes them so they fit each individual customer perfectly.

I can’t wait for this technology to expand in all categories of retailing, from dresses to jeans and shoes. Great stuff.

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Real-time Vines become Pepsi Max ads

I’ve been waiting for a brand to execute something like this for, like, forever. The mix of social content, short video formats, real-time feeds and interactive outdoors spaces make for a compelling social-interactive-brand campaigns. Perfect.

As part of its wider “Live for Now” campaign, Pepsi has done exactly the above. The soft drinks brand asked users to submit their “unbelievable” Vine videos for a chance to be featured on one of the company’s many outdoor billboards across the seven cities in the UK. Hashtag is #livefornow, if you think you have something unbelievable to share

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Staring at fish makes me happy

Staring at the aquarium can be so relaxing … fish are so clam, and they float, and everything is green and bubbly. To bring this feeling of calm closer to the busy people at work, Mindworks Innovation Lab created an app called Aquard.io. It’s a virtual aquarium (and the graphics are extremely pretty) filled with real fish. While the app doesn’t have the calming sound of water filter, it does provide a regular time-out for office workers as the timer at the bottom of the screen displays countdown of when the food is due next.

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Who stole my ads?!?

I love both this idea and somewhat unexpected consequences of its execution. In her art project, Paris artist replaced all the outdoor advertising from selected Parisian streets with the work of classical art. Often, we are all too acutely aware of the environmental “noise” that billboards screaming at us create: “buy this to be beautiful!”, “buy this to be successful!”, “buy this to be rich!” It turns out that classical art pieces  have the exactly opposite effect: they are calming, beautiful, and make the city dwelling experience more elevated. Something for advertisers to think about.

We’ve seen something similar already happening last year in the UK where 22,000 of billboards were overtaken by artworks as part of the “Art Everywhere” project.

The only downside of the ideas like this is that passer-bys are to habituated to screaming commercial images that they stopped to react to the art ones as well.

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Steve Jobs to appear on the USPS stamp

The rumor is that collectible stamps with Steve Jobs face are scheduled for 2015. This is pretty neat news but there’s more to it, as Anil Dash put it: “It’s great that they’re putting Steve Jobs on a postage stamp. Next they should honor him by putting his face on a CD player & a Blackberry.” True.

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