If you’ve followed us closely at all in the past, you’ll know that we have a serious issue with how wines are rated by the Wine Enthusiast, and all the snobbery and politics involved in getting a wine rated by a “respected” connoisseur.  SuppleWine has a “value grade” they use to give wine grades, which ranks wine on a similar letter grade scale as is used in school.. E.g. A+ is excellent, F means drink a beer instead.

I’ve been on an XKCD kick lately, so the geek in me loved this recent comic.

Courtesy of SuppleWine.com

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There can be no doubt that we are seeing a transition at the moment – and I’m not talking about from capitalism to socialism, but rather something less tangible and equally pervasive. This change, I think, is from an age of objects into an age of ideas. Be it an iPod, a Blackberry or an iPhone, we as a society have come to depend on our objects, but the trend toward ‘one box solutions’ and centralising our PDAs, mobile phones, e-mail and music devices shows a longing to free ourselves of the objects, devices, countless power cables and the increasingly cluttered assortment of gadgetry churned out over the years. The inevitable movement towards cloud computing shows the urge of our society to become less dependent on material objects in favour of something more powerful and less immediately tangible. It is in this very transition from physical to ideological that we can see the beginnings of a permanent change.

The definition of an idea most relevant here is: a process of cognition fed by information that leads to a conclusion, which goes on to influences either our opinion or a course of action. We hold ideas above all else. The next time you look at a £10 note you will see the Queen of England, a living monarch on one side and on the other is Darwin, long since deceased and yet still going on to influence the world and appear on currency from beyond the grave. This is the ultimate testament to the power of ideas: where genius and ideology trump royalty. But before we categorise our current time as one defined by ideas – perhaps we need to step back once and look at the raw material behind ideas: information. More than ever in our history, as a society we deal with information, statistics and data on a daily basis. One has to only look at how Wikipedia expands, as it is constantly changed, added to, subtracted from and altered – to see a living, organic, expanding model of information. What is notable about our current time is the simultaneous multiplicity of ideas – and the fuel behind this all is information.

In Digital media we have first-mover advantage in dealing with an age of information, and are all lucky to have begun to work in creative ways in trying to understand and interpret the enormous amount of data that we receive. We have also realised that our biggest challenge doesn’t only lie in increased complexity, but also in the sheer quantity of information we have access to. For anyone who has tried to condense an ad-segmentation report into a single conclusion, or looked at trying to de-duplicate display impressions from SEM clicks will know – we face the challenges set out by an age of information on a daily basis, with the majority of our time being spent re-purposing data in order to make actionable business decisions. As marketers, we know that we cannot simply segment our market in terms of the objects they choose, leaders they follow or ideas they embrace, as these monochromatic measures are outdated. If you really want to understand today’s consumer, you must first look at the information they have access to and the way they use and interact with it.

No doubt this leaves us in a world of complexity. However if there is one thing we know about the world it’s that things rarely, if ever, get less complex. A perfect example of this is IP.6. At current most IP addresses are IP.4 – and we’re beginning to run out. When the infrastructure of the internet was first laid out it was inconceivable that we would need more than 10 addresses each – but we have pushed the boundaries by assigning IP’s to our iPhones, laptops, home computers, work computers, Xbox 360s and PSPs – and such has been the uptake and rate of adoption that we’ve needed to move to IP.6 – which basically allows every single human being to have as many internet addresses as there are currently internet addresses.

A saying we have adopted at Unique Digital is ‘the future is already here, it just hasn’t been distributed evenly’ and for a glimpse at what IP.6 and the future may look like, we only have to look at cows in Japan, which are amongst the first users of IP.6. which may not be as obscure as it sounds, because if you think about it, as digital marketers one of the first things we do in the morning is get a snapshot of the previous day’ activities. All of our future plans are based on trends of what has happened before. Much as we might look at click-paths or the previous days’ conversions, Japanese farmers are able to access information about their livestock remotely at any time of day. They are able to study the impact of weather, grazing patterns and land usage – and cross-tabulate such information to deduce whether they need more land or more livestock for the following year.

Already this may challenge our current assumptions – if search engines organise the world’s information… in a world of IP.6 will also organise livestock? Suddenly Eric Schmidt’s claim from last year that Google’s next focus will be the energy sector seems far less outlandish. We will all begin to get our first taste of IP.6 this year when it comes standard in electrical appliances – and we will find that our new kettles, toasters, microwaves and fridges will come equipped with their own data feed into the world wide web. Does this mean then that search engines and the algorithms that power them will not only give access to information on click through rates and agriculture… but energy grids and energy efficiency too?

What age are we in? As marketers with unprecedented access to an ever increasing amount of information, we are in constant search of answers most of our working day. In a discussion over lunch, James, our associate MD reminded me of the part in Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy book Life, the Universe and Everything, where we come across a group of scientists who are obsessed with looking for ‘The Great Answer of Life.’ The quest for this answer has consumed them to point of not being able to contemplate anything else. However, after years of searching they are mortified to find that the answer is 42. 42! What they realise is that in their obsessions with finding the answer, they had forgotten the actual question. And though answers are useful, without an accompanying question they are quite useless. I think therein lies an important lesson for marketers within the age of information… if we want answers, we first need to take a step back – and understand the questions.

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By and large this is a question that does not usually elicit an interesting response. However in the world of news-reporting – digital media often covers the essential how, who, when and where questions of journalism, because our communication mediums are increasingly location aware, user-specific and time stamped. What is a question that requires actual human input – and in the past 3 years people have been answering it in terms of Facebook status updates, and for the early adopters – by joining the twitterverse.

Yesterday, however, the answer to that burning question reached critical mass and took on historic significance. Whilst some protested and others wondered about what was going on outside their office walls, multi-tasking employees were able to get on with their work whilst receiving a blow by blow account of history unfolding. It has been overstated to the point of cliché that the medium is the message – but yesterday the message made a medium and Twitter found its place in the global setting. Beyond the news-helicopters, simple tweets turned digital enthusiasts into citizen journalists and for once, a multitude of opinions on the same subject were heard. Suddenly all the hype made sense – some of us had tweeted previously to moderate effect, but for most of us not concerned about letting the world into our daily happenings, Twitter just left us scratching our heads.

The power of Twitter is its ability to allow multiple voices to communicate disparate opinions in unison. Of course, its fantastic to be in the loop of the wonderful world of Stephen Fry via twitter – but what we saw yesterday was not celebrity admiration, but rather the changing documentation of history, where instead of being written by the victors, we captured a glimpse through the eyes of the observer – raw, unfiltered and uncesorable. We have seen dictatorships stifle freedom of expression in blogs and websites – but the immediacy of Twitter gives the voice on the individual more resonance than before.

Of course history in the making needn’t be people tweeting from Hurricane Katrina or Tiananmen Square – we all have histories, cultural histories and personal histories. A father tweeting the anxiety of being in the waiting room whilst his child his being born, a techy tweeting the anticipation at a tech-conference whilst waiting for Steve Jobs to unleash Apple’s new toy, or a Machester United fan tweeting from the stands during half-time with the score at 1-1. Every generation alters the way it communicates, and it seems that those alterations are happening more frequently. In 6 years we have gone from long-form e-mail, to group e-mails, to text message, on to Facebook and finally: Twitter.

Of course Twitter has its critics, and there are those who see it as a distraction and a detraction from complete discourse. But so often when our collective brains are abuzz with thought, instead of thinking in full sentences or having complete thoughts, our minds are aflutter with neural tweets.

Could Twitter be the closest we have come to reflecting how our society collectively thinks, sees and experiences the world?

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For those of you out there who are Search Engine marketers, you may have been having some frustrations lately with the google search engine wiki.   Typically, I keep several browsers running at once so I can be logged in to multiple google accounts (personal, business, client, adwords, analytics, etc..etc..).. so having to log out to see natural results has been quite frustrating.

What I have found really frustrating is that every once in a while, a stray mouse click has a detrimental effect on the virgin google results that I am looking at by clicking on one of the google search wiki buttons, and “BAM” a result disappears to the bottom of the page.  This gets especially frustrating when I’m looking through the SERPS and I am not sure if the results I am looking at reflect those of the general population… or our clients.  While I’m excited to see google search wiki, and I expect that at some point it will effect google search rankings, the inability to disable it seems appalling for usability.

In a desperate search for an answer it was found that adding “&hl=all” (without the quotes) to the end of the URL of your google search will disable the search wiki during your browser session.  This means that if you close your browser and open it again, the custom google search engine wiki tool returns.

A pain in the ass to do this evertime you want to turn it off.. yes
Confusing as to why google doesn’t have a link to let you do this.. yes
A possibility this may do something in addition to turning off the wiki.. yes
A way to turn it back on without closing your browser… yes …”&hl=0″

I hope you find this helpful.  If you have any idea as to what other google options this may have an affect on, please let me know.

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I ended up using a couple of different services to try to manage our grocery grocery shopping lists, especially since prices are really varied and we have to shop at Whole Foods, Weaver Street Market, and Trader Joes, depending upon which items we want to get…  FYI Trader Joes has the best prices on Raw Organic Crunchy Almond Butter ($5 vs. everyone elses $11).   I wasn’t happy with the functionality in many of the services, but found that List2Shop was a pretty good service, as they allow you to organize your shopping lists by the store that you want to shop.

You can easily create a shopping list and print without signing up, but if you create an account, you can save your lists, and if you have an iPhone, login to your account and view the list while you are in the store.  What type of shopping list services do you use, and why do you think it would be better than List2Shop?

1. We would be keeping the bears happy…  I mean seriously.. look at this fellow.  He’s enjoying a little splash in the water without a care in the world.   If we don’t make an effort to save the environment, this is going to be a grumpy bear without any place to go other than your back yard.
2. Prevent extinction – I’m constantly reading about how animals are going extinct.  This isn’t animal gone from the zoo, this is animal species GONE FOREVER!!   If you do a search at iucnredlist.org, you will see that in 2008, they listed 590 species as critically endangered, many with population trends continuing to decrease, and 8 species that were no longer in existance in the wild.  This article about the Monk Seal Extinction discusses the proof that humans are the cause of many of these extinctions.
3. Keep the planet from melting - The proof keeps stacking up that the planet is warming.  Regardless of whether this is part of a natural cycle or not, the truth is that it is most definitely happening, and that we do contribute in some part.  If we all take some action to reduce our carbon footprint, and it makes the smallest difference.. won’t that mean something?
4. Save the Rainforest – Deforestation is a huge problem.. Apparently, such a large percentage of the world is in need of food, that we continue to bulldoze the Rainforest to make cow pastures and corn fields… apparently noone pays attention to the fact that we grow all of this corn… TO FEED THE COWS.. maybe we should all just eat corn?   I found this pic which also explains it well..
5. Make Al Gore happy – Just look at this guy..  do you want his face to get stuck like that?   Well, then do something about it.  The only way he’s going to be happy is if he knows everyone is trying to do something to help our environment.

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Our New Years Resolution:

1) Promote a lifestyle of nature and technology that enhances happiness and connects people with their environment and community.

2) Build a balanced global group of grapethinkers to share ideas and discuss global issues and events, while sipping a little vino for inspiration.

3) Continue to bring in clients that we can offer valuable services to, including marketing, technology development, and business development.

4) Develop our first product, a global wine brand

5) Think positive, stay focused, spread love

Happy New Year!

From all the Grapethinkers

Jake, Ruarri, Meghan, Tayloe, Brad, Rich & Greg

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Beacons of Hope

In 1994, when Nelson Mandela was elected president of my country, I remember an age of jubilation that was infused into children, adults and people from overseas alike. Backpackers would come to our country with Mandela t-shirts, and when we traveled abroad and told people we were South African we were somehow associated with a little bit of that Mandela magic and people were that little bit more welcoming. With Mandela in power, the dominant feeling was that no matter what happened – things were going to be okay.

In the past 8 years that formative optimism of the Mandela years had left me, and I found myself in the midst of a new generation of cynicism kicked off by the Clinton impeachment, followed by the stealing of the election in Gore v. Bush, and the subsequent anomalies of extraordinary rendition, water-boarding and the abomination that is Sarah Palin. When Gore released his movie, Inconvenient Truth, only then did the world realise what could have been – if only America had fought a little harder in 2000.

When I woke up on Wednesday the 6^th of November, after 18 months of watching this election, I realised the enormity of what has happened. As I showered a feeling of relief washed over me and I knew that the page has been turned.

Last night, drinking wine at a friend’s birthday party, by the end of the bottle and toward the end of the night, there was no more lamenting about the future of America and the ultimate waning power of the Western World. All the negativity and anxiety had been replaced by a palpable optimism. Progress will no longer be hindered by right-wing radicals who oppose any form of scientific advance or hope to pull society backwards – instead anything is possible. America has done the impossible and lived up to its name of the land of opportunity for the first time in many years.

From now until Obama is elected Americans have a reason to celebrate and raise their glasses in a toast to the future with their heads held high. I cannot describe the feeling of knowing that the Bush years are over. We no longer need to drink wine to forget what has happened… but can rather drink and toast to the future. Cheerz!

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We’ve been following the organic movement across the world, as consumers begin to understand the level of toxins, chemicals, pesticieds, preservatives, etc.. that are injected, grown, sprayed, or bred into the things we eat and drink.  In an effort to encourage  you to more closely scrutinize those items that you put in your body, we present “The Mouth Revolution” by Free Range Studios.. the same group that brought us, “The Story of Stuff”

Mouth Revolution hones in on the fact that we need to be more considerate of what we put into our bodies, and need to promote a culture of health within our communities.  By being more conscious of those items that are harmful.. The “Mouthifesto” or “Declaration of Indegestion” is a great starting point for understanding those items you should always avoid.  

In all of its humor, we really respect the team at Free Range Studios for their creative efforts in raising awareness about these major issues that we must all face in order to better our race.  We share a similar passion for connective todays fast paced lifestyles with an understanding of our responsibilities to the planet.  

In case you missed it last time, you can read our post on “The Story of Stuff” here.

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