painting cities

I recently finished working on a consumer behavior research  in Bucharest, my hometown, and this project enabled me to get to know more of it. I knew it before but now it was even more obvious how beautiful this city could be. And I say COULD because of the unloved, forgotten houses that one can find hidden among the neoRomanian, modern, socialist, eclectic architectural styles that cover Bucharest’s visual scenery. There are dozens of elegant and unique buildings that enchant viewer’s eyes and crave for restoration. Nobody does anything to bring them back to life. Still, Case care plang (tran. ‘Houses that cry’), a non-governmental association, tries to deal with this issue and raise awareness on it.

In the meantime, there are some things moving. The City Hall of Bucharest started a redesigning and thermally restoration project of the socialist blocks which means good looking and more comfortable households at very little or no cost for the inhabitants. Just to give you an idea, this is before and after.

At a bigger scale, there’s the Favela Painting project which is supporting the “creation of striking artworks in unexpected places. It collaborates with local people to use art as a tool to inspire, create beauty, combat prejudice and attract attention.” And I thought, this should be a powerful inspiration for all the cities that need a new face.

The first painting, finished in 2007, was a 150m2 mural depicting a boy flying a kite, by far the most popular pastime in Rio’s favela’s.

A mural painted in VIla Cruzeiro, a slum in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil by Duch painters Jeroen Koolhaas and Dre Urhahn. The artists came up with the idea of painting the cement staircase – installed to prevent landslides by the city government – after painting another mural in the slum. Most slum residents have never been to an art museum and now find themselves living in one.  It has helped bring positive news to community known for the dangerous shootouts of police and drug gangs.(Australfoto/Douglas Engle)

Now they are working on the so called ‘O Morro‘. Instead of painting a part of a slum in Rio de Janeiro they came up with the idea to paint this entire hillside in the center of Rio. When finished, it will be the greatest community driven artwork of our time, visible to all inhabitants, visitors and Google earth. Wonderful work, guys!

the online RealTime

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Today, brands truly have no choice but to go not only online but real-time. In the race of knowing everything NOW, a trend was born and it touched even the funniest and unexpected corners of day to day life. Trendwatching calls this Nowism and it refers to our obsession about currency. Currency IS the new currency.

So, smart brands had to catch the train. Cause if you are not on Facebook or Twitter, you don’t exist! They went so far that Curtis Kimball launched in San Francisco in August 2009 a mobile Crème Brûlée Cart and consumers had to rely on his tweets to find out exactly where he’ll be, and what flavors are on the menu. The Warm Cookie Radar from Specialty’s Cafe & Bakery sends customers email alerts when batches of just-baked cookies have rolled out of the oven. Kogi Korean BBQ sells its Korean/Mexican fusion food primarily through two trucks that are always on the move to new locations in the Los Angeles area. To know where to find them, customers must follow Kogi on Twitter.

With twitter being so popular, Trendsmap, a real-time mapping of Twitter trends across the world was just launched. If you are bored of your friend’s tweets you can always see what the global, collective mass of humanity is discussing right now. This can also develop into an important tool for marketers and trend researchers.

Feeling a little bit out of the story, Google decided to join social networking and solved the equation: Google+Twitter=Google Wave. Google Wave is an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration. A wave can be both a conversation and a document where people can discuss and work together using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps. It is now running in Beta and you can only use it with an invitation, as every Google product.

Enough reading, now go twitting or something!

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the nanostories

Every year Time Magazine designates its Person of the Year.

In 2006 it was YOU!

Did you know you were famous? You are among the millions of anonymous contributors of user-generated content to Wikipedia, YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Second Life etc. You create viral culture. You Twitter personal thoughts, You constantly update your Facebook status, You create word of mouth, You spread stories. The question is what drives you to do it? What keeps you in the game?

To answer some of my questions, I started reading And then there’s this by Bill Wasik, creator of the flash mobs and senior editor of Harper’s Magazine. It can be an efficient tool for marketers and a fun story for others. The author examines the so called nanostories (anecdotes that, though relatively meaningless on their own, are spread widely through the Internet) and talks about how they live and die in viral culture.

Mainly, the book shows how cultural trends are influenced by the Internet. According to Wasik, the Internet doesn’t change culture but it accelerates it. Everything happens so fast that I sometimes get the feeling I should read while sleeping to be updated. Stories burst on Internet and can die in months, days and even a couple of hours. What makes them tip? What do they have to awaken in our heads so we can spread it? This reminded me of Wag the Dog, a great movie and a good old example for how all this is working, how stories are created and spread so they can purposely shadow others.

What viral madness has more than other stories is interaction and the existence of no rule when it comes to viral culture. Bill Wasik’s mob project, started simply because he was bored. And other people joined because they were bored also. Funny, isn’t it? He also talks about this experiment in his latest book. A bit too technical for some, very organized and sleek, And then there’s this can open minds, answer questions and release doubts. I won’t give more details here but I recommend it for a smart reading session.

Speaking of the flash mob phenomena, I feel it is time to update one of my old posts. Talking on how non-efficient flash mobs are in Eastern Europe I can say now Bucharest can do it! If you didn’t see this yet, better later than never!

I am amazed!