Blog archive March 2007

<< February 2007 / April 2007 >>

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29.03.07 / 01 / 'Multicultural Marketing - THE FAITH BASED WAY!'

some things are beyond parody. this email somehow evaded my junk mail filters and dropped into my inbox tonight. i'm grateful, because now i can share it with you. i reproduce it without alteration.

You are invited to the 2nd Annual Faith Based Marketing Summit, April 10 and 11 in Dallas Texas. Here is a taste of what will be presented..

The church has always been considered as the very heart of the African American Community. Now, Hispanic consumers are converting from Catholicism and joining non-traditional churches by the hundreds of thousands each year.

Learn how to effectively and respectively target faith based African-American & Hispanic markets inside and out-side of the church walls.

Secure Corporate Sponsorship from Fortune 500 companies by showing them the value of the multicultural faith-based consumer market.

Learn about current industry trends and initiatives that are changing traditional faith based marketing methods

Transition a current campaign to appeal to different ethnic groups

Utilize different medium channels to effectively promote church, products or services to this audience

Gain valuable insight about how consumers prefer to be accessed and addressed

Learn from the very best!

Veda Brown:

Commonly referred to as Faith Based Viral Video Vixen, Veda has transformed the way the Black Church communicates. In the past five years, Veda's company, Black Gospel Promo, has managed to take the African-American faith based community from the pulpit to the pc. Instead of thumbing through church bulletins for info, people now look forward to Black Gospel Promo’s e-mail blasts. Veda Brown will teach you how to effectively and efficiently market your ministry, book, artist, product or service to the Christian consumer. Brown has worked with everyone from independent and major record labels to Mega-Churches to corporate giants like Kraft and Lions Gate Films.

Melanie Few:

A trailblazer in Urban Faith Based Multicultural & Corporate Marketing, Melanie Few will share with you the latest insights in reaching this valuable target audience. Find out why Melanie's Agency has been named the leading resource faith based corporate marketing resource by Advertising Age and The American Marketing Association.

Check out some insight full case studies and see what the Coca Cola Company, The National Football League, Revlon, General Mills, Motorola, St. Joseph Aspirin, Hallmark Cards, Loreal, Pepsi, Procter & Gamble, Church’s Chicken, Turner Broadcasting Systems, Fox Searchlight and Paramount Films all have in common. They have all turned to Melanie to build their brands with Faith Based Marketing programs.

To learn more and sign up, go to http://christianmusicupdate.com/dbm83/l.php?37750&10595

follow the link for more entertainment...

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26.03.07 / 01 / return to moscow

back from another trip to moscow. photos here.

this time we did the airport run in daylight, so you get to see the concrete jungle that is the moscow 'suburbs'. brutalism in moscow is bigger and more brutal than anywhere else. it's worth looking at the photos in large size to feel the scale and see the lack of build quality.

there were the usual surreal moments:

the property agent showing off the leather interior, sound sytem and acceleration of his new porsche cayenne - we hurtle through central moscow to the sound of sinatra singing 'new york, new york'

bouncing through the neon streets crammed into the back of a 'gypsy cab' - in this case an ancient lada with a weathered armenian driver. the roof is lined with leopardskin wallpaper, spotted with pictures of tiger heads. i tried to take a picture on my phone but there isn't really enough light. my good camera is inaccessible - and i don't want to use flash in the confined space.

we are on the way to the airport, rather late because of the traffic. we'll be there in ten minutes so i have put my camera away. suddenly the traffic stops on both sides of the freeway - it looks like an accident. a couple of guys run by with guns. drivers get out of their cars to look [and smoke]. we curse, expecting to miss our flights. a police car comes along the hard shoulder, misjudges and falls into the ditch. it's at 45 degrees and won't be got out in a hurry. suddenly it's over and the traffic starts moving. what happened, we ask our driver. just gangsters shooting at each other on the road, he says.

the serious side of this trip was exhausting. four consecutive meetings on thursday, all important and difficult. two in a day would be plenty, four is too much. 9.30am to 7.30pm, half an hour for lunch. i have to concentrate hard all through, because everything is being translated and it's important to keep track of who is saying what and how they're saying it [many people are speaking but there's only one translator]. there's far too little to eat and [especially] drink, and add jetlag. i've not yet recovered after a weekend at home.

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21.03.07 / 01 / new religion

...is the new exhibition by damien hirst at wallspace aka all hallows, london wall [the hq of greenbelt and amos trust]. private view photos here. hirst's engagement with christianity is getting deeper, and some of this work is really good. it's hard to believe that the three butterfly paintings are the only works specifically created for the church setting - it all belongs so well that it will be a real pity not to leave the whole lot there permanently. the gunshot 'wounds of christ' crucifix is particularly good [although the idea is not new, vaux were exploring the same imagery circa 2000]. it's good to see it done properly and big - and a reduced version would be great to hang on your wall, or round your neck ;) the exhibition is on until 4th april - see it.

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19.03.07 / 02 / stuff we love comes from cheap bedrooms

a pearl of wisdom from a comment by kevin slavin on the now sadly defunct v-2.org:

There's lots of people moving to Berlin right now, to live in the $350 1-bedrooms. When you go to a dinner party in Berlin, everyone is doing whatever it is they're supposed to be doing, because they only need $700 a month to keep doing it. It's a difficult problem and it's not all simple, but the math certainly is. Stuff we love comes from cheap bedrooms, and Manhattan's been out of those for a while now.

pertinent to london too.

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19.03.07 / 01 / cleaning tips

on a lighter note, while searching for leather cleaning tips i came across a discussion board with these two gems:

A yellow glowstick splatterd all over my pants that are 95% cotton and 5% spandex. How can I get the stain off?

[glowstick, spandex - yes we see...]

My dog is in heat and got blood all over my white down comforter. How can i get the blood out? The blanket is only dry clean.

GROSS!

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18.03.07 / 01 / trashed flat

the week before last, my landlord rang to say that there would be some work to the electrics in my flat. i wasn't prepared for what i found when i got home last monday night. numerous holes had been cut in the walls with a masonry drill, with wires hanging out. the carpet had been pulled up in various places. my possessions were in heaps, all the cables had been pulled out of the computer systems and were in a tangled heap on the floor, and worst of all everything was covered in masonry dust - including electrical devices, bedding, kitchen surfaces and equipment etc.

so i photographed everything, removed my hard drive and laptop to the office [hence last blog entry], and tried to contact the landlord many times on tuesday without success. nothing much happened the next two days, except that the lobby carpet vanished and holes for wiring were cut in the walls.

then i came in on thursday night to find a far worse scene than monday. someone had plastered the holes in the walls - but everything was now covered in plaster dust. the masonry dust was just on things near the holes - the plaster dust was everywhere, even the bathroom. all my possessions were covered. books, paintings, chairs, you name it. like a bomb had gone off nearby. the plasterer had left handprints in various places, smeared the leather recliner, and left drips on the carpet. no attempt had been made to clean up, there was a footprint in the dust in the bathroom. and the kitchen flooring had vanished too.

note where i have drawn my finger through the dirt to reveal the state. of course there is as much on the books behind.

this was new in october.

i was devastated. so i photographed everything again, and called up a friend to see it who had been there the week before this happened, and could vouch for the usual state of the place, if it ever came to court.  i slept in my sleeping bag, as best i could, and took friday off work to pursue the landlord [and legal advice].

to his credit the landlord seemed quite alarmed by what had happened. we met on saturday morning - i wasn't cleaning up until he had seen the place - he was very conciliatory, agreed that it was unacceptable, offered to pay for anything that needed replacing or repair. he offered the services of a professional cleaner, but i prefer to do it myself - i know what's fragile, and i'm sick of other people messing with my possessions. as i write the flat is fairly clean again. only a few minor items are write-offs, unless and until something electrical fails - but there is minor damage to many things - too small to throw the object away, but everything will be a little less new now. one or two things, like the rug, i will take a view on when the works are over.

the building work still needs to be completed this week. this will involve more plaster, paint, wallpaper etc. i have demanded proper protection for my possessions - which should have been used all along. today i will remove various significant or vulnerable items to a friend's house for the duration. i'll roll up the rug and move the furniture out of the way as i would have done if i'd had more detail about the works at the start. i hope this week is better than the last. i will be in moscow wednesday to friday, i need to get back to finished works and no more damage or dirt.

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14.03.07 / 01 / 25 years

am having lunch in the art gallery cafe across the road from the office. it has free wifi [there's one or two places round here, it's finally landed in london] so i was looking at the howies blog. and the background music is playing ABC 'all of my heart' from 1982. and i think: none of this was invented then. this machine. the web. the internet, barely. this kind of cafe.

the phone i took this on, or the kind of camera it is.

i was a student then. how did we fill our time? our bags? our desks?

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13.03.07 / 01 / wot no banksy?

this is hilarious...

A large wall mural by "guerrilla  artist" Banksy has been mistakenly painted over by a council's graffiti-removal contractors.
[...]
Gary Hopkins, of Bristol City Council, said [...] "We would have to take action against the contractor because the city council has not given instruction for the removal of any Banksy work - we are aware that it's actually quite valuable so we have specific instructions not to remove any murals by Banksy,"

so removing graffiti is now an offence, when the work in question is by banksy. the world turned upside down.

presumably this means that in bristol at least, he can now paint anything anywhere.

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05.03.07 / 01 / hot fuzz

sometimes a movie comes along that tickles everyone's fancy. went to see hot fuzz on saturday with three of the grace crew - we found it highly amusing. big-city-cop-in-small-town movies usually have the big city cop learning the wisdom of small town values - but in this case there is no wisdom. small town values get trashed. big city cop's brains and guns rule.

west country small town middle england is where i grew up [and i know the town of Wells, where it was filmed, from my student days], so it was fun to see it taken apart. in some senses it's a very london movie - i wonder about its effect on the ego and behaviour of the metropolitan police - shades of the sweeney where life imitated art imitating life.

like any buddy movie this is a love affair between two men, and the film flirts knowingly with the subtext. the scene where our heroes make friends is played as a conventional seduction - "why not come in for coffee?" etc - but the climax is not sex but watching dvds - specifically 'point break' and 'bad boys 2' which will be referenced throughout the rest of the movie, along with spaghetti westerns, star wars, romeo and juliet, the matrix and many many others. one wonders what happens when a film this referential gets referred to itself - as it surely will.

hot fuzz is a perfect saturday night movie - one that needs seeing more than once. i foresee great success on dvd where the gags and gunfights can be pored over. ironically it will probably end up in every small town cop's collection alongside point break and bad boys 2...