This is well worth taking the time (roughly 18mins) to watch. Dan Pink delivers a highly entertaining presentation on the disconnect between what science knows about motivation and what business does about it.

In essence the old "carrot and stick" works in relatively few situations, mainly where little creativity is required. For more right-brained tasks, counterintuitively, traditional motivation seems to suppress performance.

The 2009 Gartner Hype Cycle was released in July (link here) and it's been popping up all over the web (Read Write Web, We Are Social). Here it is in all its glory (click the image to view it a bit bigger)

I found this video, which takes the viewer through an explanation of the ten possible dimensions, over at the Holy Cow blog, where there are some observations about how thinking about different dimensions / possibilites could be useful for marketers.

However, I'm posting it because it made me think in a way that I haven't done for a while - figuring out something that I've no real previous knowledge of and making the brain do some gym in the process. Must do it more often.

Here's a really cool campaign from Element, a skateboard outfit. Classic example of bringing people together and giving them something to do.

I've recently come across a good analogy that if advertising is like fireworks, then social media is like a bonfire (source: @willsh). The creator has created a slideshare presentation to explain it.

The man responsible for my two favourite quotes of the moment, Henry Jenkins, is the author of a book called Convergence Culture which is a highly recommended read - it'll be appearing in the MBA libarary very shortly.

Here's a video of Henry talking about his beliefs.

Being a bit of a geek, I like to study the caveats and Ts and Cs scrolling across the bottom of TV ads when claims are being made. This is occasionally amusing - look closely next time More Th>n comes on...

But more often than not, the caveats reveal startling weak stats, especially for women's beauty products. This recent ad for Boots No. 7 Extravagant Lashes is a case in point. The screen grab below is taken from around the 18s mark.

Graphical representations of data, when poorly used (usually from too much information), can serious hinder interpretation of what the numbers really mean. But sometimes they can really paint a picture... take this example from The Guardian's website about the recent smashing of the 100m world record. It really shows what a spectacular sprinter Usain Bolt is.

Here's a neat little presentation on Social Media which I found via the iwasateenageshakeandvacjunkie blog (which is well worth a read when you have a moment).