"The power behind the throne"

Whoever the IPA insider was who spoke to John Tylee of Campaign (15 April page 13), a big thank you for crediting me, both as above, and with making presidential agendas happen.

About time I took off that invisibility cloak and stopped promoting members before myself!

Laura Marling at Honeyfest

Wow! Couldn't have been more proud of being a bond holder at community pub The Barge at Honey Street last Saturday.

First time I've seen the Lottery and BBC SOS Village fund in action. Laura Marling's first gig this year. The tracks from her new third album yet to be released sound amazing. Dry the River are definitely one to watch.

What is happiness?

What does it mean to be successful, and happy, in the modern world? This is the question preoccupying Richard Layard, founding member of Action for Happiness which launched yesterday.

It's a new mass movement geared to promoting the notion that it is only by helping others that individuals get happiness; increasing wealth does not make us happy, and more individualistic, competitive societies make many of us positively unhappy. Surprising, coming from the man who also founded the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics.

  Check out Richard's book:
  "Happiness: Lessons from a New Science"
  and sign up at www.actionforhappiness.org

New DG for IPA

The news is out. Paul Bainfair's the man. Current European Head of sales promotion and digital agency Iris, inventors of the 2012 Olympic mascots. Used to be Moray MacLennan's boss at Saatchi and Saatchi.

A good egg by all accounts. We shared a Faces to Watch feature in Campaign as youngsters but that's as far as the relationship currently goes!

Creative Pioneers for the digital future

A big welcome to Nicola Mendelsohn of Karmarama, who took over the reins as IPA President today with a maiden speech at the Savoy galvanising the industry to become creative pioneers for the digital future.

We're forging new partnerships with BBC Academy, PACT, Google and Hyper Island, Facebook; a study tour to Silicon Valley and Hollywood; a third trade mission to China; will help secure us the prize. A stepchange is needed.

Exciting times ahead.

Let's stay in for a Chinese

WARC News are reporting this morning on the improving quality of goods and services from Chinese brands.

It goes on to highlight the pressure being put on 'foreign brands' in China, helped by the country's perceived success in hosting global events such as the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the Shanghai Expo of 2010, encouraging higher-income consumers to "buy China".

I wrote about this in a previous post and thought then: what an interesting reverse development: global events leading to local brand growth, but then local brands becoming the new global brands?

Certainly a challenge for IPA agencies and our trade mission to Beijing in October.

Introducing 'queets'

A new word emerged during the Warc MAP (Monitoring Advertising Performance) conference last week, ably chaired by Nick Higham.

A question sent by Twitter is now called a QUEET!

Like it!

It makes you want to scream!

About time we sorted out this IP stuff.

Check out the sad story of thestolenscream. "When it's art it's cool, but when big companies make big money out of it, I don't like it at all." says Noam Galai.

Good week for Rebecca Black!

She may have the worst music video of all time but she's had over 81 million hits on You Tube!