Nokia: Meet Your City

Wieden+Kennedy explain in their blog:

‘The aim is to create a portrait of London, mapping the city through the connections of its inhabitants rather than by its streets and landmarks. Londoners are encouraged to introduce a friend, via a mobile phone portrait made up of text and images, to the city. Once introduced, the chosen friend then introduces their connection, and so on, creating a chain of portraits’.

What a fab UGC campaign – the chance for people to share their photos and rationale of their choice with the rest of their city. I was heading back from a meeting the other day awaiting an ever-delayed tube (rain apparently caused this) when I was secretly delighted of the wait. It meant I could nosey at the tube poster highlighting a selection of uploads from London with quirky/witty reasons why they were featured. Tapping into a mix of human vanity/creativity has enabled entire cities to take part with their uploaded pic featuring within the online gallery that is http://www.meet-your-city.com/

I heart it ;)

Youf Text

I have quoted my pet hates but I want to add one more. Youf text language.

Surely it takes more effort to work out how to write this and for the recipient to decode then it would writing it correctly? Call me old I don’t care (although I secretly do) but I don’t get it.

When did it all start – I was one of the first people to own what became known as the ‘Nokia brick’ at the ripe age of 14. Fine we didn’t have text back then but how did this manifest? Are we so busy we need to abbreviate everything? Will this snow ball into a new way of talking in 5 years? One thing to note, it’s not going to go away so I have found a solution – a decoder!

Check out http://lingo2word.com/translate.php

Type in either what you want to say in lingo OR the lingo itself and it will translate for you. Bingo!

So:

Yo dude - can't wait to see you, it's been ages and I have so much to tell you

Translates to:

yo dude - cnt w8 2C u, it's bn ages +I av so mch 2 tel u

Still have one final thing to say:

OMG wrt proply

'Cutting edge' agency music

There seems to be an ongoing debate in my office as to what constitutes as 'cutting edge' agency choons.

You see us girlies like nothing better than to sing at the top of our voices and nod aggressively to 'Please Don't Stop the Music' by Rhianna. The men in the office find this inexplicable and this usually ends in tears because we then put it on repeat and refuse to turn it off.

Now is it because the music makes us reenact the type of X factor auditions that make you want to cry with laughter or is it because in the communications industry, we need to be perceived as uber cool?

mmmmmmmmm does this mean the end to MJ and Madge in the office?

Noooooooooooooo 'please don't stop the music' repeat to fade....