March 2008

Here’s a quick round-up of some articles that I’ve found interesting over the weekend -

also on the same topic:

And while still in a “mashup” mood there’s this:

Here’s a little interactive map I found recently that’s pretty cool from the interactive section of Portfolio Magazine. It’s a fast-loading flash piece that features roll-over prison locations that house some of the recently incarcerated CEOs of notoriety. It’s almost like the white-collar dirty C.E.O. version of VH1’s Where Are They Now? series.

For instance, here’s what you get when you roll-over the icon for the Federal Correctional Institute in Texarkana - low and behold, Michael Kopper, our old buddy who used to be a high-level exec at Enron in the Global Finance Division. Poor guy, his sentence is for 3 years and 1 month, and that’s after he was the FIRST to rat out his co-workers! Good luck with the soap Mike!

In related content, if you yourself happen to be on the failing end of a large lawsuit and think you might be facing some time in ‘the slammer,’ I’ve dug up some articles (and selected a few items from each) that may be of help to you in preparing your Armani-suit-wearing-self for that eventual exchange to wearing nothing but the brightest of orange jumpsuits. So read-up, and don’t forget - they always say to beat-up/shiv someone random on the first day to prove you’re tough, otherwise you may just find yourself developing a newly found fear of taking a shower!

The C.E.O. Survival Guide: Pre-Prison Prep:

Don’t Get Sick
• Prison medical staffs may not be up to the standard you have come to expect, so seek as much preventive care as possible before you head in. See your doctor for a thorough physical, including tests for TB, hepatitis B and C, and H.I.V. And get your heart checked.
• Have as much dental work done as you can: Get new crowns and fillings; have your dentures reworked. In prison, the wait to see a dentist can be two to five months, and prison dentists tend to extract at every opportunity.
• No contact lenses are allowed, so buy a heavy, tough pair of frames. Make sure you have plastic lenses, as fellow inmates may want to steal glass ones to craft weapons.

From SnarkySpot - A Word Of Advice:

Avoid anyone offering to “take you under their wing” or help you out. Generally, they are booty bandits, or Jailhouse pimps running a well thought out and practiced game against you.

The Ultimate Prison Survival Guide - No really, this is a legit guide… everything has been half-serious until I came across this one. If you are dumb enough to be going to prison, i’d memorize this before your first day. It gives you useful tips like:

Never stare at another prisoner for more than a second or two. He may be a walking powder keg, set off by an intrusive stare. He may either assault you on the spot or wait until darkness. Even if he doesn’t kill you outright, your face will never look the same again.

and another gem:

NEVER involve yourslef with punks. Do not have sex with punks, do not associate with those who have sex with punks, etc. Many an inmate has been killed by a jealous boyfriend. This may not seem like the shiny happy egalitarian thing to do, but believe me, neither is dying.

Mike - I hope they have some sort of computer class in Texarkana and you can get online to read these guides…. i know it’s a little late by now, but who knows, that last tip might come in handy, especially after they ran all those articles on your sexual orientation…. perhaps that might explain why you were so eager to give up names? Best of luck to ya.

To everyone else, go take a look at the interactive map, it’s pretty neat how they presented the information and I’m sure that you’ll recognize most of the people featured on there.

This is a lesson to all the recent start-ups who are finding themselves with ridiculous amounts of newly found investment capital - You can only cook the books for so long before you end up with a fire……..that and hire an honest accountant.

Here’s another addition to the Johnnie Walker - Keep Walking campaign (which has been successfully running since 1999), just this time I’ve got the directors cut. Not much to say about it, concept isn’t anything new - at first I even thought it was going to be a direct copy of the recent Jeep - Heritage ads that have been airing, however the lack of product shots throughout the timeline montage proved otherwise. I don’t know about you, but I’ve always been a fan of ‘most’ of the “Keep Walking” campaign, although with this one I’m on the fence.

Harish B. from blog Marketing Practice has written an interesting piece on the effects of the Keep Walking campaign on liquor sales in India; and there’s a another great write-up from Mike over at theFoodMonkey.com about his experience at an event thrown by them promoting the campaign… apparently they don’t mind throwing expensive parties.

This piece was directed by Rob Sanders from Backyard, Venice (With Eric Treml as DP, Kris Mathur as EP, and Anton Maillie producing). It was edited by Steve Gandolfi from Cut + Run with Péter Szilágyi as the SFX manager (Eszter Répássy was the Budapest Producer). The agency used was BBH, London with John Hegarty as ECD, John Foster as creative director, Nick Klinker & Kevin Doyle as AD/CW, and of course we can’t leave out the agency producer who was Katherine Cheng.