Blessed be UK consumers; when it comes to saving a bob on insurance we are spoiled for choice. There’s excruciating hand-drawn crazy man (Confused.com), bewildering Meerkats (CompareTheMarket.com), a grindingly-ubiquitous tenor (GoCompare.com) and, depressingly, middle class boring (MoneySupermarket.com and Tescocompare.com). That’s hardly the full list, but it’s enough.

The credit crunch ensured push did come to shove, brands had to go for broke to stave off competition and consolidation. CompareTheMarket.com, for example, needed a game changer against the leader GoCompare.com and found salvation in the form of an endearingly-preposterous Aleksandr, earning a fistful of ‘Campaign of the Year’ gongs.

The game was well and truly on.

The Next Challenge
The market will never get less competitive, but the strategic objectives will need to evolve.

The players have spent millions both surviving and positioning themselves for the next phase of the game, a period likely to be defined by how each tackles their definitive commerical challenge – growth.

After all, there are only so many times one can save £600 on their insurance purchase; online comparison web sites are the epitome of the law of diminishing returns.

It is around this objective each will compete, but other challenges will also feature in the year ahead.

• Mature, but commoditised approach. Like it or not, insurance products are becoming more and more commoditised. To date, price alone has been a driving factor; for the reasons stated above, price differention on its own may not be enough for consumers to decide between competing products. We will need a quality vector too, a challenge which remains elusive because of confusing (and even cyncial) offerings in the market.
• Experience-led differentiation. With message-led advertising crowing about site usability, Confused.com has already signaled the shift away from pure-price differentation, although it still remains the headline message in their adverts. This seems the likely next battleground, as well as delivering comparison technology on mobile devices.
• The 800-pound gorillas. Without doubt, the spectre of hyper-competition looms large over the industry with serious heavyweights Tesco and Google poised to make a move. Tesco has already started in car insurance and Google is testing the waters. Deep pockets alone make them potentially formidible challengers.

You may find it irritating, but it’s likely the media agencies for each brand will wring every last dime out of the existing creative execution and make it through the World Cup and summer without heavy investment.

We’re clearly reaching the end of the natural lifecycle of some undeniably effective advertising, spots which genuinely defined an era for the industry. Who knows what may come next? Maybe one day you’ll recall fondly the days of adorable meerkats and obnoxious opera singers. Maybe.

This post was written in conjunction with cross-posting at insurance industry buckaneers Insiders View.

We are doomed to this unyielding night until Baby Boomers are no more.

It is the only explanation that makes sense: Baby Boomers, the largest living crop of humans around, must be suffering a subconscious trauma, an abstract pain of dangerous proportions. It’s for this reason our society seems in a perpetual funk, unable to escape the brooding and malevolent cloud lingering above us all.

I’m sympathetic, for sure; indeed, were I to suffer such so much repeated disappointment as this generation, I’d be feeling blue too.

After all, it was this generation which was sold the promise of the space age; children in the 1950s and 60s marvelled at wondrous technology newly-minted marketing professionals promised would not only fire an era of interstellar exploration, but also eliminate inequality, racism, hunger and want.

It seemed so plausible.

We Can Put a Man on the Moon …

Sadly, much of this promise evaporated; where’s my jet pack? these same Boomers now ask. It’s not just fantastic flying machines that have yet to materialise.

For the politically radical of both sides, the lack of achievement is all the more acute.  For the Left, utopia has not come; the gains in women’s, minority and gay rights have been bought in blood. Who can and can’t love each other remains, even in 2010, under the purview of our legislators.

For conservatives, their own gains from Reagan, and then Bush, have yet to bring the Rapture, although I suspect the Right has come frighteningly closest of the two sides to its promised land.

For the rest of us, locked in interminable political fratricide drowned by dogma, there’s little idealism left to cling.

Baby Boomers can’t help but feel this incongruity, a cognitive dissonance resulting in an intangible malaise they can’t quite quantify.  In short: they are bringing us, collectively, down.

It’s the only explanation.

It’s the End of the World As We Know It

Despite it all I’m perfectly excited about the future. I reckon I’m bullish because the magical technological gains I’ve seen in my lifetime were pleasant – sometimes unexpected – surprises, like some never-ending Christmas morning, with each new gee-whiz revelation more delightful than the next.

Yet the internet, DNA sequencing and the rapid advancements in biomedicine have not been advancements by right, as promised to previous generations, but a privilege to witness and enjoy.  I have no jet pack to miss.

Of course Baby Boomers need not die in order to change things; but it will take a massive collective effort to turn around a lifetime of disappointment, to once again see the world anew, without expectation and free from the bitterness of so many broken promises.

Maybe we can help? To all the Baby Boomers in your life, it’s time to give them a reassuring hug:

There’s no jet packs. We’ve no colonies on the moon or Mars. The age of plastic consumption you modelled to the world has imperilled us all.

But you burned bright and hot, lighting the way for successive generations to follow, with your free love, activism and Woodstock. Thank you.

Now get over yourselves. Get out there. And get happy!

It’s a brave new world.

Far be it for me to advise you to otherwise follow your instinct and be either disappointed, subdued or even downright antagonistic towards the Apple iPad.

It’s inevitable such hype surrounding the launch of a physical piece of kit will inspire these emotions and more. Yet when the dust settles, after all the bloggers and pundits have their say, the ultimate verdict will be inevitable: the iPad is yet another inspired offering from Apple.

Mr. Jobs – no dummy when it comes to product development – got the obvious out the way immediately during his January launch presentation: there is a gaping hole between the fixed, large investment hardware of a desktop or laptop computer and the nimble, pocket-sized mobile phone.

That the iPad sits somewhere in between both of these traditional, clearly-defined sets of hardware is self-evident and, for all Mr. Jobs’s gloss, there is a tension between the two which any device attempting to bridge the divide will unquestioningly inherit.

The Purpose

The answer to the question about the purpose of the iPad is both the most obvious and least relevant. It’s a computer.

There are much larger forces at work with the arrival of the iPad which make perfect sense when seen in the context of the other products Apple have launched the past five years. In many ways, the iPad is the culmination of a decade of strategic shift.

I owned a Blackberry Pearl, which I loved. It was sleek, feature-rich and efficient. Yet there isn’t an amount of money you could pay me to take it back over my iPhone.

This is the implicit understanding of any iPhone owner; it is not a perfect device, but compared with that which preceded it, the world unlocked by the shining iPhone is indisputably better; any regression is inconceivable.

Ultimately, Apple’s endeavour is clear: the iPad is the next step in its impressive quest to redefine the entire ecosystem of consumer hardware.

This is: our personal communication and mobile network access device, in the iPhone; the fixed workstation, in its established Macintosh product line; and, crucially, the device to for all our other needs, the small, filler, pottering-about-the-house tasks which demand a versatile tool to fit precisely the job at hand.

Could an existing device fit the third space? Of course: the iPhone would quite easily display recipes in the kitchen, and the laptop has been a staple on the sofa for some time.

Appliance Computing

But Apple is steering us through the next stage in our evolution as media consumers and producers. Today our needs are sophisticated enough to demand a mixture of devices.

We will look back on this period as the time when we, kicking and screaming, vaulted from simple, two-dimensional computing experiences – defined largely for a single screen – to a multi-dimensional experience across an entire suite of products. In other words, we are moving into the era of appliance computing.

In the same way we happily make space for two electrical agents in our kitchens, an oven and a toaster, equally capable of heating bread, we’ll have an iBook and an iPad. We’ll use one for work and the other to look up Callum Keith Rennie in IMDB while we’re slouched on the sofa whilst watching telly.

Apple paved the way for this reality by sneaking a second computer into your life without you even realising it. The iPhone is really just a small PC that happens to make (dubious-quality) phone calls. See? You’re already down the slippery slope of grotesquely excessive hardware ownership.

So protest all you like. But you will get an iPad.

I’m not new to this kind of device: in 2006 I enjoyed putting the first generation Sony Reader through its paces. I loved the reading experience; it’s a shame everything else about the Sony Reader was poor.

From the cumbersome software to the closed technology which severely restricted the types of files it would display, the entire offering was seriously flawed. To add injury to insult, the Reader died after about 2 months of use. D-e-a-d dead.

The experience put me off purchasing another e-reader and, being a somewhat snobbish Sony fanboy, I had turned up my nose when considering the Kindle.

However, after spending the past year eyeing nothing but positive reviews of the Kindle, my cold, cold heart was beginning to thaw.

That’s when Santa propped the erstwhile device under my tree.

Long Time Coming

I should say up front: I am likely pre-disposed to love the Kindle. It embodies everything I want to happen in the world.

I want the world to consume less paper.

I want the experience of reading on paper – without the paper.

I want an unfathomable amount of information at my fingertips, day and night.

I want my library to update automatically and seamlessly.

I want to be able to take my library literally everywhere.

The Kindle is the first device which begins to elegantly deliver on all of these things.

An e-Reader’s Lament

If you’re looking for a sentimental lament about the demise of books, reading, the paperback and society in general with the advent of e-readers, forget it. You’ll get none such nonsense from me.

In fact, the sooner we can relegate paperbacks as antiques the better, any romantic notion that reading should only be done on paper is severely short-sighted and regressive.

I’m not coming to confiscate your precious editions in some Bradburian nighmare, but ask yourself: in 150 years, what will be the de facto medium for consuming the written word? Will it be paper-based? Or a method altogether electronic?

The answer, of course, is self-evident but not yet reason alone to consign the dead-tree delivery mechanism to history’s rubbish bin. That would be more than a bit harsh. Nevertheless, the reality of obsolescence is about to bite for fervent fans of the paper-based book variety.

The Kindle is important, not just as an enabling technology but for what it represents. In the same way Generation X was the last to grow up in the analog, non-networked world, my Millennium Generation will be the last to know books in paper form alone.

Those born today will face a novel (ho ho) question: shall I buy a book – Hound of the Baskervilles, say – of paper, covering the costs of production, marketing and profit for the entire supply chain? Or download it? For free.

Weapon of Political influence

Stripped of paper’s romance, simple economics suggests the winner will be the e-book. In fact, my friend, while you’re at it: why not download the entire Conan Doyle canon? It’s free, yours in seconds.

That’s today. Imagine choices for readers in the year 2110.

For those contemporary titles one would be expected to purchase – in digital form or otherwise – the elimination of the distribution channel is liberating. The rich half of the world will dedicate fewer resources to logging, pulping, transporting, printing, stocking and disseminating paper.

The poor half of the world will have access to books for a fraction of the costs faced by mankind to date. After all, without those expensive handling processes above to pay for, digital copies can be profitable at a significantly lower price.

Access is key. Poverty and illiteracy are the scourge of democracy and liberal capitalism the world over; illuminating the four corners of the planet with the Library of Man is the first, best assault against ignorance and intolerance.

Mighty ambitions for the humble Kindle, to be sure.

The Business

Each passing paperback will likely fuel lamentations of traditionalists: “At what cost?” they will ask, an understandable question for those who have known nothing else.

But the Kindle and its cheaper, better heirs will inevitably prove a more durable, pervasive and effective torchbearer for literature and knowledge.  It will, ultimately, flip the question on its head, propositioning these same skeptics a far more awkward conundrum: at what cost, books?

I’ve been living with the Kindle for a month and it’s the real deal.

I’ve downloaded dozens of public domain books – including Mr. Conan Doyle’s excellent canon – and purchased a few to boot, such as Cormack McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning The Road, a story I interpret as man’s demise caused by the immutable effects of global warming. Interesting.

The Kindle is excellent in every way the Sony Reader was not: it has a free, wireless network connection; it happily handles a wide variety of book formats; an impressive library of titles is available for purchase at your fingertips, ready to deliver when you’re ready to buy.

It’s slick and – protestations aside about the outrageous extra costs Amazon charges because I don’t live in the States – it’s ready for prime time.

∞

By all means: keep your books. Build your library; caress those frayed and adored tomes; linger over the sweet, seductive smell of printed parchment and wallow in the luxury of words flowing, page after page, like liquid prose.

Hold on to it.

Hold on as long as you can.

It feels somewhat cynical to write about a cinematic endeavour in the context of a personal fight against climate change, but these are two topics brought together by strange circumstances: my Christmas Project 2009, recently completed.

I thought I might share my reflections on my experience.

The Project

For years I had considered going paperless at home: that is, creating digital manifestations of as many scraps of paper in my possession as humanly possible.

There was lots of paper to consider: all my grad school material, 20+ big binders full; bank statements; insurance forms; taxes; photos; pay slips; receipts; and the unusual detritus I so effortlessly seem to collect.  I wanted to eliminate it, all of it, every last scrap.

Not only would it help me get organised, it would also facilitate secure, long-term archiving; allow for web-based retrieval; and, blissfully, prompt the reclamation of lots of physical space in my flat.

The downside is, of course, the cost of buying the right hardware to archive such volume of paper, as well as finding the time required to do so. The time! It’s not a five minute job, by any means.

Extensive research led me to a piece of suitable scanning kit, the Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500: it takes 50 pages at a go, taking both sides, colour and black & white, output as PDF. Perfect.

As for time, the Christmas period is always quiet as I enjoy staying in London over the break. I therefore made plans to go paperless during the 2009 holiday on a back-of-the-fag-pack estimation that it would take approximately 5-7 days to finish it all.  Clocking I would be sitting, doing little other than clicking ‘go’ on a scanner for a week, I then considered ways I could kill a second bird by improving my flagging performance at Film Quiz.

I settled on the idea of watching 25 films of a specific genre over the same period.

Tidy.

eBay to the Rescue

It’s no secret my knowledge of pre-1960 film is spotty at best. I was looking for a specific subset of film I could focus on, one which I could really improve my knowledge after 25 sittings.  Musicals of that era seemed to represent a small enough pool where my effort would make a real difference.

I clicked over to eBay. An hour later – and my wallet a bit lighter – I had a fleet of used DVDs heading my way, the full list of titles watched are at the bottom of this post.

All the pieces were now in place.

I should also state for clarity that I enjoy more than just a passing acquaintance with this form of performance: I have a bachelor’s degree in theatre and more than 10 years experience producing musicals for the stage. So it’s by no means terra nova, just a period of cinema with which I’m less-than-familiar.

*So* the opposite of her mother. Yow.

I write this because I can say unequivocally from first-hand observation: this is not a project for the unenthusiastic; musicals divide opinion dramatically and I doubt I would have been able to sit through two successive films – much less 25 – had I not a genuine appreciation of the genre.

To wit: three Jerry Bruckheimer films in succession would likely make me wretch violently (my next project, perhaps?).

That said, I do think there are plenty of accessible musicals for the open-minded, but subjecting oneself to a cavalcade of chorus lines is testing for even the most fervent. Be warned.

I needed a goal, a clear propellant to overcome my cinematic inertia. Hours idle in front of a computer seemed the perfect time to tackle this deficiency.

What I’ve Learned

My project now successfully concluded – 29 musical films watched, in the end, for the new year after a few late additions – I thought I might share some things I’ve learned as a consequence.

Talent does not guarantee success.

As with any artistic and creative endeavour, individual chemistry and the ineffability of inspiration are as much at the heart of any successful film as perspiration.

Me and My Gal: two top talents with so little to do.

It’s one thing to bring Big Name Talent (BNT) together; getting something special from it is an entirely different proposition. This is not a new idea but musicals heighten the impact because of the format. Time and again the studios would have BNT in place on set but either have weak material or actors playing characters completely wrong for their nature.

One clear example of this is For Me and My Gal (1942):  Gene Kelly and Judy Garland are, on paper, a cinematic match made in heaven and this film should have been a barnburner.  But they suffered from boredom, their soaring talents completely wasted in routines intended more for amateurs than professionals.

Also spare a thought for Ziegfeld Girl (1941): the mouth-watering BNT combination of Judy Garland, Hedy Lamarr, Lana Turner – even Jimmy Stewart – on screen should have been enough to set hearts racing; but they were kept so far apart and given such meagre scraps to perform it begs the question: why were they included at all?

Lack of talent invites doom.

The corollary to the above is that without talent you’re sunk. Consider the hapless Paint Your Wagon (1969).

Paint Your Wagon: wrong wrong wrong, on so many levels.

Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood are exceptionally skilled actors, they have produced some of the 20th (and now 21st) century’s most memorable moments; these are not lightweight Hollywood pretenders.

Yet I found them completely at sea in Wagon, and not for lack of effort; they huffed and puffed admirably, but both are simply unable to deliver the level of performance required for a musical motion picture.

Perhaps the best counter-point to these two performances was Angela Lansbury’s turn in The Harvey Girls (1946). The film is not particularly influential and her role is hardly three-dimensional; yet Lansbury’s quality and experience as a musical performer helped her character punch well above her weight, lifting the entire production.

Maybe we should call it the Ewan McGregor Principle? Or simply: stick to your knitting.

Don’t bank on reputation.

Coming into the project, I noted certain films which carried a reputation for quality, for entertainment and for value.  Some of them had BNT; others were famous for Broadway revivals or simply received glowing praise in my conversations past. Many failed spectacularly to meet their lofty reputations.

A Star is Born: a star, sure, but what about the film?

I don’t really want to name names for it awkwardly assumes I pre-judge films before I see them; yet, some simply didn’t cut it, particularly considering the BNT on offer. Some films – such as State Fair – delight through confounding unassuming expectations; but the opposite is far worse.

High Society (1956), for example, boasts Frank Sinatra and the excellent Grace Kelly but could not rise above the mediocre. A Star is Born (1954), the Judy Garland vehicle so oft cited as her finest work, may showcase her individual skill but falters badly as a cohesive offering.

And, most egregiously, Oklahoma! (1955) was the biggest disappointment of the lot, considering the reputation which preceded it. There simply wasn’t enough within it to sustain the entire production.

There’s no acquaintance too slight to marry.

If there was a singular thread weaving each film together, it was the recurring eventuality of marriage – no matter how fast, outlandish or inappropriate – as the Promised Land for every woman.

Spare yourself a furious retort: I’m not blind, I know these are musicals, they’re supposed to be fun, idealised fantasy for kids of all ages. But I’ve watched 29 films and in all but one (Annie) marriage is either the pivotal plot device or the ultimate desired outcome; I suggest this preponderance of singularity may have had an undue impact on audiences over time.

There’s nothing wrong (I guess) with marriage – knock yourself out – but here’s one example where I think films go awry: in the boisterous movie Annie Get Your Gun (1950), the titular role played by the talented but overbearing Betty Hutton, Annie surrenders her entire identity in the final scene as an act of submission to a man for the sole purpose of potentially winning an offer of marriage.

I can hardly think of a more sweeping assertion of male power than consigning the entire lifetime of a strong, independent woman to the dustbin based on the outcome of a single competitive shoot-out.

Why would feminists have a problem with that?

Musicals are a social mirror.

Which brings us to the largest piece of reflection: musicals have been particularly well-placed to chronicle the long-term changes of women’s role in (American) society since the two world wars. I’m not the first to say so but with so many films fresh in mind, I can’t help but connect the dots.

Carousel: he's just saving his strength for later.

Interestingly, in the musicals of the 1930s gender roles were so assumed they hardly merited mention as a plot point. Though many women were presented as vaudeville show girls, their professional lives were intended less as a means of self expression and more as a showcase to a larger audience of (rich) men.

The films of 1940s and 50s displayed an interesting dialectic, trying to reflect the growing post-war ambition of women but also serving as a tool to rein in those ambitions.  In films of this era, expectations of women as home-makers were repeatedly emphasised and strictly enforced; women who strayed were punished – metaphorically or, sadly too often, physically.

In Carousel (1956), Shirley Jones – who suffered mightily on screen during the 1950s and 60s at the hands of rough lovers – faced Gordon MacRae’s fists for a perceived deviation from her place; and in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954), women are reduced to the object of kidnap — bounty for prairie pirates.

The tension continued to grow and found a face (and voice) in Doris Day, who embodied and reflected a growing social struggle with difficult and conflicting expectations of women as they began to both assert and push the boundaries of power.

The Thrill of it All!: Day as Everywoman?

The Thrill of It All! (1963), for example, is a lightweight film which happens to feature Day unintentionally playing out this very scenario when she is thrust into the role of working mother. Both innocent and prescient, the film heralds larger, deeper introspection to be explored in the 1970s and beyond.

It may have been harmless at the time but seen in the light of history, The Thrill of It All! becomes a much more interesting artefact.

Lest we forget amid all the talk of gender roles, minority gains causing so much strain on communities across the country were nowhere to be found on screen. Audiences would have to wait until the 1970s (and 80s) before those changes were reflected in musicals.

~

That’s it. I’m down the rabbit hole. I’m ashamed to say that one particular outcome of this project is that I’ve learned how many more I’ve yet to watch. There’s the entire Fred Astaire canon to consume, plus 42nd Street, Show Boat, Guys and Dolls, and … and …

List of Films Watched – December 2009

1. A Star Is Born (1954)
2. An American in Paris (1951)
3. Annie (1982)
4. Annie Get Your Gun (1950)
5. Cabaret (1972)
6. Calamity Jane (1953)
7. Carousel (1956)
8. For Me and My Gal (1942)
9. Gigi (1958)
10. High Society (1956)
11. In the Good Old Summertime (1949)
12. Love Finds Andy Hardy (1938)
13. Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)
14. Oklahoma! (1955)
15. Oliver! (1968)
16. Paint Your Wagon (1969)
17. Pillow Talk (1959)
18. Scrooge (1970)
19. Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954)
20. Singin’ in the Rain (1952)
21. South Pacific (1958)
22. State Fair (1945)
23. The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982)
24. The Harvey Girls (1946)
25. The Thrill of It All! (1963)
26. The Pajama Game (1968)
27. There’s No Business Like Show Business (1954)
28. Young at Heart (1954)
29. Ziegfeld Girl (1941)

What a decade of film, particularly for the aficionado of the sci-fi and fantasy genres which got a much-needed boost of quality, thanks mostly to the vastly improved technology available all levels of film makers, but also due to the bar being set incredibly high with the arrival of the Matrix and the unbelievable Lord of the Rings trilogies.

I’ve looked back at the films I’ve seen this decade and considered them across several distinctions – quality, script, acting, score and the always-difficult-to-assess emotional impact.  Of course, my opinion is just that, but I’ll have a go anyway.

Here’s my Top 10 films of the noughties, in no particular order:

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)

My favourite of the three by a nose, showcasing the best of each: great set pieces, a towering score and arguably the best battle scene yet put to film. Jackson got the Oscar for Return of the King but the sheer achievement of these three films beggars belief.

2046 (2004)

The sort-of sequel to Days of Being Wild (1991) and the stunning In the Mood for Love (2000), Tony Leung and Li Gong reprise their roles in a film that charts new ground as a visual feast. Written and directed by Wong Kar-wai, it is a lavish treat which left me mesmerised and emotionally wrought.

The Dark Knight (2008)

Much has already been said about this action-film-cum-commentary on present-day society. Each set piece seems better than the next: the satisfying action sequences, a sublime cast and, of course, an unbelievable performance by Heath Ledger.  What’s not to like?

Milk (2008)

Gus Van Sant’s beautiful film about the life of Harvey Milk, played by the impeccable Sean Penn, was a poignant and inspiring story of how we still need heroes to continue the work of creating a more tolerant society.  For those of us young enough to only know life since Milk’s untimely death, it’s a call to action and a bitter reminder that MLK’s Dream is not yet achieved. Penn and Van Sant at their finest.

The Lives of Others (2006)

A claustrophobic and stifling tale set in 1984 East Germany. Amazing performances, especially by the excellent Ulrich Mühe, make this a must-see film and will surely peg it in many pundits’ decade’s Top 10, maybe even amongst the best films ever.

Mulholland Dr. (2001)

Sheer madness. Sheer genius. Watch it once; watch it twice; then watch it again after reading exactly what the hell is going on. Naomi Watts and Laura Harring are sumptuously paired in Lynch’s post-modern fairy tale. Dead ends, twists, lots of sex … and there may not even be a mystery at the end of it. I’m not sure I can take it.

No Country For Old Men (2007)

It was a banner year for film, 2007, and There Will Be Blood could just as easily been in this list – it appears below instead – but NCFOM pipped it by two powerful performances which gripped me by the throat and wouldn’t let go. Javier Bardem’s gut-wrenching bad boy must be a very close runner-up to Ledger for baddie of the decade; and Tommy Lee Jones’s earnest-if-not-meandering lawman were pure delights. The Coen Brothers had a very busy decade but this is the pick of the bunch for me, ahead of the brilliant O’ Brother Where Art Thou (2000).

Finding Nemo (2003)

If the excellent Toy Story franchise elevated animated cinema into adolescence, Pixar’s sublime Finding Nemo pitched it fervently into adulthood. From the opening scene – a frighteningly-realised death in the family – we know we’ve found an uncommonly subtle and mature film, lifted by Thomas Newman’s inspired, understated and pitch-perfect score. A children’s film it is not: for while the eponymous guppy does come of age through the Ring of Fire, it’s Marlin’s voyage of discovery across the ocean of life which gives us all pause. Great stuff.

City of God (2002)

A stomach knot-inducing view of the violent slums of Rio de Janeiro, the performances by a cast of all ages inspire both wonder and fear. There’s precious little joy to be found anywhere in the film but what there is shines radiantly, captured through the lens of the protagonist’s camera and Fernando Meirelles’s tense cinematic diorama.

Runners Up

Some films I just plum loved and/ or watched repeatedly, even if they didn’t crack the Top 10.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)

Alfonso Cuarón achieved not just a step-change in the Harry Potter franchise but a thunderbolt from the sky, catapulting the third instalment of the series from mundane to monumental. While I think David Yates ultimately surpassed it with Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007), it was Cuarón who breathed depth, wonder and pathos into the magical literary universe. Subsequent directors would come to thank him heartily.

There Will Be Blood (2007)

Agonisingly close to making the Top 10, Paul Thomas Anderson’s grim portrayal of the rise of an oil baron makes for difficult watching.  I rate Daniel Day-Lewis’s performance as one of the decade’s best, probably next to Heath Ledger’s Joker and there’s no question he is all-but-uncontainable on screen as the ruthless protagonist. It is an important film, worthy of its Oscars; but that doesn’t mean I have to like watching it.

Gladiator (2000)

A star vehicle no doubt for Russell Crowe, Ridley Scott’s visceral and lavish portrayal of the Roman gladiator who would bring down an emperor is expertly rendered. It’s a shame Scott couldn’t shave about 20 minutes or so off the final film, it suffers somewhat under its own weight; but Djimon Hounsou is an excellent addition to an already fine ensemble and the open-air fight sequences are breathtaking. If nothing else, Gladiator is worth seeing for the visual realisation of ancient Rome alone.

Million Dollar Baby (2004)

Clint Eastwood is a prolific director: he had nine films this decade alone, and Million Dollar Baby is my favourite, just pipping the fine Gran Torino. The brutal story of a wide-eyed boxing underdog – the effervescent Hilary Swank, outstanding here – is gripping. But sappy sports fare this isn’t; the denouement is heart-wrenching and features Eastwood at his brilliant best on both sides of the camera.

Oldboy (2003)

Violent. Ugly. Disturbing. Add it all up for a very good film that hardly lets you draw breath. Chan-wook Park gleefully watches you squirm along with slimy (and doomed) squid as the delightfully dour Park Cheol-woong’s protagonist wreaks havoc in the underworld with little more than the tools from your DIY drawer. Not for the faint of heart, for sure.

Donnie Darko (2001)

What the heck is going on? No, seriously. Richard Kelly’s surreal film emerged right in the aftermath of 9/11 and met a mystified public reaction, mostly because there was a lot not to get. But with time – and lots and lots of explanation – a brilliant film shined through. Patrick Swayze will be immortalised here, and his courageous career is filled with quirky roles, but really it’s Jake Gyllenhaal’s command turn which impressed, reassuring the world his outstanding effort in October Sky (2000) was not a one-off.

Star Trek (2009)

Ending the decade on a sci-fi high, the franchise-zapping fun-fest was everything promised and then some. A wonderfully fresh-faced cast leads what will surely be another multi-film adventure into bold, new – and apparently very shiny – territory. The relatively wizened Zachary Quinto is perfectly cast as one of the 20th century’s finest fictional characters, Spock; but it’s the superb introduction of new-boy Chris Pine as the indefatigable Captain Kirk and Chris Urban’s poetically-caustic Bones that leaves us clamoring for the next instalment. If this is the re-boot of Roddenberry’s vision, beam me up for much, much more.

There you go: my faves from the past 10 years. Of course I couldn’t include all the films I loved – In Bruges is one notable exclusion – but that’s the nature of lists.

Here’s to the next decade of fine cinema.

Photo by Perrimoon

A chorus of voices raised across every mix of media urges brands – large and small – to compete on innovation.

Innovation!

New products, new services, new marketing techniques. Hundreds of books, thousands of blogs and millions of tweets espouse the path to commercial nirvana is paved with magical mystery of clever new craftsmanship.

For today’s marketer the message is even more direct: use innovative channels and tactics or risk losing ground to your competitor.

But while the pursuit of the Next Big Thing has forever been a key to creating better products, companies are increasingly competing along a new dimension: marketing innovation.

It’s seen in dynamic digital promotions; clever web applications; high-profile social media campaigns; or the deployment of any number of web-based communications tools. The range of activity is wide and marketing teams need help.

Traditional Providers

This need has traditionally been met by marketing and creative agencies, but today these same organisations face their own dilemmas in how to respond to ever-changing technology.

As such, and particularly for larger businesses, agencies are no longer wholly capable of meeting the full needs of a brand. Even the largest agencies will never have the range of skills required.

What’s more, some new new activities are beyond the support of existing agencies; today’s shops are not able to develop and support long-term blogging initiatives, Twitter account management and other social media activity. This capability must be retained by the brand.

It’s true, some innovation can be handed over; developing new types of television or online advertising, for example, will remain – for the time being – too difficult and expensive for brands to take in house. Consequently, existing agencies are well placed to meet this need.

However, those crucial functions of today’s emerging tools and tactics – namely the cultivation and curation of meaningful, ongoing customer relationships – cannot be left to an outside agent. These skills are too vital, too critical to the core business to abandon entirely. Brands must develop the internal capability to deliver these functions itself or risk disconnecting from customers altogether.

Ultimately brands will continue to become more sophisticated in their requirements and test the skills of those within internal teams and external partners. Like it or not, brands will have to hire staff capable of delivering this new marketing magic.

They cannot simply outsource the problem this time.

Even considering all this, the chief problem is not one of opportunity: more brands than ever need all the help they can get when it comes to delivering on their marketing promise.

The definitive challenge for agencies today is strategic: where to compete.

The dilemma is whether to remain (or enter) a traditional arena – say, direct or digital promotional marketing – or, more bravely, chart new territory. A rash of new agencies, including Headshift in the UK and Dachis Group States-side, are exploring the idea of social business design, an emerging discipline using the tenets of social media to improve business processes.

It’s unfair, in many ways, for existing agencies. They’re uncomfortably watching the industry shift, literally, under their feet, many (still) nervously pondering how to respond. It’s a conundrum they’ve been facing for years and lots still haven’t figured out what to do, not because they’re incapable but because each time they restructure, another step-change occurs within the industry.

For agencies which have been around a reasonable time, say more than five years, any re-tooling of the offering will be difficult; they will simply have too much invested in maintaining their client base and work.  They can add services, increase their capabilities and capacity but these are tactical responses to a strategic challenge.

The pain brands feel is no longer just in distribution; agencies are efficiently set up to deliver creative solutions for distribution. The pain brands need to address is the fundamental internal needs of businesses themselves, needs which exist in multiple dimensions.

Ultimately, this is a concern only for those agencies interested in real, sustained growth; for while there will always be a need for the bread-and-butter shops which churn out creative executions, this is not where future growth lies.

Photo by petrr

Even before brands faced today’s budgetary age of austerity, a populist meme was gaining traction: that while marketing is a necessary function, perhaps we don’t need a large, dedicated team to deliver it.

Mike Hutchison, writing for the blog Unlimited, argues this very point in his post Hitting Your Mark.  Hutchison’s cites an oft-quoted piece of industry lore of motorcycle manufacturer Ducati sacking its marketing department and delegating responsibility throughout the organisation.

The super-objective Hutchison craves – where individuals up, down and across an organisation take real, tangible responsibility for marketing the brand – is the right intention but the dramatic headline is unhelpful; we might have fantasies about eliminating marketing departments, yet actually doing so creates a number of acute, real problems that cannot be so easily reduced to theory.

The Professional Marketer

Marketing is a discipline; we study and practice it as a craft. And though we may use open source marketing techniques to enable and activate our customer communities, planning and strategy are still necessary components for long-term success.

Of course all employees should be focused on delivering value for their customers and, in a sense, this is marketing. But there’s a lot more to it than that.

Hutchison asks, “Imagine a church having a religion department?” Yet it does have a religion department: those individuals who, by choice and discipline, give an expert, learned voice to the order. They have perspective and share their knowledge with their brothers and the world; these individuals write, speak and teach.  They are the ‘interface’ to the study because they are able to translate the language of religion to those unfamiliar.

It seems superfluous to quote Smith, but some minds and skill sets are more efficiently put towards tackling the mechanics of marketing, the same way some minds have the discipline to enjoy cloistered, ecumenical education.

Needs of the Business

Even were a fully integrated marketing function possible, it exposes a logical flaw: each department within the company is looking for the best, most talented people – people good at a specific function. It could be a developer, a sales person or an HR administrator. The qualities which may make these individuals successful in their functions are not necessarily the same which make them effective marketers for the brand.

Should the business compromise the quality of its other functions for the sake of having someone in account management who understands FriendFeed?  Of course the account management team – along with everyone else – ought to understand the tools we use to communicate with customers, but it is not the only skill set to consider.

Moreover, the tools are changing daily, with new and better services popping up all the time. It’s difficult enough for our marketers to stay current, much less the guy in sales drowning in PowerPoint.

Romance

The vision of breaking up the marketing department is romantic: it would be great if all our marketing was a free-flowing confluence of customer ideas and creative imagination. Yet some tasks are simply not glamorous: orchestrating a cross-media, multi-discipline, global campaign in many languages and cultures takes hard work, discipline and professional craftsmanship. These are not background tasks.

The best marketers build relationships. They connect with customers, suppliers, internal stakeholders and other key influencers (the filters, facilitators, firecrackers and fanatics defined by McConnell and Huba). I like this and consider it a professional and, yes, somewhat traditional approach.

I take Hutchison’s view as a philosophical argument rather than a literal one: ultimately the power lies in changing the behaviour of our business ecosystem, increasing its awareness of customer service and product development. It is a long-term investment but one worth making.

Hutchison is right: the form and function of the marketing department is changing, the ‘disconnected’ team will cease to be relevant. But we still need educated, trained marketers, those who can draft strategy and connect activities across a sea of collaborators, lifting the brand to fulfil its promise. It is surely not something to be left to amateurs.

Photograph: Marko Djurica/Reuters

I admit it: I’ve taken the outcome of the farcical World Cup 2010 playoff between France and Ireland more seriously than I ought. My smug, albeit neutral, perch affords me the lofty position of unbiased – and therefore the harshest possible – judgement.

Thierry Henry’s shameful handling in the lead-up to the final French coup de grace, reminiscent more of a touch-down in rugby than the usually prescribed path to soccer goal scoring, leaves even the non-partizan reeling in contempt.

The incident has been described as the ultimate expression of human frailty; for the referees, whose experience and good sense abandoned their eyes at the crucial moment; for the French players, whose desire to win at all costs cruelly hijacked their common decency; and for the spectator, neutral and invested alike, who have been left roiling or rollicking to face a long, cold winter digesting the ugly and inescapable realisation that – regardless France’s performance in next year’s World Cup – the outcome is immutably corrupted.

Personally, I think it reflects all of those things and of course history is littered with egregious and outrageous officiating decisions.

But this one is different, this one goes further: this one footballing moment is a rejection of sport itself, a death knell to fair play and a perversion of every match to follow.

Our response is important. We must deal with it directly, not just as those who love to watch a game on Saturday afternoon but as one who believes sport to be a unyielding force for justice, tolerance and peace.

In other words, as human beings.

In Henry’s crime we have caught the cyclist mid-injection; the steroid-munching baseball player red-handed; the sprinter mid-sip of his illicit cocktail. We have eyes; the offence is plain to see. Feigning blindness to such iniquity is a damning indictment of us all.

But it is bigger than football, reflecting precisely our same uncertain response to soul-destroying corruption seen off the pitch.

It’s looking away from the misdeeds of bankers who rain misery the world over; ignoring crooked MPs who swindled the public with extravagant expenses; and even remaining indifferent as governments siphon money from education to warmongering.

We – you and I – must collectively say, “Enough.”

The Way Things Are

As for football, who could seriously argue maintaining the status quo in the face of such calamitous peril threatening our very souls? Competition is the backbone of our society: it drives our economy, our politics and our our evolutionary achievement. Are we prepared to reject all that?

I make the strongest possible argument for the introduction of technology in sport – all sport – today, this very moment. Not to reject tradition but to save it.

Human binary decisions – was the ball in or out? did it cross the goal line plane? – can be eliminated. These are not subjective questions and therefore our aim should be 100 percent accuracy. And why not? There is a right or wrong answer, perfection is possible.

This leaves referees focused on those decisions of judgement – tackles, hand balls, etc – which demand nuance and experience. These noble men and women study the rules, carefully overseeing matches their whole lives in order to deliver on the promise of fair play.

For this reason, to honour their commitment, they should be supported by a phalanx of cameras, poised to capture every move from every angle, to preserve the dignity of humans who can, and will, make mistakes. A tradition of error is not one worth preserving.

Of the many arguments for immediately introducing technology into the game, I find two most compelling:

I cannot imagine in 25 years, much less 50 or 100, that we will not be using technology extensively to adjudicate all levels of professional athletic competition. The sooner we start constructing that future, both on and off the pitch, the sooner we reach salvation.

And, to me the most obvious: there isn’t a referee alive who wouldn’t in a heartbeat take back a mistake which affected or perverted the outcome of a fair competition.  It seems cruel for us to deny means already available to avoid such a fate.

Quick: please, FIFA; please, technology; please, humanity; save our game, our traditions, before it’s too late. Before the harm is irreparable.

While we still have our souls.