Photos Archive

Really pleased with this combined effort from our design/marketing/community teams at Microsoft Advertising.

We’ve just launched this Advertising Week 2009 social media hub which includes a Twitter feed of everything being talked about in relation to the event and videos of interviews we’ve done before and we’ll be doing during our time there. 

There’s a photo stream and including a very cool DeepZoom plug-in on the home page!

I’ll be in New York for the week blogging and Tweeting, so hope to catch up with a lot of you there!

If you can’t make it I hope you’ll drop by this site now and again…

Not sure how Mark Zuckerberg’s lawyers will like this “aligned” branding effort from Hawaii, but while on honeymoon on Waikiki we spotted a guy doing portraits in the street using a tablet PC to draw digital portraits of willing sitters.

A refreshing change from the charcoal-mongers we’re used to:

Ashley and I splashed out a whole $15 on the above which we had done in Pike Place Market in Seattle……and no he didn’t get a tip for helping me lose 30lbs!

So we’re back to earth with a bump from our wedding and honeymoon in Hawaii!

In short it was an awesome day and I’m immensely happy and proud to call myself Ashley’s husband!

When we’ve caught our breath I’ll write some more about it but wanted to share my favourite photo so far. The official one’s are yet to surface from the photographer!

16 year-old Aviv – Josh’s cousin from Israel – caught this moment with the camera I gave him to snap some shots!

Ok so it’s all my fault!

When setting our wedding date Ashley and I didn’t check the conference calendar and so didn’t spot that Search Engine Strategies San Jose falls this year from 10th to the 14th August!

What were we thinking?!

It was only after paying the deposit on the caterers and the DJ, after friends had booked their exorbitant and non-refundable air fares from London, and after securing a super deal on an All American Mobile BBQ that we realised our gargantuan error.

Our wedding date is set for 15th August and as much as I tried to shoehorn a trip to California into our pre-wedding itinerary, herself was having none of it!

I tried to explain that SearchBash is a very sober affair and that I would make a Wednesday morning flight back to Seattle but to no avail………

It seems some things must take precedence over one of the happiest conferences of our lives.

I sincerely hope that you enjoy the week, that Mike Grehan & Kevin Ryan behave themselves 🙂 and that the keynote speeches are much better than my best men’s are going to be!

Do say hi to all my Microsoft colleagues who’ll be there in force, and get a 20% discount by checking out this post on Microsoft Advertising Community!

P.S. Can you believe she won’t let me TwitPic her coming down the aisle?!!!

Amazed that rail ticket machines in this country don’t have QWERTY layouts for typing in required information.

Might sound silly, but the brain takes a while to engage with the above letter formation when trying to buy a ticket.

Add up thousands of people having similar difficulties and you have 1000s of minutes wasted and I bet a lot of lost revenue and missed trains.

I like this approach. Waitrose has always been seen as a more up-market brand of supermarket and some would say more expensive.

So in a recession when you’re trying to attract people that are saving their pennies, why not just stick your products and prices up on a bill board?

People are looking for value for money and this advertising of their “essential range” demonstrates that they’re not all the expensive after all!

Well less than 24 hours after entertaining and being entertained by Will Carling post the Microsoft Search Summit – more on that at a later date – I’m in The Palais Stephanie in Cannes having had another of the maddest 24 hours of my career!

First impressions are that this festival is full on. There are people from all over the world here to learn, be wowed and experience some of the most cutting edge advertising on the planet- a lot of which is now digital!

We arrived last night and sped to Marco Polo’s a restaurant on the beach, a bit beyond the town, for a very cool and laid back dinner with the whole Microsoft Advertising Team that’s out here.

The up bright and early meeting the film crew that will help us interview a raft of folks from Microsoft execs to people on the street finding out what their expectations are of Cannes and what they’re looking forward to from the week.

Our cyber lounge at the conference centre is pretty cool! Lots of PCs and internet access and this Microsoft Surface table I spotted with two South Americans firmly ensconced next to with their Apple Macs wide open!

They look happy don’t they!

Jenny and I have started filming with the Media Brands crew and I think we’ve found our presenting feet…..well time will tell!

That’s me with the “I’m an FB” Tee Shirt on!

Now I’m off to the land of nod to dream up some questions to ask Biz Stone!

Check out more photos at Cannes Lions Microsoft Advertising Community and Microsoft Advertising on Facebook.

I got sent this cheeky photo and just had to Tweet it – http://twitpic.com/6jm02

[giggles]

I get the funniest emails through from my blog:

Hello ,
Am XXXXXXXXX and would like to make an Order of Hand Dryers from you and would like to know the types and sizes you have as well as the prices and the types of payment method that you accept.Thank you and Waiting to hear from you very soon,
Regards
XXXXX

How do you respond to that!?

Spotted this ad for John West Tuna near my flat at the weekend. I’m not sure what the bloke with the fiddle is all about but my eye was drawn to the USP – “No Drain Tuna”

Now they’ve obviously done some market research and found that some consumers are reluctant to buy their product because it’s too “fiddly”.

(I think I’ve just got the fiddle reference while writing that last sentence…………groan!)

But is our time so precious that we’re now looking to save a few seconds while opening a can of fish?

Maybe it’s because we’re too busy blogging and tweeting?

I’ll be “trawling” your comments for an answer soon I expect!