Well it’s May the 4th err Force Be with You!” In celebration of Star Wars Day – which character did you like best? Vote HERE. I think I’m gonna have to vote for Lei…

It seems other people share this same interest – one even created a website exclusively devoted to the slave outfit called Leia’s Metal Bikini.

It got me to thinking… and so of course I googled it and crikey! The results were… diverse… and perhaps a little perverse…

Check out some of the lesser deeply disturbing star moments in the pantheon of Princess Leia slaveness.

Yeah… okay so one of them isn’t Princess Leia but it does appeal to me. Odd. Very odd. Almost as much as this clip where some artists have engineered a full on pillow fight of a group of girls costumed up… for artistic purposes.

FACTOR168 Creative Event Company
Creative. Strategic. Tactical.
Sensational Events through Powerful Experiences.

It is manna to anyone with a creative bent and a sense of curiosity and invention – of looking at things differently.

During his career as a newspaper cartoonist – his legacy was his ‘invention cartoons’ where he looked at inventing incredibly elborate machine inventions to perform simple tasks such as pencil sharpening, or washing windows, avoiding bill collectors, peeling apples, putting toothpaste on a toothbrush. He was about creative problem solving in unconventional ways and having a lot of fun in the process .

Since his passing in 1970, his creative approach has continued to be celebrated in the form of his postcard format book called the “Rube Goldberg’s Inventions”.

IN essence these inventions over engineer very simple tasks in a very very complex fashion and usually features a series of chain reactions.

The Perdue Univeristy, Indiana USA, started the annual Rube Goldberg Machine Contest (RGMC) in 1987 and the results have been creatively intriguing and always entertaining in terms of human ingenuity. The name of the game is to solve a problem in the MOST CONVOLUTED AND COMPLICATED MANNER POSSIBLE.

Now when you to take this Goldberg approach and mesh it with a very creative and quirky musical group OK GO – the result is a masterful visual and audible event. Memorable and fun.

OK Go’s song This Too Shall Pass” and it’s Rube Goldberged all the way. Enjoy.

Hope you enjoyed that as much as we did.

Of course this is not the first time this musical group have delivered on a memorable video clip experience.

A previous music clip, very very simple in execution and concept, was superbly delivered on the back of some fabulous choregraphy using treadmills. The clip is called “Here It Goes Again”.

Just fabulous… Rube Goldberg and OK Go… fantastic. The applications within the special event environment in terms of team building, in regards to stage showcraft, out-of-the-box thinking and creative innovation is wide ranging and excites the heck out of the FACTOR168 team and never fails to recharge our mojo.

Now for some Goldberg trivia.

Some Goldberg trivia – Rube Goldberg’s machine inventions were the inspiration for the much loved classic board game “Mouse Trap“. Compare his artwork, compare the board game… yeah, you can see it too huh?

PLUS in 1931 the Merriam-Webster dictionary adopted the word “Rube Goldberg” as an adjective defined as accomplishing something simple through complex means.

Source Notes: More on the creative world of Rube Goldberg and for more music got to OK GO.

FACTOR168 Creative Event Company
Creative. Strategic. Tactical.
Sensational Events through Powerful Experiences.

Almost everyone else, certainly all my peers,  saw it as witty and funny and just plain smart viral marketing in action.

What do you think?

Does this seriously promote and celebrate negative practices or is it yet another victim of political correctness run rampant… and do you think the makers of this clip kinda knew it would attract a consumer and media firestorm around it and banked on the upside of drawing more eyes to Air NZ as good thing regardless of how it is achieved.

* Just a quick clarification for those that have been living under a rock and don’t actually know what a ‘cougar’ refers to. It is often employed to describe a sexually active woman in her 40′s who are so desperate for affection and the pursuit of robust sexual encounters that they tend to target young often inexperienced men in bars and clubs.

And this is what this clip is sending up with tongue firmly planted in cheek. Cougars stalking their younger prey. Anyway enough of that – check out the video and be prepared to enjoy it… or be offended… or perhaps both in equal measure.

Look I am sorry but personally I thought that was just brilliant.

Is it PC? No of course not. Offensive? Not to me.

I can see similar on mainstream media during primetime. Just not as amusing.

The American ABC network is airing a popular show based on this very phenomena. With that in mind, I kinda figure the notion of “Cougars” has firmly sidestepped PCness and been accepted by mainstream community social mores.

The show is called ”Cougar Town” and stars the very cute blue-eyed brunette Courtney Cox, previously of ‘Friends’ fame’, as she stalks her younger toy-boyish prey. Check out episodes from the official website here.

Look in all seriousness I think Air NZ deserves a big gold star for cutting through all the competing media clutter with a storng dose of humour and has achieved their marketing objective of elevating their brand profile amongst social media savvy consumers at little cost and in doing so also produced a moment that can withstand repeated viewings.

Big tick to Air NZ. In fact in a very backhanded compliment manner – it is very ‘Virigin’ of them in many ways.

Some source credits -

The little postit image at the top of the post advertises a show from Donna Moore.

The clip is courtesy of Youtube (but I suspect Air Nz had a huge hand in it).

FACTOR168 | Creative Event Management Company

Love this idea of making what is a pretty boring and functional transaction with a bank -a memorable fun experience instead.There should be more of it.

Sure, many cash machines around the world offer a number of language options but this is the first time I’ve come across a ‘slang’ based version.

Customers on selecting this option are requested to enter their Huckleberry Finn (PIN) before they can receive their sausage and mash (cash).

Those wanting to withdraw £10 sterling will have to ask for a speckled hen, while the machine may inform users that it is contacting their rattle and tank, rather than bank.

‘We wanted to introduce something fun and of local interest to our London machines,’ said Ron Delnevo, managing director of operators Bank Machine.

‘Whilst we expect some residents will visit the machine to just have a butcher’s (look), most will be genuinely pleased as this is the first time a financial services provider will have recognised the Cockney language in such a manner,’ he added.

All the usual fees associated with an ATM applied but Bank Machine offer the actual Cockney display prompts at no charge. Must have been an oversight on their part.

Bank Machine have done well. They have in effect creatively customized a functional transaction and transformed it, at what I imagine is a relatively low cost exercise, into a distinctly memorable experience.

People that visit and transact with these machines will carry with them positive associations with Bank Machine units as part of the East London landscape.

No doubt Bank Machine partners will also love the extra trade that this sort of traffic, for a ‘butcher’s’ or not, will bring. And following their transaction, they’ll be ready to spend some of that ‘bangers and mash’.

This same thinking can be strategically applied to other relatively ‘soul-less’ transactional activities that all companies share on a regular basis with staff and clients.

Certainly within the event spectrum, this same approach can be applied with great potential impact.

Event elements such as the registration process and post-event follow-ups are perfect candidates for being reimagined with a greater creative and interactive dimension. The possibilities are extraordinarily exciting.

Now for those that do not live in or visit East London – you can experience the Cockney slang in all of it’s glory with this fun little online app’. It is an English to Cockney translator.

Lor’ luv a duck! i’ is bee’s knees fun. Know what I mean?

* The image featured here is from Bank Machine.

FACTOR168 | Creative Event Management Company

Now of course we still have ‘film award’ nights, we are just mindful of not replicating the golden Oscar, and I suspect with the recent legla efforts surrounding the notion of the Moulin Rouge, we’ll all continue to stage fabulous Moulin Rouge inspired events… we’ll just call them… oh I don’t know – the ‘French Cancan’, perhaps ‘Paris: City of Lights’ or as the Hear and Say Centre event organizer has done -simply rebranding a ‘Moulin Rouge’ event into a “le Windmill de Rouge”

Okay I get that there is always something to be gained from unexpected publicity but it seems to be a tad… petulant… to state it is NOT ‘Moulin Rouge’ while still overtly leveraging off the ‘brand’ name in any case…

And employing the likeness of Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor, even slightly blurred… umm could this be a case of swapping one set of lawyers for another set. They do love sending letters out people. That said, I suspect they are safe, Nic and Ewan wouldn’t see much upside to lawyering up against a local charity. Bad business.

Still – good to see Thiess continued involvement despite these grim economic times.

This construction and development company is is an extremely well regard corporate citizen so it is nice to see them actively throwing their considerable support behind a worthy charity.

On a sidenote, as we are want to do from time to time – if your interested in the history of the Cancan then I recommend a quick visit to this site where we sourced the wonderful image of the three dancing girls.

And now for a wonderful video shot in 1943 showcasing the Cancan in action. Magnific!

FACTOR168 | Creative Event Management Company

I’ve found them to be tremendously helpful and it helps with my transmissions from my imagination to paper. I am also pragmatic as I identify each closed black matt book with white marker paint down the spines. Adding to my growing library of musings. Happy and content.

That was until I came across a Moleskine that fuses the functional with the artistic.

Check out the following covers commissioned and sold online by Modofly.

Moleskines as functional art. Very cool. Must have cool.

…but so far I have been paralyzed in my add-to-cart action by the sheer glorious range of choices on offer but my personal shortlist is featured below.

FACTOR168 | Creative Event Management Company

The Moleskine (pronounced as mol-a-skeen’-a) is a notebook made with an oilcloth-covered cardboard front and back cover. The best one’s also have an elastic band to hold them closed, a sewn spine so they can lie flat when opened, an expandable pocket (for receipts n’stuff) inside the rear cover, a ribbon bookmark and rounded corners. That’s a Moleskine.

Some creatives that I respect can take or leave a Moleskine. Some prefer color as a creative tool. Paul Kenny, a dear friend of mine who is an Australian Events elder and currently serving as an executive director at George P Johnson is adamant that yellow legal pads are the go.

Why yellow?

Well it has been said that the color yellow is more intellectually stimulating.

And I guess from a practical perspective – the yellow paper when compared with white seems to produce a less ‘painful’ glare and is therefore ‘easier’ to write on. Perhaps. I don’t really know about that. I do concede that black ink on white paper in terms of contrast is certainly more harsher than perhaps black on yellow.

I’d read somewhere that creatives (including of academics and of course those from the legal fraternity who share/tell/create stories for a living) like yellow pads because over time white paper ages and becomes more yellowish in appearance. The thinking being that if it is already yellow then what is written on it has also aged or is ageless – depending on your perspective.

Personally I don’t like yellow legals pads for two very practical reasons. The traditional yellow legal pads are bound with red glue and as a result I am forever losing pages and the second reason, these days they are not as easily purchased as other stationary products. Tools should be easily accessible and always at hand. If not then they are not tools but toys. That’s my take on it… but I am adaptable.

The modern Moleskine products are assembled and stitched in Italy despite being printed in China. I don’t get that but there must be a reason not to print and bind it at one place… perhaps having an Italian association makes it easier to charge more… like other luxury products made in China and marketed in Italy and France.

Moleskines are stitched. This means I ain’t going to lose a page. Sure I’ve losta  whole book, but not a single page.

And I can purchase them at any good stationary and at most airport terminal news and books outlets. If you really want to quench your curiosity about these books – check out their website and the full range at Moleskine and drool.

But is a Moleskin essential to the creative process? Or for that matter a yellow legal pad? Perhaps we are simply guilty of indulging in the romanticizing of the creative process itself.

FACTOR168 | Creative Event Management Company

No not that one… nor the one with the Salsa dipping sauce and Mojo Webb soundtrack… no. It is my Finnish pleasure.

I can’t recall exactly when I cam across this musical… umm.. phenomenon… and I can’t remember who introduced me to them but I am externally grateful. They always brings a smile to my dial and when the creative well is a little shallow, this outfit always seems to refresh and re-energise me.

They are a Finish Rock Band created by a Finnish (you’ll notice that I really like using the word Finnish where ever possible in this paragraph) film director Aki Kaurismaki (seriously that is his name, cool huh?) who featured in his Finish film cunningly titled “Leningrad Cowboys Go America” starring a fictional Finish progressive rock band with a taste for polka – the Leningrad Cowboys. Finished with laboring the Finish.

After the film, the band not expectantly took on a life of its own. Recording music, making videos and giving concerts. The band appeared in two other Aki Kaurismäki films, “Leningrad Cowboys Meets Moses” and “Total Balalaika Show”.

This second film featured the band in concert and for the first time with the 160-member Alexandrov Ensemble. It was in Helsinki and it was magic.

The Cowboys followed this up with a slightly smaller ensemble, about 70 odd Alexandrov member. They played at the 11th Annual MTV Music Awards in New York to an estimated global audience of 250 million people worldwide. Not bad at all.

This strange musical fusion of Finnish Art-Pop and Russian Military gave birth to some of the oddest cover renditions I have heard, but nothing more so than their glorious take of “Sweet Home Alabama” – the signature hit song from one of the most famous airplane crash band’s Lynyrd Skynyrd.

Check out the wacky glory of the Cowboys and the Alexandrov’s in action below.

About ten years after this concert film the Cowboys and the Ensemble got back together for a concert imaginatively titled “Global Balalaika Show“. And they were still popular! They have since toured regularly including private corporate functions… although I suspect seeing them perform without the Alexandrov Ensemble would be a little disappointing in some ways. For me anyway. The clash of stiff Cold War feeling military uniforms with the pop-art explosion of the Cowboys loud-jackets and Cirque de Soleil inspired pointed hair and shoes. It’s this visual and audible clash set to music that makes it all work so wonderfully.

As a general rule, the Leningrad Cowboys consist of eleven cowboys and two Leningrad Ladies. Their songs indicate a strong thematic preference for Genghis Khan, Russian folk standards, tractors and rockets, Led Zeppelin and the Beatles, and of course vodka.  Naturally.

That’s not to say that they haven’t tried their hand at more contemporary-ish songs.

The second clip embedded below is their version of that late ’90′s hit from punk-ish group Offspring. In some ways I like this song “Pretty Fly for a White Guy” more so than their other offerings. If for no other reason than it features the Ladies auxiliary of the ensemble opening the track by singing “Give It To Me Baby” in heavy accented English. Adorable and fun.

AND check out the way they have gone about staging the concert. Tiered stage levels and an elevated catwalk flown through and above the audience. Transferable to a memorable corporate environment? Yes sir.

The Leningrad Cowboys official site can be found overrrrr….overrr… here!

and the wonderful Russian Choir and Backing band is the Alexandrov Ensemble… and their site can be found……over….. there!

As a special added bonus for 168′ers – we have organized, kinda, for their entire site to be presented totally in Russian for a greater cultural experience. Awwww pretty.

Your most welcome.

FACTOR168 | Creative Event Management Company

In the short term – no not really. Long term? Yup.

FACTOR168 works extensively overseas as well as across Australia, and in our experience it is not that uncommon for event producers like us and our valued clients to be presented with a whole host of ‘extra’ venue charges. Reasonable and not.

This can vary from city to city and site to site but can include access to service lifts and loading docks as put forward by the Brisbane Sofitel with this new fee/levy.

Although we have never been charged for ‘wear and tear’ to the building as raised and sensibly discounted by the Sofitel Brisbane General Manager – some charges we have incurred can be considered by many as very unreasonable when added to agreed general venue hire charges.

An example? Okay, working at Shaw Studios in Hong Kong, the venue insisted on charging for every car space within their private car lot (it was discovered later that the entire site was subsidized in part by the government to encourage corporate events…wow) and much to my amazement – was also keen on charging an access levy for each ‘section’ of their private road network that criss crossed the event site. We are talking the access roads here!

Shaw Studios – on a personal level, lovely to work with but as a business event friendly venue, well let’s just say that unless our clients had some really serious motivations, we would encourage them to consider more cost controlled sites such as the Hong Kong Convention Centre. Which on a sister event they did and with the money saved from all those access fees, the show got extra sizzle to everyone’s delight.

I make this point as the Sofitel, as lovely as it is,  is not the only sole venue of choice.

Without a doubt – the two biggest and mission critical venue related charges incurred overseas is air conditioning and production power consumption.

I recall staging a heavily geared technology show for IBM (USA) in Singapore on behalf of Alford Media from Texas and being presented with an estimation of power charges by the venue. It was in the thousands.

Still in Singapore – try to rehearse a hundred strong song and dance cast within the Singex Exhibition Halls without air conditioning. Madness.You wouldn’t do it. I didn’t. My client and I haggled and paid. Singex were flexible with their ‘access’ fees.

As were the Pattaya Exhibition and Convention Hall (PEACH). It was a joy to work with Thai management who were very happy to accommodate us on site fees in return for our corporate event business. We have since returned there for a follow-up event and they continued their high degree of hospitality.

The upshot – well I guess if FACTOR168 is faced with only a $75 fee at the Brisbane Sofitel, we are not thrilled but we are certainly not desperately unhappy. We’ll just regard it as ‘av corkage’.

As a sidenote - this fee doesn’t actually surprise me at all. With the new AV inhouse supplier at Brisbane Sofitel being AV Partners you could declare this inevitable. Bankrolled by former Staging Connections supremo Gary Hackett, he had previously introduced a technician on duty or ‘TOD’ fee at all his contracted venue partners. From memory it was $60 or perhaps even … cue dramatic spooky music – $75 per hour. Not that dissimilar to the tech fees I have previously been charged at ‘teamster-styled’ unionised venues notably in Las Vegas and Atlanta.

Still at least the proposed Sofitel ‘av corkage’ is a fee in return for access.

Some convention centres in Australia have some very restrictive anti-competitive policies. Sydney is not so bad as they are happy to partner, the Gold Coast is sensational and a venue of choice, whereas Adelaide and to a lesser extent Brisbane are run almost as closed shops. I’d be happy to pay $75 at either of these two sites in return for free and unhindered site access with my partners of choice.

Ultimately – if you are staging an event in the Sofitel Brisbane and $75 is going to break the budget – I suspect you have some serious event budget issues and shouldn’t really be staging the event at all… and certainly not at one of Brisbane’s few five star venues of reasonable event friendly size.

For your reference - the ASE has published the letter announcing this policy from the Sofitel.

Perhaps the devil is in the detail with the second last paragraph of this letter from the hotel’s general manager indicating that this fee ‘may be altered at the hotel’s discretion’.

I’d like to think it could on particular circumstances the Sofitel ‘av corkage’ fee be waived outright… my gut however says that perhaps ISES are right to fight potential future fees for fear of hotels evolving into ‘closed convention shops’. I guess we’ll see.

In the interests of transparency, I should note that I have previously worked for many years developing Staging Connections overseas event footprint. Gary Hackett is a man that I respect, sometimes admired, and it would be fair to say that  I am always alert but never alarmed in his presence.

We have no commercial relationship. But I am always open to offers.

FACTOR168 | Creative Event Management Company

A beautifully shot advertisement showcasing the diversity of ‘the long white cloud’ in it’s locales and it’s people. The legendary story of this nations birth and the soundtrack of ‘forever young’ – it’s powerful and it works. I’d go…

This advertisement would have to be best in genre.
It’s a pity that their website lets them down so very badly.

Cluttered and difficult to navigate, and let’s be frank – just not that visually appealing. It has all the standard tourism site tools – the travel planner, event calenders and so on. I did however like the extension of the strong storytelling device evident in their advertisements with the send-a-friend a postcard and the the showcasing of visitors, residents, and fans home made films uploaded as 100% Pure NZ video experiences.

Fantastic ad, ordinary web presence. This should serve as a lesson to all of us. It’s not really good enough if there is no branded experience consistency across all facets of a project.

It would be akin to sinking the majority of your event budget into an expensive headline act and neglecting the event environment, high care table service, or even fundamentally a smooth and warm registration process. It never fails to amaze me that even today, some people spend a fortune on staging an important event only to neglect setting aside within their budget and site times for adequet presenter and techincal rehearsals and then wonder when things ‘happen’ or worse… don’t. Seriously talk with us or your current professional event management partner to best determine how to strike a considered balance between all aspects of an event so that you and your guests are assured a consistent and impactful experience across all aspects of the event cycle. It just makes sense.

Since we are on the subject of tourism style advertisements, a good one creates an expectation of a unique or at least a memorable experience and motivates the viewer to act on it. Consider the next clip which had the very hard task of promoting one of Australia’s east coast cities commonly regarded by many as a big country town – Brisbane. I think they did a pretty good job although would it compel me to holiday there or just make me feel warm and fuzzy about living there?

And finally, a personal favorite of mine. An advertisement for Las Vegas. What I like about this advertisement is it doesn’t show the Vegas most of us know – the shows, the strip, the neon lights, the gambling tables, the dancing and so on… no it just presents a little story and you fill in the ‘blanks’ with your own Vegas experience. Smart, fun, and effective. I’d go… for the shopping of course. Enjoy.

FACTOR168 | Event Management Company

Like a good flash mob moment, they appear to be democratically spur of the moment and yet a huge amount of pre-planning can often be involved. And they are becoming more and more popular, just check out the number of city specific zombie walks listed in the zombie walk forum. A clutch of states in the US, Australia, the UK, Finland, Brazil… people urrrrrrrrghhhh like it.

The zombie walk in Brisbane is a great example of the commercial power of flash mobbing with the charity of choice being…. you guessed it – The Brain Foundation.

What a fabulous tie-in and with not for profit outfits desperate for low cost or no cost special events that generates income and raises profile – this is a perfect fit. As an added bonus – unlike many other charity outfits with a more conservative position, the foundation through such a… well let’s be frank odd theme, also enjoys great targeted access to the difficult to mobilize Gen Y and to a lesser extent Gen X.

No surprise that the best example of flash mobs can be found in the USA. The following clip is a great example of a flash mob in process. Staged at Grand Central Station in New York – the mob on cue all froze, held their positions and then on signal reactivated. Memorable, well managed, and certainly worth watching… if for no other reason than enjoying the poor guy on the service buggy caught in the middle of the whole thing. Enjoy.

This and other similar flash mob moments were staged by Improve Everywhere – check out their site and the sister site Urban Prankster. Very inspirational for developing marketing campaigns that really create unsual and impactful experiences at ground zero.Certainly beats product tasters or girls in too small tops handing out leaflets.

FACTOR168 | Event Management Company

...is now listed in our gallery of outstanding WordPress
websites. The fact that we approve only about 1 out of 10
submissions that we receive, means that this is quite an
achievement and yet another reason for you to be proud
of your work. Congratulations!