PSFK Author:
Guy Brighton

The LAist blog features a photo and list of content that can be found on this year’s DNC media bag. Interesting to see so many brands leveraging political events as sampling opportunities. LAist tells us about the content of the bag:

Inside a canvas bag emblazoned with AT&T and Coca-Cola are the following items: an official Denver 2008 reusable water bottle from Visa, two samples of vitamin water from Joint Juice, a bottle of Walgreen’s brand ibuprofen and minipack of Walgreen’s brand facial tissue, a bottle of hand sanitizer from the Hogan & Hartson law firm, a tube of chapstick from Blue Cross Blue Shield, a keychain compass from the Ford Escape Hybrid, a lapel pin from the American Wind Energy Association, a pack of breath mints from ProLogis, magnetic poetry from SEIU, a pocket emergency FM radio from ProtectingAmerica.org, a notebook from Staples, a gift card for free ringtones from AT&T, a pack of breath mints from UPS, some Post-It Notes, a guide of hiking and biking trails from the city of Denver, several straight up ads on cardstock for things like a local Denver shopping mall and events happening during the convention, and pens from movearoo.com, the Laborers’ International Union of North America, and the Anadarko Petroleum Corporation.

LAist: Conventionist: Inside the DNC Media Swag Bag

More great jobs featured on our listings site - jobs.psfk.com

Executive Director of Emerging Platforms, Organic
New York : Build exceptional experiences

Jr. Creative Strategist, The Coca-Cola Company
Atlanta : Drive brand development

Trend Analyst, Design & Innovation Company
West Coast : Ideation, strategy and concept development

The Daily Ad Biz points to news that Heineken’s use of photos from Flickr for a promotion got them in hot water. For a micro-site, the beer company took photos from Flickr that featured the Heineken sponsored Oxygen music festival - but found themselves getting sued for copyright infringement.

More here

Here’s the latest promo from Santogold. It’s interesting to see stylistic similarities between this video and the one for Ladytron’s runaway that we featured last week.

Santogold

PSFK is proud to announce that on Friday October 10 2008, we will host our next event - in Singapore. PSFK Conference Asia will celebrate creativity and ideas that make change.

This event will be PSFK’s 6th conference following successful installments in London, Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco. In Singapore we aim to inspire an audience of creative thinkers with some of the world’s leading visionaries in a variety of fields.

The day will consist of panel discussions and engaging presentations from representatives from Flamingo International, Wieden Kennedy, MTV, Panasonic, Profero and many more. Our audience will be made up of senior professionals from the advertising, design, digital, entertainment, media and marketing industries.

If you’re in the region - why not come for a passionate dose of inspiration?

www.psfkconferenceasia.com

John Grant says planners need to start to believe in something.

John Grant: Planning’s Midlife Crisis? from JWT on Vimeo.

[via zj]

BVD in Sweden were asked to by Turesgruppen AB to create a strong and totally unique café experience: from concept and name, to graphic profile and packaging. The concept needed to be warm, welcoming, honest and genuine and targeted to young professionals.

They created an image that mixed black, white and stainless steel with “warm” wood and other simple nostalgic cues:

The old fashioned café-feeling [is] expressed by things like a board with old, detachable letters and traditional cups and trays. The graphics are clean and simple, but at the same time surprising and playful. The design exudes personality, quality, style and a big city feeling.

Photos and more: BVD Case Study

Monocle magazine has opened up a branded newsstand in Fitzrovia, London. The shop is done up in full Monocle style, offering a clean and stylish way to browse the latest publications. Going forward, the magazine is looking to continue building a network of branded news outlets around the globe.

With speculation running wild over the fate of printed matter, this is an interesting move in favor of it’s future. With environmental impact concerns and production costs rising, along with Monocle’s high end reputation in mind, perhaps it’s a sign that print is going to end up being a luxury item in the future?

Monocle

There’s been some good to and fro going on in media-land. LA Times proudly produced figures that their traffic had increased by 66% and then Gawker Media stirred the pot by pointing out that they had double the traffic with a fraction of the staff.

With an editorial staff of about 700LA Times produces 127 million page views a month, while Gawker claims to create 254 million page views amonth with 8- staff. Silicon Alley Insider published this list of traffic for their sites:

Gizmodo 73.5m
Kotaku 44.3m
Lifehacker 25.6m
Gawker 18.9m
Fleshbot 17.4m
Jezebel 15.5m
Consumerist 13.7m
Jalopnik 13.4m
Deadspin 12.6m
io9 8.8m
Defamer 6.4m
Valleywag 3.3m