The recent White Night extravaganza saw the Melbourne brand injected with vivacious culture Botox treatment. Dubbed the ‘schoolies of culture’, the White Night festival is a leading example of an exceedingly successful place-branding campaign.

Market research suggests that Melbourne is perceived not only as one of the world’s most liveable places, but as Australia’s most vibrant, creative and ‘edgy’ city with both hidden and prominent treasures.

This festival showcased everything Melbournians pride themselves on and lucratively marketed those qualities. Melbourne is renowned as a charismatic city offering an abundance of trendy bars, sophisticated galleries, yuppy fashion boutiques, quirky cafe-littered laneways, and heritage architecture. White Night complimented, celebrated and amplified the hipster ambience that locals love to indulge in over a chai latte on a sunny Sunday afternoon.

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Melbourne’s leading contemporary dance troupe, Chunky Move will be launched their new work, ’247 Days’ on March 15 at Malthouse Theatre.

The piece is a physical interpretation of asking and answering the big questions: “How do we view the world? How does the world view us? Do we behave as expected, or accept who we truly are? And, if we could observe ourselves in an unguarded moment, what would we see?”

Chunky Move Artistic Director Anouk van Dijk combines what has already been with what could be; stimulating the audience to consider the significance of the individual.

“247 Days is an exploration of human dynamics within the context of a shifting Australian landscape.”

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Prominent American designer come writer Frank Chimero raised support on crowd-funding site Kickstarter to fund a new book The Shape of Design. His target was $27,000 to cover the self-publishing expenses – he surpassed that in the first day and went on to raise over $100,000.

The Shape of Design was released in May and is being endorsed worldwide. It doesn’t teach us how to design; rather,  it focuses on why we are designing in the first place. It looks at the relationship of client to designer and the important roles each plays to create a successful outcome.

Earlier this month I was priveledged to attend a Portable Presents talk featuring fearless Frank. Inspired, upon exiting the lecture I took hold of pen and paper and furiously scribbled some notes, determined to record my thoughts. Here they are.

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Think about the last few posts, images or videos you shared online. Which ones can you remember best? Did they go viral?

Content streams across the web in huge swills, washing up in intended and unlikely places. But most of it is crap. You’re mildly amused, it was a nice photo, or it was sort of shocking. Then there are the Facebook apps that offer so little but take so much: 10 minutes of yawn while ripping your private information.

However, some content is beautiful, wonderful and memorable. It has an impact. It changes behaviour because it is so compelling. This content is the holy grail for marketers, political organisations and community advocates. But it is very rare. Why? Because it is unique and, by definition, uncommon.

There is one sector that stands to gain huge reach, appeal and influence online. That’s the Arts.

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Using the computer as a tool for design relies on the interface between man and machine.

Mice are the standard tool for navigating a computer. The first mouse prototype was Independently invented and developed by Doug Engelbart at the ‘Stanford Research Institute‘ in 1963. You can see how far technology has come but in essence the interface has remained the same for the last forty five years.

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Below is David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance” video clip.

Filmed in 1983 in Carinda – a town with one pub about 645 kilometres out over the Blue Mountains in NSW, the clip is surreal to me. It seems so bizarre to see a David Bowie hanging out at the Carinda pub, juxtaposed onto a dry, hot and dusty Australian landscape.

I interpret the clip to be a statement for Aboriginal rights. After digging around on the internet, I discovered that “Let’s Dance” was filmed around the time of “China Girl“. And both songs were used as catchy, upbeat vessels for Bowie’s sociological commentary on a situation he didn’t think was right.

In a Rolling Stone interview excerpt from May 1983, Bowie, somewhat bashfully (I think due to the clichéd nature of his explanation), explained that both clips were “..very direct. And the message that they have is very simple – it’s wrong to be racist!”.

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With the transition to new ownership and a new vision, 2011 has been a high pressure year for Sotheby’s Australia. Ellis Jones and management worked to meet the initial challenges of critics, consistently delivering results and staying true to the promise of a rare, exclusive and scholarly experience.

Segmenting consumer and stakeholder audiences to develop a media strategy, Ellis Jones expanded media relationships from arts and culture to business, fashion, and investment channels. The result, greater attendance at jewellery auctions, higher brand awareness and jaw dropping ROI of 690%.

2011 had some key milestones for Sotheby’s in a record breaking jewellery auction and record breaking jewel, the rare Melbourne and Queens Cups going to Museum Australia and a new romance with Asian art and artifact collectors.

Media relations had some outstanding successes as well.

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To many luxury brands, social media is unchartered waters. By actively participating in online conversations, brands need to relinquish some control in order to gain greater engagement from their audiences. The conversation needs to be genuine.

Luxury brands may have a Facebook page or a Twitter account, but this year’s faux pas’ and retail slide indicate that it takes a little more than leaking the new collection online to get people’s attention. Traditional mediums have relevance (real world experience is all part of the procured prestige), but there is no doubt consumer buying and decision making patterns have changed and every retailer or luxury brand needs to leverage social media to get results.

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While actors are running around filming The Hobbit ‘prequel’ to the famous J.R.R Tolkien’s Lord of The Rings, collectors are waiting expectantly for an upcoming auction of Tolkien’s personal works in Sydney this weekend, 27th November.

The collision of the art and auction world is common, but the appearance of original J.R.R Tolkien works, complete with the authors’ own handwriting is an occurrence too rare to pass by. Read all…

As spring racing takes its hold on Melbourne and, for a snap in time placing a bet becomes as acceptable as a curtsy for the Queen, two very unique horse racing trophies – the 1867 Melbourne Cup and 1867 Queen’s Plate – were the stars of a collection of fine Australian silverware and furniture auctioned on Tuesday evening at Sotheby’s Australia in Melbourne. Read all…