Sunday Soul: Heatwave

Growing up, Sundays were spent praising and cleaning. And unlike most households, our household always had a soul soundtrack on Sundays. Each week, I will extend a piece of soul (or funk/old-school/r&b/Motown golden era/quiet storm classics) to you. Enjoy these sweet, smooth sounds as you clean up or host brunch at your place.

Heatwave was founded in West Germany during the height of the disco years. Having an eclectic band line-up, the group consisted of members from the United States, Switzerland, Germany, Jamaica and Czechoslovakia. The groups leader, Johnnie Wilder, Jr., hailed from Dayton, OH and eventually recruited his younger brother Keith to join. During their heyday, the band recorded such classic tunes as 'Always & Forever', 'Boogie Nights' and 'Mind Blowing Decisions'.

Enjoy!

'Like' and Be Rewarded [Big Brother]

Currently, somewhere in Singapore, someone is shopping, using a rewards card and receiving discounts on merchandise simply for liking that business on Facebook. Welcome to the future.

Now, you may be curious as to how such activity is possible. One word: Taggo. Taggo, combined from the two words tap and go, is a service designed by Aneace Haddad. The goal of the service is to bring fan recognition to the actual point of sale; merging online with the real world. It also moves consumers away from coupons and having a loyalty card for every store they visit--which, if you're an avid shopper, can be a bit excessive. How do you use it? Simply by using a plastic contactless card with an unique identity number. And what is that exactly? Well, chances are you have one of these in your wallet already if you are a commuter or use a pre-paid phone card. If you are neither, these are not at all hard to come across. Once you have this card with the unique number, you register it online with the Taggo service. From there you Like shops and business accordingly, tap and go.

The soft launch of Taggo is taking place in Singapore because Haddad says it is a growing market for Facebook as well as tap and go. There are nearly 9 million tap and go cards in use in Singapore and business are putting up Facebook pages before they are even securing web domains.

While there haven't been any reports released yet to detail the success (or lack thereof) of Taggo in Singapore, it does seem like one really good idea for business in the U.S. Esepecially those business eagerly seeking new ways to cut down costs.

Read more on this at BBC.

Small Idea Raises $366,865+ on Kickstarter

In the keynote delivered in June, Steve Jobs mentioned that the latest iPod Nano could do many things, suggesting that it could even be a watch. Well Chicago-based designer Scott Wilson set out to make the iPod Nano do just that. Under his MINIMAL imprint, Wilson has designed two Nano watches: TikTok and LunaTik. TikTok is a snap-in design while the LunaTik is a premium conversion kit.

The original fundraising goal set was $15,000. The project has gained a lot of popularity and support receiving nearly 5,000 backers. The fundraising initiative was launched on Kickstarter nearly one week ago and, to date, this project is has received the most donations on the site. The project has currently raised $366,865, 2448% more than the initial fundraising goal, and the pledges keep coming in by the minute, literally.

Kickstarter is the largest funding platform for creative projects in the world. Every month, tens of thousands of amazing people pledge millions of dollars to projects from the worlds of music, film, art, technology, design, food, publishing and other creative fields.

Visit this project on Kickstarter here.

Storytelling with Tim Burton and Twitter

The Cadavre Exquis or Exquisite Corpse, Stainboy, is the latest project from the mind of Tim Burton. This crowdsourcing technique of storytelling works by each participant adding to the story in one-sentence sequences, building off of the last sentence added. If you would like to contribute to Stainboy all you need to do is tweet your sentence of what happens next and hastag it with #burtonstory. It's kind of like choose your own adventure in a social media friendly sort of way. Anyone with a Twitter account can participate between now and December 6, 2010. The best tweets of the day will be selected to build the story. Watch it unfold on the official website.

This social media campaign was launched in efforts to build excitement for the Toronto International Film Festival which will be honoring Burton and his work this year.

Sneakerpedia? [Swipe!]

Today's blog post comes from Kiss My Black Ads. It's where I keep up on all of the latest multi-cultural advertising campaigns. This one is for all of the sneakerheads.


Sneakerpedia Trailer from Sneakerpedia on Vimeo.

More

This is one of the smartest marketing coups of all time. If this works and I believe it will Footlocker is poised to run things in the minds of sneaker-heads throughout the known universe and beyond. In a mixture of social networking like Facebook and a collaborative encyclopedia project like Wikipedia, the network Foot Locker presents to the world Sneakerpedia .

Sunday Soul: Sly & The Family Stone

Growing up, Sundays were spent praising and cleaning. And unlike most households, our household always had a soul soundtrack on Sundays. Each week, I will extend a piece of soul (or funk/old-school/r&b/Motown golden era/quiet storm classics) to you. Enjoy these sweet, smooth sounds as you clean up or host brunch at your place.

With me being back home in California, this Sunday Soul is dedicated to none other than Sly & The Family Stone. Hailing from San Francisco, CA. many consider Sly & The Family Stone to be the first to have a racial + gender integrated line-up. Collectively, they were undoubtedly musical geniuses. But like most bands springing up in the height of the hippie-era, they indulged in some pretty heavy drugs which would ultimately cut their genius short. The band was only active between 1967-1975 but they managed to release at least a solid 5 pioneering funk/rock albums. You'll find some albums post 1975 credited as Sly & The Family Stone but in actuality, that's just Sly.

There's A Riot Goin' On is a really great album in the same vein like Fleetwood Mac's Rumors. The band itself was going through a bunch of inner turmoil and disagreements and though that sounds terrible, on wax, the results were amazing.  This album debuted at number one on the Billboard charts as did the lead single "Family Affair". This album eventually went platinum.

Enjoy!

The 44th Annual Kent State Folk Festival [Posters]

These anti-social media/pro-social interaction posters designed by Cleveland ad agency Marcus Thomas.