Con­tin­u­ing my posts on Smart car ads and dec­o­ra­tion, with the Bollywood-style Castel­ba­jac Rol­ly­wood Smart Fortwo and the Smart Aper­icube, here’s a pic­ture of a Smart on Diet Coke! After snow­fall, it was served chilled …

I don’t think these dec­o­rated smart cars look great, except for the Rol­ly­wood
one, which I like. Then again, the Rol­ly­wood Smart Fortwo is not really
an ad. It is more like what you might find in some
Cen­tral and South Amer­i­can coun­tries, in Africa or in Asia.

For instance, pic­tured above left is a wildly dec­o­rated boat in Rio de Janeiro with an ad for Extra super­mar­kets and above right, a wildly dec­o­rated bus with Pana­man­ian land­scapes (cour­tesy of Cora). Other vehi­cles might be dec­o­rated in more spiritual/religious themes. Imag­ine see­ing these col­or­ful vehi­cles every­day! Of course, we have noth­ing like it in Paris and in most North Amer­i­can and Euro­pean cities. Very few peo­ple take to their vehi­cles with an air­brush any­more, like the “hip­pies” in the sev­en­ties did with their Bee­tle Bugs and Vans.

In Miami some put neon lights under their cars, in Lon­don they have the red double-decker buses to add color to the city … and in Paris we have col­or­ful ads on Smart cars.

Please take two min­utes to reply to the sur­vey on the France Brazil site if you haven’t done so already. The sur­vey will run through Tues­day next week, so if you’d like to have your opin­ion counted regard­ing the con­tent (includ­ing lan­guages) of the site, please com­plete the sur­vey.

If you are inter­ested in con­tribut­ing arti­cles or being a guest author, please e-mail me and I will get in touch with you by next week with more details.

It snows infre­quently in Paris and in 7 years I’ve hardly seen it snow as much as yes­ter­day. Here’s a link to view  the pic­tures as a slide show.

Tech­no­rati Tags: paris

I’ve retired the “stream­ing lights” ban­ner in favor of the new one above to mark the begin­ning of www.francebrazil.com, the new blog about The Offi­cial Year of Brazil in France. The ban­ner above depicts Lagoa in Rio de Janeiro, viewed from the foot of Cor­co­v­ado moun­tain on which the famous Christ statue stands. Beyond the build­ings lies Ipanema Beach.

The objec­tive of France Brazil is to inform, dis­cuss and cel­e­brate the Year of Brazil in France, which runs from March to Decem­ber, 2005 . A num­ber of cul­tural events will be held in Paris and other French cities and hope­fully Franco-Brazilian ties will be strength­ened through these exchanges.

And hope­fully closer ties result in new busi­ness opportunities!

The cur­rent site, www.tapio.com, will con­tinue to dis­cuss ideas related to inno­va­tion, mobil­ity and new mar­ket­ing. Thanks for read­ing and I hope you’ll enjoy both sites!

Tues­day, Feb­ru­ary 22 is Free Mojtaba and Arash Day, for the two Iran­ian blog­gers cur­rently jailed by the Iran­ian gov­ern­ment. Read about Arash and Mojtaba. Here is what you can do. With addi­tional con­tact infor­ma­tion.

Let’s make a dif­fer­ence today. Free­dom of speech is an issue that affects blog­gers in the West as well, includ­ing France’s Christophe Grébert, threat­ened for his site con­test­ing his city’s politics.

A reg­u­lar Skype and Skype­Out user, I’m test­ing Teleo for its inbound call­ing fea­ture. When I’m online, I answer calls through my lap­top. When I’m offline, calls get for­warded to my cellphone.

With 73 mil­lion down­loads to date, Skype is also allegedly work­ing on their own inbound call­ing fea­ture and in the mean­time Teleo won’t do much dam­age to Skype’s user base, which enjoys free VoIP calls between users. Stu­art at the Unbound Spi­ral writes a good review of Teleo’s fea­tures as well as its expected impact on Von­age and Skype.

Link: Teleo launches mobile VoIP Service :

San Francisco-based VoIP provider Teleo today [14 Feb­ru­ary 2005] unveiled its .… VoIP sys­tem that lets cus­tomers use their cell phone, reg­u­lar phone or PC to receive VoIP calls.

Teleo’s soft­ware inte­grates with your com­puter desk­top and allows you to place and receive tele­phone calls from Microsoft Out­look, Inter­net Explorer, and other appli­ca­tions. PC-to-PC calls to other Teleo users any­where in the world and incom­ing calls from reg­u­lar tele­phones are both free. Out­bound calls to reg­u­lar tele­phones are paid as you go using flex­i­ble PSTN min­utes with 2c per minute call­ing any­where in the world.

Users can set an inbound call­ing num­ber, change voice­mail and call for­ward­ing set­tings, and view call detail records for PC-to-PC calls and calls to reg­u­lar telephones.

Priced at $4.95 per month, a free 30 day trial can be down­loaded now.

Party at the Brazil­ian Car­naval in Paris this Saturday!

Re-published in 2001, “Boom, Bust & Echo” by David K. Foot pro­vides rel­e­vant insights for marketers:

“[The] Good news for retail­ers is that these echo teens are richer than their boomer par­ents were at the same age. In the 1950s, three or four kids had to com­pete for what­ever spend­ing money one work­ing par­ent chose to dis­trib­ute. In the 1990s, one or two kids have their cash needs sup­plied from two work­ing par­ents. Because of grow­ing life expectancy, some Echo kids are blessed with four grand­par­ents. That demo­graphic sit­u­a­tion has given rise to the phe­nom­e­nom some mar­keters call the “six pocket kid.” It is the rea­son why Nike run­ning shoes are $200 and a Tommy Hil­figer t-shirt is $50″

“The echo is big but not as big as the almost 10 mil­lion strong boom. Just as movie the­atres for kids are mush­room­ing, so casi­nos and golf courses are pop­ping up every­where to acco­mo­date aging boomers who are enter­ing their prime gam­bling and golf­ing years. Life has become more com­plex for retail­ers and providers of recre­ational, edu­ca­tional and other ser­vices. They must be able to sat­isfy the dif­fer­ent needs of two growth markets–one com­posed of peo­ple in their teens and 20s and another of peo­ple in their 50s.”

Those born in the late 60’s and early 70’s make up the gen­er­a­tion in between, called the “bust” gen­er­a­tion. Busters and late boomers have had to cope with liv­ing in the wake of the baby boomers. For instance, para­phras­ing David Foot, most com­pa­nies are built as a hier­ar­chies, with a pyra­mid shape. How­ever, pop­u­la­tion and gen­er­a­tions are shaped like a box. As the gen­er­a­tion ages, the box pushes its way up the tri­an­gle … and there just isn’t enough room for everyone.

My take on this? If you’re a buster liv­ing out­side the pyra­mid, you might as well think out of the box!

“VINYL WILL KILL! is a book about the fas­ci­nat­ing and grow­ing genre of 3D Designer Toys, and the PROCESS from ini­tial con­cept in the designer’s head, through to how it finally makes it to the shelf, and to col­lec­tors around the world .… [It’s] a book for any pro­fes­sional designer, or any­one inter­ested in how a great idea finally makes it to a fin­ished product…and how much blood, sweat and pix­els are spilled along the way.”

Pixar’s, Dream­works’ and Disney’s ani­mated movies such as Toy Story, Mon­sters, Ice Age, Find­ing Nemo, The Incred­i­bles and oth­ers have been enor­mously pop­u­lar among adults as well chil­dren.  In my opin­ion, these hip and trendy toys occupy the same adult/child territory.

The MASP, Museum of Art of Sao Paulo, is hold­ing a great exhi­bi­tion on the “100 Mar­vels of Impres­sion­ism” until 27 March. Included are works by Renoir, Matisse, Gau­guin, Renoir, Van Gogh, Manet, Corot, Delacroix, Cezanne, Toulouse-Lautrec, Modigliani, Turner and oth­ers. My favorite was the work by Renoir pic­tured on the left, loosely trans­lated as “Rose and Blue: the Girls of Cahen d’Anvers”. The museum’s per­ma­nent col­lec­tion also mer­its your visit if you’re in Sao Paulo.

Tech­no­rati Tags: art

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