Timezoneone Blog

Tom Peter’s has written a new book called The Little Big Things: 163 Ways to Pursue Excellence. Below are the top 19 E’s of Excellence, which I think are fabulous reminders of why we are in the business called advertising. If we strive everyday to embrace at least two to three of these TimeZoneOne and ourselves will be better and happier as a team and individuals.

•Enthusiasm! Be an irresistible force of nature!

•Energy. (Be fire! Light fires!)

•Exuberance! Vibrate – cause earthquakes!

•Execution! Do it! Now! Get it done! Barriers are baloney! Excuses are for wimps! Accountability is gospel! Adhere to the Bill Parcells doctrine: “Blame no one! Expect nothing! Do something!”

•Empowerment! Respect and appreciation rule! Always ask, “What do you think?” Then listen! Then let go and liberate! Then celebrate!

•Edginess! Perpetually dancing at the frontier, and a little or a lot beyond.

•Enraged! Determined to challenge and change the status quo! Motto: “If it ain’t broke, break it!”

•Engaged! Addicted to MBWA / Managing By Wandering Around. In touch. Always.

•Electronic! Partners with the world 60/60/24/7 via electronic community building of every sort.

•Encompassing! Relentlessly pursue diverse opinions – the more diversity the merrier! Diversity per se “works”!

•Emotion! The alpha. The omega. The essence of leadership. The essence of sales. The essence of marketing. The essence. Period. Acknowledge it.

•Empathy! Connect, connect, connect with others’ reality and aspirations! “Walk in the other person’s shoes” – until the soles have holes!

•Experience! Life is theatre! Make every activity-contact memorable! Standard: “Insanely Great” / Steve Jobs; “Radically Thrilling” / BMW.

•Eliminate! Keep it simple!

•Error-prone! Ready! Fire! Aim! Try a lot of stuff and make a lot of booboos and then try some more stuff and make some more booboos – all of it at the speed of light!

•Evenhanded! Straight as an arrow! Fair to a fault! Honest as Abe!

•Expectations! Michelangelo: “The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.” Amen!

•Eudaimonia! Pursue the highest of human moral purpose – the core of Aristotle’s philosophy. Be of service. Always.

•EXCELLENCE! Never an exception! If not Excellence, what?

Fearon the most excellent.

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Urban Adventours run fantastic cycle tours around Boston. It is a great way to see the city. Back in July I was lucky enough to visit this great historic city. The bike tour was the best fun! It was a great day!

‘On Ya Bike Nigel’

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Saw this on one of those little ‘human interest’ bits that they do to pick you back up after the real News and the song’s been stuck in my head all day. It’s some happy kiwis singing for their supper at McDonalds. I know it’s kind of become a thing to video yourself rapping your order at the drive-thru and post it on YouTube, but those are all really annoying, this is much nicer. It’s a shame that the McDonald’s staff don’t just play along.

WHAKANUIA TE REO MĀORI

Celebrating Māori Language Week brought to you by the color Kikorangi and the letter I.

McDonalds = Maki Tānara.

The little lines that appear above some vowels in māori word are called macrons or tohutō .

A vowel with a macron is lengthened in pronunciation. In māori, the length of a vowel can completely change the meaning of a word. The word KĀKĀ means parrot but the street sign pictured has only recently had macrons added. Previously it caused a lot of giggles and finger pointing from Kura Kaupapa students on their way to school because, in the absence of macrons, it is another word for tiko. The South Waikato council has since added macrons to a number of street signs and the Porirua City Council are planning to do the same.

NGĀ WHETŪ O TĒNEI WIKI

Ko te reo te tino whetū o tēnei wiki kī a au, heoi, kī a TZ1 whānui, ko Foxy rāua ko Hamo ngā whetū i tēnei wiki. Ngā mihi nui ki korua. Ka pai ō korua mahi.

Hei korā! David

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In a world full of apples and oranges, creative people are bananas. The creative mind is a funny thing, it’s kind of like a hyperactive 4 year old, it has a short attention span, it likes to wander off when mum (mom) and dad aren’t looking, it’s prone to the occasional toy-throwing tantrum and it’s  always asking ‘Why?’ and it doesn’t even care what the answer is. Children are very creative, most of us lose that creative ability as we grow up and haircuts, mortgages and real jobs. Fortunately for those of us in the business of being creative, we never really have to grow up. Our child-like imaginations and ability to send our mind off for a wander are our greatest assets, they allow fresh perspectives on everyday things.

I find randomness inspirational. I keep a collection of completely random objects and images that I’ve found. If every I’m stuck for an idea I flick through my collection of randomness and see what it sparks off. Throwing a little randomness into the mix allows you to move beyond the obvious solution to the brief and start exploring solutions from a fresh perspective. It’s this kind of random mind-wandering that has created links between polar bears and soft drink, gorillas and chocolate and pirates and breakfast cereal.

And if your ever really stuck for a fresh take on things, just ask yourself – What Would the Japanese Do?

Here’s a rabbit in a tea cup.

WHAKANUIA TE REO MĀORI

Celebrating Māori language Week brought to you by the color Māwhero and the digraph Wh.

A rabbit in a tea cup – He rāpeti kei roto i te kapu tī.

There are 2 māori words for banana and a kind of interesting, but probably not really, story behind them. When Māori first arrived on these shores, between 800AD and 1300AD, they brought with them their crops from the pacific. One of those crops was the banana, but it is too cold to grow bananas here. So by the time Europeans arrived and brought the banana back to these shores, the memory of the banana and the word for banana was long forgotten. So Māori adopted and adapted the English word to create the word Panana (there’s no B in the māori alphabet). The other māori word for banana, that has been adopted more recently, is Maika. This is the Tahitian word and, because the languages are closely related, it is likely that this is what the original māori word for banana would have been. So Banana = Panana or Maika.

David

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Create a New Zealand Consulate experience in your very own home or office! Decorate the room  with New Zealand tourism posters as seen in Murray’s office in Flight of the Conchords. You can download high resolution images from this guy. Here’s a couple of my favorites…

Here’s a link to the Tourism New Zealand website, because seriously… ewe should come.

WHAKANUIA TE REO MĀORI

Celebrating Māori language Week brought to you by the color Kākāriki Aho, the letter R and Nickelodeon.

David

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Someone smart person who was involved with the launch of Toyota’s new little car, the iQ, thought designing a font for the campaign was a good idea. But an even better idea was do it with the car.

 Follow to story.

 blog crasher Mark

WHAKANUIA TE REO MĀORI

Celebrating Māori language Week brought to you by the color Karaka and the letter E.

The māori word for Font is Momotuhi.

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I’ve been working on projects for the U.S. Army race teams recently and while doing my homework, I stumbled across some impressive  images that show just how well this pattern does its job of making the U.S. Army soldiers almost invisible…

There are 4 soldiers in the next image…

And the image below  has 4 soldiers and 7 ninjas…

The next evolution in camoflage will no doubt be some kind of stealth suit the bends lightwaves around the person wearing it. Here’s a nice little marketing stunt for a public awareness campaign where they created this illusion with a film camera and a projector.

WHAKANUIA TE REO MĀORI

Celebrating Māori language Week brought to you by the color Waiporoporo and the digraph Ng.

The Māori word for Army is tauā (toe-ah).

The māori name for New Zealand’s Army is Ngāti Tūmatauenga, ‘Tribe of the God of War”

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New Zealand has 3 and half official languages, Māori, New Zealand sign language, English and our very own unique dialect of English known as New Zild.

This week we celebrate the the Māori language with Māori Language Week – Te Wiki o Te Reo Maori. Māori Language Week is about people who don’t usually speak Te Reo ‘giving it a go’ and it’s about being supportive and accepting of those who choose to speak it as an everyday language. Every week is Maori Language Week at my whare. When our daughter was about 6 months old, my wife and I were invited along to a hui about raising bilingual tamariki. There we learned about the advantages of raising your child bilingually and about some of the wrongs of the past and the uncertain future that the māori language faces.

So, because raising a child wasn’t difficult enough already, we decided to raise ours with a language that we hadn’t learned to speak yet. This seemed like a bad idea at the time, but our 2 year old girl is now very chatty in 2 languages. It hasn’t been easy and it’s not going to get any easier, we still need to keep studying and working hard to stay ahead of the superior learning ability that children possess. So Māori Language Week is important to my whānau because it helps create positive attitudes and acceptance towards Te Reo Māori and makes it a normal part of everyday life in New Zealand, if only for a week. Ahakoa he iti, he pounamu.

I really get a kick out of seeing Te Reo Māori in the mainstream for the week. For example, last year TVNZ’s morning talk show Breakfast was renamed Parakuihi for the week and this morning the used māori placenames and days of the week for the weather report. Also, this year, Nickelodeon are playing Te Reo Maori episodes of Spongebob squarepants – ara ko Spongebob Tarau Porowhā.

So for a little Wiki o Te Reo Māori fun, here’s some kiwi placenames for you to try at home…

A nice easy one to get warmed up…

Whakatāne

Rotorua

Taupō

Akaroa

Here you’ll find a map with lots more, just click the location on the map to here the audio.

David

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This Friday or all Fridays, at this end of this week, of all weeks, it seems appropriate to resurrect the Zoner of the Week.

For me Zoners have the following traits:
- A Can Do attitude
- Fun and energetic
- A desire to exceed expectations
- A willingness to learn as we go
- Open and positive
- Ego-less

These add up to extraordinary. It is a choice to act like this and we make this choice. Ordinary is not welcome.

This is our esprit de corps. Our mojo. And I am proud be part of a team that embraces these values.

With this in mind the Zoner of the Week goes to ALL our team, nationwide and coast to coast. In this pressure packed deadline demanding week I believe we all looked carefully at ourselves and asked ‘how can I make this better’?

Rich even bought coffee.

Next week will also have it’s challengers but we are now better equipped.

Welllll done, and thanks.

ENTERCATION

As we are all a bit brain-drained it might be likely that we miss that opportunity for a clever comeback

For example, if Churchill had been tired when Mrs Braddock said to him ‘Sir, you are drunk’, he may have replied ‘Doh’, and it might have been several hours before he thought of the rather keen comeback ‘Madam, you are ugly. In the morning, I shall be sober.’

In French there is a rather nice expression for coming up with a clever comeback when it is too late…’l'esprit de l’escalier’

Entercationally speaking this means ’stairway wit’.

Tatts

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The top things you should know about Colorado now that TZ1 has an office here:

1. Outdoor Activities-the best skiing in the world, climbing, rafting
2. Crazy weather-two weeks ago it was 75 degrees on Tuesday and then on Wednesday there was a massive blizzard
3. People love beer, especially micro brews
4. It has more pet dogs per capita than any other state-that means we are all very friendly and loving
5. Denver has more professional sports teams than any other city-football (Broncos), baseball (Rockies), basketball (Nuggets), hockey (avalanche), soccer (Rapids), Lacrosse (Mammoth), Rugby (Barbarians)
6. 300 days of blue sky
7. Home to the second largest running race in the whole U.S.-the BolderBOULDER
8. The Rocky Mountains
9. Colorado is one of two states that no water runs into-the other being Hawaii
10. 52 of 54 14,000 foot peaks in the Continental Unites States are in Colorado
11. Colorado Spring is home to the Olympic Training Center
12. If you stand on the Southwest border of Colorado you can actually stand in four States (Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah)
13. Denver boasts the largest city park system in the country, 90 golf courses and 650 miles of paved trails.
14. Our city tagline is, “the mile high city” that’s because our elevation is 5,280 feet, which equals a mile.
15. Denver is considered the thinnest city in America and Colorado is the thinnest state.
16. It was on top of nearby Pikes Peak in 1893 that Katherine Lee Bates was inspired to write the words to “America the Beautiful.”
17. The famous Red Rocks Amphitheater is in the Colorado foothills

Fear-on

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