joy

Grand Rapids will be celebrating its “heart’ next week with a special fundraiser for the Heartside Business Association hosted by development firm Locus Development as part of the groundbreaking celebration for its new development, Thirty-Eight.

The “Heartside Pre-Glow” party at the former EQ3 building at 130 Ionia Ave. SW will feature the debut of Celebrate Heartside, a short film on the rebirth of the neighborhood written, directed and produced by Creo Productions and Brian Kelly, owner of Brian Kelly Photography and managing photographer of Rapid Growth. It includes a score by Brian Vander Ark, of The Verve Pipe.

The film will be broadcast above the the building on the outer west wall of the Cherry/Commerce parking ramp, the unofficial launch of a “projection initiative” led by Kelly to help promote the use of film as outdoor art.

“Locus Development commissioned the film to show the vitality and uniqueness of Heartside in a fresh way,” says Kelly. “Heartside is becoming the place to be if you want to live downtown in proximity to hip artist lofts and galleries, innovative entrepreneurs, some of the most unique retail anywhere and fantastic nightlife.”

The February 12 event kicks off at 5 p.m. with the debut of Celebrate Heartside at 6 p.m. DJ Shannon Williams will provide music and guests can sample Founders’ beer and Republic’s menu specialties.

Event trailer:

Obama look alike?

Reports indicate that the new look cost more than 1 mil and took over 5 months to create. dang.

Sounds like the approach is justified by the iconic value and importance to Pepsi – according to some folks who know this stuff:

“It goes way beyond reasonable. … It’s preposterous and extreme, and kinda layered with bullshit,” said Charles Rosen, founding partner of New York ad agency Amalgamated. “But I understand the reason they went as far as they did with it.”

View the AdAge article

> Twitter. You’ve heard of it right? Your on it right? Your following me right? Mobile is a key component to the success of Twitter. The ability to “tweet” while off-line – sharing pictures via twitpic, videos via 12seconds, location via brightkite, (and ton of others) – is the secret sauce of Twitter. If your going to follow someone, you really want to follow them…mobile makes that happen.

> Search. Driving down the road lost as hell and looking for that great restaurant- what do you do? Right, you m-Google it.

> Yelp. You eat at that restaurant, and you want to yelp about how much the chicken sammie blows…right? Grab your phone.

> CSC (common short codes). AKA text message, SMS…you’ve done that before – right?

Applications, navigation, m-commerce, shopping comparison, coupons, QC (quick codes), YouTube, Facebook, Flickr, email…it goes on all day. The point is, we are already there.

So brands – quit talking about the “year of mobile” and get in the game!

Convergence theory
Convergence theory holds that crowd behavior is not a product of the crowd itself, but is carried into the crowd by particular individuals. Thus, crowds amount to a convergence of like-minded individuals. In other words, while contagion theory states that crowds cause people to act in a certain way, convergence theory says the opposite: that people who wish to act in a certain way come together to form crowds

Emergent-norm theory
Ralph Turner and Lewis Killian developed the emergent-norm theory of crowd dynamics. These researchers concede that social behavior is never entirely predictable, but neither are crowds irrational. If similar interests may draw people together, distinctive patterns of behavior may emerge in the crowd itself. Crowds begin as collectivities, acting, and protest crowds – norms may be vague and changing as when, say, one person at a rock concert holds up a lit cigarette lighter to signal praise for the performers, followed by others. In short, people in crowds make their own rules as they go along.

What do you think? I will post my views soon.