At the BANDIT office we are all photography enthusiasts. Not claiming that we have the complete technological knowledge about cameras, or that any of us are, or will probably ever become, professional photographers, but in our opinion we do know how to take some pretty good pictures and we appreciate when other people has done the same!

Another thing we all have a certain desire for is nicely designed “stuff”, meaning we sometimes end up spending a little more time on The Fancy, discovering new covers, leather goods and other accessories, than first intended.

Now, if you combine our two “passions” the result is unquestionably going to be;

Leica…

Since 1925 Leitz Camera (Leica) has been producing impressive, small, good-looking cameras for the people… or at least for the wealthy sections.

What’s special about Leica apart from what we at BANDIT are currently using, Canon, is the craftsmanship they put into making a camera and that’s something we are huge fans of;

Not only is this video beautifully made, it’s also very good advertising for Leica. It portrays the essence of the brand in a simple but very convincing way. There’s no need for background music or unnecessary extra effects, it is what it is, pure quality! The camera in the video is the Leica M9-P Edition Hermes and it costs $50.000… Check out the outboxing underneath and start saving up!

Emil

Hi, I’m the new addition to the BANDIT team, THE girl. I’m not a accustomed blogger, so I’m going to do it my way. For my first blog I thought long and hard about what I wanted to open “the show” with. Then I saw this video and it just came to me. I want to write about how the entrepreneur spirit has spread to all social layers and how early kids adapt the idea of ”making a business”.

This is Caine Monroy; he is 9 years old and has built an elaborate cardboard arcade inside his dad’s used auto parts store.

I know this film is very typical American. But I think it shows how a child can have a passion for making a business, that in most cases, may be bigger than an adult’s passion. Children don’t think about all the work it will take or all the finances. They go right for realising the idea. After I watched the film I went to the website, and there is, on behalf of Caine and his arcade, opened a scholarship fond for Caine to go to college.

In addition, the Goldhirsh Foundation is matching all donations to Caine’s scholarship fund to help build the Caine’s Arcade Foundation – which will help find, foster, and fund creativity and entrepreneurship in young kids/children. At this moment there has been raised 198616,64 $, and Caine’s arcade has a shocking 112,362 likes on Facebook.

If you work your way around the website (go ahead give it a try), you can see that Caine and his helpers are going all the way out with the project. You can check out the opening hours, soon buy t-shirts and the arcade is even open for film festivals and special screenings. I love the idea of the flash mob to make the little boys day, give him a once in a Childs life experience, and by doing that making sure that the message is coming out – and it did, because otherwise the Goldhirsh Foundation wouldn’t have responded.

But it is not only Caine that is “making a business” at a young age, all over the world people are adapting and learning that it is never to early to move on with a good idea. Business mentor, business coach and CEO coach, Cameron Herold is on TED says: “Bored in school, failing classes, at odds with peers: This child might be an entrepreneur”.

He presents the case for parenting and education that helps would-be entrepreneurs flourish both as kids and as adults. ”He wants parents and teachers to recognize, and foster, entrepreneurial talent in kids”.

In America there is a big focus on preparing and teaching children how to be entrepreneurs, what they do and how they contribute to the economy and society. According to a 2009 Gallup Organization survey of 26,000 people in 36 nations, the American schools are doing some good things, when it comes to entrepreneurship education. The data points to three things:

• First, American schools are doing a good job of teaching kids what entrepreneurs do. 71 % of the Americans surveyed said that elementary and secondary schools helped them to learn how entrepreneurs contribute to our economy and society.

• Second, American schools are helping to develop an entrepreneurial attitude, or “sense of initiative.” 73 % of Americans said that their primary and secondary school education taught them a sense of initiative.

• Third, American schools are piquing students interest in business ownership. Americans were twice as likely as Europeans to tell the surveyors that their K-12 education stimulated their interest in being in business for themselves

An example of another young entrepreneur is Leanna Archer.

Leanna is 15 years old and owns a company called Leanna’s Inc. The company sells hair products, on leannashair.com, which are free of sodium lauryl sulfate and parabens, and chemicals that are considered health risks. Leanna tells how she came up with the idea: ‘The idea came to me when I received tons of compliments about my hair and I knew it was thanks to my homemade products”. ”I had nothing to lose, because I figured that if it didn’t work out I still had my whole life ahead of me.”

In 2010 the company had revenues of more than $100,000. The Long Island entrepreneur expects that number to increase to more than $300,000 by year-end 2011. She is in the process of building an army of sales representatives across the United States. Her advice to small business owners: “All new entrepreneurs should know that mistakes are a big part of success.”
There are a lot of examples of child entrepreneurs, you can check out 18 kids to watch out for here and here.

I hope Denmark can keep up with America and focus more on teaching children in school about entrepreneurship and how they can realise their dreams. If Denmark does so, I think Denmark can be a strong competitor in the race of new great ideas.

Cecilie

Financial crisis. Jobs crisis. European Economic crisis. Austerity measures.
There’s many reasons why the bad news should be uppermost in our minds.

So how on earth do you combat that as a luxury brand? Or as a luxury car manufacturer?

You have to appeal to the one thing that is not subject to – the audience’s ability to appreciate design, form and function.
This is how you sell a car to people who may never be able to buy it.

Just make it look stunning!

R

While most people are still shocked that Facebook is forcing all of their members to use “timeline”, Facebook are already way ahead and past that… and trying to save lives!

Last week the Facebook crew launched a new, and hopefully, life saving feature called the organ donor status.

The purpose of the feature is to create an awareness of how many organ donors that are actually out there.

Apart from FB providing web links to government websites to motivate people to become organ donors, if they’re not already.

When you’ve then become an organ donor you simply apply it to your profile and the world will know (depending on your private settings of course).

Here’s CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, explaining;

What’s interesting about this new initiative is the amount of people who are actually using Facebook.

Almost 1 out of 7 people in the world have monthly activity on FB, which would make it, not only a huge, but also an easy database for the world population.

If you’re already using Facebook you might as well apply your organ donor status, since you know how the website works, you already have a network to communicate it to and you don’t have to sign up anywhere, and if you’re not yet a organ donor it might motivate you to become one.

It’s definitely good thinking, but is it going to work?

“Today, more than 114,000 people in the United States, and millions more around the globe, are waiting for the heart, kidney or liver transplant that will save their lives,” wrote Facebook in a statement. “Many of those people – an average of 18 people per day – will die waiting, because there simply aren’t enough organ donors to meet the need. Medical experts believe that broader awareness about organ donation could go a long way toward solving this crisis. And we believe that by simply telling people that you’re an organ donor, the power of sharing and connection can play an important role.”

A lot of people are obviously in need of new organs, and this feature will definitely create some media focus on the health issue, but to me it somehow seems a little unrealistic to complete an organ transaction based on an agreement made on Facebook.
Don’t get me wrong on this, I think it’s very good thinking from Facebook, but I personally wouldn’t consider Facebook the best source when it comes to finding a donor.

You can basically write anything you want, and right now it doesn’t seem like there are any legal bounds connected to it. I guess that whatever happens, Facebook is not a bad place to go if you’re trying to advertise/share something with the rest of the world.

It seems like the experts are more excited about this than I am though;

“This is going to be an historic day in transplant,” said Dr. Cameron, adding that people who die for want of an organ do so mostly because there are not enough organ donors, not because of any shortcomings in medical technology. “The math will radically change, and we may well eliminate the problem.”

I won’t really argue with this, and I’m truly hoping for it to succeed!

I still think it needs some adjustments to be complete and trustworthy, but I’m sure they’ll make it work very well after a short while. Right now it only seems to be active in the US, when it goes internationally it gets really exciting.

Great job Facebook,

Emil

In the past month, sport and death have become strange bed fellows.
We all face huge questions about mortality, for our sporting heroes and ourselves.

Yesterday Junior Seau, a 43 year old man died from a gunshot wound to the chest.
He was an veteran NFL player, 43 years old, with 3 children.

On Monday, Alexander Dale Oen, a 26 year old man died from cardiac arrest.

He was a swimmer, who following the tragedy of the massacre in Norway turned in an amazing performance winning the 100m breaststroke final in the World Championships.

2 weeks ago, on April 15th Piermario Morosini, a 25 year old man, died from a cardiac arrest.
He was a profession footballer, that died on the field.

Just over a month ago, Fabrice Muamba, a 23 year old man collapsed from a cardiac arrest and was effectively dead for 78 minutes.
He is a professional football player.

I say “is” because it’s a miracle that he has survived, and is making a recovery;

In an age where healthcare, technology and information are constantly reaching new heights, when athletes – who represent the pinnacle of physical performance – die at a relatively young age, it hits home.

This isn’t Whitney Houston or Michael Jackson who were long time drug addicts and strange, but talented people – these are young men felled by physical (and in Seau’s case) and mental illness.

It will be interesting how these series of tragedies and their legacies affect us all.

R

I remember when i was a kid i always loved watching the summer Olympics. It was one of those big events that was just unmissable.

The sheer variety of sports was one attraction, the quality of the competitions was another and the plentitude of nail biting and cracking finals rounded everything of nicely.

Together with Wimbledon, Le Tour, the European Championship and the World Cup in football it’s part of the reason behind my tanning game not being on par with non sports nuts, when the school was back in session.

I’ve never been an in-stadium spectator at the Olympics, and with all the IOC enforced rules that keep popping up, i’m not sure i want to.

The latest attempt on World Control from the IOC is this:

“The London 2012 conditions state: “Images, video and sound recordings of the Games taken by a Ticket Holder cannot be used for any purpose other than for private and domestic purposes and a Ticket Holder may not license, broadcast or publish video and/or sound recordings, including on social networking websites and the internet more generally, and may not exploit images, video and/or sound recordings for commercial purposes under any circumstances, whether on the internet or otherwise, or make them available to third parties for commercial purposes”.

Yes the second bit about basically you not being allowed to sell your pictures is fair enough. But then again that has never really been an issue has it. You have that bit more or less covered already…

But the first bit is incredibly narrow minded. I’m not even going to get into how you expect to enforce it, let alone the privacy laws you may have to bend to even have a shot at it.

No the simple notion of you wanting to block people from sharing a positive event they are part of with a global crowd on the spot and behind TV’s, well that may just be the dumbest shit i’ve heard this year…and i’m in advertising so i hear a lot of dumb shit! And isn’t it against one of your own fundamental principles???

Like say this one….

Fundamental Principles of Olympism:

6. Any form of discrimination with regard to a country or a person on grounds of race,
religion, politics, gender or otherwise is incompatible with belonging to the Olympic
Movement.

But that’s not all…

You have absolutely no problem with promoting your GLOBAL event in any way possible.

Including on one of the platforms where you don’t want spectators to share their personal photos.

Isn’t that a bit of a double standard??

But that’s not all…

What if i told you that IOC we’re hosting a competition where you can win tickets to the 2012 Olympic Games in London…

Not really a big surprise, i agree. But what if said competition was hosted on Facebook, and it asks you to “Share Your Best”…in video form.

So if i get this right… The IOC wants you to share a video with them, to win free tickets. But when you have paid for a ticket, the sharing is over!

Jacques Rogge please meet me at camera 3…

So i get that you’re interested in looking out for your brand and the brands you work with. But the Olympics have always been just as much a celebration as a world class competition. By coming up with these kind of crazy restriction, you in danger of driving away a new generation of consum…. erhm fans, that are used to sharing whatever they feel like. By trying to take away the joy of rubbing in people’s faces that you are where they would like to be, why should i then leave the couch?

All hail the Dictatorship of the 5 Rings.

Streetbeat

The Center for Disease Control (CDC) has launched a new $54.000.000 ad campaign through print, TV and the internet. The campaign is tragicomically named “Tips from former smokers” which sounds harmless.

It isn’t!

The ads feature severely disabled or sick people.
All are suffering from or are survivors of a smoking related disease.  The campaign advises on the unpleasant or tragic things their smoking related disease has lead to.

Terri was beautiful when she was young.

The ads appeal to almost everyone who might be a smoker, they have included different ages, colors and genders.

There are these “Good” tips from people with a stoma

It’s 99% terrible and 1% funny but it has got the right type attention which is a great start for the campaign.

There are more ads and they are all tragic and pretty effective, watch them here Stroke, Asthma, Buerger’s Disease

It’s hard to measure how effective the ads are at this early stage but celebrity Dr. Sanjay Gupta seems to be a fan and a believer, even though there are some people that are sceptical and don’t believe that scare-campaigns work and that this one is too graphic.

I’m a former smoker and this campaign is the best idea since sliced bread. I’ve only been a non-smoker for 6 months so i still get the cravings on occasion, but I truly feel that i would do almost anything to not wind up like these poor people.

The campaign also offers a bit of advise to people who are looking to quit

I like the advice because they aren’t trying to sell me anything, they are giving realistic advise from what appears to be real people and not TV-shop actors.
The people featured all have a somewhat detailed profile on CDC’s campaign page

Casper

If you haven’t already, you’re about to become a lot more aware of a particular section of New York, NY, USA.

Brooklyn to be exact.

It’s been over 5 years since the announcement that the ownership group that contains famous minority owners (Jay-Z and Bruce Ratner), corporate sponsors (Barclays) and former Russian presidential candidate majority owner (Mikhail Prokhorov) would be moving the NBA New Jersey Nets franchise to Brooklyn.

Yesterday the reality moved one step closer with the branding launch, including logo and uniform design.

New York is the US’ biggest media market, and such, the concentration of sports franchises is higher than any other city in the world.

It is an applaudable achievement that the Nets have constructed a compelling series of stories to capture the public’s imagination in NYC and beyond.

• There’s Jay-Z cast as a sporting and economic messiah, bringing a sports franchise back to his hometown.
• The Barclays Center, a USD 1 billion state of the art faclity that will be home to the franchise, as well as a concert venue etc.

Some of the latest stories, like Jay-Z designing the logos and uniforms are a little less believable, but they play on one key aspect;
Jay-Z is the one of the best people in the world to be associated with, because of his influence as a modern icon.

If you allude that he designed the logo/uniforms, there’s a greater chance that they will be accepted by fans and the public alike, especially since his clothing line Rocawear is still pretty popular.

Also, ever since the LA Raiders, the effect of sports franchise branding on the public has been appreciated for its commercial impact – so look out for lots of non-NBA fans donning the branding.

His promotion of the concept has been executed brilliantly.
From the subtle “What’s 50 grand to a motherf***er like me, can you please remind me?” line in the hit song “Ninjas in Paris”, to him committing to a series of concerts to open the Barclays center, Jay has definitely added enormous value for what is only a stake Forbes calculated to be  1.5%

adidas probably can’t print Brooklyn Nets merchandise fast enough, such is the pride that Brooklynites embrace their part of town

All of this is lovely – but…

The team is not a good one, they were one of the worst performing teams last season with a win-loss record of 22-44.

They have one genuine all star player, Dereon Williams – who may/may not be with the team next season, and are probably most famous for ‘Mr Kardashian’ aka Kris Humphries being on the squad.

At some point the team has to stop leveraging the cultural influence of it’s minority owner, savvy marketing and location – and WIN!

R

Arguably

Pepsi’s newest tv ad is like previous ones stuffed full of celebrities.

This time, the usual footballing superstars have been rolled out for some more high jinks.

I’m not a football fan but I recognise some of the players in the video, and if I didn’t, they are kind enough to show the names quickly in flashing lights.

I have several problems with it.

It comes off fake and forced, like a dubbed German Kinder commercial, the footballers have most likely been paid a minor fortune for doing this and having musician Calvin Harris in the video can’t have been cheap either.

I wish they had spent more money on the script and special effects and less money on celebrities.

Visually, the special effects are dark and the camera changes angle before you can look at anything in detail, so it comes of messy, unrealistic and confusing.

Even though I’m not a football fan, i would rather see them do what they actually do well, they are all exceptionally good at their sport.
Show me something that they actually did or can do.

In my limited football knowledge, even I can tell that these guys have some special athletic gifts!

Drogba is a “badass” striker;

Messis can shoot from impossible angles and dribble around everyone;

Let people do what they are good at, have the best footballers in the world play football.
The last time Pepsi did it well – they used several female superstars and let them sing because that’s what they do.

Casper

Morgan Spurlocks (the maker of Supersize Me) “Mansome” will release in major American cities starting on May 18th.

The comedic take on what men do to look good in modern society. Manscaping as it is generally known.

There have been documentaries and movies with a comedic take on the subject of manscaping before.

But this is the best trailer for a documentary I’ve seen since Chris Rocks “Good Hair”.

The Good Hair movie was funny and for me (a causasian male with no hair) very educational.

I’m sure I have no idea about all the different painful and embarrassing things men do to look mansome, but i very much look forward to seeing and learning.

The documentary features actors like Will Arnett, Jason Bateman, Paul Rudd, Zach Galifianakis and Adam Carolla and judging by the trailer it’s also going to project a negative opinion towards the extreme grooming and manscaping that some do.

Check out the product the filmmakers found while making the movie;

The use of subtle homoeroticism by the main characters Will Arnett and Jason Bateman just makes it so much more than a documentary. It makes it a world-class corny comedy.

I’m going to watch and NOT learn!

Casper