There’s been a lot of buzz recently about “The Internet of Things”, otherwise known as the increasing number of devices connected to, and represented within, a space on the internet. From smartphones to refrigerators, we are living increasingly plugged-in lives. By the year 2020 there will be approximately 50 billion objects that are connected to the internet. To put it in perspective, that means almost 7 objects per human being. So what does this mean for connectivity, globalization, energy consumption, and social behavior? Only time will tell, but for now, I think the silver lining is that people truly enjoy learning new things, expressing…

It’s no secret that I love Instagram. It’s a gorgeous, dreamy place that provides a much-needed break from our text-heavy world, and an artsy mom’s best tool for sharing snaps of her little one. Everything is beautiful on Instagram- and a little filtering goes a loooong way. As PR people, we’re always trying to leverage the latest and greatest in social media for our clients, and sometimes the best advice comes right from our favorite publications. Always on the cutting edge, our friends at Metropolis (rabid Instagram users and dedicated social media mavens in their own right) participated in KI’s…

It seems like the maker movement is having its moment. The New York Times recently reported a growing trend in 3D home printing and highlighted a few of the companies leading the charge. The movement started gaining traction in 2011 on Kickstarter, when donors pledged more than $830,000 towards a goal of only $25,000 to allow Brook Drumm to create the Printrbot, which he touted as “A desktop 3D printer you can build in a couple hours.” More recently MakerBot, the Brooklyn-based printer manufacturer, launched its Replicator 2 Desktop 3D Printer, claiming it’s “the easiest, fastest, and most affordable tool…

SXSW is as usual, getting huge play in the media this week. The conference and festival bills itself as offering “the unique convergence of original music, independent films, and emerging technologies. Fostering creative and professional growth alike, SXSW is the premier destination for discovery.” However, the story seems a bit different this year, and it sounds like maybe the gathering is losing a bit of its outsider cred as the big marketing brands move in. Digiday reported that brands including Pepsi, Oreo and Chevrolet had major presence this year, following American Express’ high profile Jay-Z concert last year, and the conference…

Last week AMC celebrated the launch of two new shows – Immortalized and Freakshow – with a fantastical and chicly creepy pop-up in midtown Manhattan dubbed Immortal Love. For weeks VP+C’s production team had been hard at work creating the experiential space – a collection of beautiful oddities brilliantly set off by a Thursday night event that included a fashion presentation by Cesar Galindo and a freakshow. Leading up to the event, every day brought a strange new curiosity to our office. First there were the deer heads that made their temporary home in a back corner. Then a double-headed…

There’s a new pep in everyone’s step here at Davis & Warshow’s Maspeth Headquarters.  Many of our employees have signed up to participate in the Virgin Health Miles program, Richard Branson’s popular employee health tracking application. Employees who participate in the program pay a monthly $5 fee and carry a small pedometer throughout the day.  The device measures the number of steps, the frequency of steps and several other metrics which get automatically uploaded to the Health Miles website when you plug the pedometer in to the computer.  The website gives you all sorts of stats on how far you…

There’s not much to smile about these days on a crowded subway. But, it was hard to suppress an outbreak of laughter after I did a double take reading a No. 6  train poster this week . The billboard extols the handiwork of Dr. Armond, the Canine Plastic Surgeon. Aside from the before and after photos of a droopy-skin bulldog transformed into a pert and precious Jack Russell terrier, the text amused, claiming, as well, services such as the San Diego Diet for a pooch with a pooch problem. Reading on I realized that Dr. Armond was Nick Kroll –…

One of the perks of working in SoHo is certainly pop-up shop culture, offering us a plethora of interesting gift options and research-heavy lunch breaks. Around the corner, we can peruse these limited-time, one-of-a-kind experiences from United Colors of Benetton, Etsy, and Wired. Each year retailers try to one-up each other, create marketing buzz, and connect with existing and new customers through these intimate shopping experiences. The Etsy shop in particular is an interesting application of the increasingly common pop-up shop model. Not unlike the hilarious ebay store scene in 40 Year Old Virgin, it is an online retailer taken…

As a marketing strategist focused on digital and interactive media, you’d think that I was impervious to marketing wouldn’t you? Wrong. I admit it, I fall for (usually) good marketing campaigns all the time, and one brand I love is Moleskine. Maybe it’s the connection to Vincent Van Gogh and Hemingway, or just the feel of the thick paper, but I feel lost without a Moleskine notebook.  And the more digital my world becomes, the more I crave at least one real book.

  I’ve always regarded it as magical, the fact that you get on Wi-Fi and physical documents you can read and print come flying into your hands from anywhere on earth, or you see your friend’s vacation photos taken from their phone and uploaded to Facebook in real time. Of course, some part of me realizes that there has to be a cable of some kind that the electrons use to fly across the planet (and under) the seas, but that was all very abstract and vague.