Measuring Prosperity. Beyond The GDP.

The French Government is bringing in new thinking that tries to go beyond gross domestic product (GDP) to measure the state of the nation’s economy. Nobel laureate and economist Joseph Stiglitz has been tapped to head a new study that will measure the quality of life in France and compare it with other countries. Stiglitz believes that there is reason to go beyond mere meteralistic production, when measuring the state of a nation’s economy. “If you improve the quality of life, but it doesn’t show up in more material consumption, it doesn’t show up in GDP, and you’ll be criticized,” the economist said. French President Nicolas Sarkozy had announced in Paris that Stiglitz and a fellow Nobel economics laureate, Amartya Sen, will participate in the project. Read more. Also read Bhutan’s quest at reframing GDP, to GNH or Gross National Happiness.

Chase What Matters

The new JP Morgan Chase campaign is aimed at unifying its consumer advertising, streamlining its message and stretching the dollars it spends. Rather than create imagery that’s just aspirational, Chase has chosen to talk about the things they do for customers in its campaign Chase what Matters. The campaign, like most banking campaigns tries to differentiate itself by using imagery rather than any tangible difference. BrandWeek Magazine puts it best in a scathing review of the work. “The agency press release gave clues that the new campaign didn’t have a strong strategic position. After the first sentence that announces the launch of the new campaign, the second sentence reads, “Shot by director Steve Rogers, the black/white/blue TV executions create a unique and contemporary look and feel in the category.” See a thumbnail ad in this review in The Times.

The Tipping Point

One of the fundamentals on which the seminal book Tipping Point hinged was the concept of connectors. Duncan Watts a networking theorist now at Yahoo believes that connectors or influentials who, according to the book, are so important in spreading memes may not be defined as simply as it has been. Watts believes that any average Joe can be as influential as an uber connector in spreading ideas and concepts far and wide. More from FastCompany.

Made Of Japan

StrawberryFrog is among the new breed of advertising agencies that is redefining the game. And their much loved campaign for ASICS shoes, Made of Japan has a new execution. Scroll down to check out some cool stuff that’s come out of the campaign including USB drives and keychains. Watch the TVC here.

The Rise And Rise Of Individualism

You have a custom ring tone, a custom call back tune, a facebook page full of personalized widgets. You have set up a special iGoogle landing page too? Cool! You are now firmly part of the new culture of individualism that’s sweeping the world. Made possible by the rise of digital tools, mass customization and small batch manufacturing.

Like the laser engraver, that can give your iPod a completely new look with some custom laser engraving. But wait till you hear about this device that Bug Labs just introduced. A collection of snap on modules from which you can make just about anything electronic. A cell phone, a GPS receiver, a camera. With some simple bits of coding and soon you could be walking around with a personalized device all your own.

London just finished up with a toy hacking workshop, a two day gig that encouraged people to open up toys and make new things out of them. Now throw in the powers of a Fab 3D home printer and pretty soon you could be churning up a range of unique products and selling them on the coolest online store, Etsy, a place for everything made by hand, in small batches.

Former Wired Magazine editor Louis Roesetto has set up a chocolate company, now in beta, that will produce small batches of fine chocolate. Or the story of Tesla Motors, a Silicon Valley startup company focusing on the production of high performance, consumer-oriented electric vehicles, that shuns mass production like the one that Henry Ford introduced.

Last week CPB and Dominos introduced an online pizza ordering system that gives its American customers the ability to make custom pizzas. These orders can also be stored on the system so that they or others can access and try them out. The features are pretty rudimentary just now, but the system holds the promise of enabling users to create thousands of combinations of quirky and unique pizzas. Imagine a Dominos hub in Memphis, next to where FedEx runs its overnight shipping business and these pizzas could be preordered a day in advance, giving customers unlimited choice.

Just like with everything, the agency business too is seeing the effect of individualization beginning to make an impact. Search giants like Google and Yahoo are showing us that it is possible to create hundreds of variations of the same ad with little or no effort.

Yahoo’s automated smart banner advertising system can deliver custom made banners on the fly. And on a service like Spotrunner, (WPP, Interpublic, and CBS have made investments in the company) anyone can walk in and create a TV commercial, a media plan and more simply by logging in with a credit card and spending half an hour. Combine this with the power of Visibleworld’s Intellispot and you have custom made the ad for a nationwide release in the time it has taken us to write this story.

A Widget’s Worth

Over half a billion people view them, some of the biggest sites on the internet use them, many feel widgets will change the way we browse and receive information. But how much is a widget worth? ComScore is going to figure that out.

Understanding Soverign Wealth Funds

SWFs have been in the news recently. From propping up banks struggling with sub-prime issues, to the possible take over of an English football club. Simply put a Sovereign wealth fund (SWF) is a fund owned by a state composed of financial assets such as stocks, bonds, property or other financial instruments. Read more about SWFs in FT, Economist and Wikipedia.

Credit Card Museum

Visa has set up an online repository VisaCash.org dedicated to preserving the history, information and images of Visa Cash and Mondex stored value cards. The site has been built as a resource for researchers, collectors and the general public helping create an information exchange to preserve the rich history of these smart card programs. The site is dedicated to Bruce Phillips a collector and enthusiast. The site has a rich collection of Visa money cards that were issued by various banks from around the world, including ones with errors, that end up becoming collector‘s items. Visit the site.

Move Over Phishing, Vishing is Here.

A new kind of threat has shown up for banking and financial services customers. Unlike regular e-mail phishing attacks, vishing uses SMS text messages or phone calls in addition to e-mails to persuade customers to divulge personal data, often by claiming their account is suspended, de-activated or terminated. The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint centre (IC3) says vishing attacks targeting customers and financial institutions are continuing to rise at an “alarming rate”. Many unique ways of scamming customers are showing up, according to FBI. Due to rapidly evolving criminal methodologies, it is impossible to include every scenario, so the organisation is urging customers to beware of e-mails, telephone calls, or text messages requesting confidential data. More in USA Today.

Fed Rate Cut, A Once-in-a-Generation Event

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com captures the state of the world’s financial markets in this pithy little statement as the Fed moved in unexpectedly to cut interest rates. “It’s a once-in-a-generation event,” he said. The surprise move, unusual in both its scale and its timing, underscored the severity of the current strains facing the American and world economy. It was the biggest short-term cut since October 1984. Read more in The Times and The Economist In India the wild ride of the stock market is bringing in more investors willing to take the plunge.