ACM's Distraction In Action #11
From barefoot runs to chicken-based puns: five links that are dominating our chat
Your new Distraction In Action email from All Conditions Media is here. Scroll away to get a look at the latest links and talking points from our team chat, so they can successfully distract you from work just as much as they did us…
1. GO READ OUR NEW THING
When we were drafted in by new client Finisterre to interview founder Tom Kay for a big newspaper profile last month, we knew it was time. Time to do something we've been talking about for a while. Our newsletters, as you're proving by reading this right now, have attracted a pretty huge community from the action sports, marketing, communications, and creative cultures – a cross-section that, we're very proud to say, you couldn't find anywhere else. And to keep it growing (and you sharing), we're always thinking of ways to keep it fresh.
Which brings us to ACM's Outsider Insiders: a new interview series that we've added into our rotation of dispatches and dives deep into ACM's network of influential outdoor industry make-stuff-happeners to pull out the perfect first-coffee-of-the-day read to start your Friday with. It also lets ACM copywriter Chris fire up his dictaphone again – one filled with thirteen years of mainstream magazine interviews (and aural evidence of a fumbled 'handshake' with Samuel L Jackson and a meltdown with Jesse Eisenberg). We've kicked the series off in style with Tom, nabbing him after our newspaper gig for our own impassioned conversation about activism, oceans, and... turkey plucking. Hit the link to give it a read.
We learned: Tom Kay has a really good Zoom background.
2. MEET OUR HUGE NEW CLIENT
H&M Move. ACM. The announcement of our newest client got a few chins wagging. And rightly so – we asked ourselves a lot of the same questions you had for us, too. Questions that we covered in last week's newsletter (which, coincidentally, is already our third most-read dispatch of the year). There, you'll get not only a rundown of how and why our new partnership came to be, but a very transparent look at what it's like to run an action sports agency for almost two decades, some of the straight-up issues we're currently facing, and how the perpetual hunt for 'the perfect client' is going. And if you're still looking for answers after reading it, give us a shout.
We learned: Some of the biggest ideas you create as a business arrive at 7.30 pm when you're juggling a Google Meet with cooking fajitas for the family.
3. KEEP UP WITH THE GUY WHO MADE SURFING AN OLYMPIC SPORT
For 20 years, founder of Reef (the sandals, not the "Oh Place Your Haaands" songsters) Fernando Aguerre's business card read: "Jefe & Dreamer". While that's enough for most people to repurpose a card like that as a firelighter/mobile chewing gum disposal unit/sleepy bumble bee emergency stretcher/bin filler, in Aguerre's case, he gets a pass. Jefe means 'Boss' in his native Argentinian tongue, and 'Dreamer' very accurately sums up why this fedora-loving, Hawaiian shirt-sporting, sorta Seinfeld-looking chap would spend 12,000 hours of his life, unpaid, trying to get surfing into the Olympics. The International Surfing Association's 40-minute profile of him and his repeatedly pooh-poohed 27-year mission to realize his vision in Tokyo is your lunch break, sorted.
We learned: In 1920, arguably the greatest figure in surfing history, Duke Kahanamoku, asked the IOC to include surfing in the Olympics.
4. DON’T COUNT YOUR CHICKENS (BUT DO COUNT THEIR STEPS)
Yes, we know, and we're sorry – this is another email about Australian chicken fitness trackers. But this one's really got our team clucking talking and won't rely on fowl language lazy chicken puns to keep you reading. Aussie egg brand Honest Eggs Co and ad agency VMLY&R buddied up to hatch create a plan for a device that aids in the full transparency of farming welfare. The step counter – dubbed FitChix – is the first fitness tracker for chickens and sits snugly on the bird's back to monitor its activity. The data is then laid out produced, and a step count can be printed directly onto each egg, thus cracking solving the question of just how free-range your breakfast protein ovoids really are. Good, right? The project took home a Golden LION award at last month's Cannes Festival Of Creativity.
We learned: The heaviest chicken egg ever laid weighed 454g and was pushed out by a White Leghorn in New Jersey, USA, in 1956. Cluck Fuck that.Â
5. LISTEN TO YOUR FEETÂ
Once you're past the very "what's the deal with aeroplane food?!" premise of discussing whether or not a much-hyped thing is the best thing since sliced bread, Alex Foot's 'Sliced Bread' BBC Sounds podcast is actually alright! Yeah, we're not massively selling it. But this month's episode about barefoot running shoes called in some industry big dogs to discuss their merits and whether they do, as is claimed by a number of companies, help prevent injury and/or increase speed. Runner's World Senior Editor, Rick Pearson, and Dr. Joe Warne, (deep breath) a lecturer and researcher in biomechanics and the physiology of running at Technological University Dublin (well done), both get stuck right into the science and benefits, and kept us entertained through a particularly challenging evening washing-up stint last week.
We learned: Research studies suggest you miiight have been giving gait analysis too much influence in choosing your runners.
CREW TO-DO
Every fortnight, one ACMer reveals the tasks that’ve been getting their head cogs whirring, so we can all make sure they’re working hard enough introduce our super talented crew and showcase what they bring to our creative process. This week it’s the turn of ACM’s Australian beach-seeking efficiency missile, Natalie Ellman-Brown…
You made it all the way down here? Here’s a gift for your troubles:
END OF THE ROADER’S BONUS NUGGET
How was that newsletter for you? Let us know in a comment below