Britons are starting to look on the bright side of life. A recent Ipsos MORI Consumer Confidence study shows that Britons are feeling more positive than they’ve felt since 1997. In fact it’s pretty much the steepest rise since 1981. We asked our friends at HHB Dialogue to fire off a question to their mobile Vox Pops panel: “What’s making you feel positive about the world right now?” Watch the clip to see what they say. Mostly, people talk about “the little things in life”, like spending time with friends and family, doing sport, walks in the park. It’s a heartening message, as long as we’ve got each other, how bad can it get?

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Commuters travelling on the Piccadilly line can now hear their train driver quote Ghandi, Einstein and Jean-Paul Sartre. Instead of ‘please mind the gap’ and other automated announcements, passengers are reminded of Ghandi’s observation that, “There is more to life than increasing its speed”. Or our favourite pervy intellectual Jean-Paul Sartre’s bon mot, “Hell is other people”. The initiative was created by Turner Prize artist Jeremy Deller as part of TFL’s Art on the Underground scheme. Deller hopes it will make commuters’ journeys a bit more thought provoking. This is part of a broader attempt to humanise day-to-day interactions on the tube. “I think everyone has their own little philosophies on their journeys and if we can get more of that out in the air, that would be great,” Sally Shaw, who is running the scheme for Transport for London, has said. Everyone loves those tube announcements that are a bit random or cheerful or merely human. We like how this effortlessly transforms a mundane service.

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To mark the 20th anniversary of The Simpsons, Marge Simpson is gracing the cover of November’s Playboy. The wife and mother of three poses with nothing but her trademark blue hair and is covered appropriately by a tactfully placed bunny chair. Marge, who is the first cartoon character on the cover in the magazine’s history, has been chosen in an attempt to appeal to a younger audience. “We knew that this would really appeal to the 20-something crowd,” Playboy spokeswoman Theresa Hennessey has said. How much Marge will be bearing inside is under wraps, but “it’s very, very racy,” says editorial director James Jellinek. The magazine promises a story inside on The Devil in Marge Simpson, an interview and more pictures, including a centrefold pullout. Hugh Heffner has stated that Marge’s photos were appropriately taken by her husband Homer.

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A new campaign is getting girls to ‘fess up to their mingin’ beauty habits and embarrassing secrets online. The Dirty Little Secrets campaign, by skincare brand Bioré®, aims to cleanse people’s souls as well as their skin. The campaign is fronted by the Dirty Little Secret Girl character, who will share her beauty sins in a podcast drama and encourage her listeners to do the same on a parallel dirty little secret blog and Twitter page. The campaign aims to create a confidante and forum for discussing the less glamorous side of beauty. Unexpectedly, but a sure sign of success, consumers are using it to get unrelated incidents off their chest too. One girl has confessed to a minor hit and run accident, “I have to share it as the guilt is killing me”. Is the online forum the modern church confession?

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Our favourite viral this week (and it seems nearly 2.5m other people’s too) has to be the piano stairway. If people choose the healthy option of taking the stairs over the escalator, they are rewarded with being able to make music (this nostalgically reminds us of that classic scene in Big). The viral is part of Volkswagon’s The Fun Theory campaign, a series of experiments to find out if people’s behaviour can be improved if an element of fun is added to a mundane or effortful task (answer: yes, 66% would take the piano stairs over the escalator). The experiments also include a rubbish bin with sound effects and a yet to be unveiled bottle bank arcade game to make recycling fun. Consumers are invited to submit ideas too and compete for the Fun Theory Award. We like the idea of giant shredders to encourage people to recycle their newspapers and washing up liquid with rainbow froth as an incentive for children.

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The internet is about to get a new reality game that allows players to tap into the nation’s CCTV cameras to help solve real-life crimes. When Internet Eyes players spot a crime, an SMS and streamed CCTV footage is sent to the camera owner, who is responsible for reporting it to the police. Players are rewarded with cash prizes of up to a grand. The game has been marketed to businesses looking to improve their security, with each camera costing £20 per week. “At least 90% of [UK] CCTV cameras are not being manned at any given time,” says Tony Morgan, co-founder of Internet Eyes. “This could be the best crime prevention weapon there’s ever been.”
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Credit crunched consumers are choosing to save their gift vouchers because they think they will get more pleasure out of them by waiting to treat themselves. Behaviour economists Suzanne B. Shu and Ayelet Gneezy, say this ends up with fewer people actually using the vouchers. As the recession bites, we are seeing the rise of a medical condition known as ‘hyperopia’, which according to Harvard Magazine, is the habit of overestimating the benefits one will receive in the future from making responsible decisions now. The word, taken from ophthalmology, means ‘farsightedness’, and works to our detriment by driving people “to underconsume precisely those products and experiences that they enjoy the most.” Time-sensitive offers such as birthday passes and vouchers with an urgent expiry date could be the solution. Online luxury store Gilt Groupe sells limited edition stock on sale for only 36 hours every day and has over 1m members. Economist Edward Leamer thinks that time-sensitive offers might even boost the economy more effectively than temporary tax cuts. Read more »

The new Anna Wintour is just 13 years old. Her name’s Tavi Gevinson and her blog Style Rookie is up their with Vogue. She took a week off school to sit in the front-row at New York Fashion Week. She writes for Pop magazine. And she accessorises her outfits with upside-down dolls. Tavi describes herself as a, “Tiny 13-year-old dork that sits inside all day wearing awkward jackets and pretty hats…Rather cynical and cute as a drained rat. In a sewer. Farting. And spitting out guts.” Her blog, which includes images and videos of the latest shows, has a following of 4m readers. On the new Burberry show she comments, “I am normally not very into Burberry at ALL but they killed it this season. Especially by perfecting the awkward diaper curtain Balenciaga AW 09 skirt.” Her age only transpires through the odd phrase like, “I totally just out-pretentious’d myself. Ehh..” And the pink hearts she draws all over pictures of Marc Jacobs. Read more »

Cherry Girl is a stylish and hedonistic virtual ambassador for Corporate Social Responsibility (a phrase we hate and think should become defunct), who has been creating social media buzz and a new approach to advertising as IP. Cherry Girl has been co-created by MTV as an independent entertainment property to promote environmentalism in general, rather than as a brand CSR mascot. MTV is actively open to the principle of other brands, even rivals, working with Cherry Girl, as it is more important to push the cause than the brand behind it. The proof in the pudding is that a US heath-food chain has asked to use her as an ambassador for health as well as environmental issues. A Ukrainian company is also interested in publishing a Cherry Girl comic. We think this is a big, shiny new direction for advertising. For more on this subject, read Ed Warren’s award-winning paper here.

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Countercultural Chinese youths are being described as the new Beatnik generation. Their spin is less berets and Allen Ginsberg, more Eno (local streetwear brand) and Confucianism. They’re rejecting Western values and rediscovering their own culture to find their identity. Hosting the 2008 Olympics left China with a sense of pride and confidence and they’ve become disillusioned with Westernisation. Whilst the mainstream still worships American hip-hop, Chinese Beatnik’s prefer homespun bands such as Carsick Cars, whose “Zhong nan hai” is considered their anthem. Trips to Tibet and tribal villages are on the rise because beatniks want to trace their roots and connect with minorities. Souvenirs are seen as a badge of status – “I know my country”. Chinese history TV shows and the traditional art of calligraphy have developed a huge youth following too. Brands that want to appeal to this market need to contribute or support local culture.

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