"My Imaginary Well-Dressed Toddler" - the interview

They say that if you don't ask, you don't get. So I asked Tiffany Beveridge if she would tell me more about creating Pinterest sensation "My Imaginary Well-Dressed Toddler", and she said yes! Tiffany's eye for imagery, unique turn of phrase and biting satire have made her amongst the first "social media stars" on the Pinterest platform, and I was fascinated to understand more about how it came to be and how she felt about her success. 

What form of writing do you currently do?

I've been working as a freelance copywriter for the past seven years. I've written everything from catalogs to radio ads to product packaging and blogs. It's a lot of variety and a lot of fun. 

How is creating content for Pinterest different to other formats (long form, Twitter etc)?

For me it was very natural but also very accidental, if that makes sense. I wasn't out to prove a point or do something new, I just started building a story to entertain myself. There isn't a character limit like Twitter, but I try to keep the captions short. I try to pack in as much "story" in as few words as possible and give a new twist on the details of the photo. And of course, the photo is a huge part of the content. I try to write captions that make you look at the photo in a totally new way.

Where did the idea come from?

I have two boys, so I never got to dress a little girl. I had always imagined that to be a lot of fun. When Pinterest came around, it gave me an avenue to explore that little fantasy. But then, of course, my imagination and sense of humor got the better of me.

How would you describe the "voice" you have created for it?

Quinoa and her mother are both very strong, Type A personalities. I am anything but Type A, so the voice for both is a lot of stuff I would never say or do. That's the great thing about being a writer; you can try on different voices as easily as trying on clothes.

Who were you writing it for? Who was your imaginary audience?

I have to credit my sister Leslie. She loved the idea from the beginning and would ask me for updates. I really had no other audience in mind. It was very much a silly sideshow, kind of a creative release I'd engage in every now and then. My husband and kids didn't even know about it until things took off. 

What has been the most surprising thing about its success?

I think I'm most surprised at the broad appeal. There is quite a spectrum of people enjoying the board. There's one end that is revelling in the social commentary and the other end that is laughing, but wondering where they can buy the clothes for their own kids. 

How do you see it developing?

I've always dreamed of writing a book, so that's what I'm pursuing first. But the great thing about Quinoa is that she thinks big. I'll try to follow her lead and go wherever she wants to take me! 

What has it taught you about Pinterest and/or what opportunities do you see for satire on it?

I've said before that Pinterest has always been about storytelling. Explore somebody's boards and you'll have a good understanding of who they are as a person, or who they hope or wish to be. My board just took that storytelling down a more overtly fictional path. It's fun to think about following a specific story line pin by pin. I hope there will be more boards that explore it as a fictional medium.

Who would be Quinoa's Instagram counterpart?

I think the obvious answer is Alonso Mateo. That is one stylish kid and he's the real deal! 

If Quinoa started a Board about you, what would it be called? 

Probably My Would-Be Writer Mom or An Imaginary Wardrobe for My Clearance Rack Mom.

10 Films from the 80s and 90s illuminate today's tech glossary

1. Start-ups
Ghostbusters - four guys with varying skillsets develop a unique hardware solution in order to improve city life. A distinct tag line helps them go viral.

2. Sheryl Sandberg's "lean in" culture
Working Girl - With "a head for business and a bod for sin", Tess discovers what she's capable of when she's "not afraid".

3. Crowd-funding
Empire Records - A group of music store employees offer perks of badges and booze to the general public in a bid to raise enough cash to "Damn the man" and "Save the Empire".

4. VC Funding
Wall Street - a bright young whipper snapper gets the investment he needs, but discovers only too late that the provision of lunch was not included in the small print.

5. Beta Testing
Jurassic Park - A potentially game-changing new experiential start-up selects a small group for Beta testing. They don't make it to SXSW

6. Google Glass
They Live - A drifter discovers that the ruling class are in fact aliens managing human social affairs through the use of a signal on top of the TV broadcast, concealing their appearance and subliminal messages in mass media. #ifihadglass

7. Rapid Prototyping
Home Alone - a child genius creates a self-inflicted bootcamp and uses iterative development techniques to innovate simple solutions to petty crime.

8. User Experience
Weird Science - two cyberneticists build a humanoid robot with a focus on user needs.

9. Quantified Self
Groundhog Day - By tracking himself over a length of time and assessing the data, Phil is able to improve relationships and lead a better lifestyle.

10. Aquihiring
ET - A foreign entrepreneur recruits an entire team of American specialists to help overcome serious logistical and communication issues.

Playing hard to get

In today’s world, it’s fairly rare for us to miss a call, a text or a notification. We’re either at our desks (with our iPhones by our side) or eating (with our iPhones by our side) or on the late bus home (um, I think someone just stole my iPhone).

So, the likelihood of not being able to receive and respond to a message right away is getting slimmer and slimmer. Nevertheless certain codes of conduct prevail. Despite our ever increasing links to technology, we remain humans at heart. We still want to manage perception, look cool and be seen to be doing things “the right way”.

With this in mind, I’ve put together a little list of recommended response times for our favourite platforms.

Emails: Right away. Emailing is the new instant messaging. It shows that you are across multiple devices and totally on it. Always cc people, it doesn’t only keep you in the loop: you are the loop. The loop is nothing without you.

LinkedIn invitations: 3 to 4 days. Ideally at stupid o’clock on an early weeknight. This suggests that you are 24/7, going hard, taking names and killing it. ‘I Don’t Get Jet Lag’ is your middle name.

DMs: 20 mins. This says you are busy but accessible, in demand but in control, bright yet breezy. Leave it any longer and you might as well never reply. The moment has passed. Twitter - and you - have moved on. Get over it.

Instant Messages: 4-5 hours. See ‘Emails’. No one has time for IM-ing anymore. It’s not 2003 ffs. 

Facebook friend requests: Never. If you’re not already friends on Facebook, then it’s just another person in your life who doesn’t use Twitter.

Twitter follows: Follow back instantly. Within two hours you should have established GIF-based in-jokes, sent inappropriate DM’s and pretty much nailed down that #ff shout out.

Instagram comments: If it’s food related, 3 hours. Everything else, right away. Stay in the feed, yo.

Text Messages: Right away. If they’ve got your phone number, you probably know them in “real” life. It’s probably your Mum.

Actual face-to-face meetings: Plan months in advance, set a Google Calendar reminder to cancel twenty minutes before. Always keep ‘em wanting more.

Foursquare/ Find My Friends requests: Alert the police. Things just got weird.

Photos my friends sent me this week

There's some life lessons right there. (via @ellen_tm_ and @kowchow)

After Wes Anderson

Massive new Internet crush on Alex Cornell. Today, his painfully funny app pastiche, jotly, blew up across Twitter. But, having scouted around on his website a little bit, the video I'm particularly loving is this one. Acutely observed and charming.

"We focus on SEO keyword-rich, trend tracking that's had a lot of success on the mobile-to-mobile tablet based client side in the cloud-sourced integration field"



And, by the way, I've decided that were I ever to move to Silicon Valley and create a start-up consulting with start-ups, the over-inflated job title I would give myself would be...

"BAMF of SoLoMo Strat Jazzing"

And by BAMF, I mean Bad Ass Mutha Flippa. And by SoLoMo, I mean Social/Location/Mobile. And by Jazzing, I mean bringing the Tiger Blood.

One day... one day....

Kinder not-very-Suprised

Kinder Eggs clearly had no idea who they would be dealing with when they Kinder Surprised me with an Augmented Reality toy. The only related video I could find on YouTube was this one from the makers - Total Immersion.



Unlike these happy-go-lucky kids rocking out to a bit of Phoenix and enjoying the "Engaging Digital Experience", I was left struggling with a UI exclusively in Polish while waving a marker around. After trying several games (one of which required a different marker to the one in my egg, and another which filled a white screen with red dots), I finally ended up on one where you "bop" the characters in the corners with your head to win points. Fun times.



If I'm 27 and felt more than a little jealous of my friend cracking on with assembling a self-propelled boat, I can only imagine the frustrated tears of a child attempting to get this thing going. The Kinder Magic smacks of a bored creative team attempting to band-wagon on the "cool new thing" yet ultimately alienating the very digital instinctives they were trying to engage with. Kids today may be digitally savvy, but they are still kids - they won't love something just because it's on a computer, they will love it if it's simple, fun and - ideally - in a language they speak.

Gay for Fey

Absolutely loved this hour long Q&A with Tina Fey at Google. Wonderful to see a funny, articulate and ambitious woman achieve so much well-deserved success.



And some sound advice on picking who you work with: "Never work with someone you wouldn't want to bump into outside the bathroom at 3 o'clock in the morning". Fact.

20 Reasons...

Been thoroughly enjoying everyone's feedback to my "20 reasons not to date a digital strategist". Some very funny responses, including a few people who thought they were all very good reasons to date a strategist! Well, we try!

A couple more reasons have been added to the post, so have scroll and check them out. Meantime, thanks to @joesafiend for sending this Twitpic over today - very funny!

20 Reasons Not To Date A Digital Strategist

In response to 50 Reasons Not To Date a Graphic Designer...

20 REASONS NOT TO DATE A DIGITAL STRATEGIST


1. They won’t date you unless you are followed by someone who follows them
2. They only want to eat at places with Foursquare specials
3. They will live tweet your date. Even the third one!
4. They will start a Tumblr about your relationship, with supporting Twitter feed
5. They will try to send you naughty pics via Photoswap
6. They will introduce you to their friends via Hashable
7. Their idea of a gift is to get you in on the Beta of a new app
8. Their idea of sending flowers is to take a picture of some on Instagram and @ you
9. If you make a joke they will LOL
10. When you have sex they imagine Pete Cashmore
11. They saw the new viral video two weeks ago
12. If they had to choose between saving you or their iPhone from a burning building...
13. They crowdsource where you should go on holiday
14. They have no idea what’s going on in Libya, but will send you 5 videos of cats talking before breakfast
15. They dream in 140 characters or less
16. They still won’t let you shop in Gap because of the whole logo thing
17. They judge the seriousness of the relationship based on the number of platforms you are connected on
18. SXSW is just a chance for them to catch up with everyone they’ve ever slept with
19. When you don’t update your status on Facebook for more than a day they assume you are dead
20. When they #ff people, you only find out later they were Furiously F*cking them

.... 21. They call themselves "Digital Strategists"
.... 22. According to Mashable, "Active Twitter Users Have Shorter Relationships".

2010 Round Up - The sites, ads, products, services and people that stood out from the noise this year.

Geek crushes

2010 was the year that made geeks hot - largely due to films like The Social Network, Tron and Inception. It was also the year where I spent 10 weeks in San Francisco - home of the nerds. They had me at "tech start-up". Swoon.


Dennis Crowley/ Foursquare


Mark Zuckerberg/ Facebook

Case study examples

Every digital strategy document I write is obviously tailored to the client, but these campaigns somehow kept sneaking in every time. Why? They pushed boundaries, made the most of the medium and enthralled audiences.


Old Spice/ Real-time YouTube video responses to tweets. Hilarious and genius - W&K becomes the hottest agency on the block.


Square/ The new way to pay took the iPad from a big, beautiful iPhone to a functional piece of kit.


MySpace/ Coming hot on the heels of the Gap logo fiasco, the new MySpace logo gave control back to its users, accepting that people want things their way and becoming the visual manifestation of this personalisation trend.... If MySpace was on Facebook, I'd "like" it

Straight talking

Sometimes it's refreshing just to read something in plain English - no "cross-channel multiplatform social media communication plans" bullshit.


The Man Repeller/ Fashion blog about the clothes that repel men. Also introduced the concept of a 'lady boner' to the mainstream.


A Bajillion hits/ Jacking your strat, jacking my lady boner.


Noah Stokes/ This website is so old school it's epic. Who needs HTML5 when you've got it all laid out in primary colours and no bullshit.

Digital life

If, like me, you can't start your day without that surge of serotonin caused by the arrival of an email, then you'll be relying on a heady mix of tools and services to get you through the day.


Google Reader/ Is there a greater feeling for the digitally addicted than over 200 unread articles?



Cross-platform syncing/ Personally, I like living in a world where I can check in using Foursquare and know that the fact that i just walked into a pub will be published across all my social networking sites for my adoring and ever alert 'friends' to comment upon. #don'tbelieveyourownGoogleAlerts

And finally, some of the stuff to watch out for in 2011...


Whipping your hair becomes a cultural phenomenon. I'm doing right now, as I type.


Check-in culture will get out of control, as we start checking in to TV, films and books.

And, finally... cool ad man says, "What?"

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Digital strategy explained

For anyone not quite clear on what it is I do everyday, here's a little insight.

digital ninja from moon stuff on Vimeo.

...time to re-train I think!

Check out the Slideshare version of April's Project10 edition, with a contribution from me on p6.

Project10 Newspaper April (Ladies) issue

View more documents from Steve Price.

Next up, Steve's looking for people to help him explore the relationship and influence that design has on politics. If you're interested you can contact him via Twitter @planbstudio. Spread the love.