This afternoon I watched surfing on the telly whilst feeding my son.
Who said freelance marketing is mad busy or mad boring. I've had a brilliant time.
People actually get paid to travel the world, hang out in their shorts, chat with girls in bikinis, surf a bit, then drink beer and do it again.
The bbc got me thinking.
(Don't worry this isn't a "in 10 years we'll all watch TV in the back of teaspoons, being served tea by nanobot teapots" post)

Those clever professional surfers realised the world was changing. 10 years ago they went to venues which attracted lots of people, they may not have had good surf, but the punters showed up. Now, niche audiences are accessible through the internet and multichannel TV. And when you look at the niche on a global perspective, its a big niche. So they've a saleable media property, can own some of their distribution, and get to travel to less crowded places, with better surf and better filled bikinis.

Red Bull have gone even madder. And now we're straying into brands owning content, Nike's take is a bit more mass in its approach, but still part of the same thing.

Either way, they've hit on stuff which has massive appeal to a small group of people, however its inspiring/sexy/cool enough for lots of people to want to watch.

The great thing for brands is that they don't have to make money from the happening. If they did the accountancy would make it a nightmare. The bad thing is, that, by trying to do cool stuff with a brand that might not be cool, you run the risk of being fleeced by a bloke with dreadlocks, who ships his mates off to Fiji for a jolly. You get nothing from it.

So the challenge - lets come up with content ownership ideas for uncool things. I'm decorating at the moment, so paint sounds like a good place to start. (If the ideas good, we'll go 50/50, and I'm happy to debate whether emulsion can be called cool.)