the fruits of imagination

Snubsters Unite

All we hear these days, is Myspace this and Facebook that. Which means it's ripe time for a revolt against all this connecting.  Enter isolatr http://isolatr.com/ and snubster http://www.snubster.com/  with their refreshing 'leave me the hell alone' ethic. Of course they're spoofs, but what with everyone knowing everyone's business, there's bound to be a backlash. Indeed, there are stories emerging about employers googling potential employees, and turning up unsavoury revelations. Result: no job.  Don't worry you already have a job.  Just don't post a rant about all the paper clips you're stealing and you should be fine.

Idea City

Several of us from the agency attended Idea City '06 last week.  Kudos to the company for paying for and giving people the time to attend this great event.  And thanks to Laurence Bernstein at BC3 who also brought some of us as his guests.  It's an interesting mix of speakers - a neurologist followed by a folk singer followed by an inventor – in total, about 50 people over 3 days.  Each person is given 20 minutes to talk about or do whatever they want.  Other than that, there are no rules.  This was my 3rd year and I always find it really inspiring for a few reasons:

1) It makes me feel boring.  But not in a bad way.  It makes me want to be more interesting, to immediately go out and do more stuff. 

2) It gets my head out of ads or even communication.  And into science fiction, or music, or dentistry.  Which is a good thing.

3) It's great to see lots of different presentation styles in rapid succession.  Lots of fodder for what makes a presentation memorable or bland or compelling.

4) The conference is exceedingly well run.  It's efficient, it's held in a comfortable, modern, spacious theatre rather than a boring conference center, and they include smart things like the occasional quick yoga/stretching break to get the blood flowing, and 45 minute conversation breaks after every 4 speakers where people are encouraged to debate what they've just heard with strangers.

Here's a random selection of the stuff I saw this year:

Frank Palmer, the iconoclastic CEO of DDB Canada. This is the first time they’ve had an ad guy speak, and on this evidence they won’t be inviting anyone else. I was actually interested to hear him talk, because the topic he chose was how to create change in an organization. Fifteen years ago his company Palmer Jarvis was a successful, but creatively mediocre agency, and he decided to change that. And of course PJ became the best agency in Canada, and did a kind of reverse takeover of DDB. Good story, that. But his talk was a complete let-down. His 10 rules on how to change the world were the kind of fortune cookie wisdom you usually get on posters featuring cats hanging from tree branches: things like “Be fearless” and “Never stop learning.”  It’s not that they’re untrue, they just weren’t valuable, insightful or inspiring.

Steve Rechtschaffner, on the other hand, is a really interesting guy. He’s been a member of the US national ski team, head of marketing at Swatch, ran a film company, invented an Olympic snowboarding event (Boardercross), and until recently was worldwide creative director at EA Games. He’s one of those people who seems to live more before breakfast than I do in a year.  What I found interesting is he credits his success in such different realms from being new to each one. He calls it being powerfully naïve: the best way to find new ideas is not to know how something should be done. Powerfully naïve is such a great phrase. He also talked about seeking out organizations that have a culture of “yes” and avoiding a culture of “no.” To illustrate he had a great story about working on the war-themed video game Medal of Honor, and to get a different perspective he brought in the film editor who did “Black Hawk Down.” The editor had lots of cool new ways of visualizing things, and talked for an hour. But after he’d left, the producer of the game frowned and said “I don’t see what value he’ll add – he doesn’t know anything about video games.”  Nice.  Haven’t we all had conversations like that?

Jerry Riopelle is a musician who has invented a motion-sensitive device called “Human Beams” that lets you play music without knowing anything about music. You just wave your arms in front of it, breaking beams of light, and cool software does the rest.  And it just plugs into a basic USB port. It’s won converts like Quincy Jones and Stevie Wonder, but the best application so far seems to be with disabled, sick, and autistic children. It made me want to play more music.

John Walker is another musician, and also has a PhD in engineering (as one does). His company has figured out how to reverse engineer musical recordings to determine exactly what notes were played, how long they were held, with what amount of force the keys were pressed and released, and turn it into a complex MIDI computer file. Then they can exactly reproduce that performance live. He calls it separating the performance from the specific recording. He demonstrated it for us: using a grand piano with built in hard-drive, we heard Glenn Gould play the Goldberg Variations. It’s one of my favorite pieces of music, and I found it profoundly moving, but it generated a lot of controversy – some people thought it was heretical and famous historical recordings should be left alone. I agree it’s weird, but I loved it.

Spider Robinson is a science fiction writer. I don’t know much about science fiction, but apparently he’s a big deal in the genre. He spoke passionately about why science fiction is important – it makes us dream bigger, to imagine different possible futures – and why it’s a tragedy for humanity that funding for space programs have been cut. It reminded me how compelling passion can be. By the end, I was converted.

Anybody else who went want to share their thoughts?

There's also a good recap of the conference over on Creative Generalist (a great blog, by the way).  It continues over several posts.

Nice Summer Job

Sweet little job for the kids, or sabbatical opportunity for a planner.  55 DSL http://www.55dsl.com/jobs/jlb.php   is promoting a competition to win a 55 day post, traveling the world, 'cool hunting' (I think trending-sighting is this week’s current term for it). In a similar vein, MTV US is planning a reality show where contestants compete for a job at Rolling Stone magazine. As the workplace appears to get more and more competitive, 'winning' a job would seem to be the next logical step. Brands also win beyond the obvious badging and awareness; building emotional attachment through consumer inclusion.

I seem to remember a similar beer promo years ago, geared at Newfoundland’s under-employed.  I don’t think this one will get quite the political attention that one got. 

Silver & bronze

So nobody seems to be talking about the fact that we won two Lions at Cannes this week.  Instead there's this quiet disappointment because after the high of winning the Black Pencil at the D&ADs we had big hopes for a gold (or even grand prix) Cyber Lion for our leoburnett.ca website, and instead we won silver. It was a let-down. It was a reminder of how fickle award shows can be. 

We also won a bronze for the Assaulted Women's Helpline lipstick tube.

But two Lions at Cannes is nothing to sneeze at.  It's a huge honour.  Leo Burnett Chicago only won 1 lion this year (the whole network won 29 in total).  In Canada, we're 3rd in total Lions behind the perennials DDB & Taxi.  Lots of Canadian agencies didn't get any (like BBDO, Arnold, McCann, Oglivy, TBWA and JWT).  Any other year, you'd say that two Lions is a good haul.  So how about celebrating a bit?

More viral

So following up on the earlier post about how to do viral video, here's an interesting experiment. Two writers from Entertainment Weekly tried to see how hard it was to create a successful viral video, interviewed "experts" on how to go about it, and then made one.  And well, it kind of sucks.  But they've now written about the experience.

One key learning for anyone thinking about recommending it to a client: it's way easier for a 14-year old kid to make something funny than a big company that has lawyers.

And this nugget is great for the next target audience discussion you find yourself in:

"It may sound counterintuitive, but a video targeted towards a specific group will end up having a bigger reach than something targeted towards a big group, because the people in the small group will feel more attachment to the joke and be more inclined to pass it on.''
                                                      - Ricky Van Veen, founder of CollegeHumor.com

Good outdoor

And a whole site that collects it:  http://billboardom.blogspot.com/

 

Viral ads

A fantastic post on a great graphic design blog (Noisy Decent Graphics) about what makes a viral campaign work or fail.

As an example of something good, he references a new campaign that's worth checking out: http://www.zootube.co.uk is for Zoo, a Maxim-style "lad" magazine in the UK.  It's a series of videos by two guys who work at Zoo about how their boss gave them £10,000 to make an ad, and instead they're blowing the money on stunts like mini-golfing with a lingerie model, taking flying lessons in a fighter jet, or making the world's largest toy car racetrack.  It's genius for reaching their fratboy target, is spreading around the UK quite nicely, and cost them very little.

The client's opinions

This is kind of refreshing: a site called the Third Way Advertising Blog offers commentary on current ad campaigns from a client perspective (the contributors are all now ex-clients working as consultants and trainers).  Before you roll your eyes, it's actually fairly well written.  I don't always agree with them but they give good reasons for their opinions.  But mainly I think it's great because while there are tons of agency types who toss around their opinions on ads, you don't see clients do it very often.  It's nice to get a different perspective.

The mystery of the changing logos

Something keeps bugging me at the World Cup. 

Coca-Cola is one of the big World Cup sponsors, and like other sponsors they have billboards lining the pitch.  The sponsors generally use their logos, as big as possible.  Coca-Cola also uses their famous logo, but here's what's strange: they have been changing it every game, to match the colours of the teams playing.  They even have a name for the mini-campaign: the "Colors of Coca-Cola Field Boards." This has lead to the bizzare spectacle of the Coke logo in yellow, green, and oddest of all... blue. 

That's right, the Coke logo in Pepsi blue.

Now we all know that the Coca-Cola brand is defined by the colour red.  A Google search for "Coke" and "red" comes back with nine million hits. Coke certainly knows it: they have trademarked that particular shade of red.  And Coke is usually hyper-vigilant about how their logo is used. It's not like them to be cavalier with their brand iconography. So why would they mess with the logo?

Is this an error in judgement by a brand manager?  Something that didn't really get thought through?  Or is it a carefully considered tactic? 

After all, the World Cup is awash with corporate sponsors and logos everywhere you turn.  Most of them are wallpaper.  Maybe Coke is trying to stand out (hey, I noticed them).  By changing something very familiar, you create cognitive dissonance - your brain's little hiccup over the difference between what you expected to see and what you did see.  Something unexpected immediately and pre-consciously attracts your attention - which is both a good survival mechanism and the reason you notice when someone gets a haircut.  So was Coke trying to do something like this?  Is it all by design?

Well, Coke hasn't exactly been known for their marketing brilliance recently, so maybe I'm giving them too much credit.  And now, after the first 16 games they have reverted back to the classic red Coke logo and bottle icon (including their web address) for games.

I guess it'll just have to remain a mystery.

UPDATE:  now they've got the Diet Coke/Coke Light logo up.

UPDATE 2:  Powerade.

the unavoidable future of entertainment

Channel101.com "the unavoidable future of entertainment" paddles towards the mainstream with a VH1 show.

If you haven't seen this site before, it's a collection of LA film industry scenesters that submit 5 minute 'pilots' to be screened at a local theatre (Cinespace).  The audience then votes, giving the shows their ratings, which determine who stays and who gets canceled. 

I post it for 2 reasons.  Firstly, it's entertaining and secondly it's yet another example of something starting life as a grassroots alternative, slowly growing to become part of the mainstream...not necessarily by 'selling out' but be broadening the mainstream.  The concept has been replicated in New York and the LA version has had guest appearances by Jack Black, Sarah Silverman and Drew Carey on various shows.

My hands down favourite is Yacht Rock  (start at episode 1 and work your way through).  The animated House of Cosbys was also good, but now lives life only on the greater internet thanks to a cease and desist order from the Cos.