the fruits of imagination

Smart People

 I have been extremely fortunate to have met some very smart people. Not your average, run-of-the-mill cubicle dwellers (they need not apply) but the kind of people so smart that after 5 minutes you realize how out of your league you are.

Some people never run into those kinds of people. Some are too shallow to understand the intellectual goldmine that they just bumped in to. I like to classify myself under a third umbrella. I have to work so hard just to keep up with everyone else that when I meet someone who seems to do it so effortlessly, I stand up and pay attention. Who knows, maybe I'll learn a thing or two...

Always keep an eye out for the smartest guy (or gal) in the room. There is a very good reason why they say, you're only as good as the people you surround yourself with.

lateral thinking dead or alive

Q: is people’s ability to process laterally increasing or decreasing over time?

If one merely observes how air travelers attempt to forcibly maneuver bovine sized luggage into tiny overhead compartments, then the answer might seem quite obvious. Criticisms of spatial thinking aside! However, I’m eager to hear everyone’s collective thoughts to this question as it applies to the copy testing environment. Time and time again I am startled at how flat footed, linear and obvious many of the ideas need to be in order to score well on comprehension, enjoyment, believability and purchase intent. This becomes especially clear when people have to put pieces of information together - sentences or paragraphs if you will - to form a narrative story about the brand. Surprising? Not if you think that in a world of entertainment - a world increasingly obsessed with the entertaining - each of us are quite obviously directed - what and when, to think and feel. Laugh tracks in TV tell us when to snicker, cinematic music tell us when to become apprehensive or tearful and celebrities separate the mere product from the majestic. In a world of entertainment, advertising must increasingly learn the techniques and rules of entertainment as it forms the dominant form of conversation, creation and consumption.

You.

Good for Time Magazine.  In case you haven't seen it yet, it's quite a well written piece. Read the whole thing here (and Influx has a typically smart take on the story here).

Although ironically, for a piece about how ordinary people are changing the face of media and the old rules no longer apply, Time's website made me sit through a really crappy and intrusive Chrysler ad in order to get to the article.  I guess old habits die hard.

Disappointing Christmas Presents - Explained!

According to researchers in Belgium and the Netherlands, we’re better at predicting the preferences of people we don't know than those with whom we are most familiar. When we attempt to predict the preferences of strangers, we rely on stereotypes and generalized information, as opposed to the intimate and specific – and often poorly predictive – information use for our loved ones.

Because it's appearing now, this story is being spun as an aid to Christmas shoppers - to buy better presents for your loved ones, just imagine they're strangers.  I’m sure there’s a professional lesson for us as well, but I’m not feeling smart enough today to figure out what it is.  I do think I’ll see if Jason and Julien can put together a deck that tells me what to get everybody on my list.

via The Consumerist

Tooting Our Own Horn

It was a good week for awards at Leo Toronto. 

At Monday's London International Awards leoburnett.ca was the winner in two categories, Interactive - Websites -  Corporate Image and Interactive - Websites - Self-Promotion.

We were also finalists in a number of other categories.

What's also exciting is the performance of our young creatives.  Two teams - Gail Pak & Cam Boyd and Anthony Chelvanathan &  Steve Persico, were finalists in the Young Creatives Competition for Print.  For some perspective on their performance, there were only 5 finalist teams in print and only 7 finalists teams overall.

On Thursday "Lipstick," done for the Assaulted Women's Help Line did extremely well at the Media Innovation Awards, winning a Silver for Targeted Marketing (Women), a Gold in Stunts/PR and, um, Best of Show.   

To me, this is the coolest thing we've won all year, as we were the only non-media company to win anything at the show.

(Hardware sign photo via Flickr)

In the dark

I thought this article from slate.com might be useful when discussing one of our current favourite topics - connecting - whether with brands or in this case each other.

It talks about time zones and the viability of having one single timezone for the US (much like China does).  It suggests that we schedule our lives around connecting with each other more than our need to wake with the sun.

While getting up before the sun can help us connect, it seems that it is being driven for business efficiencies more than human need.  I know I never quite feel human when I have to get up at 5:00am, but you could build some interesting arguments around it, as well as the TV scheduling reference given.

Looking for Creative Interns

We’re currently looking for fledgling art directors and copywriters for 3-month internships. If you’re interested, please drop me a line at michael (dot) takasaki (at) leoburnett (dot) ca.  Be sure to attach samples of your work. Local applicants only. Quote coupon code FOI061030 in your subject line.

(Image via The Brick Testament)

Analog trumps digital

While I was in London last week I had a nice chance to meet up for a coffee morning with some lovely people.  Some background: a few months ago, Russell Davies started an open invitation to meet at a coffee shop in Soho on Friday mornings, so that some of the people in the marketing blogging community could actually meet face to face.  It's a great idea.  Even though I've enjoyed blogging, I always feel a bit disconnected by not knowing who is on the other end, especially because with some of the regular contributors it's easy to get the feeling that you'd actually like each other if you met.  So this is a chance to do that, and put faces and names to the digital voices.  Sadly it's in London but I've been lucky enough to make it twice now.  The conversation is like a great dinner party, relaxed and rambling and fun and charming.  No web experience could ever duplicate that.  Digital is good for some things, but other things will always need to be analog.

So there was Rebecca (better known as Beeker), Helen, and Russell.  Rebecca just got hired at Leo Burnett London, in part due to her blog - congrats to Rebecca.  Helen's a researcher who writes a fantastic blog with the great name Comfortable Disorientation. They're both rather good writers whom I've been reading for a while, and so it was great to finally meet them.

Paul and Henry were also there.  I didn't get a chance to chat with them very much, which is too bad because I like both of their blogs as well.  David, Cassie and Louise were all there but left before I got my camera organized.  Check out David's Brand vs Brand, it's quite fun and addictive.

And John Griffiths, who gives away a ton of great brand and planning wisdom on his blog and especially his website: the planning kata alone are worth their weight in gold.  I've stolen a lot of his stuff over the years so it was good to get a chance to thank him in person.

I had a good chat with John about how blogs are the new internships.  I'd just had a similar conversation with Richard Huntington a few days earlier at the APG event.  Agencies, especially big ones like Leo Burnett and JWT used to have fantastic training programs for building up young talent.  But in recent years we've all have cut our internships and training budgets so much that it's really hard for someone starting out to learn the ropes or get a chance to prove themselves anymore, especially in planning.  We cut off the main route for people to get into this industry.  Sure there are formal programs like VCU and Miami Ad School, but they're expensive and you have to move there for a while.  But with all of the blogs, Squidoos, the Planning School of the Web, etc that have started over the last year or two, it's a free, informal training service for anyone anywhere interested in brands.

So agencies really don't need to provide much training anymore.  We don't do it very well anyway, I say just drop the pretense altogether.  You could just tell someone to read the top 5 or 10 blogs for a while, and I have a suspicion they'd be better off than they would with most agency training programs.  Even better, you can also start your own blog quickly become part of a community and get a chance to demonstrate your thinking and insight and creativity to the world.

This means that all of a sudden, there's a good route into this industry again for people who are starting out.  One of the great things that blogs and other social media have done is flatten the industry: up until this, it was almost impossible for someone just starting out to get in front of the top people.  But now anyone can have a dialogue with some of the best advertising minds in the world, you can ask them questions, and have them comment on your ideas.  That's pretty inspiring.  And the best part is smart people like Beeker and Dino are getting jobs because of it, where 5 years ago they might have had a much harder time cracking into the business.  All of this wouldn't happen, of course without everyone being helpful and supportive and generous, and that's one of the things that is best about this community.  Kudos to people like Russell and Richard and John for leading this charge.  We're all the better for it.

Thoughts on being a mom

I have a question/thought I'd look to float out there for comment, as part of a conference presentation I'm putting together.

In past decades there was a general icon of motherhood.  Of  course they didn't represent all moms, but provided a gage on how society viewed mothers.  June Cleaver (Leave it to Beaver) represented the stay-at-home mom for the 1950s, Clair Huxtable (The Cosby Show) and Elyse Keaton (Family Ties) the high-powered working moms of the 1980s and for the 1990s Marge Simpson (The Simpsons) and Jill Taylor (Home Improvement) the over-worked, undervalued mom who tried to keep it all together with little help from their well-intentioned but somewhat useless husbands.

It seems that society, as reflected by Hollywood anyway, hasn't defined an icon for the 2006.  Maybe that's because being a mom is so vastly different for all women that it can no longer be reflect via a single sitcom sterotype. Desperate Housewives illustrates the point further, by offering up four very different women who all approach being a mother in different ways.

So my question is, do you feel there is a singular icon, or that the question can even be answered today?  What does this mean for moms in the future?  Does this lack of definition, make things easier or more difficult for women?

This is the first time I've thrown out a question on the blog?  I'm interested to hear what people have to say.

Thanks,

Julien   

(Re)presentation culture

A month ago the New York Times wrote an article about fame as a basic human motivator which amazingly managed to not mention the internet or the media at all.  At the time I wondered why they'd missed the more interesting story about how fame is driving lots of new media today, and how that media is in turn changing the meaning and nature of fame.

It took them a month but today they finally wrote that article.  It's about the changing nature of fame and celebrity in a YouTube culture, and how the Lonelygirl15s of the world may be eclipsing the Tom Cruises.

There's a great quote in it from P. David Marshall, a professor of communication studies at Northeastern University and author of “Celebrity and Power: Fame in Contemporary Culture.”

“We’re moving from a representation culture, where celebrities or stars represented us, to a presentation culture, where we can present ourselves.  It's actually quite unsettling for the way we organize influence and power.”

I really like this as a way of describing the changes that are going on.  And I think we can put brands in there too alongside celebrities and stars in this shift from "representation culture" to "presentation culture." Branding over much of the past two decades was about creating a glossy brand image in which people could see themselves, or how they wanted to see themselves.  It was about "badge value."  Brands represented us.

But now some of the most interesting brand stuff is more about being useful - helping people to express themselves, be creative, find a community, connect with others, or otherwise present themselves to the world.  Hence, presentation culture.  In this model brands play the role of catalyst, host, or invitation to interact.  This idea is starting to take hold: it was called "branded utility" in AdAge last month (can't link to it anymore but read about it over at Chroma).  In Media Magazine, Faris calls it "Advertools."  And John Grant calls it "cooperative, life-enhancing marketing" (hmm... need something more punchy if you want to compete for naming rights, John).

Here are some ways this can happen:

1. co-creation like Nike's Joga Chain
2. mass participation like Nike's city run series (eg RunLondon, RunTO)
3. communities like Johnson & Johnson's Mom blogger project
4. events like Innocent's FruitStock
5. opportunities to express taste and creativity like publishing iMix playlists with iTunes