the fruits of imagination

Sketches of Frank Gehry

Over the holidays I watched the documentary "Sketches of Frank Gehry" and it's excellent (you can watch the trailer here).  I'm a fan of his architecture, but what's interesting about this film is his openness and lack of ego.  There are some great sections talking about his creative process.

"I don't know what you do when you start, but I clean my desk, I make a lot of stupid appointments that I make sound important.  Avoidance, delay, denial.  I'm always scared that I'm not going to know what to do.  It's a terrifying moment.  And then when I start, I'm always amazed: oh, that wasn't so bad."

There's a lot about the relationship between creativity and the clients who are paying for it.  I think my favourite moment is when he tells the story of how he decided to start taking more risks.  He'd been working on a really bland shopping mall, but at the same time was designing a bold, avant-garde house for himself.

"At the same time as I did this house, I was building Santa Monica Place.  The night Santa Monica Place opened, we had a dinner here with the president of the company... and he says to me "what the hell is this?" 
I said "well, I was experimenting and playing with it." 
And he said "do you like it?  ...you must like it." 
I said "I do." 
He said "well if you like this, you can't possibly like that" and he pointed over there towards Santa Monica Place. 
And I said "you're right, I don't."  And he says "so, why'd you do it?"  And I said "because I had to make a living." 
And he said "Stop it. You should stop it. Don't do that."
And I said "you're right." 
Now at that moment, 45 people in my office were working on a project for him.  And he and I shook hands that night and decided to quit everything.  It was like jumping off a cliff.  It was an amazing feeling.  And I was so happy from then on."

Borat goes shopping

Here's a scene that got deleted from the Borat movie (can't wait!), but will be very useful for any presentation on the importance of differentiation and the numbing parity in most retail categories these days.

Via Seredipity Book

Random inspiration

Here's some random stuff that inspired me this week.

Daft Punk's video for "Around the World."  Or anything by Michel Gondry, really.  His stuff doesn't really ever make sense, but despite that (or perhaps because of it), it's completely coherent and compelling.  Why can't ads be this interesting to watch?  Gondry once said "It has always been my goal to make people feel alright when they watch my work."  Maybe we should all use that as a starting point.

"It's odd, and a little unsettling, to reflect upon the fact that English is the only major language in which "I" is capitalized; in many other languages "You" is capitalized and the "i" is lower case"   
- journalist Sydney J. Harris. 

Does that tell us something about what is emphasized or prioritized in different cultures?  I wonder if English-speakers are more self-oriented than others, all due to a simple grammatical artifact.  It made me think about the effect that basic things like language have on the way we think and organize the world.

Kapitaal is a gorgeous little Dutch short film looking at the world with everything stripped out except for brands, media, posters, and other public signage.  Makes you realize how much visual noise we're surrounded by all the time.  And this visual effect somehow both heightens it and calms it down at the same time.
via City of Sound

 

PostSecret.  I keep forgetting about it and then rediscovering it.  Always worth spending some time on.  Great insights into the human condition, and some truly touching, funny, and weird stuff.

"Be bold, and mighty forces will come to your aid." 
      -  Basil King (although often misattributed to Goethe). 

This is one of my favourite quotes.  Thought of it in regard to the failure thing.  It's good advice.

Changing minds

Although he's talking about it from a political context, this is a great description of what we're all trying to do:

"What I need to find out, from someone like Malcolm Gladwell, is how do people change their minds? What is the process by which a person changes their mind about a deeply held belief? What’s the thing that clicks over for them? I have no idea. Clearly people do change their mind about things, but how does that work? Is it gradual, sudden? Is it through a peer? What’s the source of the information? I’d love to know how that works. You might be talking about ideas that people from either side might find a little odd or dangerous. I could figure this out! I’d love to know the mechanism by which people decide they now think differently about an issue. We’ve got to figure that out first...
You have to determine what people will listen to, who they’ll listen to. What resonates with them? What kind of information resonates with them?"
                                                                                - Steven Soderbergh

From an interesting interview in The Believer.  Spotted by Claudiu at Sparking Curious Mind.

The Tao of Steve

Fair warning: this post may not make any sense. Bear with me.

So last night, I watched The Tao of Steve (an indie film that won a few prizes at Sundance 5 years ago).  It's a funny film about an overweight, slightly pompous stoner who still manages to bed his share of women by applying three lessons he claims to be inspired by eastern philosophy.  They are:

1) Be desireless - women are more comfortable when they don't feel they're being pursued, and are turned off by neediness.  To paraphrase Singles, desperation is the worst cologne (though Drakkar Noir is a close second).  Conversely, a lack of interest can be intriguing.  So eliminate your desire.
2) Be excellent - while you're being desireless, do something excellent in her presence to show you are a worthy mate.
3) Be gone - once you've demonstrated your excellence, give her space and let her come to you because "as Heidegger said, we pursue that which retreats from us."

Now I'm not advocating this as a dating philosophy (my wife claims this is how I picked her up, but what came across as "desireless" was actually fear intermingled with  disbelief that she could possibly be attracted to me). And the movie is ultimately about him moving past his fear of intimacy and his shallow approach to women.  But thinking about it again today, I started to wonder if they might actually be fairly useful maxims for brands to follow. 

1) Be desireless: This I think has a few relevant points for brands.  One is in not being desperate to make a sale.  People today have such a good command of the grammar of marketing that they can tell brands that behave confidently from brands that are desperate for their business.  Brands that always have frequent sales and promotions and give-aways seem somewhat cheapened. They're like a salesman on commission who's had a slow month.  Russell mentions today how newspapers' reliance on frequent give-aways to drive circulation is often cited as proof of their inevitable decline.  Marketers often talk about how good branding means you can charge a premium price, and how frequent sales condition people to wait for a lower price.  I guess this is a pithy way of saying that.  If you want to have a strong brand, stop begging and bribing people to buy your product.  Have you ever seen Starbucks or iPod do a 2 for 1 sale, or a "send in a UPC code for a chance to win a trip to Disneyland" promotion?  A related point is around brand positioning, that brands should be true to themselves and find something real within them, rather than chasing people around with artificially pasted on 'consumer insights' which reek of being desperate to get someone to believe in you. Believe in yourself first, others will follow (Adam Morgan talks about this in the classic Eating the Big Fish, he calls it being a lighthouse brand).

2) Be excellent: this goes without saying, really.  With lots of choice in every category, and access to information and opinions about brands, is there even any debate anymore about the need to be excellent in everything from packaging to manufacturing to communications to service to support to design?  But, as someone observes in the movie, it's important to actually be excellent, not to talk about how excellent you are.  Too many brands seem to think just positioning yourself as excellent is sufficient.  Be excellent - give people a reason to think you're worthy.

3) Be gone: this is the idea that repeatedly hitting people over the head with a sales message or intruding on people's lives with urban spam is probably not the best way to engender goodwill towards your brand.  Once you've been excellent, give people the space to enjoy it, process it, and talk about it with others.  And I suspect that makes it more likely they'll come back than reminding them how great you are every two minutes.

I realize this is all a bit pithy and naive to the realities of corporate economic pressures and such. But I think there's something there, no?  Anyway, it all seemed very insightful to me in the shower this morning.  Hope it makes some sense.

Engage this mother!@#%$*

It is amazing what people will do if you engage them.  Would you send a friend a lengthy phone message detailing a product or service?  What if it came personalized from Samuel L. Jackson?

Check out the Snakes on a Plane web-site.  Sadly Samuel L. Jackson keeps his language in check.

PS.  This one makes up for the horrible message Leeza Gibbons and her friends at EZ-Rock once left me.  Don't go burning up my cell phone minutes to tell me you have no taste in music.  I don't care if you were on Entertainment Tonight 10 years ago. 

Instant Def

Have you seen Instant Def yet?  It's a Snickers brand initiative that launched a few weeks ago, a series of webisodes (I really hate that word... there must be something better - web films?) about a hip-hop crew with superpowers who fight to defend "the old school" against another, evil crew bent on destroying it (er... it's not as lame as it sounds).  BBDO New York is behind the whole thing.

The production design is well done, kind of Sin City-esque, combining live action with stylized comic-book animation.  And it has some big names involved: it stars the Black Eyed Peas (will.i.am, apl.de.ap, Taboo and Fergie) as the crew, plus lots of great character actors in bit parts.  Will.i.am wrote and mixed all original music for it.

For me, how they handle the branding is most interesting - it's pretty constant throughout, and at times feels quite forced (their day jobs are working in a Snickers factory, their superpowers come from an explosion on the peanut production line, etc), but somehow it doesn't feel too annoying.  Maybe because the brand doesn't get in the way of the storylines, and they aren't too precious with it (the factory has a crazy Charlie & The Chocolate Factory feel to it, and the dialogue is knowingly campy).

All of that goodwill towards the brand is ruined, of course, when you read the press release, with gems from the brand manager like how the Black Eyed Peas "share key characteristics not only with today’s young influencers, but also the Snickers® brand."  Remember, this is the same band who brought you "Let's get retarded."

All of which makes me wonder: can anyone get away with taking their brand too seriously anymore?  If you can't have fun with your brand, that probably means you're not willing to take risks or give up some control.  Which means it will be extremely hard to take advantage of any of the marketing 2.0 tools that require people to actively participate in the message - content creation, product seeding, viral video, blogs, and consumer created stuff.  After all, it's not much fun to play with someone who can't laugh at themselves. 

It also makes me think press releases about marketing campaigns should be banned.  They always sound painful.

The first two episodes are up, and a third one breaks later this month.