If you’re like me, you ask yourself this way too often. Here’s a good reminder from Maria Schneider of the proper answer:

Another read worth seeing over at Heather Elder’s Blog.  It’s the answer to her open letter from last week.

Dear Rep. – An open letter from an art producer

Heather Elder

Heather Elder has an impressive group of photographers in her care; most notably (to me at least) is Andy Anderson. Her site is worth a visit just to look at her stable of photographers.

However, here are short segments from her post – you must go to her site to read the good stuff, sorry.

1. When you ask me what our budget is, usually I don’t have access to that info, or I’m given a number that needs to include so much more:
2. Personally, I don’t kiss and tell, er– divulge who folks are bidding against, until after the job has been awarded
3. I try to offer feedback about creative calls, and estimates, when I have time.
4. I will always let you know when I am asking for a third bid, and your photographer has little chance of getting the job.
5. I don’t ever want to be the art buyer you jokingly want to charge each time I  make you triple bid for the hell of it, or revise an estimate 20 times.
6. What kind of art buyer doesn’t tell you that you didn’t get the job?!
7. Are you kidding—portfolio shows are one of the best parts about being stuck inside this cube, and not out on production bossing everyone around!
8. I appreciate the email blasts to alert me who is doing what. Unfortunately, my in box is inundated with them– half are from sub-par talent, and repeating weekly.
9. I wish reps/photographers would market the appropriate audience, once a month or when there’s truly awesome new work.

So now … go here:  Heather Elder Blog to find the context and some other goodies.

So it’s dry. Sometimes good things come moisture fee.

Rohit Deshpande

Companies can find themselves at a disadvantage when positioning a brand. Chilean sparkling white wine will have a hard time competing with sparkling white wine from France for example.

No matter the level of quality, the perceived quality of products originating from that particular location isn’t high. Korean electronics company Gold Star (now LG Electronics) is a great example found in this video from HBR Idea Cast. Gold Star couldn’t get distribution in the United States because it’s brand was inherently tarnished by their origin.  It’s a lot to overcome.

Because creativity is the province of larger markets – New York, Chicago, Los Angeles – those creative professionals in smaller markets may find it difficult to establish a brand strong enough to attract opportunities routinely found in the larger markets.

This video may offer some incite and ideas.

Rohit Deshpande, Harvard Business School professor, describes ways that emerging market companies can overcome consumer bias against their products.

Heather Elder Represents 9 commercial photographers, hosts a stock inspiration website, a

Heather Elder

blog, and consults with a variety of photographers nationwide. She’s written an open letter to Art Buyers that deserves the attention of both photographers and art buyers.  I’ve highlighted the lead sentence in each of her 8 points.  It’s worth a read here.

1)   When I ask you for the budget, please know that I am only trying to get an idea of how to approach the project.

2)   If I ask you who else we are bidding against, it is ok if you don’t want to share that inform But if it doesn’t really matter to you, then I could really use the information.

3)   If you ever have feedback for me about the book, the site, the call, the estimate; any of it, I would really be appreciative.

4)   If I am just a third bid, please let me know.

5)   When we are not awarded the job, please let me know right away.

6)   I so appreciate when you let me come to your agency to brag about our photographers.

7)   I also appreciate when you spell out your expectations for a portfolio show – especially when it comes to what will entice the creatives.

8)   Please do not get annoyed with me when I send email blasts.  I know, I know you get so many.  However, these are one of the only measurable forms of communication we have nowadays.

“]

Isaiah Mustafa via Wikipedia

Isaiah Mustafa is the man you’d like your man to smell like.

www.twerribletowel.com

Local (to me) Advertising Agency – McKinney – gave 10% of Ben Eckerson’s creative time to the Steelers – long time target of his football affections.

McKinney asks each of their 230 employees to invest 10% of their time to non-client related creativity. (Typically agency creatives work plenty of salaried overtime so I’m not sure to what 10% they refer – regardless – it’s pretty cool a la Google.)

The site is a clever use of social media, twittering Steeler fans and the Terrible Towel tradition.

http://brandbowl2011.com/

Mullen Advertising’s Brand Bowl is back for 2011. Brand Bowl is a fun way for Twitter followers to gauge public reaction to Superbowl TV Advertising Spots. Check out their blog post here: Creativity Unbound

Via Brand Bowl Website:

HOW THE HECK DOES IT WORK?

First we tally—using many, many selected keywords—the total number of tweets about a brand.

Second, we look at the opinions stated in those tweets to calculate a “net sentiment” score. The purpose of this score is to measure whether the overall public reaction to a brand is positive or negative. The net sentiment score is defined by the formula:

(Positive tweets + Neutral tweets – Negative tweets)/ Total brand tweets.

Finally, to rank the brands, we calculate a “brand bowl score,” in which we divide by the total tweets for all brands:

(Positive tweets + Neutral tweets – Negative tweets)/ Total tweets for all brands

All three of these figures—the brand bowl score, the net sentiment score, and the total number of tweets about the brand—are displayed alongside the appropriate brand on the scoreboard. You true marketing nerds (it’s okay, you’re among friends) can click on any brand for even more in-depth details. Hot diggity!

It is important to note that we are measuring the response to brands. We are not measuring the response to any single ad. So a brand with one advertisement is properly weighted against a brand with five advertisements.

Mullen, Radian6 and the Boston Globe partnered to put on Brand Bowl 2011. We hope you find it engaging and fun, and we welcome any feedback you might have. We also welcome gifts of beer or pickles. But we’ll settle for feedback. Please post your comments at mullen.com

Help me out.

Following the PermissionToSuck.com post from Jan. 4 about Jaron Lanier, I’ve had regular conversations, both online and off, about sources of creative artistic brilliance.  I’ve put hours of thought into it; hundreds even.  Here’s a quote I pulled from a 2010 post that I tweet regularly mostly to defensive responses:

Can a “10,000 hour” creative professional compete with 1,000 “100 hour” creative amateurs?

The real questions being, now that we live web 2.0 – with its many collaborative tools – what is happening to creative virtuosity? Why haven’t we seen a virtual avalanche of great literature and song writing? Shouldn’t the music industry explode beyond its traditional business model as promised? Is it because we have yet to fully embrace the tools?  Do we still need the Match.com of creativity?

I’ll confess that PermissionToSuck.com isn’t the most well researched blog out there, but then, blogs in general aren’t all that well researched; think “brain droppings”.  The best of the best are blogs from authors about their well researched subjects; think primary and secondary research data supported hypotheses.

Still, I do my share of listening, reading and surfing without finding evidence of artistic brilliance that originated online beyond the usual cleverness or somewhat unique mash-ups.  Musicians pass half finished ProTool files via the web, saving gas money and travel time, but is that really helping improve virtuosity?

We see youtubes of brilliant creativity that was recorded posthumously.  We see short films distributed via Vimeo or Vimeo-ish channels that would have existed without web-tools. Where is the promised land? Why do we continue to marvel about the success of Apple and speculate that Open Source is going to kick its butt? Waiting.

Side note on the Apple thing:  I have a friend who’s a staunch believer in open source. You know, “Android is going to kick iPhone’s ass – remember Microsoft v. Apple – same thing”.  But … what phone did my friend buy when he needed one that worked?  Yup, an iPhone.  Furthermore, which stock would you rather be gifted right now? Apple or Microsoft?  I digress.

Here’s a great example of “social net” collaborative creativity; Clever, yet nearly un-listenable.

[via B Flat website]

“In Bb 2.0 is a collaborative music and spoken word project conceived by Darren Solomon from Science for Girls, and developed with contributions from users.”

The In B Flat Project

The Johnny Cash Project is by far the best I’ve seen. It’s a mash-up of illustrations that create a music video that would otherwise not have existed if it weren’t for internet collaboration. I’d rate it Excellent but I want more; I expect more. Furthermore, as outstanding as it is, the Johnny Cash Project is build around a music icon from the 1960′s. Does anyone else find it odd that excitement for online collaboration needs an established “analog” artist?

I’m beginning to think true creative brilliance comes from a closed system – but I’m still open. Waiting.

The Johnny Cash Project

Sir Ken Robinson’s ideas about education holds true throughout our lives. Watch this and tell me you haven’t experienced at least some of his ideas yourself.

Osborn’s brainstorm as practiced nearly everywhere I’ve been is mostly worthless and definitely costly measured in a Man Hour : Fresh Idea ratio. Yet, in the right creative culture thinking groups avoid group think.  Check out what David Segal found.

In Pursuit of the Perfect Brainstorm

- article by David Segal, a business reporter for The New York Times [find it here].

“Like many of its competitors’, Jump’s core offering is an assortment of refinements to old-fashioned brainstorming. The analogy to weather built into that term is apt, it turns out, because Jump and others contend that without the right atmospheric mix, no brainstorming session will produce the cognitive version of lightning. Dev Patnaik, a sunny, kinetic co-founder and the chief executive of Jump, notes that even under ideal circumstances, traditional brainstorming can devolve into a kind of competitive idea tennis. You think of a new use for pencil. Then me. Then you. Then me. Somehow, the unstated goal is winning, however ill defined victory might seem, instead of ginning up virtuoso concepts.”

…

The dot-com boom accelerated the process, Govindarajan says. “In the late ’90s, people started to say strategy isn’t about stability, it’s about change,” he says.

…

He recommends to clients what he calls the 30-30 rule: 30 percent of the people who make strategic decisions should be 30 years old or younger. “The executives who’ve been there a long time, they grew up in Box 1 [everything a company now does to manage and improve performance],” he says. “You need voices in the room that aren’t vested in the past.”

Seth Godin's head

Devoting a lifetime to being a virtuoso at anything is hard if you plan on success.  Here’s a quote from a Seth Godin post that is available here.

I have failed at many goals; more failure than success to be honest.  Yet, my one rule  I found stated precisely by Seth Godin.  When things are hard, it’s not the time to quit; if you’re going to quit, do it when things are easy.  If you quit when getting rejected or hitting a rough patch, then you won’t be up for the hard work it takes when your ideas starts getting traction.

“Art is hard. Selling is hard. Writing is hard. Making a difference is hard.

When you’re doing hard work, getting rejected, failing, working it out–this is a dumb time to make a situational decision about whether it’s time for a nap or a day off or a coffee break.”