Here is a 1 minute marketing course – very well done by CakeGroup.com

Alex Bogusky

Mad Man – Business Week Article July 29:

On June 30, Alex Bogusky went for a bike ride in the hills outside Boulder, Colo., then made his way downtown to the century-old house-cum-studio he had renovated and dubbed FearLess Cottage. Once inside, he called Miles Nadal, his boss in Toronto, and resigned. Bogusky was 46. Adweek had named him creative director of the decade, and the agency he helped build, Crispin Porter + Bogusky, was bringing in more than a billion dollars in billings. He had a dream title of his own making, chief creative insurgent, and a salary close to $2 million.  [from the Business Week article Mad Man by Susan Berfield]

Update August 11, 2010:

Dear Alex,

I still regret having handed you the Lance Armstrong signed jersey his coach gave me during the 1998 “I Want To Die” campaign shoot, even though it was probably my best move at the time.  I’m pretty certain you, in turn, handed it to your friend and AD on the campaign Dave Swartz .  At least I have a copy of these ads signed by Lance , Greg Herbold, Ruthie Matthes, and Jurgen Beneke – nice consolation gift, thank you btw.

Seriously though – Thanks for the opportunities and we’re all looking forward to what’s next.

Best,

Bruce DeBoer

Check out FearLess QA

I had a chance to talk with Creative Director and Copywriter Mike Allen about his career in Advertising and get some of his thoughts on branding and creativity.  Here are 10 minutes from that discussion.

As this embedded spot for American Airlines demonstrates, Mike gives voice to a brand’s essence.  This spot and two others in the campaign ran shortly after the 9/11 tragedy.  Worried that the country didn’t need a reminder of plane flight or the of who’s company mark was stenciled to the side of the terrorist weapon, American Airlines was on the verge of canceling all Advertising for 6 months.

The alternative was to show the emotion of what plane flight means to those who chose to travel; don’t show planes, show what planes can do besides fly into buildings. It’s easy to see how the “We know why you fly” campaign was born from these early spots written by Mike.

Additional 30 sec. spots in the Campaign from American Airlines 2001:
“Friends”
“Family”

Summery of Mike Allen’s Advertising History:

His 24-year advertising career includes creating brand-building work for American Airlines, Bank of America, Nortel Networks, Subaru of America, the U.S. Air Force, Bell Helicopter, Terminix and Bennigan’s while at Temerlin McClain in Dallas, TX.

From 2003-2009, He was ACD, then VP/Managing Creative Director at Rockett, Burkhead & Winslow (RBW) in Raleigh, NC, overseeing work and writing for BB&T, Biscuitville, Wavecom, Queens University of Charlotte, CORT Furniture and Old Dominion Freight Line across all media channels.

I can’t grip rational leverage on conceptual composites that look like photography but really aren’t, even though they defy any other category and have original photographic components. What are these things?  Common sense says they’re illustrations yet they’re not freehand creations.

On the other hand, I know what feels real.  When I see a photograph I don’t have to speculate about manipulation, my senses care less because they’re consumed by examination and filled with emotion. Once I whiff movement too far from photo-authenticity, I sense too much personal jurisdiction lost over interpretation; I begin to feel as manipulated as the image.

A postcard manipulated or not, is a great souvenir but nothing compared to my family standing near a Paris landmark. When I put my camera between me and my family it transcends mere memento.  If I choose enhancement it loses nothing, yet choices made by another are highly destructive.

Photographic images, pixilated or otherwise need integrity or risk reflecting a downright feeble notion of authenticity; revealing a strong agenda yet one relatively easy to dismiss.

Pulitzer Prize winning Photojournalist Renee Byer tells a powerful story with her images. I don’t care how she captured them.  I don’t care what she did with them post capture – if anything. I easily place my trust in her and the honesty of the message she’s offering.

When is it that we lose this trust? If photography isn’t dealing with hard news and world events don’t hinge on precision, there is more editorial leeway; still there is an instant where manipulation annihilates the story.

Do I like these clever, often funny, conceptual illustrations that use photography tools?  I still haven’t decided whether they are worthy or fade as fast as a Hallmark Card with sloppy wet prose.

“Once the images begin to replace the world, Photography loses much of its reason for being.” – After Photography by Fred Ritchin Director of Pixel Press .

Watch Renee’s presentation and look at the conceptual slide show (above)  and help me out.  Where is the line we know exists; what is lost and what is gained?

TEDx – Tokyo Presentation – “The Story Telling Power of Photography”

Renee Byer – A Mother’s Journey: [via The Pulitzer Prize Website]

With over 20 years of experience in the media industry, Renée C. Byer is an award-winning photographer, designer and picture editor.

She has taken honors from the National Press Photographers Association, Society of News Design, Associated Press, and the Best of the West photo and design contest. She has twice been featured in Photo District News magazine for photo stories while working as a staff photographer at The Sacramento Bee. Most recently in the September 2006 Photojournalism issue for her yearlong story “A Mother’s Journey.”

Her series of photographs on biotechnology titled “Seeds of Doubt” won the Harry Chapin Media Award for World Hunger in Photojournalism in 2005. The series also won first place in the Best of Photojournalism contest sponsored by the National Press Photographers Association.

In 2005 she was awarded the McClatchy President’s Award for her photographs in the “Women at War” series. This was the first time that a Sacramento Bee photojournalist was the sole recipient of the award.

Byer has been a staff photographer at The Sacramento Bee since 2003. Previously she worked at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer where her photography was a finalist for a Dart Award for excellence in reporting on victims of violence. Byer is a long-time newspaper photographer who has worked around the country at a number of top dailies.

She recently served on the faculty of the Mountain Workshop for photojournalism sponsored by Western Kentucky University.

Kevin McKeon via StrawberryFrog.com

Your product launch offers awareness for its unique value. This accounts for most advertising.  Ok, now we know your product is there; you have my attention, educate me. It’s been repeated 1000 + times: “nothing kills a bad product faster than good advertising.” But I’ll change it a little for the internet age: “nothing kills a product like a bad product.”

There. I’ve summed up conventional advertising in one paragraph, and brought it into the crowded, abundant, consumer centric internet years. Now it’s all about ME, keep your damn interruption marketing to yourself, I’ll find you when I want something you got. Unless ….

Unless you give me something authentic of real value for free, like say … social equity? I’m my own broadcaster on the social network and I want social media love. I want to be the guy for whom others create a “bring back [your name here]” fan page if I disappear for a while.

With infinite choice comes a need to embed your product  into culture. If you’re really successful you become the culture, like #43 is to NASCAR. Hint: Start with quality.

In my campaign I’m going to give away personal brand equity – touch my brand and your perceived social value goes up in your tribe.  Touch my quality and you are quality – nice!   I know you want it – who wouldn’t?

A general guide:
1) Find out why they’re there and want to be associated with your brand?
2) Understand who you’re talking to and contribute to their experience by adding authentic value.
3) Remember that in the new landscape, everything is social – no one likes to be sold to, interrupted, or be the subject of a marketing prank.
4) And – now here’s the hard part – keep the social equity your giving prospects immersed in yours.

Repeat after me: real value, authentic value, social value.  Additionally, remember that the value is for your tribal prospect, not you.  In my tribe people come over to eat, not watch YOU eat, and they’re proud to have eaten my food.  Build personal brand equity for participants, immerse your brand into the culture to build advocacy within the tribe, and – if possible – add material reward that is portable all while generating real social brand equity for individual tribe members.

Fast Company Magazine has a nice simple article describing what successful and not so successful brands are doing to create advocates. “Five Steps for Consumer Brands to Earn Social Currency” by Ben Paynter

1) Advocates Trump Followers
2) Context Matters
3) Not Every Brand Should Be Social
4) Social Tools are a Means Not an End
5) Gimmicks Marginalize Trust

Embedded is a short video with boutique ad agency, Strawberry Frog’s Executive Creative Director Kevin McKeon explaining why he considers everything they do to be social.

StrawberryFrog Creative Director: “I Consider Everything We D… – The funniest videos clips are here

The most remarkable of remarkable things I witnessed during a month spent in China was culture clash – very old and very new – coexisting and competing for road space. Young and old, physically one or two generations removed, expose a gap wider than Jimi Hendricks and The Christie Minstrels – in many ways it’s the land time forgot.

We are analog beings. Analog is the smooth steady sensation on our hands, through our eyes, and in our ears, it’s unlimited in detail and richness.  Analog is the space in which we create things; it’s where we get our hands dirty. Our senses are not nearly acute enough to capture the immense detail of our analog world.

Digital is like touching a hair brush of ones and zeros, it’s like looking at an image full of holes or listening to harsh staccato tones.  Move the bristles close enough to each other and potentially it’s a good surface simulation. As we experience every day, those 1’s and 0’s eventually reach the edge of our senses. Digital detail is limited to what our senses need to perceive the facsimile of analog richness.

Digital gave us efficiencies and the ability to move and edit large numbers. Large portable numbers give us the ability to manipulate a simulated world. What we know is that digital technology is fast, inexpensive and accessible. As generations die, we further bake digital into our culture.  When fully baked, what then?

We all know quality when we see it.  We know what it feels like, and how it sounds, tastes and looks. Quality is not a simulation, it’s analog. Digital quality is a facsimile – albeit a good one – of real analog quality. What we experience as quality is the realness of fine detailed conception. Quality is the best humans can create.

Creativity is analog. There is no such thing as digital creativity.  Accept it, then understand there are critical points at the Analog to Digital conversion and vice versa.  In audio they’re called D/A Converters and they’re found in ever CD player and computer.  Lousy D/A converters mean you’ve lost sound fidelity. Want a quality photo print?  The D/A conversion from light to pixels or back from computer to ink on paper is the most crucial.  Everything else is just editing numbers, and yes there is good and bad editing but don’t forget the priorities are at either end.

My point is that the richness you and I perceive as quality, just like my experience in China, can be like old and new competing for road space. I recently viewed a presentation where an advertising opinion leader characterized the new definition of quality to a room full of students as: fast, accessible, and cheap.  As generations die this will get further baked into culture but, in reality, it’s more or less a digital simulation of what’s good enough and has nothing to do with real quality.

My point is illustrated in this beautiful video “UP THERE” about the precarious profession of hand painting billboards.

The Music: “Window” and “Twentytwoforteen” written by James Lavalle and performed by Album Leaf Courtesy of SUBPOP Records.

The Bird House and “The Cabbie”

The Bird House:

Bird House

On a weekend walk my wife and I came across our community’s annual Bird House Design Contest; apparently a local favorite unbeknownst to me.  There were nearly 100 bird homes in 6 or more categories – who knew it was that involved?  Excited, my wife ran through the designs doing a preliminary judging then a final run through as I waited having completed my vote.  Turns out, she is a much more thorough bird house judge.

Walking away from the event she said, “How fun was that”?  I said, “Well, that’s 30 minutes I’ll never get back.”  Wait, I suddenly feel like a bird house snob pronouncing only one or two barely worthy of my standards, yet I knew nothing of bird housing.

Every one of them looked like a bird house; that hole for the bird is a dead giveaway.  Is there some invariant form of bird home that birds comprehend; one that we’d dare not reject without risking vacancy?  What if I wanted to use design thinking to create a new bird house, where do I go to gain bird empathy or am I fated to derivative designs, i.e. where do I put the hole?

Maybe I’ll crowdsource this. Throw out a bird house challenge: describe the problem (new bird house design), set a price, get solutions from the crowd (via 99designs.com perhaps?), vet solutions, reward the winner, take ownership of the design, and retire on the sales profits.  I’ll send one to the design winner as a gift to be nice.

What do you suppose is a “fair” price for an innovative bird house design?  I want quality; I’m casting my net for brilliance; I want true innovation not some left over design sitting in someone’s closet.

Wait – how do I know who wins?  I know nothing but what looks good; I’m a visual guy – sure – but what if it looks great but functions like crap or is a huge bird disappointment?  I need an expert or better yet, I’ll bone up on all things bird.  Assuming I’ll never know bird “want”, I’ll immerse myself in bird “need”. Birds don’t really know what they want but sometimes they get what they need. It’ll have to be good enough.

The Cabbie:

Original still on which "The Cabbie" was based

Vincent Laforet is an LA based photographer and director.  He was asked by Canon to kick off The Story Beyond The Still. The story continues when the last frame of the previous video is used by the next artist to continue the story with their video creation – and so it goes.

It’s improv technique applied to video storytelling. The story is created by the artists, we get a cool story, and Canon gets publicity – everyone wins.

[via: The Story Beyond The Still]

It’s the first ever user-generated HD Video Contest where photographers become filmmakers, and we all see beyond the still. Last month Josh Thacker was chosen as the very first winner for his film “Job Security,” based on his interpretation of a still photograph at the end of the previous chapter, “The Cabbie,” shot by Vincent Laforet on a Canon EOS 7D. Josh’s film was the second chapter of seven, ending with a still photograph of its own for the Vimeo community to interpret. After a flurry of entries, Keegan Uhl’s “The Beach” was chosen as the winner for Chapter 3, and now, once again the question is posed to you, what do you see beyond this still?

"Alan Guitar Hero" directed by David Shane

Of one thing I am sure, the folks listed below created a funny sophisticated ad for the Doritos King of Ads contest.

Does anyone else find something Deliciously ironic about hiring the best in the business to produce a spot that will invite the production of a bunch of borderline Cheesy spots?

How far will user content extend the value of professional content?

Agency: AMV BBDO, London

Client: Doritos

Director: David Shane

Production Company: MJZ

Copywriter: Paul Knott

Art Director: Tim Vance

Agency Planner: Tom White

Agency Planner: Nicola Davies

TV Producer: Suzy MacGregor

Media Agency: OMD

Media Planner: James Campbell

Production Company: MJZ

Post Production Company: The Lab

Brad Colbow

Brad Colbow reviews the Art Direction for iPad magazine editions for GQ, Popular Science and TIME. The video demo gives one a great idea for how usable the editions are, and where iPad design might go in the future.

“You don’t know who they are but they are doing things that are changing your mind about your life”  – John Updike.

According to the Bio on the Goodby Silverstein website, Jeff Goodby is a thinker, writer, illustrator, printmaker and director.  He grew up in Rhode Island and attended Harvard.

He worked as a reporter in Boston, wrote for The Harvard Lampoon and has had his illustrations published in Time, Mother Jones and Harvard magazines.

Mainly, Jeff Goodby is the Creative Director and co-Chairman of Goodby Silverstein and Partners one of  Ad Age’s 10 Agencies of the Decade.  He was the principle guy who made you “get” milk.

Jeff Goodby:

“Try to see the work through the eyes of the client and yet still maintain your own faith in the stuff.  If you can do this, you can sell it to them. If you can’t, then it’s probably not the right idea in the first place. I also advise people — constantly — to start over rather than lopping edges off their ideas. Oftentimes, this results in clients asking you to go back to your original idea.”
[via: IHaveAnIdea.com]

Kevin Kelly of BigBuzz.com interview Jeff in Part One here: