whizdumb

Ten things

1) I haven't posted for awhile.  Shame on me. Getting settled in a new job and new apt in NYC while trying to be a good husband and raise a toddler is no excuse!  How does the saying go... "To be a writer, write."  To be a blogger, blog.

2) The streets here are full of scents.   Well, stenches actually.  This is something I'm still adjusting to.  I often catch myself holding my breath as I pass a pile of trash or whatever (though usually the source is unseen) only to find no relief when I pass it.  Especially lately as the summer air is thick and hot.  I imagine what things would look like if I could see scent. There would be colorful clouds hanging in the air everywhere. 

The most vivid may be right outside the building where I work.  There is a service entrance that houses and dispatches hot dog carts.  All day long the carts are coming and going, refueling and as many of us suspect, dumping their used hot dog water into the gutter somewhere.  Some say the puddles glow at night.  I wouldn't be surprised because the place smells awful. The kind of thing that inspires thoughts of becoming a vegetarian.

3) Am I the only one who thinks, "Is it me or is that PowerPoint projection a bit out of focus?"

4) I got a new TiVo and have been exploring new content. There's a feature where you can download loads of video content from the web.  It's slightly strange experience to lean back on your couch and watch things throught the TiVo menu that you'd normally watch online.  Stuff that would never make it to broadcast or even cable television, such as the Cranky Geeks show or a cheesy New York Times Vows video.  But I love it. The Long Tail in top form.

5) I am not a religious person but I absolutely love living across the street from a beautiful church and hearing the bells ring every 30 minutes.  The picture is from my home office window and the belltower is out of the frame to the right.

6) Facebook's mobile application for BlackBerry is solid.  A simple, fast, elegant alternative to their mobile site.

7) Groceries? Dry cleaning? Kitty litter?  Yeah, they'll deliver that. The other night I ordered Indian food and it was in the door 18 minutes after I called. 

8) Living in a much smaller space makes you reassess your relationship to objects.  I'm much more reluctant to buy something now because I know I'll have to find a place for it.  On the flipside, I'm selling and giving away things like mad in order to lighten the load.  Say no to paid storage...  give it away!

9)  Podcasts have become my commute media of choice.  I have to walk ten minutes, take the train (standing room only) for another ten, then walk another ten.  It's just not conducive to reading.  And I've found that when I do listen to music it is nearly impossible to find a genre that doesn't seem to perfectly accompany a walk through the city.  I guess it's a kind of aural adaptation.  Sound and sight are such strong senses that our mind melds them together.  Perhaps with so much stimulation here visually, the brain picks out the bits that go well with the music.  I don't know.  But it always sounds and feels like a good combination.

10) I feel better already.  The next time I have blogger's block I'm going to just list ten things on my mind.

MediaSnackers leave me hungry

I've been tagged by Neil Perkin to comment on MediaSnackers, the self described "site/weblog/project/call to action for people interested in how young people consume and create media across the globe."  I applaud Neil for jumping in the arena, and for the tag, but I've been reluctant to comment on this because I feel like MediaSnackers is less a genuine meme/project/idea as it is a direct pathway to sell consulting services.  Take a look at the site and you can see what I mean.  There's nothing wrong with that, I'm just not sure what there is here that is really new to react to.  So I'll just leave a quick comment on the broader thought which concerns people consuming information and entertainment in small forms whenever they want.  I think there are a few things going on. 

- The expectation by leading edge media consumers of whatever age, that time has no bearing on their ability to consume information and entertainment.  It started with the web, then TiVo, video on demand, and mobile content.  The center of gravity moved from the media (TV, movies) where stuff was consumed only when people moved to it; to the person, where media orbit us and we consume on demand (rss readers, mobile content, etc.)  The ability to shift time put people in the driver's seat.

- The nature of the content has evolved too; in two opposite ways.  Think of these snacks as short conversations over the water cooler.  Taken individually they can be trite nonsense.  But over time they allow you to get to know a person, a brand, an idea; they take on greater meaning.  So the access to all these bite-sized and easily consumed bits of content can either leave you empty and wanting more; or given enough variety (as Neil suggests) can be quite nutritious. 

- The best kinds of 'snacks' are ultimately laddering up to something of meaning.  Ideas, recipes, humor, drama, etc.  The timeless ingredients of all good content. 

Not sure what else.  Anyway, that's my two cents.

Talk to your daughter before Unilever does

A couple weeks ago at Iconosphere I met a handful of interesting planners.  One was Rye Clifton who works at The Martin Agency.  Coincidentally, when checking out Junior Planner I Am, I stumbled on a link to an orphaned blog Rye used to maintain, and I gave him a hard time for not keeping it going. 

I especially think he should after he passed on this mashup he made.  It brings Dove and its corporate brother Axe together in ironic harmony.

My two cents are (as I mentioned in a comment the PureThinking post and which I will lazily paste here) is that I fear we're all at risk of a little naivete around the overall Real Beauty campaign. At the end of the day it was a brilliant, brave marketing strategy and idea. I think if you view it as marketing it doesn't seem duplicitous at all that they would take different approaches for different brands. It wasn't a Unilever campaign, but a Dove campaign. The problem - not a bad problem to have - is that the public has attached a Dove halo to Unilever rather than an Axe halo. The Axe work resonated at a brand not a societal level so we could keep it in a box called brand marketing. The double edge of Dove's success is that it's made Unilever seem like a corporation that truly cares more than it does.

Coffee Morning 10/19 recap

First things first.  The pictures I took at Coffee with my new phone didn't come out well.  Actually what I mean is they came out fine but people just looked bad.  You're all nice people but indoors early in the morning with a camera phone, it's a crap shoot. 

So instead I did a Google image search for 'i need a picture' and took the first image that came up.  (Woah, I just tried it again and it came up second). 

There it is.  WTF?  It's a consumer submitted video for TreeHugger.com and Seventh Generation's Convenient Truth Video Contest.  So if you fancy getting lectured to about consumer consumption by a pipe cleaner, check it out.  Wow, talk about irony.  Is this karmic retribution for Coffee Mornings' consumer marketing jabber?  Who knows.

Back to coffee last Friday.  We were joined by Ameet, Jennifer, Monique, Dave, Anoud, Erin, Melissa, Ken (of the Pure Thinking blog.  He wrote his own coffee recap here), and newbies Joe and Tommy. 

Joe just moved to town and is looking to land in a corporate communications or marketing role of some sort (Joe, leave a comment with any other details or contact info if you like). 

Monique is a planner at McClain Finlon, and she let everyone know that they're hiring.  So if you're a planner looking for a home check 'em out.  I believe Sarah Miller is the head of planning over there.  I've never met her I know she's trying to make it to coffee one of these days. 

Tommy has worked for some time at Comedy Works helping them to operate and expand their business and he had some really interesting perspective on comedy as an art and as a product.  For example, a good comic should have you laughing 4-5 times per minute.  I never really thought about that.  But it is a product and it's got, well I guess, metrics.   He also talked about the ratio of practice material versus tried and true material.  In a 15 minute set there may be 2-3 minutes of experimental stuff.  If you err on the high side that's 20% experimental.  Putting stuff out there to see if it sticks. You can see where I'm going with this...

What if brands allocated 20% of their ideas / product innovations / media spend to purely experimental stuff?  Things that might polarize.  New ground.  It's not unlike a regular innovation pipeline, but just put out there with the rest of it all, not researched in test markets and groups.  Just as there's nothing quite like a live audience in a comedy club, there's little to truly replace really going for it with a product launch in the real world.

Anyway, Tommy was also kind of segmenting comics among comics versus performers.  Dane Cook, for example, he considered a performer.  I'd probably put Robin Williams and maybe Bill Hicks in that category after watching a clip that Craig posted. On second thought, I think Hicks may be in a category all his own!

Incidentally, he's also a comic (performer?) himself.  Tommy, you've got to let us know the next time you're on stage.  I promise not to throw rotten tomatoes.

Ameet was sharing some thoughts from a presentation he recently attended on innovation by Tony Ulwick (Download the ppt here).  It makes the case for devising solutions that meet unmet consumer needs.

A few other topics came up but that's all I've got time for now.  Anyone have anything to add?

A Few Good Creative Men

Iv'e got a few posts kicking around the noggin that haven't made it out yet.  Soon.  In the meantime here's something fun to watch.  Saw it on Paul's site and in a few other places.

Holy Mary, mother of beautiful nonsense

BBH's response to talent crisis: an idea

With all the chatter about the talent crisis in agencies these days it's nice to see at least one agency taking a novel approach to finding good people.  BBH has taken a page from Monster's lauded 1999 commercial, which was lampooned in another all-too-long advertising film (and then downhill even further to this waste of time).  Although not completely original the BBH take is executed with more craft and wit than the rest.  And though I struggled sometimes to understand what he was saying, to my American ears the accents only add to the fun.

Via Only Dead Fish

One line says it all

Thirty seconds of nothing but product, like watching the beginning of Star Trek.  All redeemed with a cleverly honest copy twist in the middle. 

Makes for a great :30 ad but where can you take it form there?

Ssllooww ddaanncciinngg

Here's a brutally simple idea.  Take something that is usually fast and frenetic. Then slow it way down to reveal its every detail.

Artist David Michalek has a traveling installation that does just that.  He takes hyper slow motion HD videos of the world's best dancers then projects them larger than life. Here's a sample, though the real videos are much slower.  They take an original 5 seconds of live action and extend it to 10 minutes.

Apple profiled the artist and gets into the technical end of the production.  More to learn is at the official Slow Dancing Films website.

Next up: User Generated Strategy?

When it comes to consumer generated content, most of it tends to have a pretty short shelf life.  A video, a tagline, etc.  But one submission headed for the Heinz Top This TV challenge has a bit more staying power.  Sculptor Robin Antar has made a ketchup bottle out of marble and is going to film the process for a commercial she'll submit to Heinz. (The thing is on display along with other marble pieces at the Marble Sculpting Symposium until Aug. 5 in the town of Marble, Colorado.)

Heinz has been big on the consumer generated content thing for awhile now. Say Something Ketchuppy was among the more interesting UGC campaigns as it tinkered with the almighty logo.

This new contest is pretty conventional but instead of broadcasting the winner and spending all that money on media they're simply posting the top 15 videos on YouTube and having the public vote on the winner.  Most of the submissions I viewed are pretty forgettable though this one stood out to me:

But I have to say if I was a creative I would be pretty nervous about this user generated content thing.  How long can a brand be buoyed by consumer content contests?  It's really starting to get old.  And how many modifications of the same 'submit your...' approach can smart creative departments crank out before they feel like expendable middlemen?  Daniel Pink wrote a compelling argument about about how in the conceptual economy jobs that require creative thinking will thrive while those that can be automated, a la computer programming, will be outsourced.  Perhaps this should serve as a small warning to the agencies over-reliant on the UGC trend:  Is it diminishing the 'conceptual' nature of our contribution and even our role in the Conceptual Age?

To me, the sweet spot could be some sort of a hybrid between 'here is our idea, love it or leave it' being one extreme and 'hey we give up, you tell us what this brand should say' on the other. 

But all of this dangles the question, what about the planner's contribution?  Our brand conscience?  What kind of rubber stamp strategic thinking goes into 'lets' leverage consumer's ability to operate a video camera and let them make an ad'? 

It certainly makes use of a salient trend but I can't help but think the people behind the cameras are becoming the next generation of professional sweepstakes entrants.  In the short term it adds up:  The brand is happy because it saved money on big production and media budgets.  The consumers like participating and seeing genuine content created by their peers.  But what does this do long term to the agency role? 

Of course the reason for these big questions is that this stuff used to be totally promotional and always complemented by a more strategic brand advertising campaign.  But now these contests are soliciting brand ideas that get big exposure and act as a proxy for mainline brand advertising (like Doritos' super bowl spot).  I can almost hear a client asking why, in this example, does Heinz need an agency at all?

The good news is that despite this trend the marketplace for strategic thinking is getting ever more crowded and good planning is in greater demand.   

Hmmm.  Why pay all those expensive agency fees?  I smell a contest brewing!