whizdumb

Coffee Morning 9/21 recap

Good coffee last Friday.  Regulars Darcey and Erin were there from Integer.  Eric came by, he is getting his MBA at Daniels and works for the Metro Denver Sports Commission.  He was part of the Stop Running Toilets stunt that Denver Water and Sukle pulled off at the CU vs. CSU game a few weeks back. 

[10/3 Update:  Eric has just posted additional running toilet video at www.denversports.org]

And Ken came by, he's started a new job as the interactive guy at Pure Brand and has taken to starting a blog.  He wrote a little recap post of his own from this coffee. 

That's Eric, Erin and Ken.

David returned from Corona Research and brought his colleague Leo along. 

Paul Timm returned with some good news, he's officially off the job market as he was just hired on at Crispin.  Congrats Paul. Jennifer Mich came by.  She's looking to make a career change but I didn't get to talk to her much about it.  Ameet from the Daniels College of Business joined us again.  Anoud joined us, she's a recent grad from CU Boulder (is that right Anoud?)  And I guess that's about it. 

Sorry about the bluury pics.  I'm getting to know my new camera phone.  

We talked about a lot of stuff.  Here's a streaming list of some topics...

Web search games, airline discounter Farecast, running and mypetfat.com, ad blocker software, One Book One Denver, the movie The Brave One, the books Eat Pray Love and the Six Thinking Hats, Ideo's approach to innovation, and more.

I'm really enjoying these coffees.  Stumbled on this description of Coffee Morning from the Kansas City group:

What do you talk about?
Anything and everything. It's not an Ad-Industry-only kind of thing. Have good stew the night before? Wish you could compete for World's Strongest Man? Really dislike the new Subway ads? It's all game here.

Is drinking coffee required?
No. But it should be mentioned that coffee is a wonderful antioxident and it enhances short-term memory.

Is talking required?
No. Morning grumps are welcome. But we may point and laugh at you. We'll also take a photo of you, too.

So far for us it's been a bit of a roundtable kind of thing with everyone around a single table.  The numbers have dictated that rather than deliberate planning.  So it's been one big conversation.  We could continue that and even encourage a bit more show-and-tell.  Or it could turn way casual and more of a happy hour with just interesting people milling around with coffee instead of beers.  Any thoughts on that one way or another?

Thanks, and see you 10/5.

 

The Power of Books

I saved this and now I cant remember where I found it.  At any rate it's a powerful image.  If you know where it's from leave a comment.

The Good Food Fight

Here's a little quiz.  Would you rather:

1) Read about the benefits of a healthy diet

2) Be exposed to the startling statistics about obesity in America

3) Hear General Mills talk about how great its products are

4) Have a food fight

It's a wonderful thing when marketers take their products off a pedestal and encourage you to throw them.  Which is exactly what you do at The Good Food Fight.

Of course eating right is a serious thing.  Obesity is nothing to laugh at (Except for fat jokes.  Those can be pretty damn funny.)  But we've been lectured to about this stuff for a long time.  What is so smart about this campaign by General Mills is that they realized that people are tired of the hard sell, the meaningless and increasingly confusing claims of increased healthiness, trans fats and the like. 

Compare this with Pepsi's Smart Spot program, which takes a more predictable hard sell approach.

At least General Mills gives us some credit that our world does not revolve around their brands, but rather, we need a reason to care.  And they trust that a fun experience will get your attention enough to consider taking a look at their Eat Better America website.

Once you get there you find a surprisingly readable and deep resource for diet, exercise, recipes, articles, and of course, subtle mentions and coupons for General Mills products.  I tend to have a very sensitive BS detector for sponsored content but this passes muster because of the transparency of the brands and the depth of the content. 

And the food fight.  You gotta love throwing spaghetti at a taunting cafeteria lady.

You shall not pass

A recent road trip to the mountains around Estes Park, CO took us past this lovely sign.  Like an email where you're not sure if the person is joking or not, I wasn't sure whether the sign maker was intentionally taking it over the top or just plain angry.  Or drunk.  Or psychotic.  Somehow the handwriting was disturbing enough to be taken seriously.

We managed to escape unscathed.

New Denver agency blog

The small Denver agency pure Brand Communications has started an agency blog called pure thinking.  Ken Barber over at pure let me know about it.  He looks to be off to a good start with this post about an ad he spotted on a pack of meat handed over to him by a butcher. 

Future of Planning according to Zeus Jones

Zeus Jones' deck on the future of planning is now up for viewing.  In my opinion this was one of the highlights of the AAAA Account Planning conference last month in San Diego. 

Oh, and if you haven't roamed around SlideShare yet it's pretty wild... like YouTube for PowerPoint.

Recap from 9/7 Coffee Morning

We had a good coffee last Friday, filled the back room table which was nice.   Among those who dropped by were David an analyst at Corona Research, Tonia from the Office of Communications and Marketing at Daniels College of Business, Elissa joined us (but I forget where she works), Wade and Natalie from Integer, Bob Taber of Thomas, Taber & Drazen, Meg who manages PR for IZZE, Ameet who is getting his MBA at Daniels, and Serena who is a recruiter at Wolf Creative. 

Also Paul Timm was there.  He just moved to Denver from San Diego and is open to interesting work opportunities.  He is an "Innovative, entrepreneurial marketing strategist experienced in brand architecture and positioning, new product development,  creative direction, and grassroots marketing.  An accomplished team leader with international experience, balanced quantitative and qualitative expertise, and a Duke MBA." If you'd like to get in touch with him let me know.

Matt came by briefly to say a few words about the Denver 50, the awards show put on by the NDAC.  Specifically he was responding to some thoughts lobbed by Paul recently.  Matt said the criteria they use to judge the show goes beyond abject creativity and considers the strategic backstory and ultimate effectiveness of the work.  I can't find the applications online (submissions have been closed) so it would be great to find the exact criteria and post it for all to see.  Anyone?

We talked a bit about a lot of things.  A few bits include:

- New forms of artistic/social expression, like pecha-kucha which involves a rigid 20 ppt slides of 20 seconds each.  Pecha-kucha is Japanese for "chatter" and is now featured instead of a more traditional poetry slam type event at a nightclub in Tokyo. It was featured recently in Wired.  Here's an example:

Interestingly the piece (and the pecha-kucha example) is written by Daniel H. Pink, whose name also came up in our chat because of the book he wrote, A Whole New Mind.  I think it came up as we were talking about new skill sets required of marketers.  Some in attendance were students looking to get into planning, and it is a particularly timely conversation for them.

Anyway, Tonia mentioned there is a similar self-expression event at the Bug Theater called Freak Train.  It gives the stage over five minutes at a time and happens the last Monday of every month.

- We also talked about the movement of some planners to more independent research/strategy boutiques like Egg Strategy and Brand Juice and of course kind of an opposite move with CP+B acquiring Radar. (Incidentally, John Winsor the former head of Radar writes a nice blog about the whole transition into Crispin.)

- We talked about talent and the trafficking of creative portfolios; Serena mentioned Carbon Made as a good place to start.

- We learned that Ann Taylor trains its staff to walk 'briskly and purposefully' throughout the store, even when they've got nothing to do.  That was worth the coffee right there!

- Fame, the shopping lab in Minneapolis came up, as did General Systems Theory and stages of growth, and universal insights into breakfast vs. lunch, etc. 

The top picture shows Meg, Dave and Bob, the bottom pic shows Ameet and Tonia.

Good fun. Thanks to all for coming.

Next coffee is 9/21/07.

Sloppy praise

Every year the Advertising Week supplement in AdAge has a bunch of agency ads.  It's entertaining to see what agencies do when they have to advertise themselves.  One such ad from Deutsch points you to adsturbation.com, a place where you can get your kicks receiving unabashed praise from a client, intern, creative or account guy.  The site runs slowly, but maybe it's on purpose... even the loading page makes you feel dirty.

Coffee this Friday 8/7

Hope you can join us this Friday (Common Grounds @ 17th x Wazee, downtown Denver).  We should have a pretty good sized group this week.  There might even be name tags in our future. 

Also, I was thinking of posting and emailing a recap of each coffee, maybe a bit on who came by and some of the topics discussed.  Perhaps even a picture or two.  What do you think?

Oh, that's a caffeine molecule.  Ain't it pretty?

See you Friday.