• Trends of 2012: Solitude

    January 23rd, 2012 / Comments (0)

    The “always on” culture that has abruptly emerged as the new norm is here to stay for some time. A recent piece from The New York Times demonstratively stated, “Solitude is out of fashion,” elaborating with analysis of the trending open-space work environments and team-based strategies. This contemporary approach is counter to extensive research touting the benefits of privacy in creative thinking. This culture has been fiercely fueled by the (my) millennial generation and has gained significant acceptance by baby boomers. We have grown up in an age of digital collaboration; now we’re applying these same tendencies to the office place despite making ourselves susceptible to real-life distractions.

    We all know the natural, yet rude, tendency to prioritize instant information from our smartphones over the people actually in the room. This was never more evident to me than Christmas this year. I never thought I would see the day my parents were playing Words with Friends before me. I certainly didn’t expect they would become addicted to the game instantaneously. Prior to this, my mom was notorious for leaving her cell phone in the bottom of her purse - for days on end. To her, it was a device to make calls; not for her to be alert for incoming calls. It’s becoming ever-apparent those days are over and never to be seen again. She’s texting, emailing, playing games, reading books, and verifying bets with my father through Google.

    Despite the added convenience at our fingertips, it can become overwhelming – like a menu at The Cheesecake Factory. Thus, people are increasingly more than willing to pay a premium for solitude – the ability to escape the constant draining buzz. Trend Watching explains,

    This isn’t about consumers rejecting everything that brought them to the city, but about a temporary breather. Remember, no trend applies all of the time. People will forever crave the excitement and choice available in cities; yet still want to escape for a moment.

    In 2011 some brands were ahead of the curve in offering a moment of solace to their consumers. These early adopters compete in industries where such services are appreciated due to the high stress in their corresponding environments. Some examples:

    • In July 2011, Telia, a Swedish telecom provider, launched a free app that enabled customers to disable internet for set period of time at home. They also set up internet-free zones in several public locations across Sweden. (Trendwatching.com)

    • In September 2011, at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport, Sleepbox launched a small self-contained cabin designed to give users a quiet place to get some rest. (Trendwatching.com)

    • From July to September 2011, the Marriott Renaissance Pittsburgh Hotel offered “Zen and the Art of Detox” – a weekend package that obliged visitors to surrender any digital devices when checking-in. Also, rooms were stocked with books instead of televisions. (Trendwatching.com)

    Brands that, by virtue of their product or service, must compete in a mentally fatiguing space, can embrace the opportunity by providing a counter experience like the examples above. However, most brands do not need to provide such overt forms of relief; they can bake it in to the actual product. Pandora Radio is an example of a highly appreciated, passive user interface. Listeners have one less thing to think about as the stream is designed to anticipate their tastes. Pinterest, with an extremely intuitive user experience and strong social integration, provides a similar release. The mindless nature of pinning offers a pleasurable distraction from daily stressors.

    Facebook, in the short term, offers a similar mental release. In fact, thirty-year psychology veteran, Susan Weinschenk, found that the brain releases dopamine upon receiving notifications of Facebook updates or status changes. In contrast, Facebook has become an eclectic badge of social currency - check-in’s, relationships, flattering pictures, and job title changes; thus truly adding up to social noise. As we become desensitized to social updates we look for other sources of immediate reward like Twitter, Reddit, and sites like Wimp and YouTube.

    At the agency I work for, we have a former Buddhist monk who spent six years on a silent sabbatical in Burma. You read that right…he didn’t speak for six years. He trains employees to practice mindfulness and stress-relieving routines they can implement on a daily basis. In one session, he explained that humans are naturally hard-wired to respond in a “fight or flight” manner. This was an essential tool for survival when humans first roamed the earth. Despite our evolution over time, we still react in a similar manner to alerts, texts, emails, calls, green lights, our significant other calling our name, and so on. We’ve been conditioned to believe that an immediate response is expected, and a delayed response has become an indication of a lower priority. In this new social norm we’ve set ourselves up to strive, long-term, toward solitude…or pay a lofty price to have it right here, right now, between our 2:00 and 2:45 meetings. Regardless, this will be something to watch in 2012 – an opportunity to make your brand the hero.

    As an account manager in Boulder, Dorsey has worked on global and national campaigns for brands like Microsoft and Groupon. Read more of his posts where he blogs at And this....

  • Luke Sullivan's open letter to a creative on the ropes.

    January 19th, 2012 / Comments (0)

    This morning I wrote an email to a kid I heard was in the dumps. Thought someone else out there could possibly use the same chuck-on-the-shoulder.

    • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

    Hello ____, it’s me, Luke.

    I hear “through channels” that those clients have had you on the ropes for the last month or so; got you a little down.

    Been there, dude. I spent THIRTY THREE years in the trenches where you are now and I think I had one client, one stinkeen client who needed no education. One client in alllll that time who just kinda got it.

    In order to survive 33 years of clients who either don’t or won’t get it, I encourage you to do what my big brother Kip did.

    Kip was (is) a Harvard-trained lawyer who spent all of his professional life earning 1/100th of what he could have earned being a corporate lawyer. Instead, he spent years as a $14,000-a-year kind of lawyer who represented nonprofit clients, causes that couldn’t pay a dime, organizations that were busy fighting the good fight — standing up to big power companies that were turning off the power in the homes of poor people, causes like that.

    And one day I asked my brother, “Damn, how do you keep from getting mad or depressed as you fight such people?” And his answer was, “I never let myself get over-the-top mad. I just keep my anger at a very low boil. Always.”

    A low boil. NO boil means you’re close to giving up. You need to keep some fight in you. But boiling over? That leads to a short bitter career; probably a short bitter life.

    I’ve always remembered my big brother’s answer. In order for any artistic soul to survive in a world full of number-crunchers, politics, and marketing people who just don’t get how cool and how effective advertising can be, we need to remember, LOW BOIL. I wrote recently in these pages, “The first duty of an artist is to survive.” You must make sure that the bright light you bring to the industry is not snuffed out by the first 85 bad meetings you have, and you’re gonna have ‘em.

    If something dies, in fact, when the first 85 things die, soldier on. One out of 85 things surviving? Sad to report, but that’s pretty much par for the course in this business, which is essentially one of artists presenting things to scientists.

    So, my young friend, let your defeats be funerals of short duration, but your victories? Celebrate any victory, large or small, with wild bacchanalia.

    Your cheerleader,
    Luke Sullivan

    *********

    Originally published here. Luke Sullivan is a copywriter. Always has been, always will be. He's the author of Hey, Whipple! Squeeze This. He currently chairs the ad department at the Savannah College of Art and Design, and has recently published a memoir, Thirty Rooms To Hide In.

  • Christmas ads need more sugar.

    December 7th, 2011 / Comments (0)

    I’ve been accused of being furiously unsentimental. I toss away cards like confetti. I leave family heirlooms on the loading dock of the Goodwill. But, despite that, I’ve always had an inexplicable love for Christmas and its direct connection to my childhood. I’m not alone in that feeling. I imagine most people connect this time of year back to their youth.

    And advertisers know it.

    The best Christmas ads tap into our pasts. The candy-coated memories of our childhood drive us even today. It's a bit melancholy actually. The tinseled innocence, the wide-eyed Christmas morning reveal—they’re gone. Sure, when you have kids, you get a taste. But let’s be honest: it’s methadone. Great holiday advertising understands that. It banks on it. It expects that we’ll do our best to buy back a little piece of our holiday memories, one Xbox game at a time.

    So they reel us in by transporting us back. They capture the feelings we had in easier times. They help us forget about four-dollar-a-gallon gas and 24-hour news cycles of recession and depression. If we squint, we can practically see Christmas Past in every frame. And there’s no coincidence that many of the ads unfold from the point of view of the child. What better lens to gaze at the magic of Christmas through than that of a kid? No sarcasm. No cynicism. Just an unwavering, unqualified love of Christmas Eve, Santa – and a haul of toys under the tree large enough to cripple a pack mule.

    The newest spot for UK-based John Lewis department stores nails it, capturing that nuclear-grade anticipation that little kids have leading up to the big night. Plus, it throws us a Christmasy curve at the end for bonus points.

    Notice there’s no technology marking the era. It could be today. It could be 50 years ago. It can apply to anyone. And that’s why it grabs my heart strings and jerks me around like a misty marionette.

    It’s me.

    And the result: It’s all I can do to keep myself from hopping the QE2 for England, walking into a John Lewis, and wind-milling my way though the checkout line with a credit card in each hand.

    What can I say? I’m a sucker for this stuff.

    So what does it take for holiday advertising to get to you?

    Originally published here.
    Matt McDermott is a copywriter at ADG Creative. He's deathly afraid of shooting his eye out.

  • None Of Us Is As Dumb As All Of Us

    November 21st, 2011 / Comments (0)

    I “borrowed” that from one of those Demotivator posters. If you’re wondering why someone with my cynical outlook on life needs a demotivation poster, just remember that sad sacks love to wallow in misery. And oh, how I love the wallowing. It’s a great site for realizing just how fucked up so much of the business world is; and this comes from someone who worked in an office full of the original motivational posters that make you want to hang yourself with Roseanne Barr’s thong.

    So enough of the horseshit intro; what’s this rant all about?

    One word…opinions.

    It was inspired by the recent lump of festering shit designed for Colorado Springs, an abhorrence that slid out of the puckered anus of local “design” firm Stone Mantel (sounds like something cold that supports crap from Goodwill…hmm, the irony).

    When I first saw it on The Denver Egotist I thought it was a joke. Nice one! Even worse than the Fort Collins travesty, but there’s no way this malodorous boil is real. Good old Egotist, always one for larks and japes and…

    …oh. Shit.

    I wasn’t exactly expecting Pentagram quality, but this thing looks like the kind of rotten puke you see in student books; the stuff that means you have to break it to the hopeful brat that they’re better off flipping burgers than polluting the world with their lack of design skills.

    Actually, it’s worse. And that’s because it reeks of design by committee.

    This is one of the biggest problems I see with the advertising, marketing and design industries. And it’s also prevalent in movies (oh god, the shite movies we now have to endure), music, product design and almost everything else that we encounter on a daily basis. You can see the hands of wannabe artists, designers and writers everywhere, who sit behind a desk crunching numbers for most of the day. But when they get to review work, they get to show just how damned talented they really are.

    Design by committee is rife in advertising and design, but could never exist in some professions. Here’s a quick example. Imagine a surgeon performing an operation, only he’s joined by a bunch of other people, including: his boss; a surgeon who hates his guts; an intern; the secretary; the girl from accounting who he’s been fucking at night; and the mailroom guy.

    Just as the surgeon is about to make his first incision, there’s immediate opposition.

    Asshole surgeon: “Whooah, is that the best place to cut? We need to discuss this at length. And that scalpel is all wrong.”

    Intern: “We should probably have coffee and look at these charts I pulled on the best place to make first incisions. It includes new data from focus groups.”

    Secretary: “Do we even need to cut him at all? That seems harsh, perhaps we can massage the failing liver back to health and burn some incense.”

    Account girl: “Statistically, we shouldn’t even go near this cut. The legal team says it could open us up to lawsuits, and that means more expenditure. We should probably go somewhere private, together, and talk this over.”

    Mailroom guy: “Cut him now! Big cut! Let’s see blood!”

    Boss: “I say we make a small cut in a different area, one less likely to cause visual trauma, remove a small part of the liver, put a small part of the new liver in there, sew him up and then put this all on the back burner while we wait for the results to come in. Let’s see how he performs.”

    Surgeon: “OK…making incision.”

    Asshole surgeon: “Hey, we need to talk about the shape of the incision, the depth and so many other factors. We should take this offline and run the numbers.”

    You get the picture. It’s ridiculous to think of it in those terms, but it’s exactly what happens in advertising and design. And it’s not too much of a stretch to consider the client and their product as a patient in need of medical assistance.

    Their brand is dying, their sales are on life support, they need a solution, and quickly. But opinions are allowed to grow and flourish from all sides. Everyone’s thoughts matter. Even people who have never created an ad, or wrote copy, are allowed to directly influence the copy and art direction.

    “How about this headline?”

    “Oh, yes Julia I like that. But maybe not so bold, and let’s add a call to action in there along with Justin’s idea about combining those two headlines from the other campaign.”

    “Brilliant! Let’s get a focus group together for even more opinions!”

    Clients, account managers, planners, they all have their place. But they rarely stay in it. Creative territory, and to some extent the strategic side of the business, seem to be fair game to everyone else. If a creative, like an art director, asked to see the fiscal projections for the next quarter, and supplied a spreadsheet with numbers that he or she liked, there would be hell to pay. But anyone, and I mean anyone, has a valid opinion when it comes to the business we’re trained in.

    Oh sure, it’s sometimes disguised as self-deprecating verbiage, but you can see straight through that. How many times have you heard these gems:

    “Look, I’m no copywriter but have you tried something like…”

    “I’m not a designer, but I’m thinking we could try this color…”

    “You’ll figure out how to make this much better, but what about…”

    Before you know it, your sketch pad is filled with “suggestions” from the clients and your own management team, and you have to bite what’s left of your tongue, go back to your corner of the office and turn something great into something mediocre. And then repeat the process a few dozen times until everyone can agree that they don’t hate it.

    It’s the equivalent of taking a car into the shop with a leaking engine, and picking up a completely jalopy with a new paint job after 3 months and $100k in expenses.

    So, how do we solve this?

    It’s solvable, but it requires an incredible amount of discipline and trust from both the client and the agency.

    First, the client must have one decision-maker. ONE. And that person must be in the loop from the start. That doesn’t mean the CEO, it means one person responsible for signing off on the finished project. That means the CEO and the board has to go with that person’s decision. Like I say, trust. But really, if one retarded monkey had sat down with crayons and designed The Springs logo, and another retarded monkey signed off on it, would it be any worse than the one the fucking committee agreed to?

    It also means that the agency must get a very specific creative brief, signed off on by the main decision-maker. And it means the agency must put its foot down when the client asks for god-awful changes. To put it bluntly, fuck them. They don’t know what they’re doing; if they did they wouldn’t need an agency. Steve Jobs said that he refused to test the iPad before it went to market. He knew people don’t know what they want and it would score badly. So he took the “fuck you” path and released it. It’s now the most popular tablet by a large margin.

    Jobs also had to put his own money into the infamous 1984 commercial. The committee hated it. He loved it. And we all know how that turned out.

    The agency must also put a limit on brainstorms between all kinds of people. A team is great, but I honestly believe three’s a crowd. Bernbach wanted the art director and copywriter to work together to formulate ideas. It worked great. I don’t ever seen great work coming from brainstorms with five or six people in the room. Too many cooks. Too many opinions. Ideas get left on the table because one person in the room isn’t keen. Other ideas get pushed because the group likes them. Generally, when we think in large groups, we play safe and the tepid ideas rise to the top. There are notable exceptions (Pixar), but not many.

    If we want less of this Colorado Springs crap, we all need to start putting our own houses in order. Solid direction, one main decision-maker, small teams and no more of these big group brainstorms. Try it. You’ll save time, money and the sanity of the talented people around you.

    Felix Unger is a site contributor, ranter and curmudgeon for The Denver Egotist. He’s been in the ad game a long time, but he’s still young enough to know he doesn’t know everything. If he uses the f-bomb from time-to-time, forgive him. Sometimes, when you're ranting, no other word will do. In his spare time, he does not torture small animals. He has been known, on occasion, to drink alcohol by the gallon. Do as he says, not as he does.

  • You and Your Meaningless Career in Advertising

    September 21st, 2011 / Comments (0)

    If you ask a random sample of advertising people what would make their lives more fulfilling, a good chunk of them will say the following: “I wish I had a more meaningful outlet for applying my creativity.” It’s a predictable answer, but a telling one, and an even more predictable side effect of a career devoted to consumerism.

    But despite ad folk’s general commiseration over the shortage of meaning in our day to day lives, only a handful of us are actively devoting a portion of our creative guts to the general betterment of mankind. Lately I’ve been wondering about this, because with so much apparent interest in making the world a better place, the number of people really doing it doesn’t seem to add up. What’s holding us back?

    It’s not a lack of problems, that’s for sure. No one spending 80 percent of their day on a computer can hide from the subpar-ness of some choices we made in the last 100 years, and fresh side effects of these decisions surface daily. But as our definition of ‘social bad’ continues to broaden, it’s curious to note that the definition of ‘social good’ is stubbornly refusing to keep up, with its everyday interpretation more or less hitting a hard wall at helping malnourished kiddos in remote Kenya find water, food or medicine.

    There’s a weird battle that pops up when attempting to modernize this definition, one that‘s potentially at the root of why so many of us swiftly abandon our inclination to get involved. It’s a competition of causes; a man made measure of what, exactly, counts as making a difference. I’m not sure what the point of the debate is, but I'm convinced that its core holds nothing better than a crappy sense of self-righteousness, born from finding the most CNN-ready crime against humanity and claiming that problem as your own. No more hunger by by 2020? Sure, that counts. Rounding up all your credit card purchases to give to charity? Eh, that’s not social good. That’s white guilt.

    Besides the obvious silliness of turning the social good space into yet another ego battle, the bummer is that this “problem elitism” is polarizing enough to turn 'normal' people off from getting involved. Not to mention the real bummer, which translates to a major loss in the amount of good stuff getting done, period. After all, if there’s a barrier to entry for saving the world, how can we possibly maximize the earth-redeeming potential for all skill sets, including (and perhaps especially) creative ones?

    I’m sure there’s more reasons why ad people are only wading in the world of meaningful things. But in effort to debunk at least one of those reasons, I've gotta clear the air about this one in particular: Social good is not a world owned by saints and martyrs, nor is it defined by the scale of the problem you’re hoping to solve. Social good is everybody's, and it happens each time we do something a little better, a little greener, and a little more considerately than the people before us.

    It has to be. Because the truth is, we’re long past the point where problems are confined to third world countries. Most of our most pressing, more localized issues aren’t things that can be solved by a team of lawyers specializing in social justice, they’re just things our forefathers did wrong the first time. It’s almost fair to call them White People Problems, because we’re certainly responsible for their existence.

    So what is fair cause for white guilt? Definitely not a hesitancy to relocate to Africa. But if you’re staying mum while your print production team repeatedly selects toxic processes and materials over greener ones, well, maybe you should speak up. If your client’s seeking new packaging but you’re not strongly recommending biodegradable options, maybe you should start researching those alternatives. If something of local significance has been bringing up some questions for you, maybe you should write an open letter, blow it up, and wheat paste it on your garage door. If you're not doing those things and you're whining about your meaningless existence in advertising, well, maybe you should shut the fuck up.

    Yes we’re running out of water. Yes we’re running out of clean air. But you know what else a lot of people suspect we’re running out of? Creativity. And that’s exactly what we need to rethink what’s broken. So get off your butt. Drop the guilt, grab a White Person Problem and start using a fraction of what you’ve got - anything you’ve got - to make it go away. That’s all it takes. And if the 'social good' people give you hell for helping from the comfort of your air conditioned office - just tell them it's social good enough. And maybe ask what the hell they're doing back in the US. Slackers.

    Carmel Hagen is a communication and experience designer at COMMON, a creative community for rapidly prototyping social change.

  • Write Better Voiceovers

    September 13th, 2011 / Comments (0)

    Videos come in all shapes and sizes. Some happen to be exactly 30 seconds long and formatted for a television screen. Occasionally these 30-second videos have voiceovers. Here are some things to keep in mind when you write them.

    Write both sides of the script: TV scripts are written with visual instructions on the lefthand side of the page and the dialogue, voiceover or music direction on the right. Write that way from the start. Both sides. Simultaneously. It'll prevent you from writing your voiceover as a paragraph of body copy. And it'll get you thinking about how sight and sound can complement each other, allowing you to communicate more in less time. Screenplay format is ok, too. But it drives me crazy when I see a voiceover laid out like it's a chunk of copy.

    Cast before you write: Pick a favorite actor. Someone with a distinct vocal pattern. (Morgan Freeman, Matthew McConaughey, Cameron Diaz, Edward Norton and Kris Kristofferson have all been inspirational for me. Al Pacino might be too unique.) Then write your voiceover. Let the actor's voice echo in your head as you write. This exercise will make sure your script is written to be heard instead of read. And it'll make your tone cohesive and interesting.

    Transcribe other people's scripts: I was told that as a boy, David Mamet recorded his parents' dinner conversations and then transcribed them so he could see the way everyday conversation looked on a page. It's a mess. People interrupt each other, repeat themselves, and never speak in complete sentences. Try it. If you don't feel like eavesdropping on a conversation, go find your favorite spot on YouTube and transcribe it. You'll be amazed how sparse and odd it looks.

    Read your voiceover out loud: Act it out. Don't just mutter it to yourself under your breath while staring at your monitor. Read it boldly. This will ensure your flow is perfect. And it will also ensure that on recording day, you have a clear idea of how the talent should read your script.

    Read books: Two of the most famous spots of all time, Surfer and America , have voiceovers derived from literature. More than radio, more than copy, more than headlines or websites, a voiceover is a copywriter's chance to dream big. To write something that will make people's lives better. Go do it.

    This piece is cross-posted from Matt Ingwalson's blog. It also appears over on The Denver Egotist.

  • All That Inspires Me

    August 24th, 2011 / Comments (1)

    Michael Cobra, Creative Director, Cobra Creative

    I've spent a week trying to come up with the one thing that inspires me. First, I was going to write about the work ethic of Black Flag; then it was the photography of Joel-Peter Witkin; then the graphic design of Art Chantry; the playful creativity of Michel Gondry; the list went on and on. I was looking for some divine inspiration. However, nothing felt so powerful that I could put into words how greatly it had inspired me or why it should inspire you.

    That week my 3 year old son came home from a preschool class. He told my wife and I how he had pretended a piece of paper was a robot that day and some kids made fun of him for it. We nurture creativity in our kids and this was the first time he had seen a negative side to it. He was really sad. I told him how his Mom and I make a living coming up with ideas that all start as pretending. I told him that when we were young, other people made fun of us for being creative too. So, we found friends that did understand us.

    That's when it dawned on me. My inspiration in life has come from an innumerable amount of sources. People you don't know, that haven't had books written about them and haven't had documentaries made praising them. Like my brother for having that KISS 8 track I couldn't stop listening to when I was four. Ivan, for giving me that Black Flag/Misfits mix tape. That recruiter that came to my high school and told us about a college that taught graphic design. Chris, for teaching me my first song on the guitar. Laura, for dying my hair pink. Dee, for teaching me about photography. The teachers who ignored the curriculum and made me learn more than I thought I could. Employers who have taken chances on me. The people I've worked with, employed and collaborated with. The people and bands I play music with. Clients I work with who have stuck their necks out to fight for concepts. This list could get really long.

    We are mirrors of the people, places, things and ideas we choose to surround ourselves with. We are the editors of our own personal culture. A friend posted a quote on Facebook as I was writing this that summed up exactly how I was feeling about my source of inspiration…

    "Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everyone I've ever known." - Chuck Palahniuk

    This post originally appeared over at All That Inspires Me, an awesome site about all things inspiring.

  • Advice to Ad School Grads: Think Small

    July 18th, 2011 / Comments (0)

    Jim Lansbury, Creative Director, RP3 Agency

    Graduation season is upon us, and that means a slew of aspiring writers, designers, creative technologists, planners and brand managers from great programs like VCU Brandcenter, Miami Ad School, The Creative Circus, SCAD and others are polishing up their portfolios and looking for their first big break.

    If they’re anything like the students I met at the Brandcenter recruiting session in April, they should have no problem finding a gig. These kids have been taught by some of the smartest minds in the business and given the chance to work on real world assignments from leading brands. They have killer books and the digital DNA every agency is looking to add. They can write their own ticket to the biggest name agencies in the biggest, most glamorous markets. Places like Crispin, AKQA or R/GA.

    Or they can think small, as in Small Agency. Choose an up-and-coming shop in a lesser-known market–an independent agency where you can do good work with a little more freedom to grow.

    Why think small? For starters, you’ll build your book a lot faster. Small agencies don’t have the luxury of putting multiple teams on every project. They don’t mine their juniors for ideas that don’t go anywhere, or worse yet, for ideas that someone else ends up taking credit for. They expect everyone to produce. And everyone does. In a small shop, there are no bad groups or tough accounts to get stuck on. Everyone works on everything. (At least that’s how we do it here.)

    What’s more, with fewer layers to navigate and fewer bosses to please, juniors can more quickly develop their own unique style and voice. You’re not expected to follow some pre-conceived agency look or do the kind of work the agency is already famous for. So the work you produce will be much closer to how you envisioned it in the first place.

    You’ll also develop more parts of your brain than you would at a huge shop that has lots of supporting staff and separate silos. From research, to strategy development, to user experience to ultimately selling the work to clients, you’ll wear many hats and get to see the whole process. And you’ll be free to explore more options when it comes to things like new technology platforms and emerging media, because smaller shops aren’t subject to holding company politics or forced to utilize in-house resources in the name of profit maximization. (Note to marketers—the same advantages apply to you, too.)

    Granted, there is a certain halo effect to having the big name shop on your resume. I get it. In fact, I’ve lost some talented people to places like Crispin and Arnold over the years. (Some of them have since come back.) But if you’re truly a creative person, motivated to do things no one has done before, why not apply that creativity to your career path as well?

    Ask yourself… would you rather do the 200th cool video in the Old Spice campaign, or the first amazing thing for a new brand no one’s heard of yet? Would you rather be a cog in a machine that’s already well-oiled, or the spark that helps a new shop rise to national prominence? Do you want to be the next Bogusky, or the first your name here?

    This first appeared on the RP3 Agency blog.

  • Dear Graphic and Web Designers, Please Understand that There Are Greater Opportunities Available to You

    July 13th, 2011 / Comments (2)

    You have an inherent need to solve problems, visually and conceptually. There is enormous value in this, but you may be misplacing your talents.

    The Internet, at this time in history, is the greatest client assignment of all time. The Western world is porting itself over to the web in mind and deed and is looking to make itself comfortable and productive. It’s every person in the world, connected to every other person in the world, and no one fully understands how to make best use of this new reality because no one has seen anything like it before. The Internet wants to hire you to build stuff for it because its trying to figure out what it can do. It’s offering you a blank check and asking you to come up with something fascinating and useful that it can embrace en masse, to the benefit of everyone.

    Your press checks are bullshit.
    Your personal logo is bullshit.
    Your employer is bullshit.
    Your studio is bullshit.

    The market is handing you steak and you’re choosing the gristle. The market is handing you gold bullion and you’re taking the nickel.

    As a designer, you enjoy building things for other people’s use. Your value is determined by the degree to which you can empathize with groups of people around a given topic. Historically, this relationship has required a large(r) company to act as mediator for the emotional mass-transaction. Companies provide you with an audience inasmuch as they have customers, and that’s enough for you because you just want to design stuff that solves stuff.

    The Internet kills all middlemen.

    You now have direct access to the raw vein of popular attention. The pixels you’re pushing have a higher exchange rate than you’re giving yourself credit for*. No hounding client payroll, no selling other people’s stuff, no building other people’s wealth, no nephew’s cousins stepping in with the authority to change everything you’ve been working on.

    If You Build It, They Will Come and Try It; and if you are keen enough to identify the opportunities that are being laid out before you by technology, then there is challenge and fulfillment and success to be had.

    I run Svpply.com. I am its Designer. I used to design logos and now I design for the Internet. Svpply is building a service which will redefine major components of the retail industry. Our team is figuring out how to do this together because no one has ever done anything like it before. No class of people has ever been offered an opportunity like the one you and I are being offered right now.

    If this kind of opportunity sounds even slightly interesting to you, then you should join a startup. You don’t have to know more than that. The jobs are all out there waiting for you. They’re secure and fun and they pay competitively. If the thought of building something amazing for lots of people is interesting to you, You Should Join a Startup**.

    You can find jobs at startups here, here, here and here. You should also just start sending your work to startups that you like. All of them are hiring or thinking about hiring.

    If you have questions about this, feel free to hit me up. Additionally, I know someone specifically looking to fund good designers with good ideas, so let me know if you’d like an introduction.

    - - -

    *The ability to design effectively for so many people at the stroke of a key is a skill and talent which will have its own title and pay grade. There are only going to be more and more small companies launching for the web. Many of them will need consultation on how to create and communicate with massive audiences and communities. As a designer this is all in your domain.

    **I’m not suggesting that you shouldn’t start your own company. I just think that for a lot of designers, from what I’ve seen, this is jumping the gun. Unless you have a friend who is an engineer, it is going to be difficult for you to find someone of quality to build something for you, the professional landscape for those people is just too competitive right now for much of that. But I guarantee you’ll develop relationships with engineers if you go work at a startup, and from working relationships good conversations brew and companies are born.

    - - -

    This piece is cross-posted from Ben Pieratt's blog.

  • If You Work in Advertising, But All You Make is ‘Advertising’, You’re Doing it Wrong.

    June 27th, 2011 / Comments (0)

    The ad industry is quickly evolving into a new industry. It will be one that won’t offer only the limited menu of services that’s attributed to it today. I’m not sure if this new industry should even be called advertising anymore, as the term itself can be an albatross to innovation. But whatever the name is, it’ll be even more exciting and productive than in its current incarnation.

    When the 4th Amendment Wear brand was invented, I didn’t realize at the time that it would teach me such an important lesson about where we’re headed. It helped me crystallize my thoughts on how our industry needs to fundamentally shift the way it operates in order for it to survive. Originally, it was created as a political art statement to challenge what many saw as an invasion of US citizen’s constitutionally-protected rights to privacy. Then, working together with art director and designer Matt Ryan, we developed products that launched a brand within weeks, reaching millions of people and quickly selling thousands of dollars worth of merchandise. Recently, it was honored with a Tomorrow Award, as well as ADC Global’s Inaugural Designism award.

    As CEO of my own strategic brand consultancy, Timmovations, I know first-hand just how laborious the process of developing a brand can be. But the new media landscape requires that we become capable of doing so quickly, if we expect to be able to meet time-sensitive opportunities.

    It’s one thing to create an ad. It’s a whole other beast to invent new technology, create products using that technology, tap into social media, and orchestrate a marketing campaign to reach millions. Then, to sell tens of thousands of dollars worth of merchandise, in a less than a month, with a small initial investment, with a small team of just two people to make everything happen – opens your eyes to what’s wrong with the current setup at many agencies. Because the big lesson of 4th Amendment Wear wasn’t how to launch a clothing brand. It was how it can inspire our industry to reshape its own internal organizations to react to events just as fast and be just as nimble.

    ‘Advertising’ has become pigeonholed. Even among those of us working in advertising, what we do is often defined by 30-second TV spots and double-page spreads with some sort of digital thingamajig thrown in for good measure. But anything we’re already making is then automatically ‘traditional.’ So creating ideas that live beyond those traditional routes is quickly becoming a mandatory skill that we all need to develop. Fast. ‘Fast’ is the future of how this industry needs to work.

    The typical ad agency/client relationship model is an antique. We need to reinvent it.

    While much of 4th Amendment Wear’s success can be attributed to the brand being in the right place at the right time, the truth is, all brands need to be. It also shows how we, the creative talent, can evolve – from making the ads that sell the products, to making the products that become the ads. So, I hope it inspires more creatives (and agencies) to take advantage of the quickly democratizing production systems around us and the unprecedented access to media channels.

    You don’t always need millions of dollars worth of production and media spend for a brand’s message to spread. While I’m not discounting the importance of strategic branding, which I am very familiar with, it’s the system of executing the campaigns that communicates those messages that needs to be rebuilt from the ground-up.

    Today, all you need are great ideas. Yes, it’s a cliche. But can you think of a time when it’s ever been more true? The future belongs to those with the best ideas. Not to the agencies, not to the media platforms or technologies, nor (which is the most popular saying now) even to the audience. Because those with the best ideas will always out-think and outmaneuver them.

    That’s what we do. It’s just our business.

    If a brand spends an enormous budget on campaigns that seem to fade into the background, I’d suggest giving it to more nimble teams and adaptable agencies. With the right system in place, for the cost of one ‘globally integrated, high-production value, slightly-positive-focus group-approved’ campaign, those teams will create ten times the number of quality initiatives for your brand that could possibly light and catch fire. Then, go ahead and raise your budget back up, and you’ll make even more. That’s how you can destroy competition that still works within an antique model.

    If you take your brand to one of the world’s best agencies, think about what you’d rather have them create…

    • One, carefully-honed, thoroughly-researched piece of wallpaper, approved by every layer of your organization, over the course of a year, that the world then may or may not ignore?

    • Or ten ‘at-bats’ that start little fires that can be closely monitored and fanned into flames? The world might ignore one or two, but you still have a tenfold chance they’ll actually pay attention to what you want to say. To me, it’s pretty clear.

    There’s value, efficiency – and an entire future – in being nimble.

    With access to technology, you can now leverage nimble talent against massive organizations in a way challenger brands never could. A great idea could earn its own media. And great ideas that do exactly that should be what you’re paying for.

    Don’t outspend – out-think. The only way you’ll do that is by allowing the talent in your agencies to respond much quicker than they are able to, or allowed to, right now. Those agencies also need to learn how to be nimble by creating and perfecting the systems that allow their clients to react as fast. Because in today’s media, responding to a socially relevant conversation 2-4 weeks after the fact is almost always too late. Sometimes, a day is just too late.

    If you’re a client briefing your agency on a campaign a year (or, typically, years) in advance, you’re just working in another world. How many opportunities to react to the social conversation will happen in that one year? Your brand is missing chances of free, earned media. And your competition can change drastically in that year. The entire landscape can change in a month. The category could be challenged by the end of the week.

    Remember the RAZR phone?

    If not, look it up on your smart-phone’s web browser and you’ll understand what I mean.

    A lot of what was taught in MBA programs ten years ago is being untaught by disruptive outsiders today. In the current system of typical agency/client development and approval processes, agencies and clients will most likely miss out on more and more opportunities to respond quickly and to profit. And that’s some of us, will have our own eyes open – watching when to strategically embed our own client’s brands – or even our own brands – into the conversations that your system has made you miss.

    As a client or agency, you need to realize the resources that you have at hand, right now, and make the process more efficient. Advertising isn’t dying. As the business evolves, the talent will simply evolve with it. Your brand can either leverage those talents, or you can wait until production becomes so democratized and so easily accessed, that they go on to create their own challenger brands that may, one day, take yours down.

    Of course, that’s not necessarily what we do right now.

    But soon enough, it may just be our business.

    Tim Geoghegan is a freelance Creative Director and strategic brand consultant with over 10 years of integrated global experience. Previously, he was Associate Creative Director at CP+B in Boulder and Creative Director of the ZAG brand IP-invention subsidiary at BBH, NY. You can follow him on twitter at @timogeo or contact him at timmovations@gmail.com. This piece is cross-posted from Tim Geoghegan's blog.

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