angrylush

Inspiration: Toyota leaves Helvetica in its tracks

2009-08-12T09:14:00.001-07:00

Creating peripheral promotional offerings to help boost your new brand or product isn't easy, but it's cool. It's really cool. Toyota is unleashing their newest microcar, a tiny little number called the "iQ". This tiny torpedo seats four and eats up a mere 118 inches of roadspace, which is easy when everyone is sitting on everyone else's lap. What? Oh, it apparently actually does have four seats. Oh. In the video we only really see two designers and a racecar driver slash honoury designer perform the clown car trick, so you will have to forgive me.

Designers Damien Aresta, Pierre Smeets and Zach Lieberman traced giant letters on the floor of an unused airplane hanger and used the agile little auto to skid and squeal it's way through the alphabet while cameras and computers recorded and mapped its paths. The finished product was a tired honorary designer and "iQ Agility", a playful, hand-scrawled looking typeface highlighting the iQ's tight turning radius and maneouverability.

Creating a typeface as an offering may have a fairly limited audience, but it shows a whack of inspiration and creativity sorely lacking in modern marketing. Strike that. It shows a whack of inspiration and creativity rare and prized in modern marketing.

You can download the font here.

Edible Junk: real stories about fake food

2009-06-26T10:19:00.001-07:00

The one nice thing about being a student is the attrocious diet of trans-saturated garbage and alcohol. I remember when the CBC's Street Cents did a scientific analysis of Cheese Whiz to determine if it were food, or just melted orange trash bags. As it turns out it's actual cheese.

Pringles in the UK recently came under the same scrutiny. What surprised me wasn't that people couldn't tell if Pringles counts as actual food, but that the Procter and Gamble (the parent company) was pissed to find out it was. Turns out, P&G were kind of hoping their crispy tube snacks would be scientifically labelled as some kind of fried-preservative novelty snack rather than actual food so they could avoid an avalanche of UK taxes. Also turns out, that pringles are made of 42% potato, and thus, counts as a potato-based chip.

Around the world, parents send their children "care packages" loaded with fresh undies and comfort foods. In Japan they love to include copious sugar-fried study fuels, so Nestle jumped on board with the Japanese postal syste to create mailable Kit Kat bars with inscription areas and a space for postage. The candygram won the Media Grand Prix at the recent Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. Kit Kat in Japanese is Kitto Katso, and it means "surely win".

What I'm not clear about is what the other 58% of Pringles are made out of (recycled bike spokes or something) and how you get a Kit Kat through the mail in a country as hot as Japan without making those fresh undies look like the morning after.

Media Manipulation: broadcasters now able to airbrush audio

2009-06-23T17:59:00.000-07:00

Blogging has been hard on account of work going extremely well, but you know I'd crawl out of a crypt to put a spotlight on something that bugs me.

Keeping with the smart phone theme I've been on recently, I got a tweet from Sam of O&A Radio fame and my first thought is of all those Nazi slaves working for Bayer back in the day. What the hell does that mean, you ask?

Well it seems that Sam was at the NYC Apple Store when a CNBC reporter asked him about the release of the new iPhone 3GS. Snark alert. In the most sarcastic way possible explained he was switching over to iPhone because of all the great features that one day might work, and because he was tired of all his calls going through with his existing phone, and was looking forward to dropping between five and $700 on it.

How someone can take this and make one snipped soundbyte support their slant that 3GS is the new tickle me Elmo is beyond me. Really, really makes you think about how the media works, and who pays the bills.

Here's the link to the recording.

Customer DisService: iPhones and BlackBerry's and Palm Pre's, oh my...

2009-06-10T13:43:00.000-07:00

Until they start charging for keystrokes, people will use the internet to hand companies their asses back to them on a platter when they treat them like crap. I did a Twitter search for "AT&T" after hearing about consumer complaints, and after going through an endless list of complaints except for one dude talking about that he got a discount from AT&T, but it took forever for him to be able to use it, which is a kind of back-handed compliment I suppose.

I do not have a smart phone, but I need one and the question has been, iPhone vs. BlackBerry. I've come to no conclusion, but this certainly doesn't help Apple's case. "People were saying the Palm Pre would be the iPhone killer. ... nope, turns out that AT&T will be the iPhone killer", according to @brickworkz.

Long story short, with the iPhone 3.0 coming out, existing customers have to doll out $200-300 to upgrade. There are lots of technical complaints about tethering and MMS that I'll let others complain about at length. My complaint is the short-fall in customer care. Like most giants, they're good at attracting new clients, but not good at maintaining those relationships long term. How many times have one of your service providers offered some fantastic upgrade, offer or benefit to new customers that they won't extend to you, the loyal long-term loyalist? They apologize, explain their position, but all you really hear is sit down, shut up, and keep rowing, slave.

This is more to talk about customer depreciation than the merits of different phones or their service providers. My other least favourite depreciation tactic is the Reverse Sales Call. You call up to ask a question and they withhold the help you need until you sit through a sales pitch to upgrade or upsell my services. Perhaps when I have a problem to solve, and I've just run the gauntlet of "press one for this, press two for that", this is not the best time to be asking for more money. I'm just ranting at this point.

I've come to no conclusion on iPhone vs. BlackBerry, but first I'll have to see what flaming hoops my current provider will want me to hop through to terminate my current service. And if anyone wants me to test out a Palm Pre, I'm wide open.

Promotions That Make Sense: 99 cent NYC cab rides (tipping is optional, cursing is free)

2009-06-10T12:26:00.000-07:00

For those of you new to promotions, it is recommended but not morally obligatory to make your promotions make sense, but it's great if you can. Cut out my heart if I'm lying, but I saw a banner outside a bar that offered free manicures with the purchase of a certain kind of beer. A dark stout beer at that.

My point is this: I used to work for a stand-up dude with a steady reputation in promotions, and somewhere near the top of his list of things that made him crazy were promotions that didn't support the brand. "Why the frak is my bank giving away iPods? What does that have to do with banking?" Unless they're quietly nodding to the mindless hours in line they'd like to help you kill, I'm not sure either. His point remains, if you're going to give something away as an incentive to purchase Energizer over Duracell, or a Whopper over a Big Mac, make it something that supports the brand, like dipping sauce, or a small appliance that eats batteries for example.

Today and today only, I see this awesome Verizon promotion. A fleet of branded yellow cabs in NYC will be offering 99 cent cab rides. Think of it as a 95% off coupon for your commute, courtesy of Verizon and McCann Erickson. Thanks guys, now take this cab to Vermont.

It's cool, but how does this support the brand? Verizon has prepaid 99 cent a day cellular plans which no one knows about, and this kind of guerilla tactic makes a deeper connection to the value the company is offering for just 99 cents. Sad you missed it? Good news then. On the 3rd (of June 2009) they're giving away 99 cent ice cream. As BrandFreak points out, it will likely be about 99 degrees by then, so they should consider a 99 cent dry cleaning promotion as a follow up.

I promise you, this is a real ice cream menu, and somewhere some poor population is forced to choose between Garlic Amaretto and Bacon Ice Cream on hot summer days.

Reinventing the Ball-and-Chain for the Workplace

2009-06-01T08:00:00.000-07:00

In olden times, you could slap a cannonball to a dude's leg and feel pretty confident he wasn't going anywhere. Today, the urge to close your laptop, shut off your monitor and give into the Siren call of the TV or the pub can be nearly irresistable. Advertising creatives are not known for ability to focus and concentrate, so the Study Ball works with your natural inclination.

How does it work? It's a ball, attached to a chain. Oh, attached to a time lock. How cool is that?

The Study Ball is a prison-style, steel ball-and-chain that stays on as long as you need to keep you focused on your task. Weighing in at 21 lbs, it's possible to lug around, but why bother. Unless your office begins to fill with smoke, you're not likely to lug this thing around voluntarily.

In olden times, a con couldn't slog very fast or very far before a guard could waltz up and soften up their skull with a club. For safety reasons, you're not supposed to use the Study Ball on kids, or your wife; the timer can't exceed four hours; it comes with a safety release key, and you need to part with about $115 to get one. Also, by safety, I mean legal.

The Human Eye: actually filled with a kind of urine!

2009-05-29T06:03:00.000-07:00

Ad school taught me some weird things, and one was that the human eye does a backwards Z across any page it reads, skimming along, hoping to be stimulated, becoming disappointing and trying again on the next page. According to the hard working folks at Eyetrack, it does something more like this:

In actuality, that's a graph of web usage, but it still illustrates the idea that your eye is a skeevy fool who can't be trusted to look at a piece of paper by itself. Who am I to compare the analysis of a closet alcoholic to the practically Skynet-like scrutiny of Eyetrack's creepy machines? Let's focus on it's troubling figures on headlines to start.

First, a giant, domineering headline immediately draws the eye. Wait, don't bail. The numbers show that the average person gives that headline less than one seconds worth of facetime. Not even an entire whole second will be spent on your headline. How are you going to drag them into the depth of your body copy if their brain shuts off after "Call me Ishmael"? Provoke. People are likely to continue reading after the first five words if those first five words provoke their interest. Look at your headline an ask yourself how can it work harder?

Now let's look at that body copy. This eye-eating abomination (not sure exactly how it functioned) suggests that smaller type size encourages focused viewing behaviour while giant large type encourages scanning. Also shorter paragraphs tracked better in research than longer ones. Ever been on a date with a chatty drunk? They're not that much fun. So why are you philabustering on your layout. Learn to trim the fat. Just the facts. Snag the eye. Drive them to the web for more information. Sites like Lowbrow and One Sentence have always been great for understanding the need for berevity in story telling. Twitter is another great disciplinary tool for staying on point and keeping it short.

A copywriter friend of mine once went on a drink with a chatty drunk who refered to copywriting as "all that stuff between the headline and the logo". Technically, she might have been right. Let me welcome you to the end of this entry. I appreciate it, regardless of what weird path your eye took to get here. Oh, and your eye is not filled with a kind of urine.

Advertising and Children: who needs times-tables when you have Happy Meals™

2009-05-28T09:21:00.000-07:00

So my son woke me up telling me he needed Star Wars toilet paper. That Star Wars Toilet Paper was the only paper that could help his bum. He just turned four, and has never seen Star Wars, so I'm thinking there is actually a product called Star Wars Toilet Paper trademarking off Carrie Fisher squating in front of a droid begging for help?

Here's some stuff you need to know about children and advertising I want to pass on courtesy of the National Institute for Media and the Family. In 1997, $1.3 billion was spent on television advertisements directed at children. Counting all media, advertising and marketing budgets aimed at children approached $12 billion (McNeal, 1999).

By the age of two, my children are all able to call out McDonald's, Zoo and Home Depot logos. The average child watches as many as 40,000 commericals a year, and can't tell the difference between commercials and regular TV shows. What I can say is my guys know when the really good, really short little shows are lined up and perk up for commercials so they can bow to the alter and play "need it, want it".

Simply put, children influence parental spending, so all advertising now aims at children to increase "nag factor". I've pointed out in the past how marketers target the young to create brand loyalties and children don't just influence spending on kids toys and food - it's everything from carpets to cars. A lot of adult products are being paired with kid-friendliess (oh, and billions of dollars) to influence the young to pressure the old to part ways with their money.

We're all familiar with the use of cartoon characters and toys to draw attention to all kinds of products, but I was surprised to learn there was a Sports Illustrated magazine for Kids. And I was really surprised to know there were ads for Minivans in it. Come join me in my slack-jawed awe at these tidbits of information.

databases of child customers are being built from information gathered on Internet sign-ups and chat rooms, from electronic toy registries at stores like Toys 'R' Us
in-school news briefs force kids to watch commercials in school
budget cuts draw advertisers like food brings racoons, offering cash for access to students
in-school news briefs force kids to watch commercials in school
Promotional licensing of products aimed at kids which include media pitches
Do you have any idea how many Children's TV and radio networks there are?
Children's toys are starting to carry product placements (Barbie™ dolls with Coca Cola™ accessories for example)
almost every fast food chain now has give-away programs including promotional merchandise (McDonald's™ "Happy Meals, etc.)

Brainstorming 101: suspending your disbelief for the benefit of all mankind

2009-05-25T02:31:00.000-07:00

Doga: yoga for dogs. Let me say that again: doggie yoga. Before you say anything, here's how CNN handled this topic with stern grace: "between layoffs, threats of terrorism, and tainted dog food, the world can be a stressful place for you and your four-legged friends." You think the writer had to do the rape shower after penning that masterful prose? You could be that writer. Here's your assignment: resist every natural impulse, and now convince me why I want to join doggie yoga.

One of the most important things for everyone working in advertising and marketing to remember that no one ever points out is if you are not the ideal target for a product, you have to pretend you are. I was recently in a brainstorm for pet food, and I was the only person in the room who didn't actively hate animals. Somehow the brainstorm turned out to be a complete success because this crowd was able to bury their feelings and emote like they were the end-consumer.

I can't tell you how many brainstorms I've been involved in where most of the participants can barely contain their distain for the product they're attempting to market. Brainstorms can begin with hundreds of different creative exercises to loosen the lobes and prep the mind, but I've never seen anyone ever prep a room to temporarily become the target audience themselves. How do you turn a dog lover into a cat lover? Or a vegetarian into a meat eater? Or a vampire into a warewolf?

Here's one I just made up. It's called Positive Visualization. Pretend to be a different person, a split personality; tell yourself you are that person and act like it. You're going to need a heavy suspension of disbelief, and a certain level of gut maturity that allows you to method act till the clock runs out. Your opinions and insights are going to match the target consumer because you are one, and you know how important your opinion is.

It won't be easy, but if you can't find a way to become an empath or an actor, you should maybe sit out any brainstorms for products or services that strike you as dumb or funny or absurd. Many off-strategy advertisements could be avoided if everyone could remember this simple principle. This will totally benefit all those industry noobs, and the following video is a walking tour of the kind of insanity you might face one day. Will you be able to keep a straight face?

Product Sampling: the rise of the machines

2009-05-22T04:32:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I pointed out that statistically, more people have been crushed to death by vending machines than killed by swine flu this year. Wait, stop dialing. I'm not calling for an all-out panic on vending machines. I'm using it as an excuse to talk about free sampling.

To my knowledge, free sampling is a popular mechanic for generating product trial and has killed no one this year. But here's the secret truth about free sampling - the thing they don't tell you. When marketers offer free samples they're hoping to cannibalize you away from whatever brand you're already using, stealing away your loyalty by changing your preference, AND they're hoping you'll unconsciously purchase their product faster than your normally would, even if your need for it isn't totally immediate! Wait, that doesn't sound all that evil either.

Okay, so what do vending machines and free samples have in common? Last time you checked, your relationship with your vending machine was "you eat my money, I'll eat your snacks". Well meet the BooBox. Belgian designers Fosfor have created a machine that spits out different trial-sized samples of good. It can even handle chilled items.

Both marketers and actual people are always looking for more experiential ways to generate trial and move samples from cargo van (A) to shopping list (B). To date the delivery has been fairly one-sided, either through direct-to-home mailings or interception teams in stores or on the street. Delivery systems like the BooBox put the sampling decision in the consumer's hands, but unlike calling or emailing for a redemption, the pay-off is almost immediate. All you do is send out a text on your phone and they fire back an PIN number for free goods. Boo(m)! A more interesting vending and sampling experience signed, sealed and delivered.

So where's the evil? You fell right into their hands.

Ad Innovation: inducing vomit to induce sales

2009-05-20T20:07:00.000-07:00

[CLICK THE IMAGE TO COMPLETELY BLOW YOUR MIND]

I came across this MacLaren McCann ad for the Grass Roots Hemp Store and felt it begged to be passed around. Most all of my entries revolve around an inspirational or educational message, and today's is a disclaimer that Brad Choma does not endorse or recommend the opening of the doors of perception in your mind through the use of recreational drugs.

Accidental Career Suicide: the hot new trend sweeping the internet

2009-05-18T10:19:00.000-07:00

I worked with a girl who sent an email to an office of almost two-hundred people about sneaking out early to go shopping with a friend. Any time I hear of someone losing a job, I always ask if it was a Homicide or a Suicide. Career Limiting Manoeuvres (CLMs) cuts somewhere in between. Whether you're blowing your nose in your food on film or putting fairy photos of yourself on Facbook after telling the boss you're sick, Darwin has a list for you.

I love the number of self-destructive people who step to the plate and CLM themselves right out of their job on Twitter or Facebook. According to a research poll, over 60% of 12 - 24 year olds think their friends' postings could damage their reputations, while 48% are sure they're embarassing themselves with their own postings. In an earlier post I warned about the damage the all-seeing, all-knowing internet can do. Then I found this article on iconoculture about Facebook Remorse. You think people would think twice about posting self-destructive info online. Wrong. Whether it's a snarky comment or a half-nude photo, the internet will remember.

I recently read that four out of five recruiters run web search to screen job applicants. Same goes for college recruiters. Same goes for dating. Oops. Resume Bear did a dead simple search for different CLMs and here is an excerpt (the rest are found here, enjoy).

Here are a few things you needs to know:

- always think before you send

- just because you deleted a tweet doesn't mean it doesn't get picked up by search engine indexing

- simple messaging on internet forums and threads are also picked up by google

- your privacy settings may not keep friends of friends from seeing your facebook activity

- people don't know how to take screen captures off flickr

- sometimes things you say on blogs can only be deleted by the owner

- know that sarcasm doesn't translate into the printed word

And if worst comes to worst, be creative about it. When New England Patriots cheerleader Caitlin Davis was fired for a facebook photo of her drawing dongs and swastikas all over a drunk guy at a party, her legal defense became: "the kid in the picture was a 'drunk guy who passed out and was written on,' as his costume for the night."

Personal Failure: I lost my erection (idea)

2009-05-08T13:39:00.000-07:00

A while ago I wrote an article about my friend Jan and his too-late-to-the-race Tauntaun Sleeping Bag idea that someone else produced before him. Broke his heart.

I pointed out that he'd have to take his dreams behind the shed with the rifle and followed with an screed about getting over personal failure, picking yourself up, dusting yourself off, and tips to get back in the game. Today I received an email with the above t-shirt image and I think you could hear my heart actually break through my shirt.

We live in a distracting world, and making that amazing gadget, story, or totally original dick shirt idea you had into a reality is only as likely as your attention span will allow. We are overloaded with information and demands on our time, and the little things are increasingly left behind. Being too busy or too lazy explains away the death of my deflated dick shirt ambitions, so we're getting off that and talking about rage.

There are lots of great reasons to blow a fuse, and so many great places you really shouldn't do it (at work, in front of the family, during court). You don't have to be a parent to watch someone lose their cool in a theatrical way and equate them to little children who don't have emotional maturity. Every doctor in the world will tell you regular exercise increases your ability to de-stress. Well it's too late now. Forget exercise, here's the one thing you can do in the moment to save yourself filling out all those lengthy unemployment insurance or divorce papers: STOP. Immediately.

Whatever it is you think you're going to say or do, you're wrong. Reacting while you're angry is like handing your car keys to a monkey. Anger shuts down the reasoning part of the brain, and misdirected anger is going to turn a pet peeve or misunderstanding into a full-on verbal skirmish. You've seen it before. Before you say anything, count to three, refocus your thought, walk away, whatever it takes. The second you realize you're getting dragged into an argument you have to stop and check your head. Keep your voice down and start over. Oh, and while you're at it, take a breath. Sounds dumb, but you don't breath enough. Your body runs on oxygen, but when was the last time you just took a really deep breath and exhaled slowly. You'll feel your whole body relax. I was told you should mouth the word "relax" as you exhale, which is great for buying yourself some time to think while those around you look at you like a psychopath.

Anger is the death of intelligence, and multi-tasking might be evil, but if you can learn to control one or the other, even to a small degree, you'll be better off.

P.S. Multi-tasking is the devil. Switching gears from one assignment to the next and back again is inefficient. Your brain is only so elastic, and can only refocus so fast, or so well. The complication of multi-tasking leads to stress, and stress leads to errors. You'll also find it leads to a whirling dirvish of half-completed tasks and pulsing temples. You've been warned.

Lost in Translation: Who does what in my what now?

2009-05-06T13:44:00.001-07:00

I've written before about this kind of thing before. When I first saw this, I was told it was a South African Gaviscon ad written by someone who's first language wasn't english. Unless the entire agency was populated by people who's first language wasn't english, and unless the tagline is South African slang for "did their duty to the best of their ability" or something, or unless the whole sentence is a series of unfortunate typos, then I just don't know what to say. I think this was done on purpose, and is either the best or worst copywriting ever, depending on your point of view.

A million years ago, at my first job, we did a sales ad for a bedding company, and the headline caught some flack. Once people explained their objection, we were appauled. By wad, we of course meant money, plain and simple.

The Freelance Life: can time management fight off brain damage?

2009-05-04T16:52:00.000-07:00

Be warned, the boundaries between work and pleasure can blur for freelancers. What begins as a laziness in the pre-frontal lobe quickly spreads to the extremities. Pretty soon you're calling soap operas "your stories" and your brain has become damaged.

Freelancing is great, but there are whole categories of basic, fundamental life functions that need to be explained to you like a baby needs spoon-feeding. Here comes the airplane.

First things first, the brain is an idiot. How many incredible and noteworthy thoughts have come and gone because I mistakenly thought I would remember them later? How many times have I wandered grocery stores or worse, just driven right past it like I'm suffering from dimensia? I probably know the answer and can't remember. Memory can't be trusted. If you need to remember something, write it down.

The brain is unorganized. As I said in a previous post, the simplest organizational trick in the world is to make a physical list of everything you need to get done. Seeing it makes it real. Every time you cross an item off that list, it psychologically energizes you and gives you the energy to tackle the next task. Try it, I think you'll agree.

Once you have your ability to remember things, give it something to remember. Try setting a routine or schedule. Mondays are client feedback. Wednesdays are all about acounting and invoices. Fridays are new business development days. Sounds boring, but you did it back in the real world, and it's a soundtrack for discipline. AND it's the one thing that helps you keep your work week from flowing into and devouring your weekend unnecessarily.

The brain is fickle. In the real world, everyone is shoehorned into a remorseless nine to five existence. But in the magical land of freelance and rainbows, I've found my best hours are around five or six in the morning, and I generally come unglued around three in the afternoon. Learn your rythym.

IM, MSN, Facebook and Twitter are all time vampires. Drop your guard for a second and the internet will destroy both lobes of your brain, so keep it in check. Give yourself line breaks, set a time, and stick to it. Don't get caught up no matter how interesting the outside world might seem. Resist temptation.

What do I do? I do my best to do everything I've mentioned. I also take showers, and I work in clothes instead of pyjamas. I only work in my office. I use boring dignity to keep my head up, even though the cool thing is I don't have to. There will be more posts along this thread. I hope you'll save room. Nom nom nom.

[author note: if you google image search brain damage, you'll find Amy Winehouse on every page]

Marketing as Dating: let's hook up and exchange money for services rendered

2009-04-29T13:53:00.000-07:00

lot of people I talk to are in dark places right now. They see excess office furniture and the people who used it carted out on dollies and they panic. Belt tightening can be inevitable. Even the parades of former co-workers dead-man-walking out the front door seems understandable to a degree.

Hands down the most common concern I hear from people contemplating the jump to freelance work or even just sideline freelance work is how to make contacts. Networking is creepy and makes stalkers of us all. Yesterday I heard an analogy that changed the way I think about networking for business contacts. It was a dating analogy, which blew my mind. Dating is all about prettying yourself up and making as many impressions if you can till someone gives you the time of day. It's so obvious.

Be a good listener

The dating scene seems a little quiet out there, doesn't it? Before the economopocalypse, everyone was shouting from every direction and a dollar spent on advertising was worth a dollar. It's no breaking news that many companies have shrunk or collapsed their marketing budgets lately, or as I now look at it, every other guy at the party voluntarily contracted larengitus. It's an unusal opportunity to shove that better looking guy off his feet and steal market share while your competition sits mute and forgotten. I'd say a dollar is just plain worth more when it doesn't have to work as hard.

You can't be afraid to be a hustler

I'm not proud of this next part, but it's only because the looks bad when using the dating analogy. If your client base shrinks by the numbers due to their own internal budgeting, you don't kick them to the curb; you cheat on them. Same analogy about marketing dollars, now is a great time to mad hustle for more clients. And not just regular clients. Consider married clients too. Some clients might get turned on by the aggressive swagger of an upstart leveraging against their AOR's more conservative, respectful stance.

Grow the relationship organically

All that furniture and deadwood wasn't bringing in clients; self-promotion and sales efforts do. A plant won't grow if the leaves all shrink. It needs to grow new leaves. The leaves in this horticultral analogy are one-off projects to help keep client money flowing. Now is the time to propose brave new areas of branding and promoting businesses, now that social media has removed some of the financial hurdles of traditional media. Presenting creative strategies and aligning partners on a project basis, like bringing a squirrel out of a bush with a peanut is what will grow those leaves.

Try, try again

When you're trying to woo someone and they turn you down flat, you don't crawl back in your car and leave, you step up and try someone else. I always tell the story clubbing with an old friend; it was late and everyone wanted to go but before he'd leave he ran out and hit on about fourteen women, struck out fourteen times, and we were off. He believed in the numbers game, and so should you.

On the surface of it, everything I've said follows the rules of common sense, but I believe people need to hear it some times. Getting noticed is the first step to getting laid. I mean, paid.

Reinventing your Free Time: sleep when you're dead or die obsolete

2009-04-29T07:12:00.000-07:00

Rhett Dashwood may not have the best grasp on what to do with his free time, but he inspired me, so there. Rhett Dashwood is an Australian creative director who used his free time between projects to study Google Maps, trolling for land-formations and buildings that resemble letter forms hoping to recreate the alphabet.

Clap. Clap. Clap. Clap clap clap.

I was using my free time to learn Adobe After Effects and Flash until my free time ground to a halt. It's bad enough that everything I learned in school is obsolete. Between software updates and the addition or reinvention of marketing channels and trends like the "social media revolution", you wouldn't be alone if you found yourself wandering the aisles at the liquour store.

By the time you finish a three or four year program in design, you're looking for a job and some kind of retraining course. Education is a life long process, especially for designers and advertisers. What I will say for now is find your moments, and rethink your "free time". More to come.

Product Placement: just what the doctor ordered

2009-04-26T08:25:00.000-07:00

I'm not going to pretend that I don't park myself in front of 90210 every week to nourish my soul. It is after all, the funniest sitcom on TV these days. It also deserves an award for pioneering acheivement in Product Placement. In the olde days, an actor might place a product by saying, "sorry hon, no time for dinner. The captain's going to have my ass so I'll stop by McDonalds on the way to the precinct" and boom, some money changes hands and the audience associates the character with their feelings about McDonalds, and vice versa. Today it feels like producers assume you won't notice the Big Mac unless the actor is basically posing with it and talking about it like it's another character. Let's explore some bad examples of product placement.

Innapropriate usage of a product

Really? Dr. Pepper for breakfast? Product placement without context will always catch the eye because something doesn't fit. Take this shot; would it have been crossing a line to have the cast enjoying delicious bubbly Dr. Pepper with a Western Omelette? Cheers to the producers for putting their foot down and puting a more tastefully positioned gigantic logo beside that slightly larger crying cabbage deal weeping off the table to make this scene more realistic.

Intense usage of product

I've been less excited about bandages after accidents than these two (Dixon and Annie) were while road tripping through the Arizona desert. I couldn't decide if the cooler in the back was small, or if it only looked small because of the stylized log jam of delicious, refreshing Dr. Pepper. Either way, the director gave us whole seconds of screen time to think about it as Annie decided between regular delicious and diet.

Ridiculous non-satirical over-statement of product usage

This is the use that most taxes suspension of disbelief. In comedy I think they call it a cap or a tag when you add to the punchline of a joke with a follow-up line to milk or continue the punchline. In this example, Dixon craftfully chides his step-sister at a rest stop when he explains that maybe they wouldn't need to stop so often if she didn't drink so much Dr. Pepper. Oh snap, right? Wrong. Annie replies: "We're on a road trip! Drinking Dr. Pepper is practically a requirement". This smacks of an SNL skit, but it's not. Satire free. See my earlier note about money changing hands.

All up-in-your-grill usage

I may have over-stated my adoration for 90210. The first time I saw the new series, Naomi was trying to fit in with the rest of the Heathers at West Beverly High and won them over by teaching them how easy it is to program the new T-Mobile Sidekick. This had squat to do with the plot and the intense close-ups were really distracting. Maybe they could have CGI'ed in a few sparkles or played awesome dance music in the background to enhance the effect. That would have been less obvious than running a crawl of product features along the bottom of the screen. In this scene, Annie advances the plot by changing the station (read: cuing the next track from the official soundtrack) while holding (read: hand modelling) her Dr. Pepper. I'll point out they wasted a strategic partnership with Sirius/XM here.

Not-so-generic brand placement

No wonder these people love their Dr. Pepper. Dr. Pepper evidentally owns every inch of ad space in Beverley Hills. There is no where you can go without a giant logo being shoe-horned into view. I wanted to say seemlesslly, but the term doesn't apply. In traditional sitcoms, actors take pauses to allow for audience reaction so scripted dialogue is not missed by laughter. Attention 90210 producers: your brand placements are so focal and distracting that by the time we finish laughing and/or complaining, we're all like "that's nice, now why is Justin so mad at Silver?".

I'm going to start watching just to make a product placement drinking game out of it (see a logo, take a drink of delicious Dr. Pepper). When they innevitably pull out the old teen-alcoholism chestnut, they could seemessly work Dr. Pepper into the plot by partnering with Barcardi to invent a drink called a "Bacardi & Pepper". Annie: "I'm all worried about Shasta. All she drinks anymore is Bacardi & Pepper". Shasta: "I do it because of the delicious taste, and my daddy issues".

The producers need to get off the fence and either change their product placement strategy to be less obvious, or commit whole-hog and go for that gold medal.

That's a great ad, now feel our wrath!

2009-04-22T12:32:00.000-07:00

When I first saw Bob Burnquist and Ty Evans's "Feel the Bubbles" video, I wanted to blog about it immediately. Aero's last TV campaign featured the two potted office plants (read: employees) talking about letting bubbles melt on your tongue in a way guys wouldn't understand. JWT in the UK decided enough was enough and created something beautiful and fun to reposition the brand. Here's the commerical.

and the very interesting "making of" video

It's always easier to apologize later than to ask for permission first, which probably led to the backlash. The creators admit they "borrowed" the idea for riding through balloons from a previous skate video, but skaters haven't been very forgiving. Snickers ripped off a skater video ealier and a boycott ensued. This backlash reminds me of this recent animated type spot by Motrin.

You may have heard a woman innocently talking about the pain of wearing a snuggli, but to a lot of mothers, they heard a condescending "you're a stupid and insecure fashion victim for wanting to carry your baby" and it was all downhill from there.

Whether you're stealing your inspiration, or just being neglectful of people's feelings, people will always find a way to complain about your work. The rule of thumb used to be for everyone one person who boycotts your product, there are a hundred who wouldn't complain out loud, but would sabotage your brand to friends, and a thousand behind them who wouldn't complain at all. They'd just quietly stop using your brand.

I did work for a bedding company that enjoyed provactive headlines and the backlash they inspired. "The Boss is on Prozac Sale" headline was written thinking the only people who could complain were on Prozac so they wouldn't be interested in complaining. The complaints came from the parents of children on Prozac. My personal feeling is you can't please everyone all the time, so you have to do what feels right and handle any flack with dignity later.

The protest signage was created by Stephanie Syjuco.

Strategic Partnerships: lightning in a bottle, or an insanely obvious misuse of trust and money

2009-04-22T10:47:00.001-07:00

Webster's defines Strategy as "a careful plan or method; the art of devising or employing plans toward a goal". Partners are defined as "one associated with another especially in an action".

When I was a kid, friends told me there was an mirror version of the Earth on the opposite side of the sun that no one could see. Assuming this opposite Earth exists, do you think their version of the Hockey Hall of Fame saw a partnership with a Green Food detoxifyer and said "sign here, please"?

I asked a few people in the related field to comment on this photo but there was nothing they said I could reprint here. I'm reminded that the Hockey Hall of Fame is a building full of Hockey Memorabilia. It has a soul, but no colon. I have to wonder what awesome list of candidate partners did they fire through before they ened up here. Not just a green suppliment sponsorship, but an Official Green Suppliment Sponsorship.

This blog post could be literally eight pages long, but there isn't enough snark in the world I'm afraid, so let me leave it at this: if you doubt the description of Strategic or Partnership, you likely shouldn't be creating them. And as I've said in the past, when in doubt, consult a professional.

Advertising Slap and Tickle: Another groovy idea unintentionally backfires

2009-04-21T12:12:00.000-07:00

With great power comes great responsibility. Uncle Ben knew it. Spider man learned it. And now the fine people at Honda are geting a taste. Honda came up with a great viral advert that put a smile on people's faces, and it was paved over before I started typing.

Every highway driver knows what happens when you hit a rumble strip. A Japanese engineer accidentally figured out how to create musical tones through the frame of a car by controlling the width, depth and distance between lines scraped in asphault. Before you knew it, drivers in three Japanese cities were enjoying pop tunes while they commute.

Honda engineers used this technique to make a stretch of road in Lancaster, California to play the William Tell Overture. Drivers loved it, but local residents? It didn't take long for local officials to point out some issues.

The ultra dynamic trumpet-heavy, fully-orchestrated finale to Gioachino Rossini's William Tell Overture loses some lusture when reproduced on aspault. You have to drive at exactly 55mph to really get the effect. Any slower and you get a dull, sickening rumble. Any faster and it becomes a whacked-out, high pitched drone. If you're not driving a Honda Civic, the spacing of your axles will alter the effect. And the Japanese originators knew enough to make their roads far from people's homes. Evidentally in the wide open California desert land, the sound carries further than anticipated.

"When you hear it late at night, it will wake you up from a sound sleep," said Brian Robin, who lives a half mile away from Avenue K. "It's awakened my wife three or four times a night".

Far be it for me to point out someone else's misfortune without pointing out my own. This piece was an invite for the very first agency I worked at. We needed an occassion, so we invented the two-and-a-half year anniversary party. The invite was simple enough; directions, two aspirin, and the suggestion that you would benefit from these the day after. The invites had to be crafted by hand and over 1,000 were mailed. Fast forward a couple of days, and the calls started. It turns out, mail does not gingerly flow on gentle breezes to their destinations like a scene from a Christmas cartoon. Real mail is beaten and rammed through sorting machines. Now picture the attached image with the dime bag, but instead of aspirin, you get white powder. The calls were endless. One was from Customs; summoning us, our lawyer and our checkbook to pay for testing, re-routing and charges related to sending controlled substances through the mail.

Somehow we had more than 1,300 people RSVP. We even had postal workers trying to crash the event. So the question is, are these campaigns really failures, or is the endless apologetic backpeddling just part of the cost of a great idea?

Conspiracy: Is there an Acrobati?

2009-04-18T16:11:00.001-07:00

lank

Throughout history, symbols have been imbued with archetypal energies that bond spirit and matter. These symbols are expressed in a sacred geometry. The ancients took these formulas and hid them, making us believe them to be evil so they could use them to control us. This allowed an early guild of brick layers, or Masons to build the great pyramids and ...

Uh, I mean, you ever notice how needy Adobe Acrobat is? If it was a girl, I would have broken up with it by now.

Adobe Acrobat is a piece of software that needs more memory than the original moon launch. It can take whole minutes to start up. This raises questions. What's it doing with all my RAM, and why does it want to be updated every second day, and why can't it be updated without restarting everything I own. And why is it twice as much (not really) for Europeans?

Adobe needs to be more honest about what they're doing with my computer. In school we met up with a student who'd blown his whole internship by not being honest. In his first week, they asked if he'd ever heard of Torontosauraus. Trying to sound knowledgeable and indispensible, he stepped up to the plate with a big positive grin. They wanted to name a roller coaster on Toronto's Centre Island after the monster and needed the back story on any previous claim no the name, so off he went. It took him five-and-a-half out of his six weeks to find an early 1900's newspaper clipping about two winos who saw a tire bobbing in the lake and dubbed it Torontosaurus. His lesson to us: if you don't know, don't lie, just ask.

Now back to Acrobat.

Step through the looking glass with me here. Back in the day, the masons and the illuminati attempted an intellectual overthrow of the great Monarchs of Europe, but was supposedly destroyed by the Bavarian Government's Secular Edict in 1785. 208 years later the Shoemaker/Levy comet was destroyed on impact with Jupiter. That same year, Adobe unleashed Acrobat 1.0. Wait, a black van just pulled up outside my house. A couple of

Judgement Day: or as I call them, Weekdays

2009-04-15T14:26:00.001-07:00

I found this image on a french "Anomolies de Back to the Future" website. In case you're wondering why Lorraine looks so pissed, they've pointed out that future-husband Biff Tannen, has left an errant copy of "Black Taboo" on his giant future-retro bartop. Thanks internet, I didn't catch that the first time.

I've referred to your museum of you before. Your blog is like a walking-tour of your personality that's open to the public. Google on the other hand is a museum of human under-achievement, and Google Image Search can be an actual guillotine. A quick google search of your name could reveal your previous arrest records or that album you made or your amateur "photo sessions" - these things happen. But what if it captured you commiting professional suicide?

To wit: hot on the heels of a KFC staff bathing in a chicken tub, I get this video of some Domino's employees making booger sandwiches. I'd show it to you, but Domino's was quick to arrest the employees, get the lawyers to yank the video off the net and slap down some damage control:

"The opportunities and freedom of the internet is wonderful. But it also comes with the risk of anyone with a camera and an internet link to cause a lot of damage, as in this case, where a couple of individuals suddenly overshadow the hard work performed by the 125,000 men and women working for Domino’s across the nation and in 60 countries around the world."

Two people hurt an entire company's brand. Now what if it's your name on the door? I've seen a lot of snide remarks recently attributed to Peter Arnell of the now infamous Arnell Group on the recent Tropicana package redux, and hot on the heels of the Pepsi redesign, I can't help but feel these comments, pooled here for your amusement, can only return to hurt his personal brand and the reputation of his company.

In a nutshell, the internet puts everyone under the same spotlight we all make fun of celebrities for ignoring. How many people have been sacked for telling Twitter and Facebook about playing hooky or how much they hate their jobs? To my credit, I've almost never been fired over porn, and a quick google search gives me a picket fence bill of health. How about you?

Professional Development: I blog, therefore I rule!

2009-04-15T14:01:00.000-07:00

The two things I hear over and over in conversation is "should I start a blog" and "I should start a blog". I've explained before why I think professional blogging is key in this day and age, but that was weeks ago. It's time to break off a super awesome kick-ass update infostravaganza.

YOUR NAME

I know people who function just fine without getting all hung up on these "typewriter television machines" (an actual quote, and they mean "computer"), but they do it at their own peril. They have no internet identity, and by living off the grid, they are impossible to locate and go largely ignored when the gravy train rolls through with a healthy haul of work. An active life in the blogosphere and on social media is the most popular chance you have of having your message breaking through to the masses.

YOUR MESSAGE

That you are as awesome as a Guitar Shark and Darth Vader put together. No doubt.

YOUR GIG

Let's expand that last thought. Coming from an expert at establishing oneself as an expert, you should know that demonstrating your knowledge is key to building trust and earning the respect of potential future clients. I made that first part up, but in truth, what you offer and how much you share about your niche of expertise brands you. It becomes your personal brand. People argue the definition of personal brand, but my belief is that brand is reputation personified, and reputation is the promise of delivery. Big reputation, minus the ability to deliver, equals (see my next point).

YOUR HONESTY

(Read: your life span) There's a saying, fake it till you make it. To a certain degree, there's some validity to it, but if you out-and-out lie about your experience, crack open a window so the neighbours will know when to call the coroner's office.

YOUR TIME

I never took the time to enjoy periods of unemployment. Looking back I feel like the sunless kid who spent his afternoons boning up on Adobe while my friends were all outside working in the sun. Blogging takes on-going education to another level, and here's the important part: every entry is essentially an essay that the whole world will grade you on. With each new entry, it's like being in an alternative school where you choose your own curriculum day to day. They won't kick you out unless you don't study.

Blogging didn't pull me off a ledge, but it did give me purpose when times were tough. It made be smarter, faster, stronger. And if you click the adlinks on the side of the page, it'll make me slightly richer.

[UPDATE: the author wants to thank the entire internet for apparently showing up for the launch party of his previous post about Marketing an unmarketable property like a Fight Club. Let's just say that the writing was no joke. And no, although I'm flattered, it was not a promotional gimmick by Doubleday or Chuck Palahniuk]

Marketing your Fight Club: easier than you think

2009-04-14T02:46:00.000-07:00

Fight Club has a fantastic "exclusive product offering". It's the only business that offers torn ligaments and abrasion as part of a satisfactory customer experience. The first two rules of Fight Club (you do not talk about Fight Club) make it hard to market, but is it impossible? Let's explore how simple and inexpensive marketing techniques can make your customer experience more profitable and exciting.

First things first, know your client

You know why they come. They had a tough day and they want to snap a tibia to take the edge off, but what else do you know about them? A good marketer takes the time to talk to their target and understand their needs and desires. You would be surprised how often the feedback you get from patrons can inspire and spark an idea that shapes your entire marketing approach.

The simple gift of swag

You might think key chains and t-shirts don't add any real value to your brand, but if your brand has a founding myth, a sense of community, or any kind of tribal initiation, your target audience would likely see these items as a symbol of pride or ritual or fellowship. Just because you might not wear an "I went to Fight Club and all I got was this dislocated jaw" trucker hat doesn't mean someone else wouldn't. Now try to think about more strategic offerings and how you might partner them to differ costs: a carrying case for collecting your teeth at the end of the night brought to you by a local Dentist's office as an example.

Strategic partnering

Whether you approach a national brand like Band-Aid or a local Reconstructive Surgeon, consider what you each bring to the table and how you might cross-promote. Consider partner-branding ideas, and don't be afraid to be creative. Maybe it's a crushed eye-socket, and maybe it's Maybelline. Here's a simple creative exercise to get your thinking outside of the box. Draw the human body (a handy reference here), and indicate an injury to any part of it. Now make a list of every product or service that could benefit from the associative repair of those injuries.

The classic black eye = sunglasses, make up, long brimmed hats, halloween masks

Promotional ideas

So the rules of Fight Club pretty well kills brand advertising and obvious word-of-mouth strategies. This does not mean you cannot market within your niche audience. A promotion of the "$10,000 Separated Clavicle Challenge" sponsored by your local HMO is a great way to generate excitement and trial while offsetting the cost by associative branding. The HMO picks up the tab while you put a map to their clinic on the back of every entry slip. Be creative.

Social media

Fish where the fish are. Nothing spreads a message more effectively and inexpensively than a carefully crafted social media platform. Consider the viral potential of Twitter as a great example. In previous stories I've shown how Twitter has the power to unite a niche crowd into a localized spending frenzy.

@nucklelicious will be handing out hairline fractures in the Mill St. Sharky's Grill basement after 11pm

Bearing in mind the frown put upon open discussion of Fight Club, you can consider a cross media platform like YouTube to share videos or Flickr to gallery images and to help bond your community. Budget permitting, you might talk to a web developer highly adept at social media to creating your own moderated FightBook social network. Many platforms such as YouTube and FaceBook can essentially be bought as a package and customized these days.

On a long enough timline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero, unless you prepare and plan ahead. The first two rules of Fight Club make it hard to market, but not impossible. With a little imagination and guts, even the most inexperienced operator can turn a satisfactory customer experience into a fantastic customer experience!

[author note: I found the ceramic punching mug here]

Suggested reading is Bertrand Cesvet's "Conversational Capital" to change the way you see the customer experience.

Business Cards: a Valuable Clue to solving the Mystery of your (professional) Death

2009-04-12T10:12:00.000-07:00

So I'm going through a crate of business cards with an event guru, when she stops and shows me the worst business card she's ever seen. I'm a strong believer that learning is a life long process and you can learn as much from your mentors as your tormentors, so let me preface by saying I'm not being mean. I'm just going to vivisect this hot mess for the benefit of others.

What makes this card great

Out of 1,500 plus cards, this had the most conversational appeal.

What makes this card not-so great

You can already see the big issue. If he were an artiste you might chalk it up to use of ironic design and embrace its brilliant lack of flair, but we have to weigh the odds that this guy will more likely become patient zero for a new site called yourbusinesscardmakesmebarf.com.

Nothing about this card expresses the mildest glimpse into what his business is. It's got a name, and a phone number, and a hotmail address. The end. No job title, no indicative graphics, no URL. Designers use a hierarchy to create emphasis of your information. Your name, company, contact info, some kind of visual identifier, logo or wordmark associated with your business. If you're in a more competitive field of business as an example, having a very clear title of what you do is a fantastic idea too. Otherwise, consider throwing on a recyclable logo.

Photos on business cards is more of a niche characteristic, like people in real estate value who place a premium on making themselves appear friendly, approachable and visually memorable. In this case, we have a photo of John Doe relaxing by a fence on a planet that may have more gravity than earth, like one of Jupiter's moons. Perhaps he wanted to appear friendlier, and just had his smile stretched out rather than splurging on a second photo.

Fonts and colours. Don't question the effectiveness of a clean business card. Believe. If your card is awash in colour, you will stand out, but your card will be less useable. Same goes for type faces. The less the better. In this case, he two colours for fonts. Good boy, but he's using three fonts on a card with three lines. Consistency increases digestibility.

When it comes to printing on unusual stock (wood, plastic, metal) or creating crazy sizes to make your card unique, remember that if it's too awkward to fit in someone's wallet or rolodex, it's not too awkward to fit in someone's garbage. This guy really jumped the shark and committed the triple sin of lamination. First, your card is now too wide to fit in a standard wallet card sleeve. Second, and really this should be first: lamination is cheesy. And third, although this card will outlive us all, standing against the elements for thousands of years so future historians can ignore him too. And why will they know so little about him? You can't write on lamination. A lot of people like to make personal notes on your business card; quick memos about your specialties or how they know you. It's a nice idea to leave white space or a mostly blank backside for this purpose.

If you're looking for cool inspiration, here's a Flickr set that will treat you right. And when in doubt, consult a designer. Show them what you have and get a second opinion.

via videosift.com

Self Promotion: looking for work in all the wrong places

2009-04-10T08:05:00.000-07:00

I had lunch today with a guy looking to jump ship and freelance to the shores of independence. Stop me if you've heard this before:

"I'm not an account rep. I love working with people, but I'm not the big sales guy who's going to be landing clients. How do I do it?"

His concern is the lack of a thing I call: successmanship. Don't confuse it with "gift of gab", because this rabbit hole runs much deeper. I already have a grandiose Hail Mary one-stop-shop solution, but I'll return to that at the end. As I pointed out in a previous article, one of the most overlooked sad facts of freelancing is the day you throw your name on that shingle, you now wear every hat of a traditional agency, and you better make them all look good. You want to be a freelance marketer? Your first job is to prove you can market yourself. In a perfect world, the quality of your work turns will turn into an endless stream of positive word-of-mouth and you'll be carried into retirement on the shoulders of your admiring client base. Back here on Earth, we all need help.

The tried and true paths

I know people who've tried the direct mail route, the PR route, and cold calling, and all met with varying degrees of failure. Direct mail gets a glance and 99% of it becomes recycling. PR is good, but again, no guarantee of hitting your bullseye target and generating a real lead, and cold calling is a form of torture for most people. I'll be addressing the need for a good elevator pitch in a future entry, but for now, I'm just going to address the tongue-tied horror that befalls the best of us when trying to pan for gold in a disinterested, faceless caller. Cold calling is essentially telemarketing. All pitch. No foreplay. You hate doing it, and they hate hearing it. Time to get out there for a more organic conversation.

Networking schmetworking

You can certainly find your share of "networking groups" through LinkedIn, but the non-obvious downside is you're mostly meeting and greeting with, that's right, other people looking for clients and not actual clients. Picture a real world model of a sex chat room (is anyone a girl here?) That being said, I think they're a good thing if for nothing else than blunt honest discussions with your peers about their experience finding and schmoozing clients. I look at a networking deal as an opportunity to learn a lot and earn even less.

Dealing with dry-mouthed forked-tongue syndrome

There are plenty of books on the art of schmoozing, none of which I've read, so none of which I can recommend. What I can say is that conversing is easy, schmoozing is hard. Most people have a hard time shoe-horning an agenda into an otherwise well-meaning conversation without being tongue-tied and derailed by their awkward discomfort and guilt. You can quiet the pain of these artificial discussions by lowering your expectations. Lose the stressed-out attitude that every conversation needs to end with a signature on the dotted line. You'll live longer. You have to remember, everyone you meet is potentially three people away from someone you want to know, so don't focus on big wigs, and don't cram a hard pitch into every conversation. Leave off with a "I'd like to talk to you again some time". Meet everyone you can. It's the little people that can more influential than you know. There is a good article here on additional techniques.

How would Ghandi schmooze?

It's likely he would just be nice. It all comes down to finding out how you might be able to help someone with their needs by being an observant listener, being nice, and being helpful. This could even take the form of advising someone that they don't need your services at that time. If you remember my previous article about the benefits of giving away the cow's milk for free, you'll know how well being helpful without the expectation of a reward can work to your benefit. This kind of transparent honesty builds a trust that will carry your good reputation into the future. You're showing people how smart you are without telling them how smart you are. They'll figure out how they can best use you.

And without further ado; the solution to our woes

If you're a new business developer, drop me a line. Here's my elevator pitch.

You work for an agency creating new client leads. It takes time and effort and expense, and not every client is going to fit your agency's needs. I propose recooperating some of your expense by proposing to these clients that although your agency is not the appropriate fit for their needs, having a pool of trusted and recommended freelancers on call is one way to keep the relationship alive. It shows your interest in their needs, and the goodwill generated may one day be returned when their business has grown to a level more lucrative to your firm. And the best part? It wouldn't be inappropirate to collect a referal fee from your freelancer.

R.I.P Trust: don't touch the body, it's diseased

2009-04-09T06:03:00.000-07:00

Shady, street-level marketers spent so much time corroding our ability to trust with their scams and their deceipt and their lies that they accidentally overdosed us and left us for dead. Plus they gave us hepatitus. Makes you pretty angry, huh.

Did you know the guy who pioneered TV thought he built something that would allow cultures around the world to learn about each other, and this would lead to an age of reason and understanding. The renaissance emancipator turned into a shameless marketing tool and he lived the rest of his days cloaked in guilt at "the monster [he'd] created".

Sounds like some other invention I've heard of. Oh right, it was "every other communication device ever invented." I'm not alone in saying that this disease has infected my phone and email. As a result, in my private life, I'm not terribly easy to get a hold of. Actually, it's quite easy, but I might answer my phone with foreign gibberish to weed out telemarketers. I am officially voice mail phobic. I'll check it, but typing in all those numbers to access to system then waiting to scan one-by-one and debating the motives of each caller - you could say it's not the favourite part of my day.

Marketers have made diseased corpses out of trust and prematurely killed voicemail too.

There are days I want to flying dropkick my phone through a plate of glass. Friends tell me they have dozens of partially heard messages saved on their work and cellphones waiting for that one ambitious afternoon where they'll buckle down and give them the attention they deserve. I ask them what calendar year? They prefer it when people send them a text or email. Are they unique? Nope. U.S. phone carrier studies show that 30% of calls sit for at least three days before being checked.

So on the one hand, all this fear of marketers has heralded a new age of brand engagement, product interaction, experiential marketing and social media ties to get around the diseased corpses of old school marketing messages, but what about us everyday people who got an air bubble shot into our arms? What about our more day-to-day concerns? Fear not. Hope is on the way. Wireless providers are figuring out how to convert voice mail into text and email so save you from your own trust issues, and they're already starting to roll them out. If my phone hadn't been suplexed into some drywall, I'd love to have that technology today.

----

A quick tip: the one good reason to answer telemarketer calls. No, not for material for your phony phone call album. In that brief two second pause after you answer before a human comes on the line to pitch you, a computer is logging that your number has been reached and you're removed from the call-back cycle that has your phone ringing at the same time every day. As air rushes into the telemarketer for those first words, my phone is already on it's way back to the cradle. It's an effective and beautiful dance.

As an aside, if you're looking to have fun with telemarketers, try this: next time you get a call from a 000 area code, take the call. When they tell you their records show your car/truck warranty is in danger of expiring and can be renewed for as little as $600, tell them you drive a model-T ford or Mad Max's old ride, and they will still be happy to help you. It's surreal.

Entrepreneurial Idea: Get People off their Asses and right back on their Asses

2009-04-05T18:19:00.000-07:00

There was a Thunderdome-style Econompocalyptic melee of the survivors to decide who got my chair when my last full time job went south. All those seats and computers just gathering dust. There's got to be a lightbulb joke about how many people are finding themselves displaced from their offices these days. What a waste.

Then I read Springwise's article on an online marketplace for desk space in the UK that practically begs to come to life here in North American urban business centres. Email me if you're on board.

Desk Space Genie uses a simple online real estate business model to allow a) people with empty office space, and b) people with asses to find each other. Companies with empty desk space, which is all the rage these days, post beautiful pictures of wood floors and tall ceilings, their availability, and ammenities like a rental site, then monetize the space as soon as a qualified applicant shows up with a banker's box full of stuff and the cash. The leasees gain the legitimacy of actual office space and a reason to shower and dress in the morning again.

Freelancing isn't always easy, and people often realize they miss the separation of work and home life, the daily banter of living individuals and the legitimacy of a bonafide office address. Companies realize they also miss the energy and banter of living people and see rentals and sublets as an additional revenue stream. The UK model offers broadband, utilities and security as part of a flat monthly fee. It's also a great way to situate yourself into a network (read: into networking situations) for client and customer alike.

Who wants to help me write that lightbulb joke?

Lost in Translation: Forgiveness is Divine; Salvation is Free, or at least cheap

2009-04-03T04:14:00.000-07:00

You know when you watch Asian TV and literally nothing makes sense?

See this truck? Maybe there's a Korean pop-cultural reference I'm missing here. I'm not going to attack Koya Ajoe juice. It's delicious. In fact if someone wants to ship me a case, I'll bathe in it on YouTube. The ad is well-meaning with good photography but the message is a disaster.

So how will I vent? I could easily make this about the value of translators (plural) or the three-second rule of advertising, but follow up on the happy theme of failure with a look at screwing up royal. No one wants to hear they made a mistake, but how you handle it says a lot about you.

I was always in awe of how the Japanese handle blame. Working in North America, when something goes wrong there is a flurry of finger pointing like people are dodging a shit-sprinkler (pardon the language). Throw someone, anyone under the bus, deke fault and distance yourself, get the promotion. In Japan, step one is to identify the problem, fix the situation, and only then is someone asked to put a sword in their stomach. The North American model may lack honour, it may be cowardly and shameful, but it's an honest reaction pre-programmed since school.

If you're freelance, it's just you. You're at the bottom of the trough, and if something goes wrong, guess what - the best thing to do is climb under the bus voluntarily.

WHAT TO DO: 101

To begin, repeat after me: "I'm sorry". Show some contrition to your client and get right to work on it.

Step two, show them the cause of the error wasn't a brain injury by describing a solution and get approval to proceed. Did we mention the client is the one who found the mistake? Make them feel that they're a part of the solution process to put them at ease. Now fix that problem. Stay up all night. Eat that cost. Whatever it takes. And if pushed or taken to task, let your pride take a backseat and honestly explain what went wrong, no matter how dumb.

The odds are the cooperative process of your repair job will be worth more goodwill than the damage of admitting Twitter is destroying your life and you promise to quit shortly. As long as there's an open line of communication, you're working as a partnership, and you can save yourself a lot of pain.

So do I consider this Aloe ad a mistake? I've worked with translators and they can be a shady bunch. Not every one of them is going to be the first to point out how culturally irrelevant your headline is once it turns into french or spanish. So unless "crush" translates from Korean as "delicious beverage", then at best, it's wrong for me.

Personal Failure: Pull your Head out of the Oven, it's only your Dreams that Died

2009-04-02T05:55:00.000-07:00

Today I'm going to have to break a man's heart. Today he's going to open my email and yell "NO NO NO NO NO" at the top of his lungs for the rest of the week.

Many years ago, my friend Jan invented the Tauntaun Sleeping Bag. It started as a joke on cold winter mornings that he'd gladly slit a Tauntaun belly and climb inside for warmth. If you're unfamiliar with the backstory, in the second Star Wars movie, Luke and Han play Marco Polo on an ice planet, Luke gets punched by the Abominable Snowman, they get locked out over night, and Han keeps Luke warm inside a giant dead donkey-raptor hybrid called a Tauntaun. People loved that joke, and he shared it often.

Announcing, the Tauntaun Sleeping Bag.

This thing comes complete will saddle, intestines, embroidered head pillow, 100% polyester, machine washable and even has a glowing light sabre zipper to illustrate how you slice open the belly to gain entry. It's actually an April Fool's joke, but since Jan wasn't first to market, his claim and dreams are now null and void. I could tell him how sad I was when I saw this less ambitious version of my more luxurious All Day Duvet idea come to life, but that would be cold comfort.

Today he will have to retire his joke, and his dreams. So how will he, or any of us, deal with this level of personal failure and heartbreak? The only way to deal with failure is the oven thing I described earlier, or learn from it and move on. Cold comfort you say? Here are even chillier tips that only you can choose to use, when you're ready of course. Much like an alcoholic, you can't be helped till you're ready to be helped.

Close your oven door

First thing is the crushing pain of defeat. Pain becomes fear, fear becomes hate, hate becomes evil. Of course you're going to feel sorry for yourself. This leads to self-righteousness, which leads to sadness, which leads to boredom. Hate me later, but you have to pull up your bootstraps and struggle. Life without struggle is boredom, and boredom isn't really a life.

Misery loves company

I won't lie and say it's wasteful to mope. Moping is natural and therapeutic and if that's where you're at, I suggest moping as part of a group. Purging your negative feelings is more productive in a group setting and peer feedback is a faster road to recovery than withdrawing into yourself.

Let's point some fingers!

Actually, let's get some perspective is what I meant. At some point you have to stop laying blame, try to be mature and hypothesize a reason it didn't work. It keeps the rage in check and helps you sleep better. If you go on ten job interviews and nothing happens, ask yourself questions like "had there already been a hundred equally good candidates interviewed for the job"; not "why do I suck so bad".

Let's examine our tracks and see if they end with a rebel sleeping in our stomach

If at first you don't succeed does it make sense to try, try again in the exact same way? Or does it sound better to tweak something about your approach and try again. Did you know Edison failed almost ten-thousand times before his light bulb finally worked? Ten thousand times! What an a-hole, right? Wrong. Edison changed his strategy almost ten-thousand times before he found on what worked. Whether it's an invention or an interview, trade your time for opportunity. You certainly have nothing to lose.

Help me (insert name here), you are my only hope

You'll probably have died of hunger before your ten-thousandth interview, so if you're going to suffer, don't do it alone. Fact is, your judgement and objectivity are impaired. Ask people you respect to examine your failure. It's the wiki logic that suggests someone with no prior knowledge of a problem is the best one to offer a solution. My friend from this previous article once pointed out something hanging from my nose. I was a little put off till he asked if I'd rather have not known. That booger changed my life.

Wash that Tauntaun stink off you

Whether you're waking hung over or covered in donkey-raptor intestinal fluid, the bottom line is you need to brush yourself off and get back in the game. Nothing says more about a person than how they deal with failure. I'm failing to think of a fantastic end to this article, but I'm okay with that, and I'll move on.

Consumer-Service Marketing: Harsh times force large corporations to take menial part time jobs to make ends meet

2009-04-01T21:32:00.000-07:00

Little trivia: did you know Howard Stern once ran for governor of New York on a campaign that included filling the state's potholes with the rich ashes of death row inmates?

Did you kow Colonel Sanders himself is personally filling Kentucky potholes with what we hope is "asphault" and marking them with a "Re-freshed by KFC" stencil?

You could make the joke that filling a pothole with asphault while running TV spots where they top off a chicken bucket with corn, mashed potatoes, cheese and gravy makes the buttocks clench the wallet pretty tight, but they're hoping people make the more obscure connection between "refreshing the street" and its new "fresh" campaign which focuses on food quality. It's actually called "consumer-service marketing" or "cause marketing", and in a nut shell it's a very old idea.

Early American advertising is rammed with puppets and cartoons shilling everything from Michelins to Marlboros. Here's the thing: Fred Flintstone wasn't trying to get Johnny Lunchpail to smoke Camels. He was working to create a warm feeling about the brand in Johnny's brain so one day he would feel comfortable enough about Camels to throw a pack in his adult-sized lunchpail.

Consumer-service or cause marketing works on the same principal. It creates a quiet feeling of goodwill between companies and consumers. While you're suspending your disbelief about chicken-flavored road holes, keep in mind I'm applauding KFC for their ballsy initiative. I'll explain shortly.

For my money, a better example of a company helping people on a grassroots level that builds directly to it's brand in a more strategic way is Charmin toilet tissue. For the last three years, they've provided custom port-o-lets in Times Square, and even have an iPhone/BlackBerry application that finds the nearest toilet in an emergency. They've embraced experiential event marketing and social media applications.

And now, the thorn in my paw revealed: for years I worked on an unnamed disinfectant manufacturer (not necessarily featured in my portfolio) that repeatedly shot down every attempt at any guerilla style awareness marketing and brand building in high traffic public washrooms.

Toilets and germs seems more literal than the association between fresh asphault and fresh chicken, but they didn't want to risk turning off consumers "by associating their brand with germs". So you can see, whenever a company is brave enough to engage in long term brand building rather than short term product lifts, my hands slap together involuntarily.

TrendFlogging: Reinveting Street Meat > Tweet Mobbing for MexiKorean Taco Goodness

2009-03-31T05:35:00.000-07:00

Long story short: Los Angeles restauranteur and entrepreneur Roy Choi started Kogi, a mobile Korean Taco business. At first people flashed more gang signs than money at him, but what started very slow as haute-cuisine in a cube van quickly spawned a cullinary monster.

Choi's secret recipe: a small, dedicated customer base + word of mouth + twitter = mucho dineros. (ammendum: Roy Choi was also featured on reality cooking show, Top Chef, so work minor celebrity status into the formula there)

By the time Newsweek caught up with him he was catering to crowds as strong as 600 and having L.A.'s Finest policing the crowds and traffic he spawns. All this takes is a single tweet announcing the expected arrival time of one of his trucks outside a busy L.A. bar.

Food trucks are nothing new, and taco trucks certainly aren't uncommon in L.A., but Choi has reinvented the model. By adapting social media, Kogi is essentially America's first "viral restaurant", and the real excitement comes from businessmen from as far away as Korea coming to America to study how the basic coffee truck model became an experiential phenomena, to one day unleash their own clone armies. I say let them try. The only real question is whether this will prove to be a localized fad like pop-up retail, or ground zero for a brand new business model for fast food in the future.

I'm happy to vote with my stomach.

Procrastination: How to Lose a Head in Advertising

2009-03-30T18:21:00.001-07:00

Get this: I'm just now working on my 09 New Year's resolutions. Not really, but I am putting off an entry on elevator pitches to do an entry on procrastination. Well you know what they say:

U=EV/ID.

Let's come back to that.

Back in school my first writing partner was a procrastination-fiend who modified a WWII gasmask into a feedbag for vaporized marijuana. We all know procrastinators are lazy people who can't nut up and knuckle through their work, so today, he's homeless, right? Wrong. He recently assumed creative control of a large west coast advertising agency. You can see where I'm going with this. Why didn't his procrastination destroy him? He figured out a simple trick I'll come to in time.

Little trivia to start. If I told you procrastinators were actually perfectionists so worried about producing less than primo work, they lose momentum, you'd tell me to go wait for a train, on the tracks. Guess what? That's what psychologists believe. Weirder still, what would you say if I told you a scientist got paid to determine that U=EV/ID, where U (utility) = E (expectation of success) times V (the value of completion) divided by the product of I (deadline) and D (personal sensitivity to delay).

All it means is a hamster in a lab will ignore long term goals and just keep hitting the button that gives them an immediate food pellet. Admittedly, we didn't all go to school to be army snowboarders, so we're not overly stimulated by our work, but when tasks with longer timelines fall by the wayside in favour of tasks with more immediate rewards, you're setting yourself up.

Seth Godin said it's amazing that people have so much time to worry about today's emergencies but no time for tomorrow's. His point spent years talking to people about using the time you have now to prepare yourself for professional challenges in the future. No one listened. Then came the Economopocalypse.

He was talking about training and skill-building during times of unemployment. I'm talking about straight-up bullet catching. Workplaces are becoming more self-structured, letting employees complete tasks at their own pace. This is Dateline-style entrapment for procrastinators. Even the most together people I've ever worked for had time management issues, so how does Johnny Punchclock stand a chance? It doesn't take too many extended or extended deadlines to paint yourself as the next potential cost-cutting measure.

So how did my friend with this disabling condition end up taking a diamond encrusted Escalade to Cannes? Simple time management.

He learned to visualize his tasks in more specific terms.

You have to say a job is important for you to believe it's important.

Do it right away. Now. Shock the programming of your subconscious mind and force yourself to do the opposite of your impulse.

Break up the task into smaller pieces and rifle through them. A lot of the time we worry about the scope or scale of a jog, so break it down into a series of smaller, more manageable tasks and work through them one by one.

Set a timeline. Write it down. The simplest trick in the world is to make a physical list of everything you have to do. Every time you run that pen through a completed item, it psychologically energizes you to barrel through the next. It's always worked for me.

No one will care about you as much as you do, so be careful out there.

The State of Design: Your Logo Makes Me Barf

2009-03-27T07:11:00.000-07:00

I got a tweet that promised to cheer the spirits of any designer or art director. Mission accomplished, yourlogomakesmebarf.com.

I've always said Photoshop wasn't expensive enough. The purpose of the site is to show what happens when unskilled people design logos. "Good logos require time and involve great forethought. A good logo should be a financial investment but also something that will benefit the long term growth of a company." Just because you found a torrent for anything in the Adobe library does not make you a designer.

My second favourite part of the site is the disclaimer page for anyone who gets the cold splash of water as they find their logo featured. If it's your company logo, they strongly advise it's time for a redesign and even have a list of endorsed professionals.

If you were the designer, blow out the pilot light on your oven and read a long book. Actually, it advises that criticism is part of design and part of design is constant learning. The truly commited have to eat criticism and learn from it. You're forever going to hone your craft and even a mentorship is not a bad idea.

I endorse the site because, A) it's the logo version of the audition episodes of American Idol, and B) see point A.

Definition: The Three Second Rule

2009-03-26T10:44:00.000-07:00

Brand messaging is (almost) always going to have more visual appeal than promotional messaging. At least, that's been the trend, but it's my experience that there there are enough good people working in promotional advertising today who feel promos deserve attention to design and well-crafted visual story-telling that promos have come a long way. There are those clients who feel as nice as it is, this only slows the in-take of the "what's in it for me" message, but I beg to differ.

Store environments are highly visual places loaded with thousands of square feet of competing brand messages and product images. Throw signage and promo materials into the mix, unfreeze a caveman and watch his head explode. The hunter/gatherer part of the modern human brain has the ability to treat grocery store aisles like wallpaper, only really focusing on the occasional tin of soup or bag of dog food.

By my math, and this is really conservative, if you throw promo materials or display in someone's path you have three seconds or less to engage them or they're gone.

You can easily test this yourself by people watching in a store. Watch how their eyes fall on it, do a quick backwards Z from top to bottom and either engage or keep walking. They need a reason to want to keep looking; to read beyond your clever headline or value proposition, to decide to take part in your promo and somehow commit your URL to memory. That's another story.

The reasons? First: craft a value-add or promotion so strategic and irresistible to your demographic that they think it would be stupid not to take part and you've already cleared shelf space for that next award. And second, strategic design; well-crafted visual story-telling that engages the consumer.

If your program has no lead time or money to put against it, I know it can be hard to deliver the bacon, but if you can't find a way to use strategic planning and design to do this, you're letting opportunity and money slip through your fingers.

Freelancing for a Living: Catfighting on Sugar Mountain, or living in an Asian Curse

2009-03-22T19:47:00.000-07:00

There's an Asian curse I heard about "living in interesting times". With the Economopocalypse in full-swing, stock markets are trash, unemployment is more popular than Twitter, and the trickle down effect has more and more companies lopping heads to meet corporate pressure. It's almost like an All-Leia Cat Pillow Fight. If that's not clear, just take away that these are interesting times.

That being said, business rags and the blogosphere is unanimously packed with articles about advertising in a recession. Letting your customers know you're still developing your brand instead of playing duck and cover leaves you ahead of the pack when the smoke blows over and the Horsemen ride off. This, combined with reduced internal staff, means more pie for the freelance crowd.

Working in your underwear, no commuting, choosing your hours and hand picking your clients like fruit from trees gives you so much freedom and flexibility that I can't imagine life any other way. Why do you imagine study after study shows freelancers report higher level of job satisfaction and more and more professionals are giving up their full-time roles in hopes of a more rewarding life freelancing, but it's not always life on Sugar Mountain.

Before taking the plunge, take a quick tally of your core strengths. Design? Accounting? Sales? Awesome. You've been promoted across the board. Most people don't realize that when you hit the road alone, you are a bus full of people in one body. You are truly alone. You have to wear all the hats of a traditional agency, and you better wear them well. It's a lot to juggle, and it can derail the most well-intentioned, because when something goes wrong, you're under a pretty bright spotlight. So you start by approaching clients as modest as yourself, which is great. You can make a whole career from good relationships with steady Mom & Pop shop clients, but you have your eye on bigger game. You want to grab better established clients.

Recently, the owner of a boutique promotional shop I'd been hounding took me to lunch. The client had already known my reputation as an art director and picked up the bill. It was around $50. Translation: because they knew of me, the client determined that meeting me was worth at least $50. I've had meetings where my lack of a reputation was worth nothing but a sit down in a lobby. The fact is, your name isn't some ubiquitous pop-culture catch phrase, so how do you stalk bigger game?

Scenario: you've found an in with a mid-size jacket company who at the same time is being wooed by a local design shop. What are you going to do? Scenario: you're in the woods and a cougar shows up and starts yelling at you. My advice: hold your jacket open to make yourself appear larger. Cougars aren't big on big competition. In both scenarios, feel free to point out your differences; they are your strengths.

PRICE

I've had my fingers crossed on an opportunity with a local company who has quietly been searching for someone with agency experience but without agency overhead and rates. Less overhead. No payroll tax. No health insurance costs to pass on. If you're ever been privy to a proper agency estimate, you've probably shaken your head at the cost of doing business with a reputable marketing shop. Economic differentiation has never been more important than it is right now.

SALARY

So you earn more per hour but work less hours. You have a fight an army of competition, and this results in rate wars, client-mandated concessions and delayed payments, but the ray of light comes tax time. Get a good accountant. I could do a whole article on the tax benefits.

QUALITY

A woman told me that she liked working with freelancers because they were eager to please consistently, while agencies were great at ramping her up but it always felt hollow after a month or so. Call it the seven week itch. Their strength was not in maintaining a relationship. If its your name on the door, you bet you want it shined every morning.

CARE

I read somewhere that the main problem with Type A new business gurus is that although they're quick and slick about wooing new clients into the fold, but they generally stink at maintaining long term relationships. It lacks the adrenaline they require to thrive. I've been at more than one agency where a client left because they felt the ball had been dropped on customer care.

BRAINS

More often than not, clients don't know what they want, or worse, only know it when they see it. This can be mitigated with simple education and guidance. If they're just looking for you to fill an order, so be it. If they're looking for strategic thinking and marketing perspective, always remember that's what they're paying for and that's what they deserve to hear. Walk them through the process step by step. It shows your competence and builds their trust. Only too often do agencies take the easy route of keeping the client happy without treating them like they're part of the process. it's a disservice you should avoid.

CONTACT

It's 9:30 at night and a client is calling you. If you're full-time at Saatchi, you're going to have to hide two hours of complaining against a billable docket somewhere. A freelancer's home is their business. Your personal and professional life blend so thoroughly that a call from a client is no weirder than a call from a relative. An agency will never be able to meet that kind of service.

DEADLINES

The client has revisions, it's going to press or presentation or powerpoint first thing in the morning, and that's only six hours away? Theoretically, a freelancer can ride in on his white horse and make revisions with a happy "there" and a "sweet dreams to you". Only the primaries at an agency could care about this kind of a scenario. Adobe Miller and Alexis Wipeboard in creative and account service aren't going to ruin their night out for you, and that's if it's a week night. Lord help you if it's a weekend. I want to do a line of mugs that read TGIAMA (thank god it's almost monday again) and use them to hammer this point home to clients.

AVAILABILITY

An agency will also never be able to match the speed of your accountability. By having your fingers in every avenue of a client's business, you are a one-stop shop for an immediate answer at 11:30 on a Sunday night. This is a big advantage, and clients love it.

How do you go about landing these clients? That's another discussion, but for now I just want you to know your strengths, know your weaknesses, find your niche, grab that fruit.

The Death of Newsprint: Birth of an Idiocracy?

2009-03-19T03:32:00.001-07:00

People love the dry rub of ink on blackened fingers. They love wrestling with the turgid crease of a tabloid format, flipping pages in tight spaces like subway trains and coffee tables. People love the flyers than rain out and the special edition sections and the search for the nomadic crossword section. And until you can walk into a midwestern coffee house to find a luncheon crowd of families and truckers hunched over their phones, scrolling the headlines on a two inch screen, I'm not ready to eulogize the printed word just yet.

I'm an optimist at heart. I'm also reminded that when the camera was invented, people decried the death of painting, cheerily claiming the artform to be obsolete and forgettable.

Newspapers are feeling the Economopocalypse like many industries. Some have actually shut down, and others threaten to follow suit. Some people mourn. Some people work to reinvent the business model. Some people cheer for the woodlands. Others see another nail in the coffin of accountable journalism.

Traditional journalism is definitely in trouble. A small but increasing number of news agencies have implemented some form of citizen journalism into their ranks, as a force for good. The democratization of the news. A grassroots level of consumer-level involvement. There's an obvious argument about fact-checking and accountability that's been debated since the day Wikipedia threw out their welcome mat and can wait for another day. I want to talk about stupification.

Princeton did a study that showed how the loss of a local newspaper has an "immediate and measurable impact on local political engagement". The fear is that in the same way TV makes us stupid, the internet is going to make us stupid and lazy; and when it comes to internet news coverage, users favour more sensationalistic national headlines and viral entertainment over local issues. The internet is the perfect venue for indepth coverage, but people are more likely to stay for the salient points and click to the next headline rather than reading "cover to cover".

Dark economic times don't make people stupider, but they're coniciding with a point in history where some percentage of the masses drank the kool-aid and bought into flashy adult edutainment rather than boring and proper civic discourse. Evidence of this exists in the number of editorial departments that left community news to focus on the more lucrative tabloid format, increasing stimulation and decreasing decimination (of actual news).

We'll have to wait and see what happens. All I know is: heads are rolling, and one of my local papers had two typos on the cover a few days ago. My hope is that people will enjoy dumbed down journalism or tabloid entertainment for what it is, but recognize that citizen journalism and the internet are tools for increased education and enlightenment and choose a nice balance in their lives. Namaste, readers.

Design Contests: A chance to eat a big bowl of crow and make history

2009-03-19T00:03:00.000-07:00

So North America has it's $ sign, Great Britain has it £, there's the Euro €, the Japanese Yen ¥, and the Reserve Bank of India has ... nothing?

Generally they're called Rs or INRs, but these are considerd abbreviations, not symbols. And hot on the heels of a rant against "design competitions" comes a design competition so unique and significant that it surpasses everything I said about this horrible disease that reduces the design community to a horde of old-timey prospectors panning for loose change. The government of India has announced a chance to design the rupee symbol.

The sketch pad practically jumps into your hand, and you'd also want to sketch up a synopsis for the jury that explains "the historical and cultural ethos" of your design. The winner, as chosen by a seven-member jury of experts drawn from various art institutes, the government and the Reserve Bank of India, takes a $5,000 prize and historical bragging rights. A short list of five final entries walk away with $500, but put those pencils down.

Sadly, the contest is only open to residents of India.

From a design point of view, the chance to design something so historically significant doesn't come along very often. How many people do you know with an internationally recognized symbol on their resume? And potential PR if the contest were global aside, look at it this way: when the Euro was introduced back in 1999, the price tag to update computers topped $50 billion. Each entry has a required $10 (500 rupee) fee. Each participant can enter twice, so by my math, as long as half the population of East Asia enters twice, they have a pretty good head start on those new keyboards.

News travels fast, and in the time it took me to type this, a German fontblog has already taken design submissions from the ineligible.

Don't lose hope though. I've heard Russia is looking for a currency symbol for the Rouble too. More to come...

Blog vs. Portolio: admire my work, and enjoy the enlarged genitals

2009-03-15T15:55:00.000-07:00

Building a personal brand and using a machine to humanize you? A blog, as well as your portfolio? My portfolio is the greatest thing in the world. It showcases my experience, increases genital size and cures diabetes, but that doesn't automatically entitle me to a flood of return traffic and new business.

A portfolio is stagnant, lazy, and unadored. A blog, on the other hand, can be interesting, personalized, and compelling. It's the perfect tool to fill the interest gap, and the hoped-for side effect is peripheral interest in your work after admiring your carefully crafted thoughts, then comes love, then comes marriage.

It's a silent interview

Human psychology 101: it's harder to hate people you know than random strangers. You want the world at large to love you, and you want that love to translate into increased business. But unless you're the Caligula of cold calling, you're not going to be meeting people and you're not going to be making great contacts. Your blog is a museum of you, and it's open twenty-four hours. Show off your abilities by sharing your knowledge. Show your value by having the maturity to put it all out there for the world to enjoy.

you're waiting for people to reach you, and a blog is the perfect place for you to create a museum of you, to share your knowledge and show your abilities. In short, it's the pre-interview you.

Getting to know you

As an Art Director and Graphic Designer, I could drive a car through an Adobe seminar and I'd still have 99.99998% of the competition able-bodied and hacking at that same pie (they're out there, while I'm in prison). A potential client has a lot of choice when it comes to making a hire, and without the benefit of a living conversation to add substance to your name, you're a ghost. A simple portfolio can't tell them what you might have in common; there's no chance to be impressed by your opinions and mindsets, to enjoy your wacky experiences or to relate to you on a more personal level. All of this can translate into the trust and confidence that might see you with a new business card.

I know, it's a big ass crowd

The theory bouncing around is that as more people recognize your name through social networking (blog, twitter, facebook, flickr, linkedin, etc) the more leads and referrals to follow. Don't automatically hang your hat on this nail. It's a big web out there. There's a better idea...

Give away your cow's milk

Create your blog, and focus your writing on what you know best, then squeeze. Honesty reads, and the need to feel like every other blog out there is not the most satisfying past-time. Write what you know, as long as it's unique and credible. It may seem counter-intuitive to spill your guts to the world and share valuable revelations and experiential tips for free, but if you believe in karma or wiki-spiritualism, you'll end up benefiting long-term from relationship building, networking with your peers, and increased business.

A professional gibberish-sounding post about professional gibberish

2009-03-13T06:48:00.000-07:00

As note in my last post, Pepsi paid over a million dollars to redesign it's logo. Whether the leak of this work-in-progress document was intentional is debatable, but take a flip through and with just a few pages in, you're ankle deep in "breathtaking" Marketing Speak. To wit:

"The Pepsi ethos has evolved over time. The vocabulary of truth and simplicity is a reoccurring phonomena in the brand's history. It communicates the brand in a timeless manner and with an expression of clarity ... Breathtaking is a strategy based on the evolution of 5000+ years of shared ideas in design philosophy creating an authentic Constitution of Design."

Who does what now? Sure, it sounds vague, it leaves you feeling empty, it begs for clarity, but it's called Marketing Speak and if you thought regular english was hard...

It all started with the Corporate Mission Statement? You'll find them etched into nickle plates outside many offices or in the About section of many websites. A mission statement is a brief statement of the purpose for a company. If you're familiar with them, then you've probably wondered why they sound so random and intentionally vague? Well according to Wikipedia: "In management, by stating organizational goals with opaque words of unclear meaning; their positive connotations prevent questioning of intent, especially when many buzzwords are used".

Sigh. Can't we get a computer to do this? Well, a Mission Statement Generator is a simple program that contains a short list of simple nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs which are randomly belched out into print-ready statements such as:

"Our mission is to continually leverage existing catalysts for change with a high level of employee empowerment."

or...

"Our mission is to establish a reputation as the first choice to network wealth-generating enterprises and delivery inexpensive solutions to our clients."

or...

"Our mission is to seamlessly integrate profit-drive teamwork and network principle-centered benefits."

Congratulations, you have an instant MBA in Pro Gibberish. Sure, at best it's a ramshackle syntax, so overwhelmed with topical buzzwords and empowering business jargon that the end product rings generic and hollow, agreed, and the fact that a computer spewed it mocks the entire industry, but people get paid and paid really, really well to sound fluent in this kind of stuff.

So much of modern Advertising & Design is not what you make, but how you sell it. Word to the wise, learn to do it well, and you're writing your own cheque, tap dancing into the future sipping martinis made with pickled panda eyes instead of olives or onions.

Sadly, the Dilbert model no longer exists but many clones can be googled in it's stead.

Design Contests: a lot of losers and one Winner (who is also a loser)

2009-03-08T06:04:00.000-07:00

If spec work is a cancer on the Advertising & Design industry, then "design contest" sites are full-blown AIDS.

Too harsh? Let's begin. In the beginning, there was pro bono work. Pro-bono work is work taken on for free, with no expectation of payment outside of any out-of-pocket expenses. The typical client is a non-profit, and people feel a boost of altruism livens their spirits.

Spec work, short for speculative work (short for "I'm speculative over whether I'm going to get paid for this or not) is work taken on with little more than a handshake (no contract, no deposit, no binding agreement). The danger is that the client will either reject, or in some cases steal your work, leaving you unpaid for countless hours of toil. Spec work makes the typical designer into a non-profit who's lack of blood sugar makes them feel a boost of swooning.

Lately I've been getting a few tweets (twitter messages, for the uninitiated) about "design contest" sites; "contest" being the operative word.

Here's the skinny: a client posts a brief looking for work with a typical budget of between $30 and $250. Hordes of would-be designers begin churning out work, all whittled down to the low-end of that $30 - 250 spectrum, then sit back and patiently await the client's verdict on their work. In these contests, there are a lot of losers, and one winner, who is also a loser, with $30 in his pocket.

I understand how economic downturn and whackjobs like the Arnell Group pissing through $1.2 million to rebrand Pepsi's look and feel certainly do claw at John Q. Businessowner's ability and desire to pay a premium for something as benign as a logo treatment. I get that. But spec work is at best, a potentially syphillitic blind date, and if this same business model were applied in any other industry, they would innevitably crumble flat into a Economopocalypictic landscape.

Case in point: I'm hungry. I put out the word on a "cuisine contest" site and 2,173 would-be chefs looking for work each make me a full-course dinner, and then 2,173 would-be chefs sit back and patiently await my verdict on their work.

I elect one (1) who will receive some compensation for their time and expenses, but remember, there were a few thousand entrants, so the real contenders had to lowball their rates to remain competitive. 2,172 would-be chefs now go to the next "I'm hungry" posting to design another dinner hoping one day they will get paid for their work.

I was going to use an image of scrimage at a UNICEF supply drop, which illustrates a similar kind of desperation, but the eyes of the hungry in the Sudan have more self-respect than this, so it just didn't fit. Spec work is cancer, we all agree. This trend towards "design contesting" may not be actual AIDS, but it is certainly a degenerative disease that eats the meat right off the bones, so play safe out there.

Smell my hand (I mean, look at my stuff)

2009-03-04T13:45:00.001-08:00

As well as updating my status on LinkedIn, naturally I want to get my work in front of as many eyes (read: potential clients) as possible. Heard about Coroflot which has a pretty clean and inviting layout and planted some of my skills on them too.

http://www.coroflot.com/bradchoma

Killing Time to Kill the Pain

2009-03-04T12:51:00.001-08:00

So this is to be a professional blog. A flog of professional attitude and decorum. Let's see how that goes. Today I began a blog about the awful life of a former co-worker without his consent. An official fan site at that. He barely knows what's going on, and I'm okay with that.