idea:logia

When he speaks, we listen.

2009-12-16T14:46:00.000-05:00

Toni Segarra presenta el Master Communication Design Lab from IED Madrid on Vimeo.

Tony Segarra is one of the smartest Creative Directors in the world. He is also a successful leader and an impressive creative.

In this video he speaks about the role of the "new" creative director and the talents of the new communication creative.

Noticed the used of the word design in the masters title!

Enjoy it.

5 ways to improve your portfolio

2009-12-08T11:02:00.003-05:00

We are exposed to hundreds of opinions and points of view daily. Perhaps it is the truly significant revolution of this past decade, the surge of the advise.

Every where you turn, there is someone giving you tips, shortcuts, advise, insight, rules, laws... This comes from the need to position oneself as a "brand" that adds value to the community, yet a lot comes from offer and demand... the more people come to the internet, blogosphere or twitterville looking for knowledge, the bigger number of people who offers it.

Identifying the true valuable advise from the noise is also an exercise of patience and practice, but there is a lot to be learned daily from a few well known and not so well known individuals and magazines out there.

In this case, I found it in BitRebels (a first time visit for me)

Creating a portfolio online is easy, but creating a portfolio that stands out, sells your talent and gets your foot on the door is a bit more difficult.

I found these 5 point to be simple, insightful, logical and smart (which tend to be good ingredients for analytical thinking)

1. Do Good work –
2. Make it Simple and Concise –

3. Include Case Studies -

4. Give your Portfolio a Human side –

5. Killer design -

I have come to learned that the most difficult step is to keep things simple.

Here is the beef.

2009-11-07T08:21:00.007-05:00

Classics.

These ads came out when I was starting my career as a junior copywriter and they helped me to understand what good creativity looks like.

Thank you to everybody who made this happen.

For everyone

2009-10-14T14:20:00.002-04:00

Noteboek from Evelien Lohbeck on Vimeo.

You should follow this advise:

Be different and stand out, create something, put it out there, get feedback, be real, be humble, try again, don't listen to the majority of critics, do your own thing, develop you own voice, be respectful, be tasteful, be meaningful, do something that makes you proud, execute the idea, be an idealist, adjust your expectations, read, watch, communicate, socialize, respect women, love kids, understand differences, do what makes you uncomfortable, ask for directions, leave the table still hungry, believe in the idea, never give up and surround your self of people who are smarter, faster and hungrier.

To Ander, Alani, Avi and Amaia.

TAXI wisdom.

2009-10-09T16:42:00.005-04:00

TAXI is a Design/Creative network I just recently discovered.
My humble apologies to those who have known about it for discovering it with such delay. Pero nunca es tarde si la dicha es buena and in this case, the reward is valuable.

Obviously the people running TAXI are doing a lot of great things. Great contributors, Portfolio Showcasing, Careers, articles and even interviews with brilliant Designers and Creative Directors.

And it is in the interviews section where I found this interesting interview with David Nobay, partner at Drogba5 Australia and the No. 1 most awarded Creative Director in Australasia.

I really like some of his thoughts about your portfolio if you are starting in advertising:

I’d rather see one brief, pushed out into every possible media opportunity, than 8 or 10 convenient couplets of poster and TV scripts.

On business partnership:

But passion is what keeps up the energy in a start-up. All of us expect the same level of commitment and honesty from each other. That sense of balance is a real key.

On direct mail and digital:

most people in adland dismissed what we did as “junk mail”, but at its very heart, the methodology was not dissimilar to the eulogy you hear from so-called digital gurus today: The science of accountability; The journey to a response; The sense of brand-utility. Attention/Interest/Desire/Conviction/Action.

Sound familiar? Twenty years ago, it was the rudiments of every successful mailpack, but today it’s just as current to the connectivity of the web. Sure, digital and mobile are a much more exciting palette to paint ideas with, but the basic challenge is the same: take people on a journey that’s based on them interacting, connecting and responding.

On being a creative leader:

Winning awards is easy compared to building a team of creative people who truly believe in you and your mission.

And about the present (not the future, refreshingly)

These are scary times for many. But for those of us who are comfortable with the currency of ideas, it’s also the most exciting period in our history.agency team.

And finally:

What is the WORD, which you think would reside and reverberate in the creative world for the next 10 years?

David Nobay>>Momentum.

If new business is your business.

2009-09-25T11:17:00.004-04:00

Alex Bogusky offers great insights into their (CP+B) new business process:

1. Tell other people your dreams.
People would laugh and they would point and they would say “There go those guys that wanted to be great!” FAIL! But to succeed you have to risk failure. So eventually decided to tell the whole agency what we wanted to become. Our mission statement. We had a friend who was at Fallon in the early days and he had been a part of creating there’s and I don’t know if I remember it exactly but it was very simple and basically said that they wanted to be, “The most awarded agency in America.” We thought about what we liked about the ad biz and it wasn’t awards it was the culture jamming. So our mission became, “To create the most talked about and written about advertising in the world.” Within weeks the stalemate between the status quo and something new had been broken and the agency began to clearly move toward this new shared goal. Out of the thousands of little decisions that shaped our future you could feel that more than half were suddenly talking us someplace we wanted to go. I wish we had had the courage to do it sooner.

2. The clients you currently have are your true new business machine.
I see so many people overlook this. “If I only had a client like this or a client like that.” It’s key to have a clear idea in your head of the new ground you hope to break and the new case history you hope to prove with each new client before you start work. What is going to be different about the agency six months after the arrival of your new account? How is this new revenue and this new campaign going to make your agency smarter and more capable than it was prior?

3. Find some real passion in the building for the business or take a pass on it.
We have a rule that says we can’t pitch a piece of business unless at least one of the partners is passionate about that business. In the end you will be defined by your clients. There are no two ways about that. Such is the lot of the parasites of the business world. Agencies.

4. Don’t model yourself after other agencies.

Great points, all of them. My favorite is the importance of a mission that' s easy to embraced by people.

That makes the whole difference between being successful and not. Knowing who you are and what you want, and being able to communicate that.

PS: I also agree with the title of his post: if-you-have-to-be-afraid-of-something-then-fear mediocrity

Advertising is not a magnet of talent.

2009-09-25T11:05:00.001-04:00

During an interview with Jeff Benjamin, the Interactive Executive Creative Director at CP+B, Jeff discusses the amount of talent available or the lack of enough talent rather:

It's not that we don't get talent, we just don't get the volume of talent that we need. We need to think about what we are doing to attract people.

We need (Google quality people) to come to our agency, but they are not interested.

What we value in this people is their entrepreneur spirit, they invention abilities, but the agency is not making and attractive pitch.

People want to make things that matter, but big advertising agencies are not perceived as the ideal place to the nurture entrepreneur personality.

The one question I ask during my interviews is: what's the last thing you invented? because I want to know that people can think and deliver ideas, passionate about making things that have not been made before, because it's a big part fo the interactive future.

Great points made by Jeff, that compliment perfectly with this post "the time is now" about how fear is killing creativity in advertising agencies.

We know where we are, we know what we need, the talent is out there, let's make this happen, let's rush forward into the future where advertising is again the magnet for crazy talent and rebels and mavericks.

what's the point of the story?

2009-09-24T16:58:00.003-04:00

Ira Glass shares with us how to tell stories.

he’s talking about video production, but his points are easily applied to any other "creative" realm.

In this insightful series of videos he explores anecdotes and reflections and what they mean to the story.

But hidden within his "reflections" are some very interesting thoughts, like being in charge of telling a story means being ruthless editing what works and is interesting.

Finding a decent story takes more time than producing the story. Anybody in the creative field should spend enough time looking for stories.

Failure is a big part of success. You need to be on a schedule to produce things every week and before you know it, you will have something special, something people are going to want.

The most important thing for you to do is to do a lot of work. (my personal favorite)

The first couple years that you’re making stuff, what you’re making isn’t so good — it’s not that great. It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not quite that good. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, your taste is still killer and your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you’re making is kind of a disappointment to you. A lot of people never get past that phase and a lot of people at that point quit.

And the thing I would just like say to you with all my heart is that most everybody I know who does interesting creative work, they went through a phase of years where they had really good taste and they could tell what they were making wasn’t as good as they wanted it to be. We knew that it didn’t have the special thing that we wanted it to have and the thing to do is — everybody goes through that. And for you to go through it, if you’re going through it right now, if you’re just getting out of that phase or if you’re just starting off and you’re entering into that phase, you’ve got to know it’s totally normal and the most important possible thing you can do is do a lot of work. Do a huge volume of work.
Two mistakes most people who start make are: we imitate the people who are already doing what we want to do.
But you need to be yourself. There is already a real one of who you want to imitate.
The second problem is that we tend to be interested about ourselves, but in most stories the other person is more interesting.

Make sure to watch all 4 videos on you tube.

You can't survive on content alone.

2009-09-24T16:40:00.002-04:00

What drives the creative process of a Wired cover?

"Attention to details", says Scott Dadich.

I think that the information in the talk is interesting, but what my main take away is some people are natural communicators and some are not.

Perhaps regular people are suffering due to TED and FORA itself, who offer us such a range of amazing conference and talks, hosted by brilliant communicators.

The truth is, speaking, presenting or sharing information in front of a crowd is always hard and intimidating.

The more value to those who can be memorable and entertaining and unforgettable.

If focus groups were in charge of Human evolution.

2009-09-22T10:17:00.003-04:00

It is not a surprise that creative professionals have a hard relationship with Focus Groups. Overall the type where ideas are subjected to approval and scrutiny.

That is why we need to watch this video and ask ourselves, what would have happened if?

Focus groups are an ideal tool to gather information about the consumer's needs and state of mind towards a category or product.

Safe to Fail.

2009-09-01T11:25:00.003-04:00

If there is anything the last 6 months have taught me is this: Pixar is the most creative company in the world.

Look at that record: 10 films; 10 hits. An unmatched streak in the history of filmaking.

what is their secret? How can they create original, creative, smart and successful films one after the other?

According to their Chief Creative Officer J. Lasseter their mantra is: "It's safe to fail."

The trick is to make those mistakes as quickly as possible and move on, a philosophy Lasseter picked up from colleague and computer science pioneer Ed Catmull

"When you think about science, it's about experimentation, and 99% of the experiments fail, but you learn from the failures and you move on," Lasseter says. "That's the great thing about Ed. He's always wanting people to keep pushing, keep experimenting, keep trying, and we always learn and keep moving forward."

For all the technical advances that have impressed audiences about Pixar, Lasseter's greatest innovation has been to extend a principle of positive risk-taking to the creative process.

He is adamant that teams not be allowed to sequester themselves or work too long without sharing their progress with others. Lasseter doesn't believe in mandatory notes, introducing instead what he calls the "creative brain trust" at Pixar, a peer-support strategy in which all the directors and key story people from around the company get together and selflessly help on one another's films. "It doesn't matter whose idea it is, the best idea gets used," he explains.

"Make it great." That's the mantra I've been living with ever since, just do everything we can to make it great," says Lasseter, who found confidence in Jobs' relatively hands-off approach to Pixar over the years, trusting the creative talent to steer the studio in the right direction. Lasseter put into effect was dismissing the suits and shifting the focus from an executive-led operation back to an artist-driven enterprise, where the ideas for feature films "come from the heart" of individual filmmakers.

What I find interesting about Pixar and their "safe to fail" approach is that it is intuitive and insightful about the creative mind and the creative personality.

We creatives need that that door to experimentation always OPEN.

Because once you let go of the fears of judgment and failure, you can truly explore all possibilities, be your self, share your heart.

Its about working in the ultimate creative ecosystem where ideas are grown to become great ideas.

How to make long distance presentations

2009-08-28T20:13:00.000-04:00

KingpinzTX.com Logo Options from Honest Bros. on Vimeo.

Thinking design.

2009-08-17T22:15:00.003-04:00

Anybody who has the word "creative" as part of his or hers job description deserves some credit.

Yes, from the outside it looks like is all fun and games. But in the inside is more like an engine that never stops, always going faster than it should, making as few stops as possible.

It's intense and it's a challenge, but it is the most amazing job I know.

Some of the most creative people I know are designers.That's why I thought that it would be good to share some thoughts about thinking like a designer.

The original list is Garr Reynold's blog; Presentation Zen

(1) Embrace constraints. Constraints and limitations are wonderful allies and lead to enhanced creativity and ingenious solutions that without constrains never would have been discovered or created.

(2) Practice restraint. it takes discipline of mind and strength of will to make the hard choices about what to include and what to exclude.

(3) Adopt the beginner's mind. As the old saying goes, in the expert's mind there are few possibilities, but for one with the beginner's mind, the world is wide open.

(4) Check your ego at the door. This is not about you, it's about them (your audience, customer, patient, student, etc.).

(5) Focus on the experience of the design. It's not the thing, it's the experience of the thing.

(6) Become a master storyteller. Often it's not only the design — i.e., the solution to a problem — that is important, but the story of it. This is related to #5 above. What's the meaning of the solution?

(7) Think communication not decoration. Design is about solving problems or making the current situation a little better than before. Design is not art, though there is art in design.

(8) Obsess about ideas not tools. Good advice is to go analog in the beginning with the simplest tools possible.

(9) Clarify your intention. Design is about choices and intentions, it is not accidental. Design is about process.

(10) Sharpen your vision & curiosity and learn from the lessons around you. Design is a "whole brain" process. You are creative, practical, rational, analytic, empathetic, and passionate. Foster these aptitudes.

(11) Learn all the "rules" and know when and why to break them.

A happy client?

2009-08-11T07:48:00.003-04:00

From a fellow Posterous blogger, 10 ways to make a client happy.

This is a more relevant topic today than ever, because clients have more choices and agencies are desperate to keep the accounts they currently have. So, seeing a client smile can make everybody sleep better at night.

This points work, they are smart and they help, but at the end, in my modest experience, the client-agency relationship is like any other, you can't be happy unless you are happy inside.

These are the 10.

Give Them a Morning Dose of Insight.
Go Hang Out.
Think Outside The Scope.
Always Provide Key Learnings.
Be A “What About” Person.
Introduce New Experts.
Showcase New Technologies.
Package Up The Right Success For Free.
Get Out Of The Office.
Host A Free Creative Workshop.

Read the entire post his blog Ideas, imagination and stuff.

Don't judge a book (or anything) by its size (or its cover)

2009-08-09T12:01:00.005-04:00

Many times we run across things that we immediately process as unattractive or uninteresting.

This tape looks old and dated. It reminds us of a different time when listening to music was restricted by time (45-60-90) or by forward and rewind.

But I want to tell you, that this small, ugly, dated or unattractive objects might pack the biggest surprise sometimes.

I recently finished one of the most inspiring, educational and influencing books I've read as part of my 2009 quest

It's Not How Good You Are, Its How Good You Want to Be by Paul Arden, is a small book. It's a thin book. It's divided in chapters of 2 to 4 pages. And it's not in anybody's top 100 books to read before you die.

Still, this is perhaps the book with the most knowledge-per page ratio that I've read recently.

the reason this book might fool you is because Paul Arden doesn't go around in circles; he says what he has to say and moves on.

He thoughts are concise and organized. Well writen and intelligent. Based on experienced and relevant.

I was going to summarize some of the most important thoughts here, but I feel like it might spoil your experience when you read it.

I just have to tell you that with this book, like many other things, people or ideas, is not about the cover, it about the content and that is a beautiful lesson to learn from it.

Even though it might be the least in Mr Arden's mind.

Enjoy it.

Disruption is Liberation

2009-08-03T21:32:00.004-04:00

Disruption is Liberation

Well, of course we work in partnership with them. We don’t just come up with an idea and force it on them. Disruption is a step-by-step process. We work together to unlock the ideas that were lying dormant within their brands. Disruption is about identifying the self-imposed restrictions that can stifle creativity. We call these restrictions “conventions“. The “disruptive idea“ is one that overturns these conventions and allows a company to adopt a unique standpoint, which we call the “vision“. From that, they discover a new truth about their brand, referred to as the “brand belief“. This is a fundamental statement about the brief and should guide all aspects of communication all “brand behavior“.

One of those thoughts that needs to be shared.

2009-07-29T19:02:00.004-04:00

Joshua Porter from MFA Interaction Design on Vimeo.

A great idea by Liz Danzico

she sought out the advice of digital designers and designer conspirators far and wide, to ask them to respond to the following:

So you’re thinking about becoming a designer? If I could tell you only one thing about going into the field, my advice would be ___________ .

These are their answers:

Emotional advertising

2009-07-29T10:45:00.005-04:00

This is one of the first ads I remember watching when I started my career in advertising.

Great concept, great casting, great song, beautifully executed.

A strong call to action in 3 words, and a strong emotional idea.

"Stay in touch"

I want to call my dad every time I see this ad.

Increase your creativity.

2009-07-25T08:42:00.003-04:00

It seems that the phrase "distance yourself from the project" has actually a lot of insight.

According to a set of studies published by Scientific American by By Oren Shapira and Nira Liberman psychological distance (anything that we do not experience as occurring now, here, and to ourselves) increases our ability to be creative.

Consider, for instance, a corn plant. A concrete representation would refer to the shape, color, taste, and smell of the plant, and connect the item to its most common use – a food product. An abstract representation, on the other hand, might refer to the corn plant as a source of energy or as a fast growing plant. These more abstract thoughts might lead us to contemplate other, less common uses for corn, such as a source for ethanol, or to use the plant to create mazes for children. What this example demonstrates is how abstract thinking makes it easier for people to form surprising connections between seemingly unrelated concepts, such as fast growing plants (corn) and fuel for cars (ethanol).

These means that we can actually take some steps to increase our creativity:

traveling to faraway places (or even just thinking about such places),
thinking about the distant future,
communicating with people who are dissimilar to us, and
considering unlikely alternatives to reality.

Perhaps the modern environment, with its increased access to people, sights, music, and food from faraway places, helps us become more creative not only by exposing us to a variety of styles and ideas, but also by allowing us to think more abstractly.

So the next time you’re stuck on a problem that seems impossible don’t give up. Instead, try to gain a little psychological distance, and pretend the problem came from somewhere very far away.

Stand out imagination and creativity.

2009-07-21T13:29:00.002-04:00

What if you bought a bike on Ebay, write a wicked ad hoping to sell it for much more than you paid for it just a few days earlier?

The guys at George Patterson Y&R did it and created this video to share with the world the results.

I have talked often about creativity being a state of mind. A way fo seeing the world that can't be contained or just apply to advertising.

Creativity wins because makes us feel different and unique.

Why clients see a threat on this?

Stop and move on.

2009-07-18T11:57:00.003-04:00

It's part of being a creative; you get stuck.

You seem to be unable to move forward and everything looks like a roadblock.

Zenhabits offers some advice to become more productive by taking a break.

when you don’t take breaks and allow yourself to recover, you’re less than 50% there. 50% you = 50% work.
It’s obvious that taking short, rejuvenating breaks is the more effective way to work. So what are some examples of these types of breaks?

Change channels. Most of us do a lot of work on the computer, so doing some kind of physical activity for 10 or 15 minutes can be a great way to change our state. Bodyweight exercises, a brisk walk, or yoga can be a great way to get your body moving and put yourself in a different state.
Breathe. Do 10 or 15 minutes of meditation, focused on your breathing.
30 second headstand. Support your feet and legs against a sturdy wall (or tree).
Juice it. Stop by your local health food store and get a wheat grass shot or vegetable juice.
Refuel. Eating some kind of snack or small meal every 90 minutes is a great way to keep your glucose and energy levels steady. Go for fresh, organic fruit or a salad to get a quick pick-me-up.
Power nap. A 20 minute nap in the afternoon feels awesome and rejuvenating.
Motivate. Take a time out and listen to a Paraliminal session, guided meditation or personal development video on YouTube.
Flood your body with consciousness. This is something I’ve been doing lately that’s been really working for me. Take 10 minutes out to lie on your bed and flood your body with consciousness. Focus your awareness first on your toes and feet, then gradually move your focus up through your body, into your legs, pelvis, torso, chest, back, shoulders, arms, hands and fingers. Then back up through your arms into your neck, up your throat and into your face and your head. Really focus on feeling the energy in your body and only move your conscious awareness up your body after you’ve really felt it in the last part.
Total relaxation. This is a follow up to flooding your body with consciousness. After you’ve completely immersed your body in awareness, focus on relaxing each muscle in your body. In the same way previously, start with your toes and work your way upward through your body. Really let go and relax.

These are just a few ideas for ways that you can really relax, recover, and rejuvenate your body. Once you do that, you’ll be re-focused, recharged, and ready to work at 100% capacity.

Hopefully, next time we are pressured with a deadline we will remember to stop and take a break so we can deliver on time.

Awards for what they are.

2009-07-17T07:02:00.003-04:00

Creative, funny and original.

Boondoggle is the agency responsible for the very successful Axiom Banners.

Awards are good to win, but are not the golden ticket.

well done Boondoggle.

Service the customer.

2009-06-29T13:15:00.002-04:00

Most of us do customer service in one way or another. And most of us believe that customer service represents an investment and a commitment.

Customer service has become the ultimate commodity.

We all have had experiences dealing with good and bad examples of customer services, and some even have created an equation: it takes 8 good experiences to erase one bad experience.

You can find an interesting definition on Wikipedia:

"Customer service is a series of activities designed to enhance the level of customer satisfaction – that is, the feeling that a product or service has met the customer expectation."

Dealing with the customers expectations is complicated because our expectations tend to be higher and even unrealistic.

But the fact remains that customer service is about enhancing the level of customer satisfaction. And that is pretty tangible, easy to measure and easy to design a program and tactics around.

Why is excellent customer service so hard to find then?

Are our expectations so unrealistic? Why are companies so in the defense? why is it so hard to hear the words "you are right sir"?

I think that customer service is misunderstood. I believe that most companies and people feel that since clients expectations are so different and unrealistic, they will never be met and since I can't satisfy everybody, I aim at the middle and go on with it.

Obviously this is the wrong tactic in a day where so many people can so easily share their experiences and opinions.

I'm not an expert but I am an avid observer and I think that there are 3 easy ways to enhance customer satisfaction:

Listen to consumer's experiences and questions and engage in an honest conversation with your customers. Create an environment that facilitates this exchange.
Reward those who care enough to speak about your brand or service, even if it is bad.
Consider every moment an opportunity to enhance my experience. Be creative and innovate your service in unexpected ways. You will always over meet an expectation that people didn't have.

If you like this article, please tweet about it.

Innovation; immediate or reliable?

2009-06-25T15:37:00.005-04:00

What can I say? Superheroes are powerful and super and heroes, but they are also reliable.

When Ryan Jacoby a business designer at IDEO (http://www.ideo.com) asks the question: Innovation; immediate or reliable? in one of his recent posts at his blog do_matic, I immediately thought about immediate.

But he makes a brilliant case for reliable:

So, if innovation is in part about bringing new things into the world, this is where I come out:
I want reliable people posing provocative questions and processing more immediate inputs.
"Reliable people" are those that have learned to spot patterns through experience and many cycles of learning. Such people exhibit a relentless curiosity that drives them to learn and challenge their patterns frequently. Ultimately, I want such people working close to the questions and looking to be surprised and contradicted by what they find as quickly as possible.

I really like that Ryan has decided to put his thoughts available to us for immediate and reliable access to his mind and expertise.

We all need superheroes and the people at Ideo can lead us to safe and wonderful innovation, that's for sure.

Havaianas. Brasilian design and creativity.

2009-06-25T14:45:00.009-04:00

If you have been to Brazil, you know the flip flops that have become part of the Brazilian national pride.

Havaianas are fun and colorful. They also capture the essence of the Brazilian personality: Easy, relax and go well with every occasion.

But Havaianas also has an image to build and a brand to keep and they do a great job doing just that.

I have 8 pairs, so I use what I preach. Just so you know.

via zambrano

Instint, openess and share.

2009-06-24T13:24:00.003-04:00

From the blog of TBWA Paris a set of interviews with Worldwide Creative Director John Hunt about creativity, disruption and media arts.

Why disruptive ideas are more important today?
A good idea is like a coat hanger, where you can hang lots of different executions from it.
if every biody ahs a great idea about a concept, it is a good indication of a good idea.

How do you identify a good idea?
First of all, trust your instincts. Don't over think it. Let the idea live initially. What first engaged you will probably engage your consumer.
Stay open/

It's our idea!
Ideas are portable. The idea's power is how it irrigates out, how it is shared.
Bureaucracy is not the best way to share an idea. When you share an idea people take responsibility of the idea. Otherwise people will find a way to sabotage it.

Cannes and its irony

2009-06-23T19:31:00.003-04:00

I like irony.

Overall if it's related to advertising and the stereotypes associated with it. And there are lots of them.

In this case, it comes in the form of "things I don't want to hear at Cannes 2010" by the inmates at the Duffy agency.

1. ”It’s not about advertising, it’s about engagement.”
2. ”Print’s days are numbered.”
3. ”You don’t want to advertise, you want to have a conversation.”
4. ”It’s about having a great narrative, a great story.”
5. ”Advertising is no longer a one-way process. The consumer can now talk back to you.”
6. ”You have to let go when it comes to the controls for your brand online. Consumers will take it anyway.”
7. ”Online banner and display advertising is a broken model.”
8. ”The next big breakthrough will be centered around mobile devices.”
9. ”Social media is not a fad, it’s here to stay.”
10. ”Consumers are ’always on’.”

Advise in 140 characters.

2009-06-22T19:11:00.003-04:00

I think that this is my first reference to Ad Age on this blog. Well, there is a first time for everything, and this is a good first time.

Mansi Trivedi following the best twitter etiquette gathered advise in the form of 140 characters from some of the best equipped minds form the industry.

these are some of my favorites:

Noah Brier, head of planning and strategy, the Barbarian Group, on ideas: "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough."

Nathan Helenie, co-founder-chief creative officer, Crush & Lovely, on process: "Stay young, curious and inspired. Become disciplined and resourceful. Make things. Move. Fail when necessary. Execute with love and precision."

Jinal Shah, strategist, Electric Artists, on being fearless: "1. Don't be afraid to break rules. 2. And have a point of view, no matter how provocative or silly you think it is."

I think that mine would be:

Stay interested in other fields and learn from everyone, keep your mind open, surround yourself with different views. It's not about you.

what would yours be?

Client's feedback to creative.

2009-06-22T07:26:00.002-04:00

I'm always trying to bring some light into our world of advertising, the creative process, brainstorms, creative presentations and ideas. It is an easy job, but it comes with lots of layers and shades of gray areas.

That's why I wanted to share with you this post I found at Life in the middle.

It offers good advise about one of the hardest part of the agency-client relationship: The creative feedback.

1. Prepare to see the work. What am I expecting to see? What are we trying to do? What will impress me?

2. Get in the mood to see the work - read the brief - remember what if feels like to have the problem fresh in your mind.

3. What's my instant emotional reaction - do I like it? Hate it? Am I surprised - why? Is it confusing? (It's not always a good idea to share these thoughts, but note them.)

4. What caused the reaction you had - is it 'what' the work is saying? Or, 'how' it's saying it?

5. Does the work contain a real brand idea that changes perception, as opposed to a nice advertising idea?

6. Never act like Simon Cowell. My job is not to say whether something is good or shit. But to say how right something is, and to find ways of expressing how to make it more right (if that's what it needs).

7. Feedback does not mean criticising. It means trying to understand and articulate why the things that are working are working, and why the things that are not are not. These are equally important.

8. Start macro when feeding back but go micro. As long as feedback is something the agency can action then all comments add to the intelligence around the problem,even the little things.

9. Post-rationalise. If something you didn't think was previously important or salient now looks like it might be. Try and understand why - strategy never ends.

10. Be aware of the self-serving bias and the confirmation bias - interpreting things in a way that confirm preconceptions, or meet your interests.

11. Always say thank you. Creative work is hard work.

What gets you in at W+K?

2009-06-21T17:02:00.004-04:00

In an era of social networks and Linkedin, where people search for a job using twitter and social pressure, this 19 year old decided to do it the old fashion way: writing a reason for his cause.

Dear Weiden + Kennedy, I am a 19 year old, entrepreneurial/creative mind. I have between 2-3 groundbreaking business or creative ideas every single day, and to say the least, I do NOT have the capability to even keep track or implement them so; I started a business. I decided that If I were to ever become successful and impact the world greatly by undertaking huge and "impossible" projects I would need a very balanced, efficient, and productive degree of discipline. Sometimes discipline and creativity/randomness sit on opposite sides of the lunch hall; however, to combine them would I assume be as earth-shattering as balancing the ying and the yang of business. Behold, my mobile billboard business in Las Vegas, NV. However, I did not have enough money to start it to I decided to sell it first, and with the profits, start it (opposite to the quote "think with your hands, and then talk about it, not in reverse") Well I did it in reverse. I dressed up in a black and gold suite and tie, drove down to the Forum Shops in Las Vegas, NV (very wealthy shops) and started selling my ideas to the managers, converting them to my corporate sales people, and starting the damning corporate marketing man chase. I thought "wouldn't it be awesome if I had some clout, some pull, to just pitch these ideas,". So out of the few dozen I approached, and followed up over weeks and weeks, I ended up with about 4 hot prospective clients. I mean, one that is looking at buying a marketing package from me for $30,000 U.S. and very, very EXCITED to do so. So I have a feeling my ideas are golden, but I promised myself I would stay here until I make my business, my ad agency, my marketing consulting firm, which I named "Unique and Innovative PRO (Personal Relations Officer)"--a success. Well what does this have to do with you? Well I'm a young man, and I "stay stupid, stay foolish (steve jobs)" so I thought I would write this e-mail to someone who has done what I want to do in the advertising/marketing world. I found Weiden + Kennedy from watching everyone of your Nike MVPs videos, and found that you had internships/platform program. This is what is on my mind: Nike Factory in the forum shops needs strip advertising; I concepted a Giant Shoe on a platform truck that will drive up and down the strip with a sign in it promoting a weekly event with the local UNLV Basketball team, celebrity, athlete, or locally famous socialite, that would pull customers to Niketown to HAVE FUN. The place is built like a club and it could very well be a sales monster tool, all while the customer is not cheesed by old ad methods. So To Conclude, If you were to use me for my ideas and implementation and passion... If I were to use you as my clout vessel Your company, Your Ideas, Your advertisements would only progress, and companies that don't keep innovative, fail. (You DO, trust me I've seen your advertising). I would progress, and become the next YOU, to offer more and more people opportunities to create, and jobs for everyone helping them, and in turn bread for families all over the world. This is my calling, I am the global entrepreneur. And I love advertising, Can We Team Up? What do YOU propose?

He was hired on the spot.

Leo Burnett would be proud

2009-06-20T23:19:00.002-04:00

For a few years Leo Burnett has put together a reel of work it expects to win at Cannes.

Lots and lots of great work. Great ideas executed brilliantly in most cases.

I really was caught by surprise by the Skittles ad and Scooter.

The winner at Cannes?

Go on Lad.

Take my name off the door

2009-06-20T22:31:00.002-04:00

Leo Burnett the man, no the agency.

He delivers a smart and inspiring speech, as relevant today as it was emotional back then.

"When you lose the respect for the lonely man. When you forget that the lonely man is who is making Leo Burnett possible, allowing us to reach for the stars, that day you can take my name off the door"

Do you have it?

2009-06-08T15:33:00.005-04:00

"it" is an amazing word.

It means everything and nothing. The difference between success and failure. Between accomplishment and defeat. And in my case, the difference between getting a job and not getting it.

When I was a younger version of myself and looking for a job in advertising I got a 3 month "trial" period at an agency in Dallas. I really liked the agency and the people and the things they stood for (true creativity and real thinking outside the box) so I desperately wanted to come on board.

After 2 months of brainstorming for every account they had, staying late, learning everything there was to learned about the business and the people, I was called to the Creative Director's office.

He has a brilliant creative, with the ability to make something happen out of any small idea you brought up to his attention. I admired him and I wanted to get a good report on my performance, so I walked in nervous and aware of the significance of the moment.

After a small talk about workload and common friends, he told me: Iñaki, we decide to bring you in full time. People like you, you work hard and you have potential to be a great creative. You know? you get it. Some people get it and some people don't. But you get it.

Wow, I thought. I get IT. I really had no idea of what that meant. "IT" whatever it was, I understood it. Great.

The thing is, 'It' means so much. It has taken me over 13 years to fully understand it, and I wanted to put it on paper for future generations to read it, process get it, use it and benefit form it.

In advertising and in creativity "it" means the creative process, the fragility of ideas, the exploration as a mindset, the conceptual world, the world of concepts and the concept as a driver of executions.

It means that you know that you are not alone and that your creative partner is your life partner. That you know that it takes time to do magic, no tricks, no magic dust, no mirrors, just old fashioned hard work and sweat.

It means that Accounst services has a job to do and that it is a nasty job. That is not your job and that they need to do their job so you can do yours. And you get this and expect them to get it too.

It means that clients are a mess, and unfair and hard and they don't get it. But they can afford not to get it because they are the client and the pay the bills, and the y don't care about creativity.

It means that you understand passions and egos and discussions and conversations and heated arguments and blown up talks and soft points.

"it" also means that you respect the process, the traffic department, conference reports, briefs and written directions. they are a pain but important and the lifeblood of an agency.

I didn't know I had all this in me, but my boss saw beyond and he hired me.

When we interview creatives I look for it. And I hope they have it.

It makes everything so much easier.

UPDATE:
I had been struggling to find an image that would compliment this post, but when I saw photographer Erin Hanson's site I knew I had found it.

This is a person who gets "it"

Design with purpose

2009-05-29T18:25:00.007-04:00

I'm so happy I'm curious.

Without this father learned legacy I would have never clicked the 7 links I needed to follow to end up here: AN INTERVIEW WITH RALPH EGGLESTON, Production designer on Pixar's WALL-E.

I didn't know of course that Ralph Eggleston joined Pixar Animation Studios in 1992 where he served as Art Director of their first feature film Toy Story. Afterwards, Eggleston helped develop the treatment and screenplay for Monster’s, Inc. and went on to write, design and direct their 2002 Academy Award®-winning animated short For the Birds. In the role of Production Designer he helped envision the undersea world of Finding Nemo and was Brad Bird’s choice for Art Director on his Academy Award®-winning animated film The Incredibles. Before coming to Pixar, Eggleston’s early work in animation included character animation for the Family Dog episode on the television series Amazing Stories.

Eggleston’s recent contribution for Pixar was as Production Designer for their cautionary tale Wall-E. Months after the film’s June 27th theatrical release, in October 2008 and January 2009, Eggleston discussed with me how he went about creating the futuristic environments for Wall-E.

The whole interview is worth your time considering he speaks about Pixar, the creative process and Wall•E. But these are some of my favorites.

In many ways Wall-E is a film about contrasts, not only from the point-of-view of its story, but also contrasts and contradictions within some of its design choices. The film opens with a portrait of a ruinous Earth inhabited by a diminutive robot. The second half of the film is contrasted by a high-end space resort full of overly-indulged humans.

As any of the great production designers would tell you, “Start from the character and then everything else will follow;” and it’s so true.

The script provided the most obvious jumping off points. Wall-E is a square whose only limitations beyond his imagination is what he can physically do. Eve was a circle (an oval, actually) who only did what she was programmed to do. Wall-E has a soul; Eve develops one.

Once the major design obstacles are laid out and agreed upon with the design staff and the director, I can jump back into the color script. Because we’ve done so much research and have begun understanding the world we’re creating, I can delegate to my crew a lot of what needs to get done. This allows me to get back in and focus on the emotional core of what we’re trying to say visually with color, value, and lighting, which usually takes me well into production.

Wall-E was the first time I’ve ever did it exclusively in Photoshop, digitally.

My creative process is “method painting.” I put myself in the place of the character and walk through the story. I’m trying to find colors that evoke an emotion based on everything I’ve absorbed up until that date, reading the story, hearing a pitch, research.

For inspiration for the movie we looked at the Mars Rover film and toured a cruise ship. We looked at Sea Lions for the blubber on the humans.

The key things to the design of Wall-E are his -- eyes, and the overall proportions of his body as it relates to his eyes. The first impression we wanted the audience to have is "child-like.” They were about to watch a whole feature starring a bucket of bolts; we needed to grab their hearts as fast as possible. We never wanted this to be a man in a robot outfit. I’ve seen many animated robots that were visually appealing, but I rarely believed in them, because they didn’t seem designed to do anything specific. Not so with Wall-E. He was designed by the Buy'N'Large Corporation to do one thing: crunch trash. Over the centuries of gathering trash, it seems he’s developed a soul and a personality.

Exactly, one of my goals on this film was to bleach out the whites. I wanted the audience to feel like they might need their sunglasses while they were watching the movie.

The three classes of the Axiom were delineated by shape, color, lighting, organization, and texture.

No, I don’t think so. I think it was the idea of the song and the contrast of the world you were seeing, the world of trash. So much of this film deals in contrasts and the song really grabs your attention quite well! Also, the director was in a High School production of Hello Dolly and had a soft spot in his heart for it. If anyone has video of this, I’d love to see it!

What advertising can learn from design.

2009-05-18T13:02:00.006-04:00

For my entire career I've been an advertising creative. Driven by the dogma of creativity: The idea above all.

The truth is, I'm not sure any more.

I've always known that the ideas of the advertising creative had a purpose, and that purpose, to sell a product, could be achieved with clever and innovative creativity.

But I've seen and experienced lots of situations where we place the idea above the consumer, because we believe that the idea might be more important than the purpose itself.

After watching this video about IDEO and their creative process, I have to admit that we need to reconsider the value of an idea that doesn't deliver on it's purpose.

While design creatives mainly place purpose on function (does it work?), advertising creatives place it on the form. (is it creative?)

And while design finds a beautiful form for its functionality. Advertising is constantly trying to find functionality to its form.

We need to remind ourselves that the ideas we come up with, are design to be understood to provoke an action. Does it work? needs to find an answer in an action from the consumer, not with an award in your shelve.

When you achieve both, you have something worth talking about.

Creativity works better when engaging the brain to fill in the blanks. A mistery of sorts where our mind is engaged to figure out the message.
A big difference from a puzzle, where our brain is left without enough relevant information to get to the message.

I think that this is a big difference to keep in mind and a key point that changes the purpose of our creativity.

Ask yourself: Does it work? often enough and you'll find the right purpose to your idea.

Lots and lots of creatives are already doing this, resulting in great work that deliver amazing results for the brand and the consumer.

I just think that we need more purpose driven creative. More design thinking and less creative for the sake of being creative ideas.

Prototype early, prototype a lot.

2009-05-12T11:56:00.012-04:00

I can't help but to feel envy while reading The Art of Innovation by Thomas Kelley.
In every page you can find a story that could change your work culture or your approach to brainstorming. But the part that I'm finding the most breakthrough and helpful is the prototyping chapter.

By executing a prototype you start the process of discovering and improving, eventually resulting in "making" your idea happen. These are some of the principles:

Prototyping is problem solving. It's a culture and a language. What counts is moving the ball forward, achieving some part of your goal.

Prototyping is a state of mind.
No matter your business, no matter your experience, odds are the water is rising, you don't have time, and if you don't act soon, the project will be underwater.

If you keep trying on new techniques you'd make dramatic improvements. Childlike curiosity and enthusiasm, a playful iterative approach to problems. Boyle's law: Never go to a meeting without a prototype.
Make mistakes - and discoveries - as soon as possible.

In engineering, if you have more variables than equations you normally have an unsolvable situation. But in the other hand, if you take some good guesses and fill in the blanks on some of them, you'll get some answers.

The birth of Amazon.com was lunched on the run. Prototyping is about acting before you've got the answers, about taking chances, stumbling a little but then making it right.

In 19914 Bezos scratch on a paper a list of things that he could sell online, got on a truck and headed west without a clear destination.

The enxt time you kick off a project, try tackling problems when you don't have the answers.

Once you start drawing or making thing, you open up new possibilities of discovery. Doodling, drawing, modeling, sketch ideas and make things, and you're likely yo encourage accidental discoveries.

A picture is worth a thousand words. And a prototype is worth a thousand pictures.

I believe that prototyping is perhaps the single most important concept to embrace to make things happen.

Take a step forward, see where you go. No matter if you fall, you'll be a step closer to your goal.

Request to Account Services: Be a Lando Carlissian

2009-04-30T12:14:00.007-04:00

I remember watching "The Empire Strikes Back" in 1980, fully engaged in the story and the characters. You know? Dreaming to be like Han Solo or Luke, living exciting adventures fighting storm troopers and Darth Vader.

I remember being afraid of Darth Vader and the dark side.

I can still recall the disappointment, betrayal really, that I felt when Lando Carlissian surprisingly turns our heroes into hands of the empire.

Being young dreamer I couldn't understand how he could betray their friendship for money. And why Han Solo could've trusted Landon, after everything they had gone through together. (remember Landon won the Millennium Falcon from Han in a game of sabacc)

Landon was supposed to be on the side of the Rebels, the good guys. And their friendship meant more even now that the universe was fighting for its freedom. So his betrayal to his friend and to the cause was devastating.

But perhaps one of the best moments of any Star Wars movie is when Landon changes his mind and he helps Chewbacca, Princess Leia Organa, R2-D2 and C-3PO escape. He later on assists Leia in rescuing a maimed Luke Skywalker from the underside of Cloud City.

Few things make us happier than an old friend who left us joining back the force.

Please, see the Carlissian within you and come back to our side. I know that playing both sides feels safe. But believe me, we want you back, fighting by our side, for the good of ideas and the future of marketing.

Join our Rebel Alliance. We need you.

The creativity behind company names.

2009-04-29T06:48:00.004-04:00

Naming a company is a fascinating exercise that requires vision, creativity and a sharp knowledge of vocabulary, right?

Hardly.

Most companies show a surprising lack of originality. And most fall under three well defined categories: Companies named after the owner's names. Comapny names formed following a combination of names. And third; acronyms created by the first letter of a long series of words.

Owner's names:

Adidas – from the name of the founder Adolf (Adi) Dassler
Boeing – named after founder William E. Boeing.
Black & Decker – named after founders S. Duncan Black and Alonzo G. Decker.
Bang & Olufsen – from the names of its founders, Peter Bang and Svend Olufsen, who met at a School of Engineering in Denmark.
Mattel – a portmanteau of the founders names Harold "Matt" Matson and Elliot Handler.
Taco Bell – named after founder Glen Bell

Combination of names or words:

Alfa Romeo – the company was originally known as ALFA, an acronym for Anonima Lombarda Fabbrica Automobili. When Nicola Romeo bought ALFA in 1915, his surname was appended.
3Com – Network technology producer; the three coms are computer, communication, and compatibility
Accenture – from "Accent on the future". The name Accenture was proposed by a company employee in Norway as part of an internal name finding process.
AOL – from America Online.
Cisco – short for San Francisco. It has also been suggested that it was "CIS-co": Computer Information Services was the department at Stanford University where the founders worked.
Coca-Cola – derived from the coca leaves and kola nuts used as flavoring. Coca-Cola creator John S. Pemberton changed the 'K' of kola to 'C' to make the name look better.
Duane Reade – named after Duane and Reade Streets in lower Manhattan, where the chain's first warehouse was located.
Skype – the original concept for the name was Sky-Peer-to-Peer, which morphed into Skyper, then Skype

Acronyms:

ASICS – an acronym for Anima Sana In Corpore Sano, which, translated from Latin, means "Healthy soul in a healthy body".
BMW – Bayerische Motoren Werke
CVS – Convenience Value Service.
GEICO – from Government Employees Insurance Company
IBM – named by Tom (Thomas John) Watson Sr, an ex-employee of National Cash Register (NCR Corporation). To one-up them in all respects, he called his company International Business Machines.
Qantas – from its original name, Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services.
WPP – Global advertising and marketing company. Originally called Wire and Plastic Products.

Random or/and Original:

Amazon.com – founder Jeff Bezos renamed the company Amazon (from the earlier name of Cadabra.com) after the world's most voluminous river, the Amazon. He saw the potential for a larger volume of sales in an online (as opposed to a bricks and mortar) bookstore. (Alternative: Amazon was chosen to cash in on the popularity of Yahoo, which listed entries alphabetically.)
Apple – For the favorite fruit of co-founder Steve Jobs and/or for the time he worked at an apple orchard, and to distance itself from the cold, unapproachable, complicated imagery created by other computer companies at the time – which had names such as IBM, DEC, Cincom and Tesseract
Google – an originally accidental misspelling of the word googol and settled upon because google.com was unregistered. Googol was proposed to reflect the company's mission to organize the immense amount of information available online.
Häagen-Dazs – Name was invented in 1961 by ice-cream makers Reuben and Rose Mattus of the Bronx "to convey an aura of the old-world traditions and craftsmanship. The name has no meaning.
Kodak – Both the Kodak camera and the name were the invention of founder George Eastman. The letter "K" was a favorite with Eastman; he felt it a strong and incisive letter. He tried out various combinations of words starting and ending with "K". He saw three advantages in the name. It had the merits of a trademark word, would not be mis-pronounced and the name did not resemble anything in the art. There is a misconception that the name was chosen because of its similarity to the sound produced by the shutter of the camera.
Lego – combination of the Danish "leg godt", which means to "play well".^[37] Lego also means "I put together" in Latin, but Lego Group claims this is only a coincidence and the etymology of the word is entirely Danish. Years before the little plastic brick was invented, Lego manufactured wooden toys.
Pepsi – named from the digestive enzyme pepsin.
Virgin – founder Richard Branson started a magazine called Student while still at school. In his autobiography, Losing My Virginity, Branson says that when they were starting a business to sell records by mail order, "one of the girls suggested: 'What about Virgin? We're complete virgins at business.'"

You can see a larger list in Wikipedia

The perfect brief.

2009-04-28T00:34:00.005-04:00

I've been thinking about writing this post for a long time. But it never quite materialize in my head. Its difficult because a brief is a interesting instrument. Most people agree on having one but few people know how build it properly.
The Planning Lab blog has put together a review of 4 briefs. From Saatchi and Saatchi, Falon, BBH and CP+B.

This is a summary of his comments:

Saatchi:
Pros: Good amount of elements. Requires structured thinking.

Cons: One simple proposition might not always be the solution.
Verdict: My favourite brief for standard projects. Gets the job done. 7/10.

Falon:
Pros: Openess allows for flexibility and creativity.

Cons: Quality will depend solely on who writes the brief.

Verdict: Will only be better than your standard brief template when there’s a sharp mind behind the pen, and it will not work when you have a hangover. 6.5/10

BBH
Pros: Focus on the task rather than the message allows for creative flexibility.

Cons: No focus on HOW the communication should be to be effective allows for free interpretation of how a problem can be solved.

Verdict: A modern creative brief template that covers most areas while still allowing for creativity, but not that inspiring to be honest. 8/10.

CP+B
Pros: Puts pressure on planner to deliver psychological insights and on CD to deliver a workable concept.

Cons: Less creative freedom for creative teams in terms of creating a big idea themselves.

Verdict: Phenomenal, I love it. 9.5/10.

8 things I wish I had known when I started in advertising.

2009-04-26T21:04:00.009-04:00

To save energy and to keep my mind.

I wish this post was about the corporate values my parents tough me:
Work hard, you'll get far.
Learn as much as you can, people will look up to you.
Managers know the way.
Your principles will prevail.

These are great lessons about the way the world is supposed to be. But in my experience the world rarely is the way we want it to be. The world is complex, office politics complicated and most people are just passing by.

This is why I want to share this list with you; The 8 things that would have made my life easier when I started as a creative in advertising.

You are a creative. You have the best job in the world. Brainstorm, read, share ideas and have fun. Do as little politics as possible. Believe me, there is always someone above you who can take of that.
The Account services dept. doesn't care about the creative idea. They care about the client, and unless the client cares about ideas and creativity, AS won't do it. Save yourself some disappointments and don't expect too much creative input from them.
Look at the big idea picture. I know you worked hard to come up with cool creative ideas, but don't spend too much time defending the small stuff. Keep you eye on the big idea. You'll be happier.
All agencies and all accounts are the same. Believe me, they are. Clients are demanding, the time line sucks, the brief lacks depth, the agency politics interfere with true innovation and the hard, talented workers hardly get the credit.
People is what makes the difference. When choosing an agency to work for, look for chemistry, soul mates and mentors. As a creative you need to feel confident to screw up, say the crazy thing and share your soul every day with the people you work with.
20% of the people do 80% of the work. Be part of the 20% no matter what. Because you are doing it for you, your own satisfaction, your career and your principles. Don't pay attention to the 80% downloading music, playing Foosball or watching youtube. Stay focus on your work.
Don't take it personal. Believe it or not, most times is not personal. Most times its mediocrity.
Know what drives each department. Account services=make client happy and timeline. Finance=money. Production=Budget and timeline. Traffic=timeline and paperwork. Planners= strategy and originality. Clients=their brand. When you know their interest, you know what to expect from each one.

I hope this list of insights helps you to be a happier creative, because at the end, that's all that matters.

The evil behind the Devil's advocate

2009-04-24T12:04:00.009-04:00

You can tell a lot about the first few pages of a book. (And I'm not going all Gladwell's blink here)

The first page of the new book I am reading part of my 52on52, (a self imposed challenge to read 52 books in 52 weeks) is The Ten faces of innovation by Thomas Kelley and Jonathan Littman.

This is a revealing book about innovation as a driver of a company culture and the power behind the implementation of ideas.

We've all been there. The pivotal meeting where you push forward a new idea or proposal you're passionate about. A fast paced discussion leads to an unwelling of support that seems about to reach critical mass. And then, in one disastrous moment, your hopes are dashed when someone weights in with those fateful words: "Let me just play Devil's Advocate for a minute"

Having invoke the awesome protective power of that seemingly innocuous phrase, the speaker now feels entirely free to take potshots at your idea, and does so with complete impunity. Because they are not really your harsher critic. They are essentially saying. "the Devil made me do it." They are removing themselves from the equation and sidestepping individual responsibility for the verbal attack. But before they're done, they have torched your fledgling concept.

In fact the Devil's advocate may be the biggest innovation killer in America today. What makes this negative persona so dangerous is that is such a subtle threat.

Everyday thousands of great new ideas concepts and plans are nipped in the bud by Devil's advocates.

Why is this persona so damming? Because the devil's Advocate encourages idea wreckers to assume the most negative possible perspective, one that sees only the downside, the problems, the disaster in waiting. Once these floodgates open, they can drown a new initiative in negativity.
Innovation is the lifeblood of all organizations and the Devil's Advocate is toxic to your cause.

The Devil's Advocate seldom takes a real stand, preferring to tear down an idea with clever criticism, and often exhibiting the mean-spirited negativity associated with that role.

The Devil's advocate may never go away, but on a good day a true culture of innovation can keep him in his place. Or tell him to go to hell.

I have the feeling that I'll be sharing lots of thoughts from this book.

Inside the creative mind: Garrick Hamm.

2009-04-22T09:44:00.008-04:00

A couple of weeks ago I started the series Inside the Creative Mind. A series of interviews from Lurzers Archive with the best and most brilliant creative people from all over the world. The second post is about Garrick Hamm, at the time, D&AD president and founder of Williams Murray Hamm, a design consultancy in London.

Design isn't about talented designers, is about a good, focused brief and how to set out your stall.

If you go into a meeting with ten concepts raging from evolution to revolution, guess what you'll be evolving brands for the rest of your career.

Most clients don't like "different" when its applied to their brand.

We dig around in the dirt like detectives until we discover a brand truth, then we ruthlessly magnify it.

The consumer can only read one message, in the hope of saying everything, nothing gets said. we edit and simplify, that's what we do best.

The formula of rolling out a brand across the globe, in all its fiscal efficiency, has made a lot of big brands even bigger, but very, very dull.

The designers I admire the most: Martin Lambie-Nairm, Saul Bass and Peter Saville.

To do something truly different, you need to look way beyond the genre you're designing in. Most of my ideas come from what surrounds me in life, not design annuals.

The truth is, all awards are a load of wank, until you win one.

I am very curious about Designers and their way of looking at the world, perceiving problems and how they solve them. And I think that he offers an intelligent set of principles to keep in mind. I really hope you enjoyed it.

Ji Lee. Happy creativity.

2009-04-19T07:37:00.003-04:00

Since we are talking about happiness and creativity, Ji Lee probably has the best creative job (that requires a title) in the world: Creative Director at Google Labs in NYC. He was a speaker at The 99 percent conference last week and gave us some of the reasons for his creative joy.

He talked about some of his independent guerrilla projects, which evolved from his frustration as a creative director at Saatchi & Saatchi, where his best ideas kept getting killed.

As a creative Ji Lee is an especially prolific idea generator that consistently executes ideas in remarkable ways. Like most creative minds, Lee has tons of ideas. However, when it comes to actualization, Lee actually makes ideas happen. Lee’s fundamental secret, as he describes it, is “an element of fun.”

For the WTC Logo Preservation Project, the ongoing game to find at least one logo every day kept the project alive. People would hear about the project and take part in the personal challenge as a sort of ongoing game. “Games,” Lee explains, “keep things simple and keep people engaged.” It turns out that games and some element of fun have fueled Lee’s loyalty in projects in and out of the office.

Lee uses games to foster learning and motivation. Throughout the day there is an ongoing exchange of links - little findings that stretch the mind in some way - that Lee’s team and students send him. From these, Lee culls certain links that are especially interesting and blasts them out to the whole group.

These are some of the quotes from his conference.

"Personal & Professional projects compliment each other."
"Sharing is Rewarding."
"I cannot depend on others to make things happen."
“When everything else falls apart in the workplace, I can always fall back on my personal project,”
“These were campaigns that became viral; I discovered that creating platforms for other artists is powerful!”

Check his portfolio at Please enjoy.

Please do.

Why some decisions are better made without thinking.

2009-04-18T13:15:00.007-04:00

I always get excited when I find scientific or psychological explanations to the everyday mysteries of the corporate world.

I enjoyed this article by Jonah Lehrer about choking under pressure. But what I really loved is what this means to us creatives as we try to do our job of generating ideas.

In his post Lehrer uses golf as a frame of reference and it short it goes like this:

When people are first learning how to putt, the activity can seem daunting. There are just so many things to think about.

But the mental exertion pays off, at least at first. The more time a novice golfer spend thinking about the putt, the more likely they are to hit the ball in the hole.

A little experience, however, changes everything. When experienced golfers are forced to think about their putts, they hit significantly worse shots. The part of their brain that monitors their behavior starts to interfere with decisions that are normally made without thinking. They begin second guessing the skills that they've honed through years of diligent practice.
So what should experienced golfers think about when hitting a putt? They should should focus on general aspects of their intended movement.

Or as we like to call it in advertising, "the bigger picture".

I think that this mental process speaks wonders about practicing and trust. When you have put enough time into practicing, you should stop thinking about the mechanics and trust your instincts.

I'm happy that now I have a psychological explanation, if only that meant that we would put it in practice.

It's all about optimism.

2009-04-14T16:33:00.007-04:00

I really like the blog by W+K London. Its called Welcome to optimism and it's a refreshing dose of smart writing and creative company culture.

I like this post about advice to creatives showing their book at an agency. I kind of feel like I should have written about this subject. Oh, well... it happens.

Here is the list:

1. Keep it quick. Creatives looking at your book have limited time so make the most of the opportunity. Keep storyboards and radio short and sweet.
2. A balanced book tends to have between 7-9 ad campaigns and a few other creative ideas.
3. Get to the bottom of a brand. Try to find out what makes them different to everyone else and what’s at the heart of their product and their company.
4. Demonstrate different tones of voice. How does this brand talk to people? What’s their personality?
5. Find different ways of talking to people. You don’t always need to conform to the conventional. Logos don’t have to sit in corners. Photos don’t have to be funny. And long copy is not scary.
6. Do more than just press ads. There are many other interesting ways of exploring an idea. What are the appropriate media for your idea? What medium is right for your audience? What will draw people in and surprise them? (TV, press, radio, online, viral, ambient, talking dogs…)
8. Expand at least one of your ideas into a big campaign and prove it’s not just a one off poster or TV ad.
9. We like to find out about you as well as seeing your book. Show us your matchbox collection, the short film that you’re making on the side or your greatest baking success. We see tons of ads, but sometimes it’s these little funny things that sums up who you are.
7. Listen and take notes too. You’d be surprised how many people don’t! Which is annoying to creatives who’ve given up their time to see you.
10. The advertising world is small so don’t piss people off or others might get to hear about it.
11. If you like a particular team, try to go back to them again with more work. Try to build a relationship. This will help you make more contacts, they may recommend you to their advertising friends and colleagues.

As a junior creative, when yuo don't know where you stand yet, and senior creatives give you their professional opinion, remember what they say in Hollywood; at the end of the day nobody knows anything.

The life cycle of a creative idea.

2009-04-14T11:37:00.009-04:00

I found an interesting analogy on The Pixar Touch by David A. Price that I think applies to creativity and how is handled by agencies and clients.

The cycle of a film is like that of fruits and vegetables. You try to plan it well in advance and you lay your seeds, put your fertilizer on, you water it, make sure it is nourished and all that. When it is ready to pick, it is ready to pick.

I think its brilliant because the creative process (or any other process for that matter) is this simple and this useful when you follow it.

Plan it well in advance means understanding that creativity (like fruit and vegetables) follows a process that takes time and doesn't happen overnight.

Laying the seed is about picking the raw materials with the best quality. This is about the hiring of the right creative minds, building the right team, selecting the type of "fruit" you will be picking up later on. You can't plant a potato and expect an onion.

Put your fertilizer on. Without nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium the plant simply cannot grow because it cannot make the pieces it needs. The chemicals elements of the creative mind are a defined and simple goal, confidence, freedom to explore and collaboration.

Water it, make sure it is nourished and all that. In one word: love. Achieving a balance of love is important though. Just like with water, too much or to little could ruin the outcome. It's love given to small ideas and big ones, for ugly ones and cute ones. Love as in providing room for an idea to grow. And believe me, is all about love.

When it is ready to pick, it is ready to pick. If you have done everything right, the weather helped, the soil was good and you got lucky, you can go and pick the idea up. Its amazing to me how many people inside the business think that creativity is just the action of going to the field and picking up ideas.

Every creative enterprise goes through this cycle. If you respect it and follow it, you'll pick up great fruits and vegetables.

What bacteria can teach the next creative generation

2009-04-13T12:12:00.006-04:00

TED is full of wisdom. No matter who talks, about what subject, sharing whatever type of knowledge. One always walks away improved.

Watching this passionate and useful presentation by Bonnie Bassler I thought about creativity and the creative professional.

The market is shaping new roles and new disciplines, and the marketing creative is not inmune to those changes.

Bacteria is kind of a superhero. Powerful and always present, and I think that we can learn a little bit from bacteria when thinking of the super creative of tomorrow.

Its all about DNA. Anybody can be creative. I believe that to heart. But not everybody can deal with tight deadlines, be creative on demand and be conceptual with restrictions. Is more about who you are and whether or not is in your DNA.
Bacteria do many things. Mostly good and some bad. Creatives create 30" TV ads, but that's just a small % of your talents. Creative will do many creative things.
Bacteria turn on group behavior. They talk to each other, are inclusive and cooperate. The creative lone rider is, I think, no longer working.
Bacteria is Multi-lingual. Creatives need to speak different languages to collaborate with multiple disciplines: Planners, engineers, web designers, art directors, product developers, user experience designers, clients...
Bacteria develop defenses. I think that adapting is essential for creatives. New clients, new brands, new partners, new boss, new rules, new playground. But same game: generate ideas with value.
Bacteria do things together because it makes a difference. They have collective behavior and carry out tasks that they could never accomplish if they simply acted as individuals.
There is chemistry between bacteria. At the end of the day, without chemistry bacteria wouldn't accomplish any of the things its supposed to accomplish.

Perhaps creatives could become the new bacteria of the marketing industry. Wouldn't that be sick!

The ideal candidate

2009-04-12T20:30:00.006-04:00

The advertising industry has one of the highest turnovers in the professional world.
It's not surprising though.
This fast paced world of high emotions and big egos is draining. Most people I've worked with are always looking for the next opportunity, a deserving promotion and a bigger check.

Now we are facing a delicate situation because of the economy downturn and the next opportunity might appear sooner than expected.

That's why I thought about sharing what makes the ideal creative candidate as well as the ideal boss (I don't think that we should look up to for the traditional agency anymore. As a matter of fact, the most creative work, with the most challenging briefs and most rewarding accounts might be in digital agencies, design studios and small creative boutiques)

The Ideal Candidate

Your talent can't be restrained. No TV? No Print? You did coasters. You edited old Nike commercials into a 30".
You always offer solutions. Your positive opinion is important. Add value.
You are interesting. Your creativity reaches beyond marketing and advertising.
You are curious. you want to know why?
You have a reason. Aimless creativity is the worst kind in this business. In art is cool though.
You flirt with strategy. Your best friend is a planner. Even better, you are married to one.
You explore everywhere because you know that ideas are found.
You know that all this is just a big dance, and you are a good dancer.
You stay ahead of me. Making yourself essential for me to stay ahead.
You push forward. And you know when to stop pushing.

The ideal boss. (A human angle from the great Creative Director)

Your ideal boss is not cynical. Having seen it all doesn't mean hating it all.
Your ideal boss still cares. Because if the boss doesn't care, who cares?
Your ideal boss is still learning.
Your ideal boss is ahead of you. Making himself essential for you to stay ahead.
Your ideal boss writes a blog. if you have to ask read the previous point.
Your ideal boss doesn't discuss politics. That's why he is the boss.
Your ideal boss listens.
Your ideal boss pushes you. And knows when to ease the push.
Your ideal boss works with you. It takes a team.

If you find the right boss, take the job. Forget the salary if you can. The reward will pay itself back to you a hundred times more valuable than money.

I know is hard, but talent survives. It always does. Don't settle. Keep on learning. One day it all will make sense. I promise you that.

The ideal candidate is optimistic.

Post inspired by summation

Inside the creative mind: Craig Davis

2009-04-07T15:47:00.010-04:00

Wouldn't it be great if we could get advise from the best creative minds in the world?
Inside the creative mind is a series of posts bringing you exactly that through Luzer's Int Archive which is a magazine that showcases outstanding print, Posters and TV advertising from all over the world.

Every issue is anxiously awaited at agencies because its pages are an incredible source of inspiration for creatives worldwide.

In each issue they interview someone who has managed to put together a successful career in the creative arena. Not an easy accomplishment. That's why I decided to share with you a summary of some of these interviews.

The first one is with Craig Davis who at the time of the interview was Regional ECD in Asia and Africa, but today is JWT chief creative director Worldwide (those titles keep getting longer)
I decided to go with this as the first of the series because I happen to believe that what he says is key for successful agencies, the essence of innovation and the true job of a good creative director.

The role of an ECD? Find people who can deliver world-class work. Helping them do it, developing people and helping client embrace that kind of thinking. Basically, getting good ideas and making them happen.

A lot of people are capable of finding strong ideas. The tricky thing is to make them happen. I think that most agencies are the same, The key difference between a greta agency and an ordinary one is that the great agency is much more successful in getting interesting thinking into the marketplace.

I think my job is to simplify things. I think that what we do should be pretty simple but it's just made complicated. I try to simplify expectations, and try to simplify briefs and simply the idea.

Perspective is worth up 10 IQ points.I think that the best solutions are often discovered by people who are not up to their neck in the problem.

(Agencies) We are in a problem solving business.

I'm not a big fan of processes. Repetition breeds similar outcomes. changes will invariably lead to fresher, more interesting solutions.

(creatives) You need to be hungry for information. You need to collect sources of inspiration and ideas from all over the place.

I think more often it's people who are willing to explore and who can throw a lot of ideas out, and can later on come back and sift through them... that's interesting... To me that's the way it works. I think that you've got to sweat out a hundred ideas and if you are lucky, two or three can be really cool.

That's another thong I do, encourage people to think past the obvious, because the obvious is normally pretty dull stuff.

In this business you've got to enjoy thinking. You've got to enjoy the exloring part.

I think people think that they are born with 100 ideas, so they keep those 100 ieas really close to them. Because they have a career ahead of them. But I think that there are a million ideas out there running around all the time.

I think that tehre is a growing number of clients either frustrated with that (tradictional agency) process or with the outcome of that process. I think that there are lot of smart clients who see that the value is in the idea, the value is in the solution.

The competition to a client is not the other people who produce the same kind of products or provide the same type of service, the competition is music videos, films, television, news, newspaper content, etc. You have to give people surprise or delight. You have to touch them in some way.

I believe he is one of the great ones of our generation. I love his approach and his philosophy.
Look at the work of JWT recently and you'll notice his influence.

I hope you enjoyed it. There many more coming up. Stay tune.

Absolut creative

2009-04-05T12:22:00.006-04:00

The Absolut Vodka print creative (developed by TBWA ad agency in New York) is another brilliant campaign that has influenced my career and the career of millions of creatives around the world.

Last week I focused on Nike as an example of brand and agency producing some of the best creativity of the last 20 years. Nike and its "Just do it" campaign is a complex combination of clever insights, talented creatives, brilliant execution and bold decision making.

A good example of this complexity is that although everybody understood "Just do it" very well, very few people besides W+K were capable of delivering a comemrcial with the right "Just do it" feeling.

With Absolut we find a different case of creative brilliance.

Everybody could and probably did create an Absolut print ad. (this fact was embraced by the agency and resulted in the first global collaboration between artists from all fields and a brand to create advertising)

All you needed was a bottle and your own interpretation of the campaign. This attribute (where everybody can contribute to the campaign with a valid idea is perceived in creative departments as a sign of having a good concept.

This "ease of creativity" is rare in advertising, and in the case of Absolut (and probably MasterCard, which will be subject of a future post) is one of the main reasons for its popularity: Everybody understood the creative idea.

The brief of the campaign wasn't promising:

Adman Geoff Hays of the TBWA ad agency in New York was asked to come up with a campaign for Absolut Vodka. The Stockholm team had taken great care to outline a campaign for the new product based on very specific guidelines - all advertising should center around the bottle, the product should not be identified with any particular lifestyle and the approach should have a timeless yet contemporary feel to it.

Its amazing how much creativity could be born from from such uncreative set up.

But it is a good remainder of the magic of the creative process and the creative idea (TBWA was and stil is one of the most creatives and innovatives agencies in the world. And I don't believe in accidents)

Keep this message from the brand in mind:

Creativity is that simple surprise and delight of seeing familiar things in a new way. From the very beginning, when Absolut vodka was first exported, we decided to be different - to surprise and delight.

Why is this important? Because all the decisions made by the Absolut brand were measure against this strategic vision.

Be bold. In 1980 you couldn't find many alcohol brands that had such a conceptual message. It was one of the first campaigns that really said more about the consumer than about the product itself. In the 80"s!!! You wanted to be seen with that brand, wear it, be associated with it. Absolut said a lot about you; clever, playful, classy, sensitive... creative. (is it surprising that the same agency creates the advertising for Apple?)

Make the product the hero. Many times the creative team forgets that the whole purpuse of the ad, is to seel the product. But don't be too harsh on us. Its part of the creative exploration and the process of landing on the right idea. I always say that the product has to be the center of the drama. In this case the Absolut bottle is the main character, and the name Absolut the story. what else could a client ask for?

Surprise and delight. I remember being attracted to the absolut campaign long before getting my first job as a creative in advertising. I found them... surprising. I remember getting winter gloves with a copy of the New Yorker in 1993 "Absolut Warmth". Following their strategy, to surprise and delight Absolut had to think outside the conventional print ad, within the limitations of the print ad world. I can ventured to say that without that brand vision, the creative team would have never searched for alternative ways of delivering the campaign in the way they did.

Ready, set, go! Once you realize you have something big, make it huge. I'm looking at the Absolute Gallery and it is amazing to see the unbelievable amount of ads they created. There are collections about fashion, painters, Hollywood, cartoon artists, photographers, Album covers, Latin American cities, Chefs, designers, flavors, zodiac, literature and even the 7 deadly sins. Everybody in any field of creativity wanted to do an ad for Absolut Vodka.

I hope you like this campaign as much as I do. It offers great lessons about creativity and the innovation process.
But it's also consistent with some of the lessons from the Nike campaign:
Be bold.
Never be satisfied.
Try everything, fail, learn and keep on trying.

Absolut is to date one of only three brands inducted into the American Marketing Association's Hall of Fame. The other two are Coca-Cola and Nike.

One hand. No car.

2009-04-02T09:58:00.005-04:00

Emotional vs functional. We talk about their difference so many times. Yet, their purpose and effectiveness is still a mystery in many marketing departments and advertising agencies.

This ad for BMW Spain by SCPF Barcelona is emotional.

We don't see the car. We don't hear any attributes about the engine or the model or the year or any special end-of-year deals.

We hear the wind, we hear some music and we are asked: Do you like to drive?

Why is this building the brand?

Because by bringing us into a world of emotions: The hand coming out of the window, our memories of childhood, fun for the sake of fun, the state of peace... the pleasure of driving. BMW is now associated with those emotions inside our brain, in our hearts.

Do you like to drive? BMW does too.

That's branding, and that's long lasting, solid, unique and difficult to forget.

That's why branding is hard to do and that's why this ad does it so well.

The (lost?) art of giving feedback

2009-03-27T11:13:00.005-04:00

As a creative, feedback is your fuel. Or your stake in the heart or your wings, or a dead end or an opening in the sky. People telling you their "feedback" about ideas is the currency of our job.

We receive feedback from our team, our creative director, other creatives, account services, planners, lower level clients, higher level clients, girl friends and boy friends. Everybody is ready and willing to provide feedback. Unfortunately very few times we received the gift of good feedback.

Feedback or the art of processing, analyzing and providing an evaluative response is a misunderstood act at best and a power seeking action at worst.

But it shouldn't be so hard. It's a simple exercise if we understand its purpose and follow a few simple rukes.

1. No one cares about your opinion. As Seth Godin says:

I don't want to know how you feel, nor do I care if you would buy it, recommend it, or use it. You are not my market. You are not my focus group. What I want instead of your opinion is your analysis.

Analysis being the most important word in his explanation.

Analysis is a lot harder than opinion because everyone is entitled to his or her own taste (regardless of how skewed it might be). A faulty analysis, however, is easy to dismantle.

The only people entitled to give feedback based just on their opinion are the real kick ass, ninjas of creativity, 10-Lions-on-shelf creatives directors. Because sometimes all the years of experience and all your knowledge and all the power of your creative mind can't even help you to see what's missing in an idea, but your gut tells you that something is missing. But notice that this amendment applies to 30 people in the entire world. The rest of us mortals need to bring more to the feedback table than just our opinion. Which leads to the second point.

2. Say the right thing at the right time. Also from Godin:

try to figure out what sort of feedback will have the most positive effect on the final outcome, and contribute it now.

I've seen way too many times how good ideas with lots of potential are dismissed because negative comments are made before all angles have been explored.
The creative process has stages because ideas have a life cycle. Knowing that cycle is essential for people to understand what to expect at different times of the process.

2. The bigger the power the bigger the responsibility.
Creative ideas are easy to pick on. Its easy to look at what's missing, to search for weaknesses, to see the holes. Its easy believe me. Everybody can tell you, based on their opinion, that anything could be better or different. The harder thing to do is to add value to the idea.
The way I see it, either way you choose, you are empowered to kill or to give life.
And that's a lot of power resting on a few words.
And a big responsibility.

4. I link to link to link.
Humans imitate. That's what is happening in the deeper layers or our brain. When we see someone building on an idea, we imitate that behavior. Soon, an entire table is adding and providing value. Next thing you know, the Ipod or Twitter or RED is born.
People are attracted to creativity. There is something about being part of something magical like ideas and innovation.
I think this is the reason you tend to find creative people in groups. Very few times you'll see creativity happening in isolation.

5. Try on my shoes.
To really help me with your feedback you need to see thing from my side. Understand my goals and help me reach them.
Probably this is the number one reason why the feedback creatives receive form other departments is so far away from what we are looking for or need.
Other departments have different goals. Dave Trott talks about it in his blog.
I believe that agencies where everybody knows the ultimate goal, work better, communicate better and do better work.
When it comes to creative feedback, the reference should be creativity and the goal to make the idea better and more creative.

Ultimately, good, relevant, value adding feedback is not something that everybody can master. Mainly because to provide a good analysis, you need to do a good internal analysis and not everybody spends the time nor everybody is qualify to do it.

One final point that is important in my opinion is that when looking for the right feedback, one needs to ask the right people. Find the people who cares and understands and you'll receive good feedback.

Feedback is important to grow, please share yours with me. I'll appreciate it very much.

Brand Obama. The summary.

2009-03-26T10:32:00.007-04:00

I recently came across MAD (through @pakkoidea) a site by TBWA\ Europe. They have very interesting posts and a different and refreshing point of view.

That's why I thought that It would be good to share their comments on the Obama campaign. Mainly because I agree with them, but also because I've been looking for a good summary of takeaways and I believe this is one of the best.

I'm writing just the highlights, please visit their site for the whole article. It's worth it.

1. LEAD WITH HUMILITY AND ALWAYS STAY COOL

Obama exemplified a new way of thinking that meets the demands of leadership in a complex world: “Adaptive Leadership“. While a visionary puts forth a specific plan to be implemented, an adaptive leader works with constituents to devise one together. The goal is to get your employees to tell you how they would improve your company. The less constrained they feel, the more you’re going to learn and the more your organization will benefit.

2. BE A GAME CHANGER AND PLAY BY YOUR OWN RULES

To grow, you have to invent a new game and beat them at that, too. Change the rules of the game where you can.

Obama didn’t accept any campaign contributions from large companies or lobbyists. He tapped the power of the small time donor through the Internet and went on to win the nomination. His fund raising methods and strategy of foregoing government funding have changed the future of American electoral campaigns.

Brilliant marketers don’t just fight for a bigger share of the pie. They expand the pie by bringing new consumers into the market.

3. CARVE OUT AN AUTHENTIC & RELEVANT POSITIONING AND STICK TO IT

Obama made and delivered a simple, consistent and aspirational promise: “change”. He coupled that with an empowering call to action, “yes we can.” By appealing to both the rational desire for change and the emotional need for hope, Obama presented his brand as a movement.

For Obama, however, “change” was more than a political slogan. He could not have been elected if he had not embraced and embodied the change he promised. Too many companies lurch from one strategy to the next, one consulting fad to another, because, deep down, their leaders don’t really understand what makes them different, better, and special. When you understand that, it gives you the confidence to stick to your positioning and strategy.

4. KEEP IT SIMPLE AND STAY POSITIVE:

Obama’s team understood that his message needed to cut through the clutter. “Keep it simple ” is a cliché, but it works. If you ask any Obama supporter to define what Obama stands for, you will always get the same answer: “hope and change“.

Obama understood that politics was about more than just rational argument, it was about emotional connection. People want to be inspired.

Obama always stayed positive, no matter the twists, turns, and psychodramas from the other candidates or the media. In that way, he stayed above his rivals.

5. THINK AND WORK BOTTOM-UP:

Obama wanted to make sure that his campaign was consistent with his philosophy of “ground up” rather than “top down”. When he was a political organizer, Obama had seen how a grassroots campaign could succeed. The internet allowed him to form an electronic grassroots, or netroots. He reached millions, built a formidable war chest and mobilized a dedicated army of supporters.

Online communities have become the place where billions of people of every age, social rank, and ethnicity hang out, where decisions are made about what to think, where to go and what to buy. The Obama brand was the creation of the community rather than of media or advertising.

6. MASTER MEDIA AND EMBRACE TECHNOLOGY:

Obama was the digital candidate while McCain was the analog candidate.

BarackObama.com beat the 24-hour media cycle with dynamic updates and offered a digital toolbox that allowed users to get involved. But the social media strategy of the Obama camp extended far beyond his site. His image and messages were everywhere on the web. His team not only created content for Web 2.0 sites, they also designed it to suit each individual site and its viewers.

Email marketing was fully integrated with these tools. “Be the first to know” was the email campaign theme, asking voters to sign up for exclusive email and mobile alerts. Obama‘s iPhone application transformed the phone into a campaign instrument to mobilize and inform supporters. Real time campaign updates on twitter made Obama the most followed person on this ever-growing microblogging service.

On YouTube, Obama staff constantly put up hundreds of cheaply and rapidly produced videos. Footage of events was edited from multiple cameras and uploaded, often only 20 minutes later. Toward the end of the campaign, they were being uploaded at a rate of 20 or more a day. Obama’s YouTube channel became a controlled media outlet. And he continues to use YouTube for his weekly addresses – a radical departure from Bush’s weekly radio address.

His message also appeared on billboards in 18 online video games, driving traffic to VoteForChange.com.

In the end, Obama’s familiarity with the most advanced new media technologies provided a huge advantage over his opponents.

7. FOSTER CO-CREATION AND GIVE UP SOME CONTROL:

Obama enjoyed a “co-creation” advantage – the passionate support of creative people. Their independent viral marketing impact was phenomenal. It’s hard to think of a political candidate who has inspired so much creativity.

The user-generated viral video “I got crush on Obama”, the “Yes We Can“ music video was conceived by Black Eyed Peas front man will.i.am and director Jesse Dylan.

Another prominent example of co-creation was the limited-edition print created by Los Angeles graphic designer Shephard Fairey. He used the proceeds from sales to finance a guerilla poster campaign. In addition to popping up on many streets, the image made its way onto bumper stickers, T-shirts and so on.

8. USE BIG MEDIA WHEN YOU HAVE BIG TASKS:

For all his mastery of new media, Obama also used also the old-fashioned route to the White House: he out-spent McCain 3-to-1 on TV advertising.

One week prior to Election Day, Obama turned up the heat with a prime-time 30-minute infomercial shown across most major TV networks. The half-hour simulcast was an extraordinary climax to his media blitz. Channel flippers had a hard time avoiding the ad because it was seemingly everywhere.

9. CREATE A SEAMLESS BRAND IDENTITY BUT LET IT BE FLEXIBLE AND ADOPTABLE:

The primary brief given to the design agency behind Obama’s brand identity was to create something different. The designers (who had never worked on a political campaign before) were informed and inspired by Obama’s two books, as no identity can work if it does not stand for something real.

Instead of taking a closed approach to his brand identity, the Obama campaign let people remix the brand for their own uses. With the mark being easy to modify, it was an invitation for social interaction. A good reminder for marketers that, as with any mark, meaning and impact comes from what people bring to it.

10. FAVOR CONSTANT CHANGE OVER CONSERVATISM:

Obama ended his last speech before the election by saying: “Let’s go change the world.” Obama’s change-driven election is a reminder that the status quo is a dangerous place.

The biggest risk is to take no risks – especially now. Business leaders can’t expect break-through results by following conventions. In an age of me-too products, where the consumer is in control, keeping up with the competition is no longer a winning strategy. Winning companies don’t just embrace change—they are the change.

Brilliant points.

• Be an inclusive leader • don't let the rules stop you • choose a strategy and stick to it • inspire, • use the right technology for the right medium • foster co-creation • use big media for big tasks • make your brand custumoziable and • be the force behind change.

My main "top-of-the-soap-box" message is that running an Obama-like organization or delivering Nike-like advertising are choices we can make. They are available to us. We just need to make the decision, get the right people in place and do it.

Just talking about it won't turn us into Obama or Nike.

Be like Nike

2009-03-25T14:55:00.009-04:00

My first memory as a copywriter is about a Nike commercial. Back in 1996 I didn’t think as a creative. I was just a consumer. A regular guy who played soccer, and had a fascination with sports. All sports.

The Nike commercials were cool. The music, the athletes, what they said and how they said it. But they were true too. There was always something about the Nike spots that reached inside of me and touched my two hearts; the athlete one and the human heart. Later on I learned that this is called an insight. And it is about the most important thing in advertising next to a creative idea.

I just finished watching more than 500 commercials by Nike.

I did it online of course. You can find anything online.
It was a pleasure so don’t feel bad for me. I did it because I wanted to watch and take note of what makes Nike the best brand in the history of creative advertising.
Everybody wants to be like Nike. Everybody wants its creativity. Nike’s creative power and glamour are legendary.
But let’s go back to 1989 when Nike was just a brand. Just another brand of sport shoes, shorts and shirts facing some interesting decisions.

CONSISTENCY.
For the last 20 years Nike has stubbornly told us that we can be anything we want as long as we just try and do it. 20 years is a long time. How many brands do you know that have maintained their message intact for 5 years? 10 years?

EMOTIONAL.
While many brands were focusing on rational RTB’s, Nike went emotional. Emotional as in all range of emotions. Not tearfully emotional but insightfully emotional. Many brands believe that emotional is one feeling. When in fact, emotional refers to anything that makes you feel emotions. (see next point)

SMART/VISIONARIES/DARING (you choose)
Back in 1989 few brands would’ve used an unknown black director (Spike Lee) playing a supporting character (Mars) from his first movie (she’s gotta have it) making him the start of the commercial over Michael Jordan? Nike connected with the black urban youth before they were a profitable target. And the rest is history. The thing is, they have been taking risks for so long that now risky looks safe. Yet, how many brands would have done the commercial “I’m not a role model” by Barkley? Or a commercial in Spanish about Dominican ball players in 1993? Or considered Jump rope a sport? Or made a commercial in 1995 about allowing girls to play sports? Or a commercial showing a soccer team of devils? Or a commercial in 1997 defending the rights of skateboarders? Or a commercial showing in detail the end of the world for Y2K?

JUST DO IT.
Its painful to look at Nike’s reel as a creative. They have done it ALL. Leaving a small room for originality left. They have done nostalgic, humor, no humor, celebrities, unknowns, rising stars, falling stars, social activism, color, Black and White, washed out, graphics, cartoons, animation (at least 15 different types) “find the ending online”, CGI, puppets, animals, kids, fast editing, slow motion, opportunistic, video game characters, rap, musicals, miniseries, about winning, about losing, horror, nudity, suspense, comedy, romance, science fiction, documentaries, testimonials, claymation, graffiti, stick figures, tributes, salutes, condemnation, ads with two logos, with no logo, long copy, short copy, no copy, retro, modern, futuristic, viral, … they have tried it absolutely everything. I think because they understood that as a brand, you always need to be ahead of the curve to be relevant to consumers. I believe this applies to every brand.

TALENT.
Not just the quality of the creatives, producers and planners. But the directors, music companies and editing houses working on their ideas. When Pytka did Nike in the late 80’s he already was famous, ok. But look at this list:
David Fincher in 92, Dominic sena 91, Alex Proyas 91, Tony kaye 93, Spike Jonze 95, Samuel bayer 95, Tarsem 96, Jonathan Glazer 96, Michale Gondry 97, Bryan Buckley 97, Noam Murro 98, Jon Woo 98, Jhoan Kamitz 98, Kinka Usher 98, Alfonso Cuaron 98.
And to me the question isn’t so much about who wanted to work with Nike by 98, but the fact that Nike selected this directors before they became household names.

MUSIC.
The amazing thing again is that many, many brands could have done it too. But only Nike did it. And they did it right. They knew the important role of music in people’s lives. And they use music brilliantly. From scores of music to enhance emotions to well know songs from pop culture.

INSIGHTS.
In my opinion, this is the most important reason for Nike’s success.
They know athletes. But they also know the mind of the average runner, the average kid, the average woman, the average football fan, the average injured player and healing NYC marathon runner. I’m a runner, a soccer player, a triathlete, a sports viewer, a fan, a father, a man and a human. They have tap on to every layer that makes me, me.
As a runner I have dreamed of running on the beach to Chariots of fire in my head. We runners go out running and say a casual hello to the fellow runner. As a soccer player I have appreciated the goals I scored but always remember the ones I missed. As a fan I have admired and idolized athletes. I have seen Jordan play and believe that he was god dressed as a basketball player. I believe Brazilian players can have fun anywhere as long as they have a ball at their feet. I used to skateboard too and I appreciate that a brand would take a stand against “discrimination”. As much as I respect paying a deserved tribute to Jackie Robinson. Sports are fun, like playing chairs pretty much. I have imagined being Tiger woods, and Agassi and Ronaldo and Ronaldinho. I used to believe in Marion and Alex and Michael and Lance. I’m not a woman but Janet Champ made me feel like one with her copy. I also wish there was a secret tournament where all my favorite soccer stars play elimination games. But most importantly, Nike made me believe that I could achieve my dreams, as long as I got my shoes on and play.
Nike has been using insight focused advertising long before planners became the agency’s front face they are today.

Be consistent, be bold, pay attention, try anything and stay ahead, work with the best talent, use music and truthfully show the consumer that they are the inspiration of it all.

I believe that this decisions could have been made by any brand. And I guess this is where every body who dismisses Nike advertising is right; Not all brands are like Nike.

I believe, not as an athlete but as a creative, that all it takes to head on the direction of becoming Nike is to just do it.

Planners are the keymasters

2009-03-23T21:32:00.013-04:00

If you follow my blog thinking alaud you know I have two blogging passions; Dave Trott and Seth Godin. They are both brilliant, at least to me, because they both offer a unique point of view that I happen to share. But mostly because they manage to say interesting things post after post after post.
Now, sometimes, just a few times, I find myself in a different place on the discussion spectrum.

In this case is regarding planners and creatives and this time is mostly with Dave Trott.

In a recent post at the Brand Republic blog Dave Trott describes planners this way:

Planning basically wants to protect the brand. Their job is strategy, to have a plan of where everything’s going. And consumer feedback, making sure what’s being done works with the people who’ll be parting with the cash.

and he goes on to describe creatives this way:

Creative basically wants to win awards. They want to do ads that get as much publicity as possible. Because 90% of advertising doesn’t get noticed and, if no one notices the ads, they can’t possibly work.

His main point is that creatives and planners are on the same side but with different priorities. And I disagree with him.

It just so happens that today Leon, a planner at Jung Von Matt in Stockholm had a post on his blog titled: Advice for the next generation Planner
Leon posts the advice of three brilliant planners that could be summarize in this points:

Be curious and learn as much as you can
Think about how you help and solve the brand problems. Beyond the TV ad and the billboard headline.
Learn to get organizations to do stuff.
Pay attention to what works and what doesn't.

Read the blog because it is really much more than those bullet points and the planners are icons of the industry.

The thing is, as good advise as this can be for a young planner. And as good as Dave's point of view could be based on his many years of experience. I think that planners play the most important role inside an agency. And this is why their role has become more and more relevant and important in the modern marketing world.

In my opinion planners are in charge of finding the magic. What makes this product unique? what can be said about it that could engage the target? what ammunition could the creatives use to deliver stand out creative?

I'm not saying is easy, because it isn't. But being curious and knowing how to make an organization tickle is not enough. Not today, not with the complexity of today's consumer and not with so many similar choices in the market.

Planners insights are the master key that opens the mystery door to every brief. Without them, the creative team is left to try every key on every door. Sometimes we get lucky. Most times we spend a lot of time opening doors to a brick wall.

Planners need to see beyond the matrix. Planners have to see the code that is the matrix and make sense of it.
Planners need to deliver hypothesis.
Planners need to play creative chess and think three plays ahead.
Planners need to speak consumer and translate it into opportunities.
Planners need to stand out against confusion. Creative have played the bad guys for too long.
Planners need to remind us of the purpose.
Planners need to be independent. But lean on the side of ideas.

And I guess that this is the point of disagreement with Dave. The priority of the planners and the creatives should be the same; the idea. Nothing more and nothing less.
If planners then want to learn and be curious and tickle me to follow them, I'm cool with that. But first give me the master keys.

One year from now?

2009-03-16T15:00:00.014-04:00

The advertising world is changing. In fact, this business is always changing. But today the changes seem to be happening faster and with deeper and more significant repercussions.

The media outlets are redefined as new ones become more relevant to connect with a more dynamic and complex consumer.
Therefore the consumer is playing now a more important role in the marketing equation.
Turning marketing plans into experience driven initiatives.
Changing the way creative departments are built and organized.
Digital is the new innovative branch of advertising.
Social media is the new golden child of marketing.
New agencies are being established as the true leaders of innovation in advertising.
Lessons that looked rock solid about the internet 2.0 just one year ago, are being challenged today by new discoveries and new players (twitter).
New brands are on top of the charts of consumer's trust, as classic brands struggle to sync with customers.

With so many exciting changes and adjustments happening in the marketing world, some terms are becoming part of our vocabulary that perhaps are leading to misinterpretation.

Participation vs Collaboration.
The single most important factor that enables the changes and wonders happening today in the internet is collaboration.
Collaboration is the element that has allowed human kind to get to where we are today. It's the basis of our evolutionary dominance and the reason for our success as species.
In marketing, brands are looking for the collaboration of consumers to engage with their brands initiatives. (Nike +) But its turning more difficult than expected to make a significant transfer from participation with a brand into collaboration to build a brand.
And I think that this is because brands are still thinking about all this in the wrong terms. Thinking too much about themselves and too little about us, the consumer.

Social People vs Social Media.
We are a social species. We have been social for thousands of years. And the media has always been a social medium.
Now, the brands are coming to where consumers are, beyond the obvious and not always welcome intimacy of our home.
Brands today are becoming more human, talking more plain, and behaving more like a good neighbor.
The media is not social, the consumer is social. And that should be the starting point of branding efforts and marketing programs.

Innovation vs Creativity.
Creativity is the creation of ideas that stand out, that are different.
It is true that we have gotten careless using this term. And today, creative is a term used by any agency, any CEO as a banner displayed to lure clients.
The truth is being creative is no longer enough.
The new person in charge of generating concepts and ideas won't be a person, but a group of people with different knowledge and skills. All of them, Planners, creatives, brand executives, content developers or Media directors will be part of an innovation process, that is bigger than them, but built by them.
Innovation will take over as the driving force of an agency, small or big, to create experiences and build brands with a complex multi-channel net that delivers customized experiences to groups where people with similar interest gather.
Prima dona creatives with the ability to create one amazing idea for the TV or print will give way to humble innovators with the ability to collaborate with brilliant people from different fields.

That's how it looks from here.

what do you think?

The great Creative Director.

2009-03-12T22:16:00.005-04:00

“What are the qualities of a great creative director?” That’s the question that Felix at the Denver egoist asks (himself and us)

I thought that this was a very relevant topic. I agree with Felix on the crucial role that Creative directors play. So here it's the list:

The creative director is the last line of defense.
When no one else in the creative department knows where to take a job, or how to crack a brief, the CD can do it. They have the experience, the savvy and the ability to produce the work when no one else can.
The creative director doesn’t play politics with creatives.
Creative directors should shield the creative department from all of the unnecessary crap and make sure that the teams focus on the work.
The creative director gives specific feedback.
A good creative director gives specific feedback, not vague platitudes. Their direction will be considered, constructive, smart and intelligible.
The creative director is well-versed in all crafts.
although they are experts in one discipline, they understand all the crafts. Great CDs are chameleons who understand the balance between concepts & strategy, and copy & design.
The creative director is a selfless creative.
a good CD will let you flex your creative muscles and allow your own work to shine.
The creative director is not your best buddy.
The creative director knows the latest trends.
if your CD has no idea what Facebook is, or looks puzzled when you talk about Twitter or social networking, they aren’t doing their duty, as an advertiser, to understand the modern consumer.
The creative director will hire great creatives.
“If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. But if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, we shall become a company of giants.”
The creative director is well-read.
The creative director produces work.
a good CD will still want to do some of the work, usually about 25% of it. Good creative directors never lose that passion, that drive and that hunger for doing great work. It’s in the blood.
The creative director knows every creative brief intimately.
When the creative director guides the account team to get the brief ready, expect good things.
The creative director is an idea catalyst.
The creative director, with one or two pearls of wisdom, can make sure the creative team strikes gold every time.
The creative director has a broad range of experience.
With a well-rounded CD on your side, you’re in much better hands than a CD whose only experience of direct mail is tearing it up over the garbage can.
The creative director steers the whole ship in the right direction.
Everyone in the agency, including in-house agencies, is looking to the CD as the captain of the creative ship.
The creative director understands strategy and planning.
The creative director is a shepherd.
the CD should set the standard for how the creatives are treated within the agency. If he or she lets account directors walk all over creative teams, changing copy and art direction at will, then the morale in the department will hit rock bottom. The CD who is a good shepherd will keep the creatives in line, but also keep the wolves from bringing them and their work down.
The creative director can sell or present anything, and do it well.
The creative director has balls.
A creative director should have the authority and confidence to make some big decisions, and should also take some firm stands against feedback that will either ruin the creative or demoralize the department.
The creative director knows how to motivate.
The creative director wants honest opinions, not nodding dogs.
The creative director doesn’t play the second-guessing game.
The creative director doesn’t care about being popular.
You just cannot be a great CD and be friends with everyone in the agency, and every client, and every production house, and, well, you get the point.
The creative director doesn’t micromanage.
A confident CD will realize that they only need to see the bigger picture.
Finally, the creative director improves the work.
A good CD will improve the work. Period.

Its a good list of qualifications. Hopefully you'll work with someone who matches most of the attributes on this list.

It's what makes the difference between loving being a creative and being a creative.

The right question.

2009-03-09T13:59:00.019-04:00

At the beginning of the movie I, Robot, there is scene with the following dialogue:

Dr. Alfred Lanning: Good to see you again, son.
Detective Del Spooner: Hello, doctor.
Dr. Alfred Lanning: Everything that follows is a result of what you see here.
Detective Del Spooner: Is there something you want tell me?
Dr. Alfred Lanning: I'm sorry. My responses are limited. You must ask the right questions.
Detective Del Spooner: Why did you call me?
Dr. Alfred Lanning: I trust your judgement.
Detective Del Spooner: Normally, these circumstances wouldn't require a homicide detective.
Dr. Alfred Lanning: But then our interactions have never been entirely normal. Wouldn't you agree?
Detective Del Spooner: You got that right... Is there something you want say to me?
Dr. Alfred Lanning: [the camera rotates around Lanning, revealing him to be a hologram] I'm sorry. My responses are limited. You must ask the right questions.
Detective Del Spooner: Why would you kill yourself?
Dr. Alfred Lanning: That, detective, is the right question. Program terminated.

The idea of asking the right question and getting the right answer has always fascinated me. So, as a creative set to find the right agency to work for, what’s the right question to ask?

It's not about the accounts, that much I know. You could have the most creative account but if leadership or talent are missing inside the agency, you won’t do much.

A more difficult one is whether to go for the name of the agency. While I believe that the classic agencies like Ogilvy, Leo Burnett or Sattchi & Sattchi are good schools of advertising thought, big agencies are handicapped by mindless bureaucracy and good ideas gets lost amongst too much politics.

So what makes an agency ideal to grow and nurture our creativity?
I believe that it’s the agency ecosystem.
That ecosystem is a balanced environment where all the units are integrated and interact so a flow of energy leads to rewarding expressions of creativity.
A habitat where leadership creates an environment where everybody is able to reach creative potential.

Where leadership feels responsible for the growth of the entire community.
Where people feel safe to be wrong and supported to try again.
Where leaders embrace diversity in thinking that fosters independent growth.
This will create an environment that promotes creativity by the community, who shares and discusses ideas and projects to create the results they truly desire.
Where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, collective aspiration is set free, and people are continually learning how to learn. (see here)

This ecosystem of creativity will sustain its own growth, because is managed by the community with smart supervision.

This creative driven culture is not new and you can find it at play in some agencies today; Razorfish, Big Spaceship, Zemoga, Poke, TBWA, The Barbarian Group or Goodby and in some corporations like Google, Pixar, Apple, GE or Amazon and Nokia.

Since we are talking about nature, I'll ask you to think of atoms. An atom in a specific environment will become just a rock, but the same atom interacting in the right environment turns into a diamond.

It's all about what surrounds us. It's the difference between being a rock and a diamond.

I think the right question for every creative to ask today is; what sustains the ecosystem in the agency?

That, detective, is the right question. Program terminated.

Ingredients of a creative brainstorming.

2009-03-05T17:44:00.015-05:00

"i think I've got it - Mandela, the After-shave"

I believe that the brainstorm session is the most important event in the life of a creative.
Most of what I know about the process of ideation I’ve learned at brainstorms. I really respect that moment when a thought is transformed from the intangible into an idea.

I like the humbling nature of a brainstorm too. There is nowhere to hide, in a creative brainstorm things are fairly simple; the best ideas raise to the top (This depends on the type of brainstorm and the people in it, but its generally true.) Ideas at this stage don’t know politics, which is another reason why I enjoy this stage of the process.

So after a creative life spent brainstorming, I figured that I could share with you what I have learned, from the inside.

Get the right people; Creative, knowledgeable, smart and willing.
Gather different people. Variety works wonders.
Who is leading? Someone needs to bring us back.
Why are we gathered here?
NEVER criticize (I don’t like…) NEVER judge (I don’t think it’s good…) I know you’ve heard this before but this is the single worst mistake people make. Criticism during the brainstorm session shuts down the soul of a creative.
Explore every idea, see where it leads, look for connections.
Pay attention to the flow of thinking.
Don’t be in a bubble.
Write down ideas on the wall.
Anything goes but please make it relevant. Don’t ask the group to do your homework. (there are exceptions to this, but not many)
Trust the group, don’t get stuck on one idea, move on.
Dip in. Get dirty. Help cleaning.
Learn from the guys who use little to create big.

For some reason there is more time spent in meetings than in brainstorms these days. We should reverse the equation and spend more time creating, even if it is for an aftershave.

Hard work is the best inspiration.

2009-03-04T14:47:00.013-05:00

Annie Leibovitz is a great photographer who has taken many of the most iconic pictures of the last 20 years. On her book "At work" she talks about her career, and offers a valuable insight about the thoughts behind some of her favorite photographs.

I really appreciate that artists, agencies and business alike are opening the doors of their creative process. Allowing us to learn about their work and their thinking but more importantly, I think, teaching us that being creative takes much more "homework" than one would have imagined.

As a creative I have learned to rely a lot on my instincts (the ones you develop after years of practicing the craft) but what I see again and again from books by Stephen King, Annie Leibovitz, Elbuli and Twila Tharp is that all of them spend a long time preparing, studying and getting to know the subject.

Instincts are great and they all use them, but not as a tool but as a safety net.

This can surprise some who think that being creative is mostly about waiting for the inspiration to happen. That some lucky few are granted the gift of creativity and that they can turn the switch on and off at will.

The thing is, none of these creative minds mentioned a word about that.

They rely on creating a process that enables ideas. They rely on teams, dialogue, hard work and surrounding themselves with talent and passion.
They believe that a lot of it is luck and some of it is God given talent.
They all agree that coming up with ideas is pure chance, and that you need to be paying attention to identify and take advantage of those few brilliant moments of inspiration.
They all agree that you need to spend a long time rehearsing, and be ready when the time comes, with the finger in the click button, the fingers on the keyboard or the pan on the stove.

There are no shortcuts to learning.

Breathe.

2009-02-28T18:32:00.005-05:00

We humans need to breathe. That's what we are designed to do. If we stop breathing, we die.

Creative people need to generate ideas, unusual thoughts and possibilities that may be useful.
If creative people stop practicing this talent, we die.

Don't hold your breath.

Simple ideas spread faster.

2009-02-26T13:00:00.022-05:00

Simplicity is a necessary quality of a good idea.

But simple is misunderstood by many, often seen as a negative, unsophisticated or non-intelligent treat.

I think that we need to share a common definition of what simple means in creativity (in design, ads and digital)

Simple means easy to understand.

Simple means clean.

Simple means as few steps as possible.

Simple means taking everything else out.

Remember; identify what's important and eliminate everything else.

Simple, no?

There are some good books on this subject, and one that comes to mind is The Laws of Simplicity by John Medea. Enjoy it.

The method is the idea.

2009-02-24T20:38:00.008-05:00

I like reading creatives blogs. They are useful and play an important role as a forum to learn and discuss all the great advertising being done all over the world. I personally like the ones that share their opinions about the ads better than the ones that just post ads.
One that I follow regularly is adverblog, a well known blog in my creative circles.
In a recent post Daniel Granatta wrote an interesting article about interactive creativity that was full of wise opinions, but one stood out for me. He said:

I believe in inspiration but I don't think a whole campaign can depend on just waiting for a creative spark, I think it's necessary some kind of systematic process of research that nurtures creativity, defines a style and makes that spark fittable into client's needs. And then you can have brilliant projects or not-so-brilliant projects, but having a methodology and a style makes success much closer than just waiting for the one-hit wonder.

I agree wholeheartedly. I think that extraordinary creativity, mostly measured by the quality of the idea, is not about having an idea, but about the environment in which the idea is born, supported and grown.
I believe that the creative process is most responsible for the idea becoming "the idea", and not the people in charge of having them, as it is generally accepted.
The creative process is a method where an idea is transformed into a valuable product, where all departments are involved and are accountable.
It’s an open, dynamic and smart process, that recognizes the fragility of ideas but their enormous potential.
It is a shift in focus from the individual creative to the creative environment.
From the idea to the group.
From the single act of creation to the creation development.
The companies that believe in this process produce several pieces of excellent creativity throughout extended periods of time across all mediums.
The ones that rely on creatives to spark creative ideas have to settled for "one hit wonders".

Restaurant Series II

2009-02-20T11:47:00.019-05:00

One situation that I have seen often during my career as a creative in advertising is the apparent “Irreconcilable differences” between the account service dept. and the creative dept.
I’ve seen it in all the agencies I’ve worked for and the ones I’ve worked with.
Across GM and HM, in branding, promotions, PR, packaging and digital agencies.
It just seems like one of those accepted truths that nobody cares to challenge anymore.
We are different and we just have to resign to tolerate each other.

In many ways I wish we were more like a restaurant. A good restaurant of course.

Many times I’ve heard that account services are like waiters. That they just take the order and pass it to the kitchen.
But some waiters are exceptional. They actually get involved, improving the guest’s eating experience. They know the menu and the cook’s strengths. They ask questions about the guest’s appetite and make relevant recommendations. They pay attention to the party’s behavior and manages the rhythm of the kitchen to handle the guest’s expectations. But most importantly, they prioritize the welfare of the restaurant at all times.
We remember and talk about these waiters. They probably work at the best restaurants and are valued for their unique skills.

Some cooks are also exceptional. They prepare great food, in a distinctive way, adjusting their skills to the needs of the food market. They are professional and creative and they communicate with the waiter staff to make sure the guest receives the best possible eating experience.

This all sounds so simple, so easy, so logical.
Yet, it is so rare.

Most times the waiter is just doing his/her good job, which is to take an order and deliver it to the kitchen.
Most times a cook takes the order and cooks it, sometimes thinking that the food is beneath his/hers skills and complaining about the guests taste.

This is what I propose:

To the waiter.

You are the link between the cook and the guest. That’s a big responsibility. If you don’t like it, there are other jobs available for you at the restaurant.
To manage the guest is your responsability. The restaurant won’t grow a good reputation (and you won’t make many friends in the kitchen) if you take a plate back 3 times saying that the guest didn’t like it and that you see his point.
Some guest will tell you that they know a better way to cook. That doesn’t mean that you should tell the cook how to cook.
Every plate coming of the kitchen is the best the cook can make. Always. From the appetizer to the Fillet Mignon. Support all plates.

To the cook.

Know the type of restaurant you are cooking for. If it is a fast food restaurant, expect a fast food client. Nobody goes into a McDonalds asking for a white truffle burger. If you really want to cook that amazing gourmet burger, change restaurants.
Communicate with the waiter staff. If you don’t, they won’t know how to "sell" your food with the guests.
If the guest asks for a salad, the guest probably wants a salad. If you plan on delivering your special salad recipe, tell the guest ahead of time or they will be pissed off they didn’t get what they order.

The restaurant needs excellent cooks and great waiters. Let’s buy the best products, prepare a good menu and make the best food our cooks can make. Give our waiters the tools to deliver an amazing dinning experience and hope that our guest enjoy the food.

The truth is, for a restaurant to be exceptional, both need to be synched to deliver amazing experiences.

10 ways to be memorable.

2009-02-17T23:12:00.019-05:00

I know the Miami Ad School by reputation. I know people who graduated from the school and I know that they teach well. That’s why I follow the Miami ad school on twitter and that's how I came across this interesting article on their blog:

First Rule of Memorability; Be memorable.
At the Miami Ad School a great deal of time is spent getting across a very simple yet incredibly crucial bit of information; that communication has to be memorable in order to be effective.

I agree a 100% with them. As creatives we must come up with ideas that are memorable and new. Because as the article says, - the memorable ideas are the ones to leave a lasting impression on us. The best remembered experiences are the new ones.-
Obviously it is easier to be memorable when the brand, the product, the insight and/or the media plan are “memorable”.
When I finished reading the article I was left craving a little bit more. More on how. More on practical, more on examples.
So I decided to help those who like me, craved a little bit more how beyond the what.

10 ways to be memorable.

Be outrageous. Say something few say, do something few do, break social rules, scream, be offensive or use nudity. We tend to remember what shock us.
Be funny. Very funny. Budweiser has reached more than 60% of market share based on this principle. Every other beer trying to do humor, is actually building Bud brand.
Be honest. Dove uses an honest approach to win the hearts of women all over the world.
Be playful. With language and/or with visuals. So many examples come to mind; MasterCard, Ikea, HP, ESPN.
Be impactful. When you see thousands of color balls rolling down a street, you remember.
Be insightful. Nike delivers on many of these points but at the heart of its campaign there is a deep (and unmatched) knowledge of athletes.
Be glamorous. We love celebrities. Pepsi loved celebrities. People loved Pepsi.
Be real. The internet is demanding that ideas look less like a brand and more like your neighbor. 2009 Doritos superbowl ad.
Be your consumer. Playstation, XBox are, in many ways, like their customers, believing that the games are real life.
Be smart. Make the consumer think. The Economist is a brilliant example.

I’m sure I am forgetting some. But its a good start, isn't it?

Creativity is not copying. - Restaurant series I -

2009-02-16T01:15:00.010-05:00

El Bulli is a restaurant in Barcelona. Google “best restaurant in the world”, you’ll see El Bulli is unanimously ranked the best, year after year. And the owner and chef; Ferran Adria is considered the most innovative chef working in a restaurant today.

In a new book called "A day at El Bulli", the chef describes in detail the insights, methods and creativity used by him and his team managing the restaurant and the menu.

In 1987 Jacques Maximin was asked what’s creativity? and he answered: “Creativity means not copying” This inspired Adria entire career.

Creativity means exploring. They spend 6 months brainstorming, 6 months executing. During the brainstorming season they develop new cooking techniques, new concepts for dishes. They investigate food and drinks, hardware and colors, designers and manufacturers.
Knowledge is essential. Investigation promotes understanding. Experimentation is promoted with ingredients gastronomically and scientifically.

Creative method I

A concept is the basic idea behind a dish, which can be elaborated in different ways to create different dishes. (idea)
Concept and technique. A technique is any process by which a product may be cooked or transformed. (execution)
A guest does not need to appreciate a new technique in order to enjoy the dish, but it adds to the experience.

Creative method II

Association. Create a list of ingredients, cooking methods, sauces and finished dishes. This creates limitless combination.
Inspiration. It requires a reference from any field to form the starting point.
Adaptation. Taking a dish that already exists and remaking it to one’s ow taste.
Deconstruction. Every part of the original dish, including its form is modified.
Minimalism. When magic is created with minimum ingredients.
The structure of the menu. Its planned the way the narrative of a film is structured. And its divided in 4 acts, each with its own character.

Relationship between guest and chef. The chef, the waiter and the guest play a part in the meal. The waiter plays an important role by helping the guest adapt to the rhythm of the kitchen and maximize their experience with their meal.
Role of the chef: ability to cook common sense and judgment, experience in other fields, knowledge, philosophy and creative abilities.
Role of the waiter transmitter: Create a warm atmosphere, conveys philosophy, serves the food, explains dishes, controls quality, controls timing.
Role of the guest: Gastronomic experience and knowledge, senses, sixth sense (enjoy cooking with intellect) spirit and emotions.
Art? El Bulli’s food is provocative, new and often surprising, but is always in the sphere of cooking.

Creative Methods III
Eating involves the use of all the senses. Each sense can be seen as a separate creative method. And they can be combined to produce the most interesting results.

Sight. First sense to transmit information about a dish. One of the principal ways to engage with a guest.
Hearing. Knowing the qualities of the food helps design dishes around the properties that deliver on this sense (large potato chips)
Touch. Temperature and texture.
Smell. Adding smell to dishes with no natural “smell”, creates an experience.
Taste. The heart of the act of eating. Taste is detecting flavors. Flavor is the range of sensory perceptions yield by the food.
Sixth sense. Intellectual satisfaction. Transgressing the traditional boundaries of cousine is an important par of the sixth sense, but it is crucial to preserve the distinction between playfulness and gratituos provocation.
New ways of serving food. A waiter needs to give instructions to help the guest enjoy the dish to the full. Particularly is it is a new concept for which there is no reference point.

Altering the structure of a dish can result in total freedom and the absence of any guiding rules, but the composition should not be anarchic or arbitrary. It should be grounded in analysis and reflection.

El Bulli serves 50 guests per day, 160 days per year. The restaurant is sold out a year in advanced. 4o chefs work at the restaurant and 26 people serving the dining room.

El Bulli shows that creativity is hard work, making choices and sticking to them.
Table for two please.

Same old NEW benefit.

2009-02-15T22:29:00.006-05:00

Nice print by Leo Burnett Mumbay. Its for a hot sauce called Goody. I had never heard of it but the point is, the idea of communicating the burning benefit of a hot sauce is not as simple as it sounds. At least if one wants to be original.
Tabasco sauce has been delivering this same benefit for as long as I can remember. I even worked on the account back in 1998. And as creative as the Tabasco print ads were and are, I feel like this one is the simplest of them all.
I love it when we can be shown that creatives can still find great ways of delivering old (but good) benefits.

We can't all be P&G. (and that's too bad)

2009-02-12T08:29:00.021-05:00

headline: ketchup doesn't stand a chance.

By now nobody is surprised to see P&G around the creative circles, picking up Grand Prix awards and being courted by the most creative agencies.

But just 4 years ago, the creative reality of the marketer that spends the most money in the world in advertising was very different.

P&G barely had a presence in award shows, which was concerning considering that P&G has a roster of more than 30 global brands.
Agencies appreciated their sophisticated marketing process but creatives hated their lack of appreciation for "creative" ideas.

Just consider this numbers:
From 1994 to 2006 P&G won 23 awards at the Cannes advertising Festival.
But from 2006 to 2008, 21 awards!!!

what made this remarkable change possible?

Ask yourself the hard questions. How can the biggest spender in advertising in the world have so little recognition on shows that reward creativity?
Learn what you don't know. P&G is run by engineers. Smart, data people who believe in the principle that everything is measurable and everything can be learned. So, they asked the most prestigious creatives around the world to share their views on advertising creativity.
Change happens from the top down. Brand directors were invited to Cannes to experienced the award festival. They were infected and they became believers.
Provide the tools to achieve the goals. Creative seminars and discussions groups were organized with creative, media and promotion agencies. More people were sent to Cannes, agencies provided best in class creative as inspiration and as a measurable tool.
Encourage taking risks. In an organization where failure is not an option, embracing the unpredictability and subjectivity of creative ideas is still a work in progress. But P&G knows that this is a long distance race.

I was part of the changing process and I never imagined that in just three years, P&G would win a Grand Prix at Cannes. (note: the agencies are of course responsible for the ideas, but P&G has an amazing roster of agencies and these agencies are winning awards with other clients anyhow)

I think that this is a great example that once you embrace creativity, make it a part of your culture, encourage it and reward it, everything is possible.

Maybe P&G should create a seminar about creativity. Probably they already did it.

4 (brilliant) lessons in 3:26

2009-02-04T09:41:00.017-05:00

On his latest post Seth Goodin shares this clip from Mad Men. He uses the pitch of an idea for Kodak to set the distinction between marketing and advertising. On his own words:

... just about every successful product or service is the result of smart marketing thinking first...

But while watching the clip from Mad Men, some thoughts came to mind:

• Find the meaning. Transform what the product does into what it means for the consumer. A slide wheel is a carousel of nostalgia. print it, post it, memorize it.

• Don't rush through a presentation. The creative presentation is the final product of a long and difficult process. Enjoy it, set the mood, set up the idea and reveal the drama. Its the time for the idea to shine.

• Clients buy passion. The creative director is not "just" reading the copy from a piece of paper. He is delivering it, feeling it... he made this product, his product. It belongs to him and he's sharing, not presenting.

• One thing at a time. Notice how there is no talk about next steps or budget or recos. The emotion taken from the presentation must linger on the clients minds. Let the idea be the protagonist.

Nostalgia indeed.

Improv

2009-01-30T11:25:00.008-05:00

What can a bunch of comedians teach us about communication?
Improv comedy groups are all about having fun, but they play with a very strict set of rules that must be followed.

• Don't Deny
Denial is the number one reason most scenes go bad.

• Say Yes-and!
For a story to be built, whether it is short form or long form, the players have to agree to the basic situation and set-up. The who, what, and where have to be developed for a scene to work.

• Don't Block.
The opposite of saying yes-and is blocking or denial.

• After the `and` add new information.
An improvised scene can't move forward or advance unless we add new information. That is why new information is added after the Yes of Yes-and!

• Avoid Questions.
Questions force our partners to fill in the information or do the work. It is a way of avoiding committing to a choice or a detail. It is playing it safe.

• Trust your partners.
• Listen, watch and concentrate.
• Never enter a scene unless you are NEEDED.
• Your prime responsibility is to support.

Even in a situation when one needs to improvise, people need rules, guides, a process.
Its easy to see how the comedians need to apply these rules. Its easier to see how marketers could benefit from them.
Communication is not a funny business after all.

Is this Viral?

2009-01-28T14:01:00.010-05:00

This spot provoked an interesting conversation around the agency. What makes you to want to share a spot? When we send something to our friends and family, we instantly make it viral.
Obviously most brands and agencies would love to master the secrets of this phenomenon.
What makes this ad a shareable idea?

A (creative) point of view.

2009-01-27T12:39:00.012-05:00

We want to share another insightful and smart post from Seth Godin.
In Creativity and stretching the sweatshirt he compares the act of being creative with stretching out a sweatshirt.

For me, creativity is the stuff you do at the edges. But the edges are different for everyone, and the edges change over time. If you visualize the territory you work in as an old Boston Bruins sweatshirt, realize that over time, it stretches out, it gets looser, the edges move away. Stuff that would have been creative last year isn't creative at all today, because it's not near the edges any more.

The exercise at the edges is an adventure in search of new and different ideas. Its not easy to get there and its hard to convince others to come with you if they are not ready.
To get to the edges requires two different travel plans, depending on where you are.

1. If you want to be creative, understand that you'll need to get to the edges, even if the edges have moved. Being creative means immediately going to the place the last person left off.
2. If you are "not creative," if you are the sort of person that gets uncomfortable being creative or has been persuaded you're not capable, don't worry about it. Just stretch the sweatshirt in your spare time, watch the creative things other people have done, keep up with the state of the art. Then, when you do your "not creative" thing, most people will think it's pretty creative indeed.

Big vs good

2009-01-23T10:43:00.013-05:00

I laugh every time I watch this ad. It's created by JWT Sydney for Thrifty Rental Car. The ad is surprising, the girl is hilarious and the father is just perfect. The creative idea is excellent; affordable rental car prices to be an everyday hero. Its a great idea, that won many awards at festivals around the world.

Now, watch this idea by BBDO, New York for HBO:

Winner of two Grand Prix and 6 gold awards at the last Cannes Festival, among several other awards across the world. The idea; sometimes the best stories are the ones we weren't meant to see, is a BIG Idea. An idea so big that it's executed online, direct mail, promotional, outdoor, print, TV, magazine, posters and as a banner on a website maintaining its full strength.

Both are good creative ideas. Both are award winners. One is innovative, the other is a good idea.