Sound of Color

I bet Sony wishes they'd come up with this first. Soundofcolor.com by The Gap is definitely pushing branding boundaries. No?

I would embed the video but...there are serious issues with its viralability currently. Just go to the site and check all the colors out.

And now for a little blog attention: This is a blog Post with No Thinking (PNT). Regular readers will be able to call these out from now on with PNT and PWT (With Thinking). I'm a big fan of honesty and calling things how they are, and I haven't come up with a solution for the posts that I do in lue of time. I actually Onelooked "lue" and it turned up nothing. Then I Googled the phrase and was verified by other bloggers who used the term: Everyone else is doing it. :P

A PNT for you because sometimes us bloggers have to compete with RSS feeds. I'll post a PWT soon; because on the other side of the coin, we owe it to you to give the web innovative content.

PSFK Conference 2008

Conversation topics will be:

Finding Inspiration
Michelin star chef Eric Ripert explains how his three annual trips inspire his menu, service and brand.
Good Business
Is good the new green? Does being good mean making good profits? Marc Alt leads a panel with Graham Hill , Johnny Vulkan, Jeff Staple and Jeffrey Hollender to investigate one of the key trends driving business.
Social Media
In a 'new guns' versus 'marketing gurus' debate, Josh Spear & Noah Brier join Marc Schiller & Steve Rubel to debate how social media will change in 2008 and how companies can leverage this digital phenomenon in the most rewarding way. Moderated by Noelle Weaver .
Does New York Matter?
Local observers discuss whether the culture created in New York has a role on a global stage.
Collaborative Co-Working
Etsy and NASA explain how they engage their customers, staff, partners and the community with co-working spaces (real and virtual).
Tomorrow's TV
How has digital changed the delivery, content, sponsorship and future of television? Mike Hudack and Adam Stotsky join a panel to discuss the opportunities and challenges.
Pattern Recognition
Grant McCracken explains the importance of inspiration, providing a framework for which to gather, monitor and react to trends and ideas in culture and business.

Tickets are discounted for Likeminders, pretty awesome of Piers.

blogs make us think

Yesterday I stumbled on 90 Day Jane > a 24 year old girl who has decided to blog about her last 90 days of life. Some call it a hoax, others have taken her plea for help very seriously (the amount of comments she has gotten will make any blogger a little jealous). Blogger.com finally reacted and took her blog off the map, but she persevered on her own site and now...I'm not sure what's happening. You decide. Apparently she is posting something to Post Secret revealing the project for what it is. Hmmm...

Jane made me think. Some of her posts are about the digital age, how connections made online may not be of much value when taken offline, and how relationships today may be more fake than ever because of this. I have made many connections with fellow bloggers and am inspired by Jen at Innovation Feeder to give a shoutout to those that make me think the most.

Noah Briar - always making new connections and pushing the limits of what we consider to be integrated communications.
Russell Davies - if there's a planning celebrity, I'd say it's Russell, this uber planner is seemingly down-to-earth. I'd love to chat if you ever make it to Dallas.
Daniel Mejia - from Columbia, he blogs in English and has a very on-point perspective about planning and strategically weaving brands into people's lives.
Amelia Torode - I always like what she has to say, very down to earth and super smart.

(check the side bar at right for more)

I don't know if Jane's mission is real or has been side-tracked by the numerous connections she has made with fellow bloggers, but I can say that being part of this community is important to me as if we all worked together in the same planning department. And that means something online and off. Inspiration is just a click away. :)

media snackers

Wake up: the media landscape is changing.

advertising High School

"Making young people see the relevance of advertising to their lives will be an important part of that goal." - says Ron Berger, CEO of RSCG Worldwide

Sounds like Ron has been smoking the "advertising is crack" pipe a little too long. Ya?
Read more at Ad Age about the High School for Innovation in Advertising and Media

In my personal experience of being a junior planner, real life experience and a diversity of dedicated studies/hobbies makes or breaks your career, not a major in advertising. I found the fact that I had said major to be debilitating when it came to presenting my resume. A focus in advertising seems to be as bland as a major in Business. Whoopdeedoo.

I'm not going to spend too long developing how I feel and why I feel the way I do about this high school concept; except to say that I think it's a bad idea. Unless of course the school is extremely well thought out and has teachers from all walks of life who understand the connections between business, cultural relevance and consumer behavior equally.

Amen to education. Say what? to this idea.

planners need to be storytellers

"It's interesting to see how much the amount of information (given) influences its retention."

My mom and sister are fanatical storytellers. Each time they launch into a story, it happens before I know it. I hesitate: "do I have time for this?" I'm listening for a noun + verb kind of story; But they can't tell a story like that. The details get me every time.

Someone said once that information is the currency of a planner. Damnit then, give me the details.

A story is accepted or rejected by "the telling of it." Planners need to be good storytellers. I know this; however, this particular facet of planning is one that I need to work on the most. I can pinpoint the elements but when it comes to giving you context, I'm more brief than beautiful.

It feels good to share this. Word.
(the initial quote was one I wrote after listening to my mom tell me about a memory she had of her dad when she was seven years old and he was a mechanic and had a Ferrari up on blocks in the garage and her uncle had this car like an Aston Martin you know like James Bond and her dad listened to the radio while he worked on the car and..........)

planning sells "the work"

While planning is increasingly the job to get, it's still the job that is least understood within the industry. Advertising has a creative foundation: what sorts of bells and whistles can we add so we can get more consumers interested? It was a problem + idea business. Planning introduced "a strategy" to the equation.

Planning is the middle child: not as strong as the Oldest - account management, not as protected as the Baby - creative. We are the in-betweens; the people that need to connect the two. And while planning might take a tad longer to input, it's worth it; because planning sells the work. And it alleviates a lot of the time creatives spend staring at a brief (if there is one) and concepting a solution to an ill-defined problem.

Concepting is one of the hardest f'n things to do. And if the creative team hasn't been given sh*t to work with, it's even harder. They've been given a problem (which used to work in the old days) and they'd come up with a solution because creativity was still innocent and un-competitive when it came to the marketplace.

But now, we all have to concept for a very competitive marketplace. We cannot forget this. Planners have the job of positioning a new product or evolving a brand to a new position within consumers minds and the marketplace. We don't fabricate the possibilities. Planners connect all of the dots. We define the dots. Then we put the dots to be visually connected into the brief. Then the creatives concept visual solutions. That's what they're good at! And what us planners are not so good at; and if we are, then we should switch departments.

Planners are here to help. We've put together (what should be) valuable information. We have fine-tuned the elements; we've pointed you in a direction; we've identified an opportunity. Planning sets up the problem to be solved, gives you a target to work with, identifies what works and what doesn't and is here to help give the creatives direction so they're not so frustrated.

Do you get it? Doesn't this sound great? Doesn't this sound useful? Why do I have to keep explaining it?

stressed out (of a job)

Got this in an Iconoculture newsletter a week ago:

According to a Watson Wyatt Worldwide study, stress is the leading cause that prompts people to quit their jobs. Yet stress is not even among the top five reasons cited by employers, who instead believe insufficient pay is why people generally leave.

Stress.org is another great resource for more statistics concerning Americans and their workload.

Are employers really this out of touch with their employees?