pedestrian vs. car

What if urban spaces were planned more for people than for cars? Park(ing) Day has made it its mission to find out, started by the art collective ReBar from San Francisco, this "art" seeks to advertise.

let them design

This trend caught my attention with the 1800 Tequila "Essential Artists" campaign. Now I'm watching it continue with Mountain Dew.

1800 Tequila is launching the second part of their campaign with a "Design your bottle" campaign; the winner will be featured in the 2009 campaign.

Not only does this highlight the artist in all of us, it lets us "in" a brand's world, letting us feel a part of the advertising, thus making us more receptive to it in general. I would say that campaigns like this raise consumer morale for the industry as a whole. With that in mind, we should be promoting these more. :)

Plan on.

planners caught in the middle

Let me know if you've experienced something similar:

your super smart insights help win the agency new business.
your strategic prowess helps position the brand within a dead category.
you excite the creative teams: they are creating Nike.
production begins.
then nothing...
some management conversations happen here and there, you hear tidbits about this and that, you "plan" for more work, etc. etc.
no "work" comes from management.
you call a meeting to "get everyone on the same page"
come to find out management has made decisions on strategy's behalf but rest assured if it's the wrong decision, strategy will be called in to save the day or we lose the business.

Agencies count on us (planning) to bring in new business with our vibrant talks of the possibilities and insights which drive them. The agency also counts on us to diagnose problems and remedy situations with a strategic sounding board when business falters along the way. But when we're not involved along the way, how can our strategy be the best?

Strategy exists for the betterment of the work. We are here to ensure results. In order to win and RETAIN business, please include us along the way. Caught between management and creative, I understand we're easily forgotten with no tangible piece of proof that we exist. Just like the brands we create every day, planning is a sense of something more - it's there to be engaged with, a smart personality with which smart agencies become associated with.

Mac attack!

Life without walls is pretty brilliant.



Not only is PC global, it's multi-faceted, colorful, and vibrant. Mac attack initiated.

Vote: it's a verb

To express one's choice or opinion. (i know you all have one, do you?)

what are Bill & Jerry doing for Vista?

There's been a lot of talk about this new campaign from CP+B and what it's doing for Windows Vista...I personally don't find anything engaging about the spots: I'm not pulled in, I'm not intrigued to find out more, I don't want to talk about them - it's just another commercial in the commercial pod in-between programming.

but...

What I think is happening is the spots are encouraging those people who do have Windows Vista to talk about it. The spots are totally targeted at them, to incite them to think about WHY in fact Vista works, what they like about it, what the whole "shtick" is about. The spots incite them to think about the product and most likely they feel like they're part of an inside club which is inherently the point of any product and/or brand. To support my hypothesis: after using his laptop last night (with Vista), my boyfriend said: "I don't know what the negative hype is all about, I really like it. It's sweet."

look what we've done

If you're in advertising, see this movie: America the Beautiful. With all of the Planning for Good and brand utility that gets furthered by smart agencies every day, let's not forget where our industry has come from and what the social ramifications are; the ones we must address and tackle before we can get consumers to really believe (buy into) our newly "good-hearted" and honest attempts at reflecting society rather than shaping it (no pun intended).

go to www.thisad.com

In the age of information, it seems we always want to communicate as much as we can. The client wants to get their message, contact information, website, and any other support points ALL in one ad ALL the time. I think it's silly to clutter a space with all of this information at once and believe it doesn't make any sense message-wise. If a consumer sees a billboard (or a bus ad), think about where they are: in their car. They're NOT going to be able to check out your website and most likely won't remember it when they do get to a computer, even if they repeat it 3x in their head (I've tried it, it doesn't work). Instead, a website might work better in a text message or in a TV commercial; a lot of people are combining laptop time with TV watching these days: This makes more sense.

Anyway, I don't have the answer yet. My podmate said it's a problem of media saturation which I'd agree with to an extent. It's also a problem of one-sided communication. We think that just because we give people information they'll use it or know what to do with it. WRONG! We need to do a bit more work these days and come up with ways in which we can help/remind people to use this information.

I hear a new Google app in the making...only if they read this post. :p

more to come...