Crowdsourcing and the Music Video

Approximately 40,000 people helped director Chris Milk create The Johnny Cash Project's "Aint No Grave" music video -- and score a Grammy nomination. The following interview with Milk, who was present at CaT London, goes through his experiences and inspirations in creating some of the most innovative music projects to date. In an era where crowdsourcing and interaction are king, Milk is at the forefront in combining the two for the ultimate user experience.

Chris Milk at CaT London 2010

The Johnny Cash Project

~ alicia

We Used to Wait

About a month ago, the band The Arcade Fire worked with director Chris Milk and Google Chrome to create a music video/short film to promote their album The Suburbs. While I'm a little late in actually posting about this, I have to admit - I can't stop thinking about it. Interactive, original, and using the latest in digital technology... it's one of the few pieces of promotion put out recently that has been creatively inspirational (at least, for me).

So, for you who haven't checked it out or just want to see it for a second time:

The Wilderness Downtown

~ alicia

the 4 S's of viral

"A viral won't go viral just because it's a viral." I said this in a meeting the other day and as clumsily syntaxed as it is, I want to develop what I meant.

The client says: we want a viral.

The creative team: creates a viral.

But what IS a viral? And what makes something GO viral?

Let's find out.

"A viral is something worth sharing," says Rob Birgfeld on SmartBlogs.

Dominque Hind says there are 3 things to remember about a viral:

• Must be a great idea
• Viral doesn’t necessarily mean free
• Nurture the campaign to get it out there.

And we learn from Karl Long that a viral isn't a strategy but a tactic within the more holistic term of co-creative marketing.

In the post from Karl, I especially like what he says about tactics, such as virals, building social equity with your brand. He described social equity in October 2007 as “built by aggregating, connecting, reflecting and amplifying all of the small user contributions over time so the whole is worth much more than the sum of its parts.”

You see, everything used to be about brand equity - where brands were one of the most valuable assets a company could have. But in the age of social media, we need different terms. And borrowing the term from Karl, social equity - where social networks are one of the most valuable assets a brand can have - is where we need to focus now. In creating social equity you need to take into consideration what starts a conversation and what begs to be shared - is it creativity? is it a thought? is it a point?

Anyway, back to viral. In this post, we learn that viral is a tactic used by brands to create Social equity. To do this, they need to

Simple - be birthed from an uncomplicated idea
Sharable - have all the necessary social media tools attached
Supported - be nurtured by various brand ambassadors - bloggers/influencers online, PR people at the agency, or synced up with traditional creative in an innovatively creative way

So next time someone says "let's do a viral," make sure you've got the 4 S's in place so that you're not just creating more digital crap to take up cyberspace.

Visual Thinking

We all get spam. But in the workplace, it's a different kind of spam - vendors hoping to prove their usefulness with the provision of information. Jen Spencer might have it right:

"We all know we are in the Information Age, constantly being bombarded through email (sometimes in the form of newsletters - ha!), tv, blogs, ads, marketing messages, and the list goes on and on. This barrage of information often leaves us in a continuous state of being overwhelmed, making it difficult to focus, see clarity, and find the mental space and time for innovation.

Check out Jessica Hagy's work at Indexed.

I happened upon the Visual Thinking Movement, through a local maven and crusader, Sunni Brown. Visual thinking '...is the common phenomenon of thinking through visual processing using the part of the brain that is emotional and creative to organize information in an intuitive and simultaneous way.'

This method of working is being used by all levels of professionals to connect facts and insights with visual images and representations, allowing for a higher level of understanding and recall from the audience to which they are speaking. Graphic recorders and facilitators have shown their prowess at events like TED and SXSW Interactive.

Most of you work in creative environments and practice this work for your clients in one form or another. Images are powerful and words can create magic -- whether you are marketing a message, creating an ad, designing a logo, the details matter. And, too many details clutter.

Visual thinking marries creativity with your thought process. The emerging result can bring about a different cognition for yourself and others.

And, the great thing is: anyone can do it! You don't need to be an "artist" or "creative" to practice visual thinking and implement visual thinking skills in all aspects of your life. As Austin Kleon says, there are only 5 shapes (dot, line, circle, square, and triangle).

Check out Visual Notetaking 101 offered by VizThink

How can you use visual thinking?
1) To cut through the noise to hear the succinct points
2) Steal a creative moment in everyday meetings, conference calls, and presentations
3) Sell a complex or simple idea through to a client
4) Describe a process or desired outcome
5) Laying out a project and timeline
6) Understanding cogs in the wheel
7) Goal Setting
8) Self-Expression
etc.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
Training offered through The Grove + VizThinkU
The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Picutres
Ed Emberley's Drawing Book: Make a World
Handbook of Pictorial Symbols
Indexed

Give a damn, get a lot. - by Jessica Hagy of Indexed (image above)

Lastly, if you would like to enhance and develop your skills and talent and achieve a higher level of leadership and satisfaction in the work you do, Jen Spencer Coaches is here to support you in your greatness.

My niche: Companies and individuals that provide creative services.
My clients: Men in their 30's and 40's going through transition and evolution AND driven women

Jen Spencer Coaches wants to hear more about you. To receive a complimentary consultation, email or call Jen.

Enjoy your brains (left and right)! And experience a wonderful summer..."

And that's Jen Spencer and her wonderful, unexpected Spam.

Hope you all enjoy thinking about Visual Thinking.
Have a creative day!

hats off to Skittles

I am dazzled (If Skittled were an adjective, I'd use it) by the new Skittles site, yesterday and today. Yesterday it was skittles.com - the Twitter page; today it's skittles.com - the Facebook page. The change has been credited to spam/vulgarity (one and the same in my marketing book), and I think this says more about us as humans than it does about the brand.

I think people will take advantage of any chance to publicize themselves; "oh what? Skittles.com is publishing anything related to skittles in real time? Oh shit, I better type something so I get my 5 seconds of fame." - seriously? Oh yeah, it's America, the country of democracy and 15 minutes of fame. What happens when we place control in the hands of media hungry, socially-active consumers? Not decency in this time of good, but foul language and foul play. Gross.

I commend Skittles for going out on a limb, where most clients are scared to not have a TV ad, Skittles said we're doing social media all the way. They took a risk, and we've made them pay. As a young advertiser and social media advocate, I'm not happy with my fellow Twitterers. We abused the medium and teased a brand for having some balls.

Like this post says:

No one knows all the rules apart from the fact that the rules change every time you want to play. Trying to play it safe is the riskiest play of all right now.

So here's to Skittles, my hat's off to you for taking a risk; you've been the bravest, aside from Modernista (but they're an agency so they don't count), in terms of thinking outside the box when it comes to marketing yourself and interacting with your customers. High five!

Not to mention, that Farmers came to our agency the other day and left bags of Skittles on all of the tables, little did they know that just days later, I would be eating them still (they were huge bags) and happy to be part of a very brand-worthy social conversation. pretty cool.

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.

oh data

Part of me wants to launch into a fictitious rant about Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation, a childhood favorite in the late 80s, early 90s, but I'll save us both the nostalgic embarrassment.

If you haven't seen it yet at Contagious, read this now: Ways of Seeing, The art of data by digital ninjas Faris Yakob and Noah Brier. These two smart guys put data visualization into inspirational laymen's terms. What exactly is data visualization? Words are simply visual representations of information - pictures of sounds. I thought this was beautiful when I read it. An inspiring way to think about what they refer to as the art of eroding the gap between how something looks and what it means.

Basically, they give it to us straight: we are a generation drowning in data. Here, Here! Oy Oy! How many of you are currently struggling with balancing your professional network with your social one; aggregating newsfeeds but never finding the time to read them all; trying to figure out how to Twitter but...can't; wishing you could email everyone back at once but know that mass emails aren't the personalization you know people deserve these days. AHHHH, what are we supposed to do? The Internet has made us all stir-crazy, psycho-paths who need the latest "fix" of information and we can't focus until we get it, and even then, focusing (and being productive) is difficult.

The problem identified by Faris & Noah is that data, like many things, is worthless without the tools to interpret it. Ok, now I've got to get on my soapbox: Attention agencies without planning departments, planners ARE your tools to decipher the data, the information, the culture, the research, etc. :)

Down now. Check out some of these super cool sites to get your data visualization fix now:

www.labs.digg.com/bigspy
http://www.marumushi.com/apps/newsmap/newsmap.cfm
http://wefeelfine.org
http://www.visualthesaurus.com
http://moodstream.gettyimages.com/
http://twittervision.com/
http://www.fidgt.com/
http://walk2web.com/

and there are more here at Mashable. Enjoy!

Dancing

A viral Internet sensation with four million web fans says The New York Times:

In many ways “Dancing” is an almost perfect piece of Internet art: it’s short, pleasingly weird and so minimal in its content that it’s open to a multitude of interpretations. It could be a little commercial for one-world feel-goodism. It could be an allegory of American foreign policy: a bumptious foreigner turning up all over the world and answering just to his own inner music. Or it could be about nothing at all — just a guy dancing.

Here, for your viewing pleasure (see if it doesn't make you a bit happier):

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.

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.

trends schmends

I think the following will be big topics in 2008:

• waiting in line - I think we will see more movement in this "experience" part of retail and food service. Our lines are getting longer and Americans like to get in and get out, expect a tipping point soon. Whole Foods is leading the revolution.
• serving sizes - In these days where servings sizes are pre-packaged (oh so handy and oh so wasteful), the obesity epidemic makes the 5 o'clock news, and Super Size Me is more a movie than an order, I expect serving sizes to get a closer look. You know those smaller cups at Starbucks? If you order a double espresso to go or a "short" drink, you know what I'm talking about; well, those are 8 oz. They look "small" when compared to a venti (20 oz) but 8 oz is really all you need.
• mass market "natural" - Natural is a catchall term for "not fake, maybe less chemicals, close to organic, better for you." Every product that has an ingredient list even the company doesn't understand wants a piece of the 'organic' market. Using the term "natural" will be their Joker card for a while. See what I'm talking about here with Crest, and the fact that Chapstick thinks it needs to compete in this market is kind of funny.
• more media neutrality - for those of us in the industry of ideas, this trend is definitely not to be missed. What's maybe more important is that you get your client to understand this first. Gone should be the days that tv, print and radio are part of the first creative conversation you have. While I agree you need to play the ballgame with everyone else, you also need to differentiate yourself and spend the bulk of your budget on getting through to your target consumers, granted you've got some planners on board to help you identify how to do that. :)

Plan on.

[image via Cultureby]

2007: A Year in Advertising

Best of...
Top 10...
Top 5...
A Year-in-Review...

This is a collection of what I could find on the Internet and then a final Best of Strategy list at the end for all you plannerly types.

TIME did a pretty good summation of TV Ads from 2007:

1. Dave and Oprah Super Bowl Ad
2. Adidas: "Impossible is Nothing"
   
3. Gatorade: "Thief"
4. Dove: "Onslaught"
   
5. Applie iPhone: "Meredith"
6. American Express: "Tina Fey"
7. Coca-Cola: "Happiness Factory - the movie"
8. Dos Equis: "The Most Interesting Man in the World"
9. Doritos: "Live the Flavor" (CGC)
   
10. Nationwide Insurance: "Rollin' VIP"

Top Viral Videos by TIME are:

1. Leave Britney Alone!
2. The Landlord (Will Ferrell and daughter)
3. Miss South Carolina Teen USA
4. Hillary, 1984
5. Prison Inmates' "Thriller"
6. I Ran So Far
7. Can't Tase This (mashup)
8. Dan Rather Collar Up (really?)
9. Clark & Michael (of Superbad genius)
10. Daft Hands
    

Top 5 Viral Video Ads by MarketingVOX:

1. Cadbury - Gorilla Drummer
2. Smirnoff - Green Tea Party
3. Ray-Ban - Catch Sunglasses
4. Blendtec - Will it Blend?
5. Lynx/Axe - Bom Chicka Wah Wah

A collection of AdWeeks' Best Spots (of the month) 2007 (in no particular order and definitely pared down):

• Apple - "Tech Support" (Mac v PC)
• Coca-Cola - "Videogame"
• Rembrandt - "Kissing"
• Pepsi - "Pinball"
• Adidas - "Gilbert Arenas" (Impossible is Nothing campaign)
• BMW - "Feats"
• Starburst - "Berries & Creme"
• Absolut - "Protest"
• JC Penney - "The Heart"
• Saturn Vue - "Money"
• Yellowpages.com - "Tanning Salon"
• EBay - "Foxhunt"

These lists are by no means comprehensive when you consider the creativity in thinking and 'strategy' that the industry was blessed with this year. I would like to draw attention to some other campaigns and make a new list. The first seven are insightfully creative, the last three are strategic genius. So here it is, the 10 Best of Strategy List:

• Apple: iPhone ads
• Rembrandt "Brilliant Mouth"
• Dove "Onslaught"
• ***watch Rye Clifton's parody here
• Axe "Bom Chicka Wah Wah"
  
• Cadillac "Life. Liberty. And the Pursuit."
• EBay "Shop Victoriously"
• Doritos "Live the Flavor"
  
• Radiohead "Name Your Price" strategy for In Rainbows
• Samsung "Charging Stations"
• Simpsonized 7-Elevens
  

My valid attempt to scan as many of my favorite blogs I'm sure has failed to capture all of the memorably strategic campaigns of the year. Input is appreciated; this list is by no means complete or final. Happy New Year!

i've got a viral

Today was my first "ah ha! Yeah! I gotta spread that" experience. It was with Greenormal, John Grant's (Brand Tarot) new project.

This is what I spread:


I put it on my Facebook and Myspace. Dothegreenthing has a bunch of catchy icons, tips and tools. It's merits rely on two principles: Easy & Creative.

change the way you see celebrity

In a period where the latest news with Britney Spears and her child custody problems is aired alongside the morning traffic report, Iconoclasts presents a nice alternative context for celebrities.

• Join twelve of the world's leading visionaries as they share surprising revelations and insights into their creative process and unyielding quest for excellence. Take a journey inside the lives of these remarkable individuals through the eyes of their fellow iconoclasts and forever change the way you see celebrity.

This relatively new series (in its 3rd season) from the Sundance Channel is garnering wonderful brand affiliation too: I was reminded of the series while flipping through Wired Magazine. And Grey Goose Entertainment (yes, the Vodka brand) is behind the show in the spirit of artistry and innovation. It will be a neat counterpoint to Star, Ok, Life&Style, InTouch, UsWeekly that compete for the majority of our attentions while in the checkout line.

Some celebrity pairings that have been celebrated are: Howard Schultz (Starbucks) & Norman Lear (All in the Family); Mike Myers (Austin Powers) & Deepak Chopra (mind-body specialist); Robert Redford & Paul Newman; Sean Penn & Jon Krakauer; etc.

The show will remind us that celebrities are people too; some extraordinary people with visions and goals, who have fallen into an extremely commercial and often times soulless industry. Good people are all around; Sundance is showcasing them and bringing them into our homes. Cool.

NYC's new tourism campaign

this is what it was like...

creative inspiration & clues

was researching the new JCPenney Ad with (I believe) Feist as soundtrack vocals, and stumbled across Boards > "the creative edge in commercial production."

• Boards is a brand focused on bringing the international commercial production industry community together for dialogue, debate and discussion about the global business of commercial production.

kind of cool.

a dialogue takes many forms

In museums, there is a language that goes on between each piece of art. It's something I hadn't really thought of before until I read an article about Carmen Gimenez, a curator for modernist sculpture.

Designing a show or museum exhibit requires a vision for how the artwork will communicate from piece to piece. There is a language here: "Sculpture is a very spatial idea. When you build a museum you need to think about sculpture. It needs space. All in their own space, they aren't mixed at all, but they are in dialogue."

It made me think of a museum curator as a planner: setting up the creative brief as a tool to stimulate possibilities. A brief should not mandate and focus on only one path. It should open up the room for creative dialogue and let the reader/viewer/user take their own journey.

Gimenez works in the Guggenheim Museum, a beautiful building by Frank Lloyd Wright. "The whole museum becomes a situation," she says, "there are many possibilities for dialogue." Her exhibit Shapes of Space is on exhibit through September 5.

creative possibilties and ideas

are endless at a Museum! Go to one NOW! This post comes after going to Target FREE Friday at the MoMA with my friend Kent (copywriter in training).

First of all, if you're not into crowds do not, repeat DO NOT go on Free Fridays. The place is swarming with people. There is no sidewalk to follow, no path you should take. It's chaos! It's like Pamplona and the running of the bulls only they have cameras and children. There's no set pace; everyone's moving in their own directions at their own speed. I wondered if there's ever been any studies done on crowd movement within museums. What I found:

• something called adaptive movement behaviors
  
• the Crowd Farm by two MIT students hoping to harness energy from human movement

and not much else. Hmmm...seems that "movement science" as defined for human physical and mechanical movements should/could be applied to crowd flow. It could help us determine factors that contribute to movement, blah blah blah. Architects and structural engineers probably have to consider this sort of thing: where should we put the stairs? how do we position the escalators? I think there's a difference between walking on a sidewalk and moving around a museum. I see an opportunity here for research or maybe I just haven't found it.

Weird fact: You can take pictures (no flash) of the permanent art collections in the MoMA but not the temporary exhibits. Yeah, you can take pictures but you can't point at the art (bringing your finger inches from the canvas). Miss Pointy here got reprimanded several times with "Hey, what do you think you're doing?" Nothing. I'm pointing. Those people are taking pictures in a museum.

Next thing that occurred to me was the potential for copywriters to exercise their skills with "Untitled" works of art. When I moved from Ringaround Arosie to Sleeping Gypsy to Untitled I became irked by the lack of name. Like, come on, if there are blank boards titled The Twin and The Tree, surely you can name a sculpture of three pillars and some mysteriously hanging balls (Magic, Storm, and Horizon come to mind). Anyway, I see this as a campaign opportunity for copywriters. Maybe they could pair up with artists who don't want to spend the time titling their work. But then we have to ask: What's in a name? Google returns 261 million websites for the question: ranging from "What's your Viking Name?" to "What's your Spammer name?" Sounds like quiz time to me.

Lastly, when Kent and I came to the Sleeping Gypsy (above), he interpreted it as pre-feast for the lion: "That lion's ready to tear her apart." I interpreted it as lion curiosity: "The lion is just checking things out, saying hello to another being in the desert way of life." He was shocked that I would have such a contrast in perception. But I think our interpretations say more about who we are rather than what we're looking at.

These ideas & observations are open to YOUR interpretation. Feel free to comment. Have a great Sunday.

Where did you take your insight?

This is a question I've been asked many times in interviews. It takes a bit of thinking (that in an interview might be an awkward pause) so take some time now to map it out:

• what is your insight?

What was the gold nugget that set your creative work (supposing your showing a portfolio) in motion? Don't get stressed out about it, this is where planning should be simple in nature. An insight is an "ah ha" or "that's it" moment. Just know where and why your conversation happened: what the problem was and how your insight addressed it.

• where did it come from?
• research you did
• questions you asked

What did you do to support and develop your insight? Was it a conversation with your creatives or fellow planners? Was it research-based? Jen M (a fellow planner) told me there are two kinds of planners: Madness and Meticulous. Madness planners are all over the place, gathering culture here, talking about it there. Meticulous planners are all about the #s and research: based on this study, we know that blah blah blah. I want to point out that neither of these answers is right v. wrong. Don't think that because you didn't do any research that you're insight isn't insightful. Just be conscientious of how you grounded your gold nugget.

• where you did you take your insight? > Strategy
• how did you make it actionable? > tactics

Easier said than done, I know. Christopher Owens, from The Richards Group, broke it down for us. An example:

Insight - I feel unhealthy
Objective - lower stress levels
Strategy - go on vacation
Tactics - visit South Beach, fly JetBlue, leave Sunday

Just do some thinking before you throw some bomb creative work on the table and say "look what I did." We all need to know how we got there and why our specific solution makes the most sense.

thinking different

"i wasn't pushing you away, i was pulling me toward myself."




i stole the quote above from someone's myspace page. i like it. the problem with it though (dar, problems) is that even though the person speaking says she isn't trying to offend the other involved character, that's what they took from it. the lesson here is to think different but make your thought process accessible to others. make your thought process juicy and engaging and interesting...so that others want to get involved. that sounds fun...doesn't it?

now, searching for a job, i'm looking for the right fit, not looking for a job, but looking for a situation.

David Terry with BBH said "planners should be a little off." Quirky is ok, but what (i think) he means is 'think different.' I wonder what Apple meant by this tag...

*picture from Jennifer Coates: 'master of the incidental moment' (pretty neato, says me.)