moving for a J O B?

does the city an agency is in matter to the creative work that gets produced? this is a question i have on my 10 to ask in an informational interview. And I'd like to think the answer is yes.

i got the following from an adweek article describing Chicago's need to revive it's ad scene.
"New York is the center of the global advertising world. Los Angeles boasts world-class production capabilities. Outposts like San Francisco, Portland, Ore., Minneapolis and Miami lay claim to some of the industry's best talent. But Chicago's historic ability to tap into the heartland values of Middle America, most typified in Burnett's whimsical doughboy fetishism, now seems like an anachronistic throwback."

The cities I'm most interested in because of their blend of culture, music and the arts are: Boston, LA, and New York as far as agencies go. The question I ask myself is: if i lived there, would i be able to get a job easier than if I attempted to get one at a distance? hmmm...

carbon footprints

Inspired by my beautiful friend Rachel, we need to be more aware of our harm to the environment. We can do something, little things add up to be big. I'm going to learn more. This is a start.

What are they? What can you do? (Oregonian)

• Every company has a carbon footrpint - carbon dioxide emissions it creates through manufacturing and energy usage.
• These companies hire a carbon broker to calculate their carbon footprint. Based on this calculation, the broker buys carbon offsets, or credits, on the company's behalf.
• These carbon credits pay for projects that reduce CO2 emissions.

The article says more and more companies are taking up the fight against these greenhouse gases that are harmful to the environment and the atmosphere. "[Efforts] will create a stronger brand and broaden consumer love while doing right by the environment." COOL!

Green tags - (besides being a trendy named thing) are a type of offset that present investments in renewable projects such as wind and solar energy. Carbon Fund is a non-profit dedicated to cost-effective solutions to reducing your carbon footprint. They put money into renewable power, energy efficiency and tree-planting projects.

Sustainability is a big trend my friends. Jump on the bandwagon now and get ideas for making the brands you work with more environmentally-friendly. It will be a top notch way to differentiate your brand and company, and will tell customers "you're walking the walk."

Tom's of Maine began purchasing 100% renewable wind energy in February 2006. "Carbon dioxide emissions will be reduced by 1.5 million pounds per year -- the equivalent of planting 214 acres of trees or removing 138 cars from the road." SHARE INFORMATION.
For more information on sustainable practices, check out the Sightline Institute in Seattle.
Buy your own carbon offsets at Carbon Counter.
For ride-sharing/carpooling info, check out Ridester.com
There will be more to come.....

i wanna work in advertising

kind of funny. kind of depressing. kind of sad to see what people think of us. kind of still funny.

a conversation

http://whistlethroughyourcomb.blogspot.com/2007/05/mass-innovation-society.html#links

just two planners having a dialogue...
what do you think?

simple idea, simple brief

This was a time of brilliance and humor that came out of a very late night brainstorming for our huge client: OfficeMax at Miami Ad School. you've gotta have some fun with it...

Strategy: OfficeMax loves ink!

Creative idea: LOVE
Audience: Office Hippies
What they currently think: office supplies suck
What we want them to think: I can love office supplies.
Insight: Everybody Loves somebody Some time
Single-minded thought: Office Supplies = Love
Tone: Peace, Love
Tactics: Teddybears, heart candies, red office supplies, roses, a
grain of rice with OfficeMax's name on it in a heart-shaped capsule on
a necklace, distribute at stores.

Rockstar: not for amateurs

says my roomie Alana. It contains 160 mg of caffeine.

i am going to develop my hypothesis that there are stages of caffeine when it is digested.

for now, enjoy this site for Energy Fiends.

customers rock!

just found this blog today on customer-service and customer experiences. I will be adding it permanently to my list.

Planners, we need to always be mindful of who we're talking to, what they're experiences are, and what they're really thinking/feeling/saying.

Customers buy the brands we inspire them to love. It's gotta come full circle.

engaging brands

"The annual Brand Keys Customer Loyalty Engagement Winners are those brands best able to engage consumers and create loyal customers."

The 2007 Winners are:

• Pepsi (over Coke), this was quoted as a "major upset"
• Diet Pepsi (beat out Diet Coke): diet soda category
  
• JetBlue: favorite airline, #2 - Southwest
  
• New Balance: favorite athletic shoe, #2 - Adidas, #3 - Sketchers (donde esta Nike?)
  
• Toyota, BMW and Mercedes: top 3 automotive brands
• Coors Light: favorite light beer, #2 - Miller Lite, #3 - Bud Light
• Coors: favorite heavy beer, #2 - Sam Adams (really?), #3 - MGD
• Aquafina: favorite bottled water, #2 - Fiji
• Dunkin Donuts beat out Starbucks for coffee & donuts category
• Discover Card: favorite credit card, #2 - Capital One, #3 - Visa
• NFL: favorite major league sport, #2 - NBA, #3 - MLB
• Domino's, Papa John's, Pizza Hut: top 3 pizza brands
• Subway: favorite quick-serve restaurant, #2 - McDonalds, #3 - Quizno's
• Target: favorite retail store, #2 - Costco, #3 - Walmart
  
• Verizon: favorite wireless phone service, #2 - T-Mobile, #3 - Sprint

Heineken Bars

Heineken - the next Starbucks? (AOL) Heineken is taking beer branding one step further.

Brand Experience is finally getting the emphasis it deserves from planning and creativity. So much so that experiential marketing agencies are becoming an industry of their own. Check out Jack Morton, they believe experiences bring a brand to life and have the power to spark immediate insight and action. COOL!

"With Starbucks, people are looking for a familiar brand. This is what we are trying to roll out for beer," says Erik van de Ven, Heineken's manager for duty-free and travel retail. "If you enter the Heineken Bar, you enter the world of Heineken."

I think this is super smart for a beer brand. Starbucks created the third-place (not work, not home) around coffee. But who wouldn't want the license to enjoy a brewsky in an established third-place that offered beer? People now (maybe) feel awkward about their beer consumption at mid-day or after-work. But really, an after work brew serves the purpose of breaking up the work-home-work-home mantra. Heineken is serving the customer and the brand with experiential marketing.

"Social experiences are in many ways stronger than advertising. They create an opportunity to showcase your brand at its very best," says Tim Riches, the Australia managing director of branding agency Futurebrand at Interpublic Group of Cos. (AOL)

Heineken will be rolling these bars out in airports around the globe. Keep your fingers crossed for U.S. entry, apparently we have some legal restriction against alochol makers owning and operating their own bars, so it might be a while...

Experience marketing focuses on creating a positive and memorable experience for customers. Super COOL because it focuses on the take-away for the consumer; in which, the brand is intrinsically a part of.

I worked for Starbucks for 6 months and about two and a half or those were dedicated to teaching me the values of the company and the goals for every customer interaction. Starbucks has the experience thing down. They are a big company but their brand runs through all departments and all interactions, making it feel small. Every company/brand needs to realize that even though passion may be felt at the top of the chain, it needs to trickle down to the frontline 16-year-old who's looking for inspiration. The frontline is where the customer experience happens.

Junior planners, have a couple ideas from your own consuming experience about how to make changes at the frontline for brands. This is where planning can really count!

For more info, check out The 3 Ds of Customer Experience by the Harvard Update group.

telling a story

Advertising is about telling a story.

These clips are about the Cadillac campaign (mpdailyfix.com) from Modernista:

• By telling its story, Cadillac has a chance to connect its heritage with the baby boomer generation.
  
• Good advertising tells a story - but there are thousands of stories out there. Tens of thousands. But it's a company telling a story about itself. How credible is that?
  
• We are all over brands telling us their stories. And what am I interested in? Finding the stories about others that sound, smell and look like my own story of myself.

I think good advertising tells a story where the brand is a character and the customer/user is a character. Consumers see themselves in the story, identify with its details, and opt-in via purchase. This is where planning comes in (we should really be the best storytellers at the agency).

• Christopher Owens from The Richards Group says, "If an idea never reaches storymode, the briefing's going to suck." To him, a story is a compelling flow of logic.
• Jen Urich says "get enough information to be able to do this."

Planners are mostly responsible for the big idea, at least honing in on it so it can inspire the creative process to be magical. And if the creative is done well, then there should be a story in place that consumers will pick up on and spread via word of mouth. The big idea/story we come up with should inspire others to tell it again and again.

Historically, stories have been shared as a means of entertainment, education, preservation of culture and to instill knowledge. They are frequently used to teach, explain and/or entertain. Wikipedia states that today, the vast entertainment industry is built upon a foundation of sophisticated multimedia storytelling. (connections planning?)

Also from Wiki: In narrative, a plot is the rendering and ordering of the events and actions of a story, particularly toward the achievement of some particular artistic or emotional effect. Planners, we are responsible for the plot/BIG IDEA.

Typical plot/big idea structure goes something like this:

1. Initital situation ~ make it about the consumer: where are they? what's going on with them? inspire the story to move from here...
2. Conflict/Problem ~ what was the insight? what problem can the brand/product/service solve for the consumer?
3. Complication ~ to include or not to include, creatives can add details here to engage people
4. Climax ~ highest point of interest (if you study quantitative, this is where emotion and attention flow should peak), level of engagement should be high, consumer's interest is peaked (think of how a creative brief should inspire and take the creatives to another level), the brand should take consumers to another level here.
   
5. Suspense ~ again, to include or not to include, maybe think of the Got Milk? Campaign
   
6. Resolution ~ brand/product/service fulfills a need
7. Conclusion ~ call to action of some sort.

A solid narrative/storyline could/should contain these 7 Elements:

1. point of view ~ single-minded voice/perspective (the big idea) Ask yourself what your story's message is, why it's important to tell and who your audience will be.
2. dramatic question ~ engage consumers here, it may be an intriguing statement that causes the consumers to ask themselves a question
3. emotional content ~ this is what everybody can relate to and what make stories so universal (understand fundamental human truths)
   
4. voice ~ tone is important
5. soundtrack ~ music is a great way to establish mood and complement your overall message (think of Rumblefish)
6. economy ~ copywriters need to make every word count
7. pacing ~ planning can come in here, think about how, where and when this story should be available to consumers...you don't want to overwhelm, but you need to keep your presence consistent and top of mind.
   

Hipster Stereotypes

I like stereotypes. Useful for initial descriptions/first impressions. Great for a Creative Brief to give tonality and an archetypal idea. So, we're starting with The Hipster. I've been called this lately and I wanted to find what's it all about. Definitions from Urban Dictionary

• people in their teens to 20s who generally listen to indie rock, hang out in coffee shops, shop at the thrift store and talk about things like books, music, films and art
• listen to bands that you have never heard of
• have hairstyles that could be called "complicated;" dyes it often
  
• probably tattooed
• reads Black Book, Nylon, and the Styles section of the NYTimes
• drinks Pabst Blue Ribbon
• always denites being a hipster
• usually wears the same three things over and over, for more fashion sense check out Hipster Musings
  
• addicted to coffee and cigarettes
• name-drops
• one who possesses tastes, social attitudes, and opinions deemed cool by the cool (Note: it is no longer recommended that one use the term "cool"; a Hipster would instead say "deck")
• the Hipster walks among the masses in daily life but is not a part of them and shuns anything held dear by the mainstream

Hipster cities:

• New York
• Los Angeles
• Chicago
• Austin
• San Francisco
• Portland - my favs: Powell's, Crow Bar, Matador, Doug Fir Lounge, Mississippi St., Muu-Muus, Montage, Kelly's Olympian, Music Millenium, Shanghai Tunnel, Night Light Lounge, Wonder Cafe
  

think of the answers

Interviews can be exciting and stimulating, or they can leave you feeling like you're in way over your head. Some advice: Be prepared #1. You will have the opportunity to ask questions of the interviewer, have some good ones already thought up.

These are just a few that were tossed my way:

1. What is your ideal job?
   
2. Where are you in 3 years?
3. Have you discovered a trend ahead of everyone else? What was it?
   
4. What do you know about ____ agency?
5. What is planning to you?
6. So you don't have any agency experience? (have a good answer while you're still a great candidate for the position ~ energy, training, ideas, etc.)

more to come...

advice to junior planners

• Look for 3 things in an agency: a mentor to spend time with you, work you like and admire, and the opportunity to do new business.
• Bring your personal passions to planning ~ experiences are the coolest things you can bring to an agency.
• Stay naive & curious; be comfortable with your inabilities.
• Talk to as many people as possible. In this industry, it's all about timing.
• Get good fast ~ work on good accounts and do good work.
• Have a point of view.
• You should be 'a little off,' not crazy, but different.
• Love the human condition; be able to empathize with fundamental truths.
• Understand business.
• Develop your ability to inspire the creative mind.
• Don't overthink things ~ planning should be simple.
• And remember, a great idea can come from anyone no matter their positioin.
  

young blood in the industry

• With more young blood entering the advertising industry, Bildsten credits Brew with allowing new talent to explore their creativity.
• "Younger talents are interested in working for the untraditional agencies," Bildsten said. "They're not even interested in talking to the big traditional agencies but to the new breed agencies like ourselves because we are trying new things." AdAge.com

Brew is a small (8 person?) shop in Minneapolis. It has worked with Nikon, Porsche, Virgin Mobile, Citibank, and Time Warner Cable.

Anybody know more? They sound super cool. No website found. :(

practicing my consuming skills

• you know those discount racks of items? Well isn't it a conundrum when you're looking at each piece, making your way around the circle and you find a person coming in the opposite direction doing the same thing? You pause a bit longer and hope that they go away so you can continue in your systematic shopping method but they continue, and you're frustrated...what's a shopper to do?
  
• Do you have my size? Customer-service people are super nice when trying to find you a different size or locate a different color. But when you're request sends them in all different directions and you know your request isn't the only one on their plate, it gets a bit ridiculous and you retract your inquiry in the first place. They relinquish with a roll of the eyes but with a smile. I feel like I should tip them. Anyone else?
• in the shoe department, I was skimming the sales racks, totally immersed in my skim and out of my peripheral, I hear a sales lady ask "finding everything ok?" Passing me in the opposite direction, she was neither direct nor interested. I didn't even notice her till she was past me. Is this sneaky? is this shy? Whatever it is, it doesn't work if you want to be a good salesperson.

Customer-service should be a competitive advantage for brands. Starbucks spent almost a month training me in the frontline, customer-service ways of their beautiful brand. The Tuna Fish does a funny parody of what this service should really be. Remember to take your brand's values and beauty in-store too, this is where advertising can really make a difference.

just smile more

Short coffee.
Triple Venti Mocha.
Tall Vanilla Extra Hot Latte.
Tall Awake Tea.
The Usual.
My Drink.
Grand Latte for here.
Venti Black with two cups no sleeve.
Grande 1pRasberry Nonfat No Whip White Chocolate Mocha.

We are all smiling Starbucks' Baristas on the inside. Maybe there won't be a line behind you and we can talk for a bit, or maybe you have a better connection with the barista on bar and you move to talk with them. Either way, smiling is good.

Enter, the "facial feedback" hypothesis. The hypothesis states "involuntary facial movements provide sufficient peripheral information to drive emotional experience. And feedback from facial expression affects emotional expression and behavior." It is the ability of smiles to make others smile that is transforming a facial expression into a global industry.

A great deal of research is now being done to determind how exactly smile work and why. COOL!
Advice: next interview you have - smile. Maybe you'll make the person across from you smile too. Then you'll both be happy and thinking positive thoughts. They'll like you for making them happy and want you to be a part of the team. You'll get hired and make a difference in the world. The payoffs of optimism are endless.

Experience v. Passion

"you'd like to think we live in a world where passion and energy would mean something to an employer...but experience seems to be the old ball and chain bringing people together"

Gen Y makes a mark and their imprint is entrepreneurship sets the tone for this quote by yours truly this morning to dear ol' dad. I'm not flailing or discouraged, just frustrated.

• Experts say these children of the baby-boom generation, also known as Gen Y or echo boomers, are taking to heart a desire for the kind of work-life balance their parents didn't have.

I am part of a generation that has a certain passion for work (and life) that many of the people (get ready for a sweeping generalization) who are hiring entry-level youngsters aren't accustomed to in their own career.

When the job brief states "2 years (or more) of agency experience," it's a barrier to entry. It's meant to weed out the weak candidates. I'm still standing. Just a bit frustrated.

Chris Anderson

Wired magazine is pretty brilliant. Editor in Chief, Chris Anderson has a blog, check it out.

I got linked to Chris through Ed Cotton's Q&A with Ad Week. Ed considers Chris a thought leader.

This is a cool rant by Chris:

• The Intelligent Design movement has opened my eyes. I realize that although I believe that evolution explains why the living world is the way it is, I can't actually prove it.

• So, by this standard, virtually everything I believe in must now fall under the shadow of unproveability. Most importantly, this includes the belief that democracy, capitalism and other market-driven systems (including evolution!) are better than their alternatives. ~ Chris Anderson, Editor in Chief, Wired magazine

agency cliche

“The cliché in the ad business is ‘You’re a real agency if you have a car and beer.’" Greg Solman, AdWeek

I'd like to work on beer. Maybe I just drink too much, but give me a good beer and watch me sell the sh*t out of it. :) Beer is an experience to be shared. I'm not a huge fan of the cheezy Budweiser stuff or anything Coors has done. But there are a tons of other fantastic beers out there to be celebrated with a good campaign.

Cars...I drive a Mazda--a recent brand change for me. I drove a Honda, and my parents drive Fords. I love my Mazda and Zoom Zoom made an impression on me as far as creativity and emotion go.

Jr. Planners--get an opinion on these two industries. Have some ideas in your back pocket for when you join an agency and they ask you to work with a car or a beer, cuz it's probably in the cards.

planners in the middle

You Are 45% Left Brained, 55% Right Brained

The left side of your brain controls verbal ability, attention to detail, and reasoning. Left brained people are good at communication and persuading others. If you're left brained, you are likely good at math and logic. Your left brain prefers dogs, reading, and quiet. The right side of your brain is all about creativity and flexibility. Daring and intuitive, right brained people see the world in their unique way. If you're right brained, you likely have a talent for creative writing and art. Your right brain prefers day dreaming, philosophy, and sports.

Are You Right or Left Brained?