Kill The Gun

A very powerful bit of visual story telling.

Make Me A Bicycle Clown

Some very creative hockey calls from Randy Moller.

Some Photos From 2009

An Advertising Parable For The Holidays

How About A Bottle Of Hand Sanitizer with Red & Green Glitter In It?

A nice spin on the development of the agency holiday

card: http://duffyshanley.com/HolidayCard-2010/index.html

The Official Beaverisms

After some recent editions from fellow Eagles I've decided to officially memorialize the great words of Ray Beavers on my blog for future reference. I documented this list of "Beaverisms" in the side of my notebook during my high school accounting class in 1989. My apologies in advance for any of you that may find these offensive.

A special thanks you to BG and MC on their additions to this list. Both were priceless.

• The hit dog always hollers

• All I should see is your rear end and elbows

• You're like a blind dog in a meat house

• Run through there like a spotted ass ape

• You're running on eggs!

• Fire out and ring his bell

• I'm doing the dog... you're just holdin' the tail

• You may have enough money to burn up a wet elephant

• I don't have to button up my shirt, my heart ain't fallin' out

• Your next few tests are going to be boogers

• I speak bilingual English and profanity

• A blind hog finds somethin' to eat every now and then

• You come in here with that horse play. You'd better tie that horse outside!

• You guys are crazier than a house full of ants

• He doesn't care what I call him just as long as he's not late for supper

• You just bump your gums to hear your head rattle

• I gotta cavity over here and I'm talking with an echo

• I got $10. What does that mean? I got someone else's pants on.

• Currency is paper with dead Presidents on it

• If she had another wrinkle she have to hold it in her hand

• You'll be down in Joliet getting a stripped sun tan

• Throw it back and let the whineo sleep on it

• Sit up. You don't have a rubber neck.

• I almost had a job at the dynamite plant

• How the hell could you be board? You're breathin', you could of been a dandylion

• They'll put you so far back they'll have to feed you with a slingshot

• I'm gonna put a ring around your eye

• My wife wraps my lunch in a road map

• You can read reading, but you can't read writin!

• When Meno & Gohel were Jrs people thought they dressed the side line markers

• How can you be listening to me and be writing the sugar report to somebody?

• We've had that ever since heck was pup

• You don't know rude from bubble gum

• Time to sack the bat

• They say that when you get older the memory is the first to go. I forget what the second is.

• What's a Sail Cat? It's a cat that has been run over so many times you can pick it up and throw it. And boy does it sail. It goes like a shingle.

• You're 2 sandwiches short of a picnic lunch

• You guys never annoy me. It's a slice of heaven every day.

• Stormin ' like a bull at a new gate

• If you want a rocker go to the old folks home

• Maybe if I fill up on the gas tank she'll run away

• Where there's no brains there's a lot of labor

• Some of you guys are just scratchin around the sandbox

• If you don't know your right from left... throw a rock

• When the bell rings I'm outta here like a scolded dog

• You can't ride a good horse to death

• I love all you guys even if some of you are hemorrhoids

Social Media Boom

A nice visualization of SM data

Nail In The Coffin

I thought this packaging design was genius.

A New Meaning To The Word Office Space

I'd like an office like this.

Pop Up from abw on Vimeo.

http://vimeo.com/4197108

Gimme Shelter

I came across this today on commarts.com and thought it was a great media buy.

Credit: www.jigsawllc.com

Grant Bernstein, art director; Nick Pipitone, writer; Steven Wold/Nick Pipitone, creative directors; Matt O'Donnell, print production.

Logomatrix

This Lego video is unbelievable.

Original link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDe4v318f64&feature=player_embedded

Thanks for @mattChevy for tweeting.

Ideas Are The Real Currency

I came across this line in a Tim Williams article today and thought it was worth sharing. "In a world where many of the most powerful media have a cost of $0, ideas are the real currency of marketing, not money."

For the full article on the 15 Risks Agencies Can't Afford Not to Take go to: http://ow.ly/F1iz

FDA & Social Media

Experimenting with a style for Unity

Experimenting with a new technique. If your next project needs creative support contact me at C2.
Review our work at www.C2-cc.com

http://c2-cc.posterous.com/experimenting-with-a-style-for-unity

Tribes Are What Matter

Who are you upsetting?
Who are you connecting?
Who are you leading?
This is where change comes from.
Where are we going next?

Handle With Care

This came from http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/10/big-ideas.html but I thought it was worth repeating because it's so simple and so true.

"Big ideas are little ideas that no one killed too soon."

Yast

Time sheets can be a necessary evil. I just came across a tool for freelancers that makes tracking time very easy. Go to www.yast.com. It's about as easy as it can get.

Invest In Fun

Sometimes the best way to motivate change with a customer isn't a new brochure flooded with lots of information. Sometimes it's about having fun. Sometimes (I think) we forget that difficult problems can be solved this way because we've convinced ourselves that we have sophisticated methods to deliver solutions. Sometimes it's fun to begin 4 sentences in a row with sometimes.

Upside Down House Meets Upside Down Umbrella

Klaudiusz Golos and Sebastion Mikuciuk build an upside down house for the ”The world stands on its head” project in Trassenheide Germany.

http://freshome.com/2009/09/11/crazy-upside-down-house-in-germany/

Kaboom

A quick read from Alex Bogusky. Creative directors are in the business of professional insanity http://post.ly/9QY5

Have We Lost Something Along The Way?

Original Article Link: http://bit.ly/15XV2L

I Miss the Lunatics

by Ernie Schenck

I miss the lunatics. I miss the whack jobs and the incendiaries, all full of passion and madness, wild-eyed, hearts on fire, willing to fall on their swords for an idea. I miss the art director I once knew who threw a cigar at a client.

I miss the yellers and the screamers. The immature, belligerent little bastards who refused to let mediocrity suck them down into the cage of mediocrity.

I don’t know George Lois but I think about him. What a wild man he must have been in the early years. What a nut case. What a Claymore mine just begging you to trip his wire. Go ahead. Just pull my chain. I dare you. What a genius.

I love the stuff that’s going on now. Never before have creatives had such a massive canvas to work with. There is so much possibility. So many dots to connect. It’s huge. It’s enormous.

The smartest guy in the room? Doesn’t exist anymore. You know why? Because every guy in the room is just so damn smart. MIT Ad Lab guys. UX wizards. The Twitterati and the digerati and the experiencerati. So smart. So brilliant. So cool, calm and collected.

But where are the hot heads? Where are the tortured and the agitated? The bulls in the china shop. Are you out there? Do you exist anymore? Because I sure as hell haven’t seen too many of you around lately.

In our rush to collaboration, I wonder if we’ve lost something along the way. For so long, so few of us had ownership of the process. The client paid for the work, but we owned it. It was ours. And when something is yours, you care about it. You protect it. And woe to the sorry soul who tries to deface it or harm it in any way.

As I write this, millions of disenfranchised Iranians are taking to the streets to protest what they believe is a sham election. Millions. Standing up, risking their lives, for an idea. This is the passion of crowds. Put a creative idea in the hands of a far smaller mob of smart, talented people and passion goes AWOL.

Psychologist Jeremy Dean puts it this way: “Groups only rarely foment great ideas because people in them are power-fully shaped by group norms, the unwritten rules that describe how individuals in a group ‘are’ and how they ‘ought’ to behave.”

Maybe it's like Dash, the little kid in The Incredibles, when his mom tells him that everyone’s special and he says, “That's like saying nobody is.” If everyone owns the idea, then no one owns it. And where there’s no ownership, there can be no passion.

Just for once, I’d like to see fury make a comeback. I’d like to see pyrotechnics in the conference room. Fireworks and explosions and loud bangs. God almighty, people, doesn't anyone fight for creativity anymore?

Tony Kaye was arguably one of the most volatile, egotistical, abusive directors ever to set foot in advertising. Most people I know who’ve worked with Tony have nothing but, well, not-so-wonderful things to say about the experience. Me? I loved him. Adored the guy. (Although I have to say, when he asked that his name be removed from the credits of American History X, even I had to shake my head. Brilliant career move? Probably not. Explosive display of passion for the work? Absolutely.)

If nothing else, the Tony episode taught me something about the choices we all make all the time between career and craft. It's not easy.

In his recent Ad Age piece, Bart Cleveland recalled something Steve Hayden said about his old boss. “The night before we presented the storyboard for ‘1984,’ Jay [Chiat] was on a tear. He didn’t think anything we had in the room—including ‘1984’—was good enough, new enough, smart enough, beautiful enough. He was upset. He was brutal. He wanted to cancel the meeting.”

As Bart explained, “Chiat’s passion for the work was not influenced by what was going on in the world around him. He wasn’t going to do mediocre work because there was a recession going on. In his mind, it was every ad maker’s duty to serve the client by breaking the mold. To fail was inexcusable.”

No, we don’t need creatives throwing cigars at clients. We don’t need art directors threatening to jump out 35th floor windows if their Webisodes don't sell. But every once in a while, when the work is about to get its throat cut, it wouldn’t hurt if we stood up and said, no you’re wrong, you’re wrong wrong wrong. This is great. This will work.

I believe it. I want you to believe it.

How very reaffirming that would be. How very Tony. How very Jay.

Upside Down Umbrella

I finally made a header graphic for this blog. Here's to procrastination.

Take Care Of All Of Your Advertising Needs Without All Of Those Pesky Creatives

Presenting The Ad-O-Matic

The Ad-O-Matic from James Kiersted on Vimeo.

Visualization of S&P 500 as a Planetary System

The Stock Ticker Orbital Comparison, or STOC for short, from media student James Grant, uses a planetary system metaphor to display activity with the S&P 500. Each circle represents a stock and they orbit a planet-like (or sun?) thing in the middle.

Source: flowingdata.com

Too Much Noise

So much noise is created about social media channels that I wanted to distill it down into one simple statement and move on. Social media tools are evolving the way we build relationships. Bye for now.

Photoshop In Your Pocket

Yesterday Adobe released Photoshop Mobile for the iPhone. The new photoshop.com site looks amazing as well. I'm definitely going to up late this weekend exploring the possibilities.

The (Not So) Secret Ingredient

Without a doubt healthy relationships are key to a successful business but quite often we overlook what fuels these relationships. I believe the (not so) secret ingredient is quality ideas. Quality ideas that exceed expectations and stretch the minds of both client and creator keeps everyone inspired, opens a dialogue and ultimately strengthens the relationship. Believing that we are exclusively in a people business can lead to a relationship without a lot of substance. In my experience great ideas lead to strong, long-lasting healthy relationships. Not the other way around.

Typolution

#nospec

Did You Know 4.0 Video

Extra! Extra! Read all about it.

Google gets deeper into the media business.

Official Google Blog: Read news fast with Google Fast Flip

For a demo:

Google Fast Flip

Can I see Mr. Buffet tomorrow?

A short blog entry on how to get a meeting with Warren Buffet from Jason at 37 signals.

Warren Buffet on scheduling meetings - (37signals)

Don't Be Pollution

ESPN's Social Media Guidelines

2 articles about ESPN's Social Media Policy

http://www.briansolis.com/2009/09/espn-takes-social-media-guidelines-just-a-bit-too-far-or-how-to-stunt-your-employee’s-growth/

http://mashable.com/2009/08/04/espn-social-media/

From Toy To Tool

A very simple and inspiring way to solve an almost overwhelming problem.

Dr. TXT

This year, 39% of doctors said they'd communicated with patients online, up from just 16% five years earlier, according to health-information firm Manhattan Research, a unit of Decision Resources Inc.

Source: The Wall Street Journal

Be More

It great to see a familiar face in Communication Arts. Hucklebuck Design Studio is featured in Fresh this month. http://www.commarts.com/fresh/hucklebuck-design-studio.html

Hucklebuck will even send you badges if you ask nicely.

Creatively Speaking

Creativity Magazine is a print publication that I still read religiously because it has an interesting mix of voices talking about the creative industry. I particularly enjoy this expert from David Nobay's POV article:

"SUITS 1: CREATIVES 0

Admittedly, you'd have to be profoundly medicated to ignore the general state of the world's finances right now — but, well, we're creative people aren't we? Surely, we are precisely in the business of thinking our way out of excruciating tight corners? Faced with a life of potentially nothing, isn't it up to us to create something? Not a fictitious valuation, or a shady shelf company, but rather something tangible.. Something of worth. Christ, perhaps, even something of great beauty?

Rather than talk ourselves into a dark hole, what if we viewed the current shitstorm as a catalyst to a new, governing class system? Not the Working Class, the Upper Class, or even the Emerging-Technology Class. THE CREATIVE CLASS (That's right; us). More specifically; a class diametrically opposed to The Uncreative, Intangible, Unimaginative Class that has shaped society and fucked up our ideas for far too long."

He also goes onto say that "There are too many of us, crammed into an ever-decreasing space." It's a breath of fresh air to hear someone speak so frankly.

There's some other antidotes that I wanted to capture before my issue gets lost or I throw too many things on top of it and forget.

• The most important thing I have learned about leadership is to jump off a cliff and build your wings on the way down.

- Tony Davidson of Widen + Kennedy London

• Because it's (the internet) is the most populated universal modern environment, and it's where the newest languages and rules of communication are evolving and being created from scratch.

- Andrew Keller from Crispin Porter + Bogusky

• We learned with "Truth" that we could affect social change. And so we applied that to MINI with the thought that we could change culture to embrace a product rather and change a product to mirror culture.

- Andrew Keller from CP + B

• Almost everything I know I learned from Kiss and the Catholic Church.

- Andrew Keller from CP + B

• The biggest challenge right now is not the economy, it's relevancy.

- Linus Karlsson & Paul Malmstrom of Mother NY

For more info on Creativity go to: creativity-online.com