What Is Creative in the Age of Social Media? from Doug Winfield on Vimeo.

Lessons for folks in ad agencies looking to get a handle on social media:

1. Stop being scared.
2. Learn to do by doing.
3. Change is accelerating, which means that if you’re not doing, you’re falling further behind, faster all the time — the bell curve of adoption is flattening.
4. The hits will be separated from the misses by the ability to accelerate the tempo of learning — how fast you can learn what you need to know then apply it to your goals. Then do it again.
5. The word ‘tush’ is underutilized.
6. Start with the relationship you want to have with customers, follow with strategy and platform decisions.

Worth visiting: the original post.

Alex Bogusky reports on the Brammo campaign Shocking Barack

That’s the thing about this that’s so fundamentally different than anything that has even a tiny media buy connected. With media you know you’ll get something but here, there is a very real chance that absolutely nothing happens. Yet we were also confident that what we were doing mattered and that, maybe when something matters, it has a chance to get noticed.

CP + B bought no media for the campaign. They made their own media. They flexed their creativity and earned attention.

Just in case you thought we were the only ones seeing the 80 / 20 rule flip happening. Not so much.

It’s the biggest change in media and advertising right now and it’ll continue to be for the next decade. To recap:

Advertising’s 80 / 20 (media / creative) is flipping.

20 / 80 (media / creative) will be the new rule.

Here’s the introduction — Advertising’s 80 / 20 Rule is Flipping.

Here’s the collection — posts on the 80 / 20 Rule Flip.

Here’s a sample of a Shocking Barack video:

Last night I heard from a friend about the launch of a new venture — Victors & Spoils.

Here’s how they describe themselves:

Victors & Spoils is the world’s first creative (ad) agency built on crowdsourcing principles. Our goal is to provide businesses with creative solutions to their marketing, advertising and product-design problems, by engaging the world’s most talented creatives.

The NYTimes reported the launch of Victors & Spoils in the midst of some overall industry news about recovery, which is dandy.

In fact, this is all excellent news. As a friend said when I pointed to the news,

A new development, not a wholly original though, but may be one with the weight and track record to generate momentum… (elipses theirs)

So I’d like to welcome Victors & Spoils to the game of crowdsourcing ad creation.

It’s outstanding to have industry heavyweights showing their commitment to new ad agency models and taking the plunge themselves.

The opportunity to invent a new model, fit to an evolving media, creative and advertising landscape, that connects key people with processes and rewards contributors fairly is our vision on AdHack.

And more than a little bit.

We bust into our offices every morning to get at the hard work of making it more real day by day.

• Getting great work done for great brands.
• Getting the creative powerhouses compensated for their work.
• Getting the hard parts of the process smoothed out so it’s easy.
• Getting great stories of success to share with skeptics.
• Getting it done fast and pain free and now.

And we’re now 500+ strong, growing every day. Bringing in big deals. Delivering great work.

Unum cum virtute multorum. One with the strength of many.

So welcome Victors & Spoils. We think you’re a great addition to our ragtag group inventing a 21st century ad agency model.

Let’s get to it.

So what? Well it’s more than just simple fun.

Here’s why we did it:

• More views for your videos — who doesn’t want that?
• Discover new videos — let the full playlist run and we guarantee you’ll see work you’ve never seen before.
• Invite discovery through cross pollination — buyers get to discover more great videos from creators.
• To experiment, learn and add another tactical arrow to our promotional quiver.

Here’s the full view of the full list — Video Ads from AdHack Video Creators — with codes available for you to share it and embed it on your site too.

And in case you hadn’t noticed, the AdHack community of video creators rocks!

Microsoft Fetes Windows 7 ‘Creators’ — Good-natured push from Crispin Porter touts collaborative nature of new OS.

In addition to commercials running on TV and online, the effort includes outdoor and digital banners as well as 7-second Web videos that demonstrate the product’s ease of use.

Microsoft will also invite consumers to submit their own 7-second product demos through crowd-sourcing sites such as AdHack and TurnHere. Selected clips will post online next month.

Hunh. Isn’t that interesting.

Sounds like a really Big Video Ad Creative Job, if you were interested in that kind of thing.

Overview

Woo, baby. We have a big client with a big opportunity coming up. Fast.

Who are they? Let’s just say they’re a Leading Software Company for the Global PC Marketplace. Big.

That’s about all we can say, just for now.

Why You?

You’re getting this invitation because you’re on AdHack and have top-notch video skills.

We want to work with you.

Are you interested?

No? Stop reading now and have a great life. Thanks and good luck!

Yes? Here’s the 4 steps for you to find out the full details:

1. Email me your AdHack user name (I’m james@adhack.com or contact us).
• (No AdHack user name? Create one here)
2. I’ll check out your portfolio of video work. If it’s excellent, I’ll reply back with a link to the full details on Thursday, Oct. 22.
3. When you click on that link, you’ll be presented with a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) and Release Agreement (RA). Big clients have these requirements.
4. Agree to the NDA and RA and you’ll get full access to the ad brief.

What does that get you?

With full access you’ll get to see the client name, the rewards available and the scope of the project.

You’ll also have access to create videos for the project.

Okay, now what?

Don’t delay. A specific reward is available only for the first 45 creators. (Yes, 45. We told you this was a big job.)

I’m james@adhack.com or contact us.

People keep blathering on about social media — the changes it indicates in media, the new model for distribution, a person-to-person revolution for sharing.

But it’s hard to put those claims into a tangible perspective.

We read that every minute 20 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube but that’s pretty far out of human scale.

We hear Udi Manber, Google’s VP of Engineering say ‘that 20 to 25% of the queries we see today, we have never seen before.’ But can we really understand how diverse and complicated that makes our intentions?

I don’t think so. It’s pretty abstract and hard to really get a handle on.

So I’m grateful to have found this widget (embedded below): Gary’s Social Media Count.

I dare you to watch the numbers and not be amazed.

So how does advertising play in this world of constantly flowing new content from person to person? By being more creative.

By flipping the old 80 / 20 rule of budgets — spending 80% on media and 20% on creative — to the new 20 / 80 rule — spending 20% on media and 80% on creative.

Fancy enough, we call it the 80/20 rule flip. Here’s the introduction to the 80 / 20 rule flip.

Thanks to Lynetter for the image.

How do you win over an audience? Make them laugh.

Rory Sutherland succeeds at getting the audience laughing right off the bat and just keeps rolling.

The highlights:

• Perceived value is the easiest type of value to create.
• Unless you want to live in a poorer world in the future, we need to create more intangible value from our limited resources.
• Most problems, once you reach a certain level of wealth in a society, are problems of perception.
• All value is relative. All value is perceived value.
• Persuasion is often better than compulsion.
• Shakerism was a proto environmental movement.
• The interface fundamentally determines the behaviour.
• The value created by the invention of Shreddies Diamonds.

“How many problems of life can be solved by actually tinkering with perception, rather than that tedious and hard working messy business of actually trying to change reality?”

Some great, thought-provoking stuff.

Want to get paid to make a lot of videos for a cool new product that hasn’t launched yet?

We’re deep in discussions with a prospective client who wants to buy a lot of videos from AdHack creators.

The client has a few specific requirements.

So to make the project a success, help us with this simple 5-question survey.

It’ll get your foot in the door.

It’ll take you less than a minute to complete.

We’ll bring you the business to maximize your success.

Click this link:

• Yes, I want to bring in that business!

Don’t delay in answering and don’t be shy about sharing this survey. We’re working on a big deal and want to extend it to all the right people.

Thanks for helping us help you!

Team AdHack
James, Corey, Karim and You

Unum cum virtute multorum.

Dirty Cheap Liquor: “Enjoy the journey!”

Bralief: “Even doctors have recommended it.”

Be sure to watch right through to the end for the closing jingle.

As Grant McCracken says: “We were once a monolithic society, relatively speaking. Now we are badly-herded cats.”

Our culture has spread. Our shared meanings have disappeared.

What speaks to some in an effective way about a real problem, speaks to others from another planet. What looks to some as a simple ad looks to others as a surreal satire of a form of advertising.

In a spread culture, the meanings live with the receivers and their orientation to culture.

Seth Godin posted the following graph this week to illustrate what he calls the tacky techie conundrum.

Click for larger version.

It’s a great frame of reference to place cultural artifacts and people’s understandings of culture.

And it’s important to advertising because we’re operating within the culture. Telling stories about the culture, to the people in the culture.

Though the ads above may not speak to me, they may well speak to the folks who they’re intended to speak to. And that’s their purpose.

So before we look down our noses from on creative high, let’s remember that maybe we’re the ones not getting it.