Desedo | Des Temps

Help Wanted: Game Developer

MHB — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 20:50:09 +0000

We need a freelance video game developer to help Desedo make the Cutest Casual Game Ever. Email your resume and portfolio to michael@desedo.com.

American-Muslim Consumer Conference

MHB — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:18:37 +0000

This Saturday is the American-Muslim Consumer Conference at Rutgers. The speakers and audience will be a mix of marketers, businesses and scholars, all there to discuss this overlooked $170 Billion consumer demographic.

One Hundred and Seventy Billion Dollars.

That’s a lot of spending power still overlooked by most agencies and F500 companies. At Desedo, we see opportunities in this market gap. So, I’ll be there and presenting some thoughts from my white paper American-Muslim Identity: Advertising, Mass Media + New Media.

Give a shout if you want to learn more.

City Secrets

The System — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 02:16:35 +0000

When I first heard Jay-Z’s new song Empire State of Mind, which is a personal map of our hometown, I began to visualize the locations as data points: Stash spot @560 State. Tribeca Grill. MSG. Turns out I was not alone, as Tyler Gray of FastCompany placed Hov’s lyrics to Google Maps. Cool, novel, and any other adjective that can be used to explain how we remix stories within new media.

I asked myself – how could this become even more entertaining? And then, via the Google Geo Developers Blog, I learned that Japanese designer Katsuomi Kobayashi created a driving simulator that uses Google Maps – so that you can drive around any city via the interwebs. Like GTA. 2D or 3D. OMFG.

What if we could meld the two? Therein lies a game of some sort. Alternate or augmented or awesome. Via your computer screen or handheld device, sit in Jay-Z’s SUV and drive around his NYC. It’s like a dash of 2nd Life, and a pinch of ARG and heap of reality to mix it all together. Where can we put this thinking to use for transmedia elements of a narrative, an album release or an advertising campaign? Perhaps, within Heart of the City?

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(Written by erstwhile Desedo intern Jeff Slawsky, a strategist, NYC native and rabid UMich fan.)

Love in London

MHB — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 18:34:35 +0000

We are back from London and giddy with excitement. Why? Because we just won Babelgum’s Pixel Pitch award for our transmedia tale Heart of the City!

Given the competition and the jury, we’re still shocked.
Here are some lovely spots of press from ScreenDaily and ARGNet. More news and excitement is forthcoming…:)

Cross Media Business Models

MHB — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 05:19:10 +0000

At the Power to the Pixel conference last week in London, Ben Grass of Pure Grass Films gave a brilliant talk that addressed this topic:

Extending stories across multiple platforms not only helps build an engaged fan base but also extends the potential of new revenue generating possibilities. As traditional financing dries up, how can producers leverage new types of cross-media partners to expand the value of their properties?

Leading cross-media producer and digital innovator Ben Grass explains how, with current case studies of brand new projects Shadowline and Circle of 8.

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Heart of the City

MHB — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 20:28:30 +0000

What if Kanye West met Lord of the Rings…?

The Story
Our transmedia story Heart of the City is a narrative set in the surreal world of urban teens, rife with mischief, rabbit holes and romance. The storyworld encompasses a web series, ARGs, original products and a feature film.

It all begins one hot day in Brooklyn when our two heroes, Jai and Sash, buy a dusty talisman from the back wall of their local bodega, thinking it might hang nicely from Jai’s chain. But when they discover that it has the power to unlock daydreams – turning them into flashes of reality – the boys find their lives and their path forever changed.

In their mind’s eye and on our screen, they now skate with Tony Hawk, smooch Santogold and freestyle with Pharrell. New York City morphs into a vast playground as Jai and Sash explore its nooks and secrets, joined by a purple sasquatch-dragon and bold fashionistas.

But something’s missing.

They must find the meaning of the talisman – what are its rules, how can it help them, how long will this magic last?

Just as heroes before them have learned, from Dorothy Gale to Peter Parker, with great power, comes great responsibility. Time is fleeting. Evil lurks. And so begins their quest.

The Market
At Desedo HQ, we are excited. (we just won the Pixel Pitch:))

In creating Heart of the City, we wanted to make new heroes for a massive, multiracial audience. Jai and Sash are from the optimistic youth of the Obama generation, from a new era in American history.

These teens are at the vanguard of digital, mobile and gaming. It’s a group whose hobbies include comic books, skateboarding, and fashion. And they were weaned on hip-hop.

As we wrote in Ad Age, most advertising and entertainment that targets this audience does not reflect their many interests. It overlooks both their depth and digital smarts. Yet in a shrinking economy, these minority markets are growing in both size and spending power. It’s a demographic we see reflected and refracted in spaces like Grey’s Anatomy and Kanye West’s collaboration with Takashi Murakami, Disney’s Cheetah Girls and our 44th president.

Heart of the City is the first transmedia property built to engage multiple minority markets. Our heroes and our audience hail from the same world of early adopters, one encompassing Black Nerds, Asian BBoys and Wassup Rockers.

As our characters plumb the city for adventures, our audience sees itself reflected in values and style, in language and in attitude. Jai and Sash are the heroes they’ve been waiting to see onscreen.

Heart of the City is the new hero narrative for this generation.

The Alice Bond Bag

MHB — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 22:05:02 +0000

Earlier this summer, I worked with fashion designer Rachel Nasvik and creative strategist Biba Milioto on a project called The Alice Bond Bag.

The challenge was: How can a small company with lovely customers and a valued product increase brand awareness?

The answer was to make a limited-edition of 96 bags and create a citywide scavenger hunt for them using the tools of social media. They were surreptitiously left in bars, bookstores and phone booths. They were sold by hotdog vendors, ice cream men and Canal Street bootleggers.

When the dust cleared 10 days after launch, the project had become a media darling: covered by 50+ blogs and followed by 1000+ people on Twitter. Mainstream outlets like NBC New York, Vogue, Nylon and MSNBC’s Your Business all took note.

Most importantly of all, it was fully embraced by Rachel’s fans – once we tweeted about the location of a bag, within 10 minutes, women were on the scene looking for it. And those who couldn’t make it, often sent boyfriends in their stead.

It increased interest and sales in Rachel’s brand, reinvigorating past connections and creating new ones.
And was some of the most fun we’ve ever had playing with social media.

Asian Efficiency

MHB — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 15:07:34 +0000

One of the best books I’ve read in ‘09 is Digitizing Race by Lisa Nakamura. In her essay The Social Optics of Race, she writes that

the racio-visual logic of…science fiction films that depict interface use set up distinct roles for particular races, and distinct ways of conceptualizing the racialized body as informational property… [and that] Asians and Asian-Americans function as the material base for technologies of digitized vision….

I was reminded of it when seeing this Palm Pre commercial from Modernista! in which masses of Asian bodies signify supreme technology. While I doubt that this was overtly outlined as such, I do think it is a product of Western subconscious.

HT:Sociological Images for the clip and Erin Lamberty for noting it.

Jamaica

MHB — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 18:39:08 +0000

Raafi is down in Jamaica with DP Bradford Young and super producer Karin Chien working on a film and education project for the Rockhouse Foundation. Directing, teaching and, uh, lying on the beach. Topless Raaf pics to follow shortly.

More Blood

MHB — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 20:15:20 +0000

Here lie some more of the True Blood promos that we made with Campfire and HBO.

And if you like vampires, buskers and ATMs, look here.