whizdumb

Social experiment on Broadway

2009-04-21T07:53:46-04:00

I recently went to see the Neil LaBute play Reasons to be Pretty at the Lyceum Theatre.

As curtain time approached the usual announcements were made. "Welcome to the Lyceum," "Please take your seats, the show will begin shortly."

And "Please take a minute to turn on your mobile phones."

Instructions were read aloud and provided as an insert in our Playbill:

"At Reasons to Be Pretty we're temporarily breaking with tradition! Take your phones out. That's right, get your phones out and on. We'd like your help with a little social experiment. We want to know how attractive you think you are... and how you think your fellow theatre-goers measure up in comparison. To participate, text the word PRETTY to 42903. After you cast your vote, turn off your phones, put them away and enjoy Reasons to Be Pretty. We'll text you the results at the intermission."

I followed the instructions. Rated myself and some lady sitting a couple aisles away (6 and 5 respectively if you must know). At intermission everyone received a text with the results. On that evening the average self rating was 6.6. The average stranger rating was 5.1, a difference of 22%.

The theatre seats 922 people. Every night the results are remarkably consistent, but not terribly surprising (you've probably heard a lot of talk about the wisdom of crowds, about how on average people tend to rate themselves above average on smarts and looks).

What is different about this is how it added a bit of fun to the experience. It literally set the stage for the play to follow, which is all about judging looks of one another.

But it was also a smart marketing idea. Two weeks later I received a text telling me to visit a site for details about a buy one get one free Monday Night Date Night ticket offer. So ultimately everyone wins. I think that may be the first time I have actually welcomed a text offer to my mobile.

This kind of thing is a great example of how some have started to think about relationships: Provide an experience made better through participation.

Faris Yakob recently gave a presentation that touches on this. In it he has a quote from Henry Jenkins of MIT:

"Our focus should be not on emerging technologies but on emerging cultural practices."

So to me this example is really less about a well executed mobile tactic but more about how open people are to finding new meaning (i.e. what people sitting around me think about beauty) in timeless forms (i.e. sitting in a theater and watching real actors).

Brother, can you spare a story?

2009-02-18T22:34:01-05:00

Last week our planning group at R/GA hosted an AAAA event with The Moth. It featured storytellers Andy Christie (pictured) and Ed Gavagan, Andy Borowitz as host, and The Moth's executive director Lea Thau on Q&A. There were nearly 100 attendees in all. Planners mostly. AAAA executives and our group of around a dozen planners.

The way The Moth lines storytellers up is very similar to a stand up comedy routine. There is a stage, a mic, a host, and acts. Here are some examples of stories. I've listened to a few. They're compelling, human and very emotional. Not something to just listen to in the background. Oh, and they're becoming quite popular as they were the second most listened to podcast on iTunes in 2008.

To me the most valuable part of the evening was the Q&A at the end. Lea has been with the organization for years and has heard and coached probably hundreds of storytellers. She also helps The Moth in consulting gigs with corporations. One example she gave was that they helped a pharma company tell more compelling success stories of some people who used their drugs.

Here are a couple things I took away from the event.

Be present with your story

Above all else, the storyteller has to be at one with their story. In other words, comfortable in their own skin. This brings home the overriding importance of being oneself. A story well told is not recitation but sharing. It's incredibly personal and you have to leave all masks behind.

She talked about how this is challenging for some people like paid actors who think it would be cool to go on stage and tell stories for The Moth. They sometimes need a bit of coaching to leave behind their acting and simply be a regular person.

Don't confuse facts with truth

A set of facts do not make a story. In fact, a set of facts do not necessarily tell the whole truth. Great stories take a set of facts (who, what, when, where) and bring them to life, perhaps with a bit of embellishment, to reveal a bigger truth that the facts alone do not tell.

An example one of the storytellers gave was about his skydiving tale. In it, he had told what was going through his mind as he looked down at the houses and power lines below, seemingly careening toward them without a chute. He imagined the horror of being bisected by a power line. In reality, he admitted, he did not remember exactly what was going through his mind during the jump many years ago. But he did remember what he saw and how he felt. He imagined what would have been going through his mind.

So as he retold it his story took on some embellishment but ultimately a greater truth. Truth about our fears, about how we reconstruct events, about how we share life events with each other. But more importantly, it became a better story.

Stories are uniquely human

Stories are such a natural human impulse that it almost seems funny or sad to me that there is an organization in place to do what we should naturally be doing... sharing stories with each other. But these are the softer human needs that often get pushed down by more urgent deadlines and priorities in our lives. And in a place like New York they seem to need a venue of their own.

The timing of this workshop couldn't be more appropriate. We are in the midst of a great recession. Clients and agencies are laying people off like crazy. Budgets are shrinking. We are being asked to do more with less. The beauty of a good story is it's free. It stands on its own. And when times are tough, people love 'em.

Far from simply spinning a good yarn, the reminder to marketers is about authenticity. People sniff out fake storytelling very quick and will know whether your brand is telegraphing some core truth, or simply a mask. It's much more about revealing truth rather than concocting a story. About peeling back the layers until you get to the soft center.

Put another way, a good brand story is a uniquely human competitive advantage.

Heard any good ones lately?

Chocolate rants are yummy

2009-02-09T11:18:29-05:00

Jon Stewart becoming one of the most trusted men in America has certainly not been lost on the traditional news networks. They've been trying to figure out how to deal with it. One outcome of this soul searching has been CNN's venture D.L. Hughley Breaks the News. For a news network like CNN it's kind of funny, but when you hold it up to a broader competitive set like the Daily Show or the Colbert Report it has its work cut out for it. The network's straight laced DNA comes through. How about this description of the show from the CNN website: "Sometimes you just have to throw up your hands and laugh at the news!" Well golly me, I can't wait to do some laughing!

Compare the show with the relatively new Chocolate News with David Alan Grier. I think his monologues alone are some of the best news comedy out there today. Each episode begins with a pull-no-punches rant, a racial talking-to that taps into a fundamental truth (with a few harmless stereotypes). Here's an example:

Chocolate NewsWednesdays 10:30pm / 9:30c

First Black President?

Joke of the Day
Stand-Up Comedy

Get Funny Ringtones
More Funny Videos

So naturally this gets me thinking. Why does so much of brand marketing have to be positive and aspirational and happy? Why can't more brands be more raw, truthful, even angry? Wouldn't we love them for it?

For some time planners have argued that the best kind of reactions to brand communication are those that polarize. That you should never aim for consensus around a brand. That universal liking is worse than a room half full of lovers, half haters. That in the end it's energy that counts.

I agree. That's why I'm guessing Chocolate News is not going to garner a giant following. For me that's all the better.

Rant on, D.A.G., rant on.

Halo hearts Chopin

2009-01-25T16:46:57-05:00

In 2003 I was laid off from FCB Los Angeles when the office was shuttered. I became a freelance planner for the next year or so and enjoyed the ebb/flow lifestyle all independents are familiar with. Weeks of work followed by days without and vice versa. In some of those downtimes I pursued something I'd ceased when I was seven -- playing piano.

I bought myself a digital piano, took a class at Santa Monica Community College and picked up where I left off. I enjoyed the counterpoint of studying old music versus new marketing. It was something timeless and familiar to turn to after working on CPG creative development or whatever.

I became quite a fan of Chopin's music and learned to play a few of his easier pieces. Sometimes I'd notice some a solo piano tune from the old books of Beethoven or Bach appear in pop culture like the beautiful aria from Goldberg Variations in the movie Hannibal. Or a Chopin prelude coming from the orchestra during the Oscars. These masters are everywhere, I just hadn't recognized them as such before.

So I was amused when recently I was on YouTube and saw a part of Chopin's Raindrop Prelude featured and subsequently studied in the Halo "Believe" spot. It was kind of amusing also to see the rash of videos that spun off the ad, showing how to play it on the piano (e.g. Halo Believe Piano Version).

A small movement of (apparently) teenage boys exposed to the tip of the iceberg of Chopin's opus. And some of them are studying how to play it on their own pianos. They probably love it because it's the new Halo theme and have no idea where the music really came from. But at least they're playing.

Pomegranate phone

2008-11-12T20:57:21-05:00

I won't spoil this if you haven't seen it, but it has its own sort of bait and switch charm. I can hear the agency brainstorm. "Will you people stop talking about how freakin' cool Apple is already? We are not shilling iPhones for chrissake. Unless..."

Learn about the pomegranate phone.

Mattress shopping vs. sharp stick in the eye

2008-10-30T23:05:09-04:00

Honestly, it's a toss up.

What a miserable endeavor. You're a savvy consumer in search of a good night's sleep. They are holdouts of an era when product reviews and shopping around and other seemingly accepted consumer habits were the exception rather than the rule.

Today, retailers like Sleepy's, Mattress King and 1-800-Mattress have preserved in amber a way of doing business that would be quaint if it weren't so maddening.

Poorly trained sales staff, scant product information at point of purchase and innuendos of pricing wiggle room were all part of my experience.

In fact, sorting through product differences across retailers and even within brands is so impenetrable that Consumer Reports has refused to report on the category. And they're in the business of demystifying consumer products!

I won't bore you with any more details of my experience but instead offer advice: Go for comfort above savings, don't drag it out any longer than 2 or 3 retailers, and compare return policies.

Image: The CEO of 1-800-Mattress, NY Daily News

Playing the building

2008-08-10T16:11:22-04:00

I'm a long time fan of David Byrne's art and music so I was thrilled to go see his new art installation called Playing the Building.

He hooked an old organ up to the beams, pipes and columns of the Battery Maritime Building which lets you literally play the building. The keyboard is divided up into three sections which correspond to the types of triggers: solenoids which are basically hammers that strike metal; flutes which blow air past holes drilled in pipes; and motors which vibrate beams.

The building has had several lives. It used to be the place people waited to board the ferry to Brooklyn before the ferry was discontinued in 1938. You can see its restored Beaux-Arts grandeur on the outside and if you really look carefully on the inside there are cues to its better days. And there is evidence of more recent uses such as the faded basketball court lines on the floor.

I didn't record any sound but you can hear some in the videos on David Byrne's site.

I put some some photos from my visit in a flickr set. Enjoy.

The exhibit lasts until August 24, 2008.

Violence and marketing

2008-08-10T15:07:33-04:00

I heard a couple of really interesting stories recently about how violence works. Specifically on what causes a tense situation to turn violent, and what is necessary to stop a violent act before it happens.

The first story was a podcast of the BBC Radio 4 show called Thinking Allowed. It featured a fascinating interview with Randall Collins, an academic who wrote a book called Violence: A Micro-sociological Theory. From the podcast, here is the host explaining the gist of the professor's theory:

"It's the word micro that explains his interest. He concentrates not on the personal, biological, family, social; but rather on the precise details of the situation in which violence occurs; he looks for the the contours of the precise situation which shape the emotions and acts of the individuals that step inside them; for example when he looks at an incident of violence, he'll be concentrating on patterns of surge or counter surge in the crowd, of the precise chain of events that precedes the attack upon a fallen policeman; the number of people actually involved in the violence and the number of non participants."

In other words, context really really matters when it comes to violent acts in a social setting.

Then there was a This American Life story on a guy who works as a violence interrupter for a group called CeaseFire. A group that is (perhaps unintentionally) leveraging the micro theory above to great effect.

Part of a classic planning contribution is to concentrate on things like the personal and the social; the factors that enable us to understand a person more deeply than, say, how many times a year they buy deodorant. They provide an understanding of people as more than simply eyeballs (I really do cringe every time I hear a marketer refer to people with that word). But what if, like understanding violence, all bets are off once a person enters the actual marketplace?

I guess the point is that it's important to have the background depth on people to relate with them, but ultimately such understanding has great potential to be meaningless wallpaper because context matters so much.

I'm not suggesting the world needs more in-store Paco Underhill type shopping research because I really don't think that would make things better. But I do think we can always do with more reminders that we're just not in the driver's seat.

Scavengers of the digital trash heap

2008-07-23T00:37:43-04:00

I recently stumbled across a video of the Payatas trash village outside Manila, Philippines. If you haven't heard Payatas, it has a population of over 80,000 that lives on and around the monstrous trash heap. It recycles and resells much of what it finds there.

I thought of Payatas when I watched a video by NYT tech writer David Pogue about geotagging photos. He talked about a memory card for your camera called Eye-Fi, which uses so-called fake GPS from Skyhook Wireless. For years the folks at Skyhook have been sending out drivers to cruise around metropolitan neighborhoods in America to detect network address of some of the 70 million Wi-Fi base stations. Then they associate each Wi-Fi spot with its physical recorded location. So instead of your digital camera needing a GPS, you can have a memory card that can detect and save nearby Wi-Fi signals and include them in the photo's data. A pretty creative use of existing technologies.

It is possibly a stretch and maybe a bit insensitive to compare these two things. But it's not hard if you imagine the opposite of the Payatas trash heap as an invisible yet vast mass of wireless data ripe for profitmaking. The folks over at Skyhook did and managed to find a way to resell the same data but, quite literally, through a different lens.

(By the way, the reason your iPhone is so good at finding your location is because it uses Skyhook technology too).

I wonder what other kinds of scavenging could create value from others' digital waste.

Retail stunt circa 1918

2008-07-10T19:09:57-04:00

Is this the great, great grandmother of those fancy cars parked in the hotel roundabout? The glamorous people in line at that club?

Not that I'm at all fond of marketing subterfuge, but this does help make the case that there are no new ideas.

Ten things

2008-07-08T00:21:32-04:00

1) I haven't posted for awhile. Shame on me. Getting settled in a new job and new apt in NYC while trying to be a good husband and raise a toddler is no excuse! How does the saying go... "To be a writer, write." To be a blogger, blog.

2) The streets here are full of scents. Well, stenches actually. This is something I'm still adjusting to. I often catch myself holding my breath as I pass a pile of trash or whatever (though usually the source is unseen) only to find no relief when I pass it. Especially lately as the summer air is thick and hot. I imagine what things would look like if I could see scent. There would be colorful clouds hanging in the air everywhere.

The most vivid may be right outside the building where I work. There is a service entrance that houses and dispatches hot dog carts. All day long the carts are coming and going, refueling and as many of us suspect, dumping their used hot dog water into the gutter somewhere. Some say the puddles glow at night. I wouldn't be surprised because the place smells awful. The kind of thing that inspires thoughts of becoming a vegetarian.

3) Am I the only one who thinks, "Is it me or is that PowerPoint projection a bit out of focus?"

4) I got a new TiVo and have been exploring new content. There's a feature where you can download loads of video content from the web. It's slightly strange experience to lean back on your couch and watch things throught the TiVo menu that you'd normally watch online. Stuff that would never make it to broadcast or even cable television, such as the Cranky Geeks show or a cheesy New York Times Vows video. But I love it. The Long Tail in top form.

5) I am not a religious person but I absolutely love living across the street from a beautiful church and hearing the bells ring every 30 minutes. The picture is from my home office window and the belltower is out of the frame to the right.

6) Facebook's mobile application for BlackBerry is solid. A simple, fast, elegant alternative to their mobile site.

7) Groceries? Dry cleaning? Kitty litter? Yeah, they'll deliver that. The other night I ordered Indian food and it was in the door 18 minutes after I called.

8) Living in a much smaller space makes you reassess your relationship to objects. I'm much more reluctant to buy something now because I know I'll have to find a place for it. On the flipside, I'm selling and giving away things like mad in order to lighten the load. Say no to paid storage... give it away!

9) Podcasts have become my commute media of choice. I have to walk ten minutes, take the train (standing room only) for another ten, then walk another ten. It's just not conducive to reading. And I've found that when I do listen to music it is nearly impossible to find a genre that doesn't seem to perfectly accompany a walk through the city. I guess it's a kind of aural adaptation. Sound and sight are such strong senses that our mind melds them together. Perhaps with so much stimulation here visually, the brain picks out the bits that go well with the music. I don't know. But it always sounds and feels like a good combination.

10) I feel better already. The next time I have blogger's block I'm going to just list ten things on my mind.

An assassination undone

2008-06-05T11:49:30-04:00

Yesterday morning on my way to work I passed by a storefront near the corner of 40th and 8th Avenue. It had been vacant for some time but this morning there was brewing buzz of activity around it. Sometime earlier in the morning an artist had put nicely stenciled letters on the storefront window that read, "THE ASSASSINATION OF HILLARY CLINTON; THE ASSASSINATION OF BARACK OBAMA".
The exhibit turned out to be a short lived statement which is getting much more attention online than in real life, where it was up for only a few hours. When I passed by I thought about taking a picture but balked. When I returned a couple hours later the window was covered by construction paper and the artist was at the police station being interrogated by the cops and the secret service.

Later interviewed, the artist said the piece was a reference to character assassination in the media. Seems like a pretty harmless thing to me and it's a shame this guy and his message were so swiftly swept away. The storefront is directly opposite the New York Times building so at least he caught the attention of his intended audience.

Read the NY Times' blog post about the whole thing here.

Rear window parking dispute

2008-05-11T22:03:23-04:00

Last night we were in our living room when we heard some commotion outside. We looked out our apartment's rear window to see quite the dramatic parking space squabble in progress.

It seems two cars happened upon the same space at roughly the same time. Each felt a perfect claim to the spot, and each dug in their heels.

One was a silver minivan with an Asian couple. The other a cherry red Land Rover with two African American girlfriends. The best part was that each car's passenger walked out to stand as a human road block in front of the other car.

A perfect stalemate. With nothing but pride and concrete hanging in the balance. Asian vs. Black, Minivan vs. SUV. Not that their races or car types had anything to do with the fight. But I could almost see the Daily News article unfolding before my eyes.

There was lot of yelling and some awesome dissing body language, but it never did come to blows or anything truly newsworthy. So my dream of retiring from a photo journalistic windfall still lives on.

One side gave up before the cops came. Can you guess which one?

See the whole set of pics and witness the victor here.

Mental speed bumps

2008-04-18T15:31:24-04:00

I've been in New York now for about three weeks. Walking a ton, of course. Amidst the pedestrian and vehicular chaos I've thought a bit about street level friction. Friction between a person and their environment; an environment riddled with obstacles (objects, cars, buildings, posts) and concepts (noise, advertising, signs).

A recent article peeking into the world of traffic management (seemingly a dull endeavor) brought this to life brilliantly, showing how friction can be a good thing. Here's an excerpt.

Mental Speed Bumps

Slower traffic can make for a friendlier city. But slowing traffic can be done in harsh ways: Speed bumps, traffic circles and the intentional bottlenecks known as chokers are auto-hostile tactics that do little for pedestrians. Gentler measures include tweaking the timing of traffic signals, or using what David Engwicht, an Australian traffic expert, calls “mental speed bumps”— street-side social activities that slow drivers without their knowing the foot is on the brake.

A community project called Ninth Avenue Renaissance, for example, proposes the use of on-street parking spaces on Ninth Avenue in Manhattan for barbecues and the like, adding a dose of intrigue to the street scene that will lead motorists to become curious, and slow down. “New York has these sorts of mental speed bumps,” said Mr. Kent, of the Project for Public Spaces, “but we’ve slowly degraded them by designing a more and more frictionless city for fast walkers and fast drivers.” But street-level friction, he said, is actually good.

I'm curious to hear what a connections planner's reaction is to this metaphor. What if connections planning was always done with this ethic in mind?

How would creative approaches in crowded environments be different if the brief was about mental speed bumps?

Moving on, moving in

2008-03-28T01:24:16-04:00

Time to shake things up a bit. After four years here in the fine city of Denver, we've decided to make a change and move to New York.

I'm going to miss a lot of people here in Denver. I've had a fantastic experience at Integer; it's a great place to work with a strong culture and fine people. I still think it's the best kept secret in the agency world (but becoming less secret all the time).

And I'll miss Coffee Mornings. But we've got a new host for the coffees: Monique Elwell, a planner-type over at McClain Finlon. Monique's energy and gift for gab have always served coffees well, and we're really excited to have her step up as host. Coffee Mornings will continue as usual on the first and third Friday of each month. Monique will keep the reminders and updates coming. And as always, to join the email list for details on the coffees write to coffeemorningsdenver@gmail.com.

And Melissa Wilhelm of Sprout Strategy has offered to be the Denver point person for Planning For Good. Another piece of great news as PFG grows.

For me the time has come for a new challenge, an opportunity to experience and contribute from a different perspective. So over the last few months I've got to meet a lot of interesting people and agencies in New York, and I'm excited to have found a home in the planning group at R/GA. My new job starts on Tax Day.

More details on this to come. But in the meantime take a look at something R/GA launched in Europe for Nokia called the Urbanista Diaries. I'm pretty biased now but still, it seems a great example of how the future of the marketing campaign might look. From an R/GA release:

Urbanista Diaries is an extensive three-phase campaign that engages bloggers, journalists, and everyday people in ways that highlight the benefits of the Nokia N82. While the technology for this project is currently in beta, Nokia is partnering with several top media sites such as Wallpaper, Lonely Planet, National Geographic, and CNN to document major world events in real time. Reporters are given a Nokia N82 to snap photos, which easily get uploaded to the Internet and positioned on a stylized map-thus allowing people to follow their stories around the world.

More to come as soon when I unpack my computer late next week or so. I think it's in box 63 or something. Crap.

Design and the Elastic Mind

2008-03-21T13:36:50-04:00

If you haven't heard of or seen this exhibit, I'd call it a must if you find yourself in New York sometime between now and May 12 when it closes. Loads of inspiration and mind fodder for anyone interested in the role of design in an information and technological society.

Among the many wonders on display are instant furniture, nano inventions, and a new piece by Jonathan Harris.

If you can't make it in person, the MoMA's exhibit website is a meaty proxy for it.

Book cover designs wanted

2008-02-28T00:53:37-05:00

That is one stinker of a book cover.

Paul Isakson heard from the author who is looking for a little design love to rescue the cover.

As Paul writes:

Can you design a better book jacket/cover than this?

If so, Tara Hunt would love your help.

There really are no rules. Just take the words that are there and make the thing look better.

Post a link to your design in her Flickr comments for this image and she'll check them out.

If you don't have a blog, web site, Flickr account, etc. to post your design to, just create a drop for it and put that URL in the comments section.

Also, please spread the word to others if you can.

I didn't get a deadline from her, but I'm sure it's something that's needed sooner than later.

Any help you can give her is greatly appreciated.

Diaolgue, Part 2

2008-02-28T00:40:18-05:00

I just went back and reread Part 1. It feels forced, and like it was written by a planner, which it was. I didn't mean for the creative to be so shortsighted, I guess it's just that there are a lot of creative minds out there (just as there are a lot of planners) and some of them think that way.

If I wrote about a creative that was a complete likemind then we wouldn't have to have a conversation at all. We'd just sit there in a room, silent, knowing exactly what should be done. Gee, that actually sounds even more strange.

Continued from Part 1.

Setting: An internal creative review, Conference Room C

PLANNER: Yes, beautifully told. Consciously beautiful. Like, way too perfectly beautiful. Not relatable. We assume way too much here. Like the people looking at this want to hear from us. Like they will be paying full attention. Like they really give a s**t about hearing a story from [brand] about [benefit]. I'm not saying it's not beautiful I'm just saying that beautiful is not going to cut through.

CREATIVE: We tried cutting through before and you know how that one ended.

PLANNER: That's because we shouted louder. That's a volume issue not a tone issue.

CREATIVE: This is what they're asking for. I think they'll buy it.

PLANNER: Do you buy it?

CREATIVE: F**k man, it's not about me, like you said before, I'm not the target audience. They aren't buying [brand] because they can't justify the higher price. We have to show them why they should. Their lives are so busy and stuff that we have to reach them with something meaningful, like you said.

PLANNER: Right. But what is meaningful in this context? We can't talk to people like that anymore. We'll get ignored. Look, you've got a fantastic intuitive sense about people. You don't need me to tell you about the human draw to a good story, about characters, about drama, hope, dreams, all that s**t. You get it. But those are also the things that are thrown around into bad TV and movies. The thing is, the way things are going, that kind of blockbuster mainstream story is going away in favor of other things. It takes a new kind of creativity. It's a lot harder, I have to say. I worry that we're taking the easy way out.

CREATIVE: We're just trying to sell more [category]. You make it sound like we're saving the world.

PLANNER: We're sparing the world from more crap.

CREATIVE: Maybe, but it is still advertising. The other one we did that was similar to this tested through the f*****g roof.

PLANNER: Oh, so now you're a fan of our client's copy testing?

CREATIVE: No, but this will probably test well too, and that's the only way it will get made.

To be continued...

Dialogue, Part 1

2008-02-27T01:30:44-05:00

I was wondering if sometimes it might be easier to write a conversation than to write a straight-on point of view.

And I had some stuff knocking around to get out. So how about some imagined exchanges between agency people.

Is it an easier read? Different? Break things up a bit? Whatever, here goes.

Setting: An internal creative review, Conference Room C

PLANNER: It feels like an ad.

CREATIVE: It is an ad.

PLANNER: I know, I know... it just feels conspicuously like an ad.

CREATIVE: Well it's supposed to sell stuff so...

PLANNER: It just feels false, I can't put my finger on it. Like we're not really getting to the truth we talked about, the insight.

CREATIVE: What do you mean, it's all right there. It's bringing that insight to life.

PLANNER: Yes but, ummm. Give me a sec, I'm trying to figure this out.

Okay, It's like I'm watching Pearl Harbor. I'm totally aware that I'm watching a movie. Like I'm on blockbuster ride that leaves a bad actor taste in my mouth. There are special effects that I've seen a million times before. I know what's going to happen, and when. But we want this to be more authentic, like a Paul Greengrass thing. The guy made the Bourne movies and, whether you like them or not, you didn't totally feel like you were watching a movie while you were watching them.

CREATIVE: But blockbusters make money. It sounds like you're trying to impose your particular sense of taste.

PLANNER: In a way, yes. Because the tastes of people are shifting. Blockbusters aren't performing nearly as much as they used to. People are turning to more imaginative and authentic kinds of entertainment, and doing it on their terms. We need to make stuff that people would not instantly look at and say, "that feels like an ad."

CREATIVE: It is real though. The art direction is beautiful. The casting is perfect. It's a genuine moment between the [subject A] and the [subject B].

PLANNER: Really? Do you think people will look at that and feel a genuine impulse of human emotion? Is it more like a Hallmark card or is it more like some high-impact kind of art?

CREATIVE: Neither. There's a story in there. It's telling a story. It's a beautifully told story.

To be continued...

[image from Doc Ross]

Music sampling in a subway tunnel

2008-02-25T02:01:28-05:00

Recently in a NY subway I saw these two posters for a new live John Legend album distributed exclusively by Target. They were side by side, to be taken together as a single bit of communication.

But they could be seen as two approaches to advertising the same thing. The first poster was simply a glossy announcement of the album and it's exclusive retailer. The second invited you to sample the music right there, from a red box with a speaker jack ready for your headphones.

Here are some samples from the album.

These two posters could serve as a kind of before-and-after exhibit for outdoor media. Before: The basic poster bringing you in with a shot of the musician, just the facts. And after: A more interactive sampling of the real product. But they need to be taken together as a whole to have greatest effect.

I don't think this is particularly remarkable communication. But it does hit on the brilliant basics of using media these days.

And I feel it could have gone further, say, by inviting you to a free song when you visit target.com. Or even providing a docking station for iPods to download the song then and there (not sure how technically feasible that would be). Or a ShopText type code to buy the album instantly. There are more and more ways outdoor media is fostering a richer interaction or sampling with products and ideas.

Three cheers to those pushing the envelope. And to those licking it.

A couple upcoming design events in Denver

2008-02-20T00:19:16-05:00

A couple events coming up for the design minded. This Friday 2/22, local digital design talent Ian Coyle goes analog for an open house / show at his new letterpress gallery, located at 8 West Ellsworth in Denver.

I bump into Ian here and there, usually in Belmar. He gave me one of his letterpress samples as an invitation and it looks excellent. I hope to get down there Friday and see what else he's got going on.

Paul wrote a post recently about some more great stuff Ian's been doing.

And in early March the one and only Sagmeister will be rolling into Denver. His new book is Things I have learned in my life so far, and he'll be discussing it and other stuff at the event.

Fri, Mar 7, 2008, 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM
At the Oxford Hotel, The Grand Ballroom, 1600 17th St., Denver, CO 80201

The full skinny from AIGA is here.

UPDATE: The event is now sold out but Denver AIGA members are eligible for this poster Sagmeister made for the event.

Andy explains:

The ONLY way to get his poster for this event is by 1) being a member of AIGA Colorado (at any level) and 2) having your correct address registered at the AIGA national website (http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/membership) by Thu, Feb. 21 . No amount of whining or begging will get anyone else the poster. It won't be available for sale or at the event.

The Art of Idea Preservation

2008-02-11T23:00:47-05:00

Awhile back I went to see Alex Bogusky speak as part of the launch of the New Denver Ad Club. One thing that I found interesting was when he referenced the progression of the Truth vs. the Miller Lite campaigns.

He encouraged tolerance in evolving a campaign over time. Referring to a Miller client he said something to the effect of, "when a creative approach is not working perfectly to their liking, some feel the need to put a bullet in it, rather than learn from it and evolve the approach."

That thought came back to me today as I was perusing blogs on architecture. In my wandering I found an interesting little flash video on a site dedicated to art of preservation, specifically an effort to save the 1960 Blue Cross building in Boston. The group espouses the many creative ways the aging building can be preserved - rather than demolished.

Specifically, they pose some interesting What If questions about preserving buildings that can clearly apply to other things:

What if we considered the degrees of preservation between ALL and NOTHING?

What if we thought of preservation through the ideas of artist Gordon Matta-Clark?
What if we thought of preservation through the act of demolition?
What if we integrated a building into new development?
What if we expressed a buildings ideas and concepts through anatomical exhibition?
What if we re-inhabited a building by dissecting it?
What if we treated a building as public art?
What if we distribute remnants of a building to plazas and museums?
What if we move the building from its site?

Could we use degrees of preservation to educate?
Could we better heighten awareness of a building's original value in an altered state?
Could we increase the perceived value of design in the public consciousness?
Could we preserve our cultural heritage while embracing our future?

I think there's a lot we marketers can learn from architecture. And maybe this can help open the doors for asymmetrical ways to rethink a flagging campaign, rather than running to the nearest phone to summon the wrecking ball.

Art meets science at Le Laboratoire

2008-02-10T16:49:23-05:00

I heard a story recently on NPR's Weekend Edition called New Space Promotes Intersection of Art, Science. It's about Le Laboratoire, a place in Paris that is part science lab, part art exhibit.

It was founded by a Harvard professor of bio-medical technology named David Edwards who moonlights writing fiction.

He started talking to his colleagues across disciplines and found they shared a similar story - the scientists had a hidden interest in art and the artists had a hidden interest in science. He was struck by their covert passions and wondered what would happen if he brought the seemingly opposite disciplines together in a public space.

Le Laboratoire was born, and it was driven by a central question: What lies behind innovative intelligence?

He wrote two books related to the founding of the lab. One is called Artscience: Creativity in the Post-Google Generation. I haven't read it. In the meantime I recommend giving the story a listen.

Le Laboratoire has since closed the exhibit featured in the story but it looks like they have ambitious plans for the future.

They segment their types of innovation into four kinds:

CULTURAL Through collaboration with a scientist, an artist creates a new form of ?????

INDUSTRIAL Through collaboration with a designer, a scientist invents a new scientific process.

HUMANITARIAN Artists and scientists engage in dialogues to bring solutions to humanitarian problems.

EDUCATIONAL Artists and scientists create with or alongside a student in the arts or sciences to produce passionate experiential learning.

Sometimes I feel like the common themes of left brain vs. right brain; art vs. science; rational vs. emotional have become the tired dualities of pre-concept conversation. We talk about how such-and-such concept hits on a balance of emotional and rational. We debate the role of each extreme, often for the purpose of explaining why a concept, an approach, an execution, works.

I like what Le Laboratoire is doing because they use art and science as creative inputs. They crash them head-on and exhibit the result. It just seems like a good approach for true creative alchemy.

Recap: Coffee Morning 2/1

2008-02-08T10:47:18-05:00

Thanks to David Kennedy for this recap of our last coffee:

We had great coffee this Friday morning (Feb 1) and were joined by many past attendees. Hillary, Ameet, Ralph, Anoud, Michelle and myself (David) were all in attendance, as well as Amy (I think a first timer), an account executive, also joined us. We also sat in the front room, as our “regular” table was taken (odd how we’ve always been able to get that back table in the past).

The conversation started as more of a job searching forum, with many people looking for a new job or at just a different one. Lead sources were discussed, such as Andrew Hudson, TalentZoo (mainly for Creatives), The Ladders (for high pay jobs), and InDeed. Anoud noted that with so many people moving to Denver, the competition for jobs is only getting tougher.

The conversation quickly turned to all sorts of random things as it normally does, including why MP3 players don’t have an AM tuner (is it not hip?); coming up with a product name for a new Sorbet product one attendee is working on (we think we might be onto something with our group think tank…maybe we should start offering services for a fee!); and customer service research which led to “The Ultimate Question”.

Conversation wrapped up, looping back to the beginning as it often does, with talking about our ideal jobs and companies. Follow your Bliss and Patagonia’s Yvon Chouinard were two examples of following what you believe in.

As usual, the conversation was all over, so I’m sure I missed something, but hopefully I did not leave anyone out. Oh, one more thing. New ideas were given for coffee mornings, including: “Beer Afternoons” and “Ski Saturdays (or any other day)” I see an expanding market here…

Dear You: An experiment in analog goodness

2008-01-26T01:57:45-05:00

I'd like to write you a short note. On an old typewriter. Then send it in the US Mail. Let me explain.

I'm a bit uninspired with blogging lately. Technology has left me a slightly dizzy and I need a break. So I thought I'd do an offline experiment.

I was inspired by seeing Craig receive a note in the mail which was written on an old typewriter.

So I went on Craigslist and I found a wonderful retired journalist here in Denver named Bill Boas who had several old typewriters in a storage space. I fell for a 1914 Royal Standard, Model 10 (see picture).

So I'm going to take a blogging break for a couple weeks or so and instead, write notes on my new old typewriter.

My offer is this:

To the first 20 people who reply to this post by emailing me their mailing address at millerse1 AT gmail DOT com, I will write you a brief note on my typewriter. I have no idea what I'll write. If you want to give me something to go on, by all means include it in the email. A question, a word, whatever. Otherwise I'll just cook something up.

You can be anywhere in the world. Maybe I'll post the notes here, maybe I won't. I haven't really thought it through.

How about a deadline of February 1?

Thanks for playing.

Coffee Morning recap 1/18, reminder 2/1

2008-01-26T01:29:15-05:00

A week ago we had a nice coffee morning and I never did a recap. Life's been getting in the way like that lately I'm afraid. Our next coffee will be Friday, 2/1. I'll be out of town on vacation so it will be host-less. But please come by and have a drink and a chat.

Last Friday's coffee was visited by Monique, Ryan, David, Sarah, Trevor, Michelle, Amy and maybe a few others I missed. A few newbies in there which is wonderful. Unfortunately I had to leave before really getting to know them.

Before I left there was hot air on all matter of stuff including American Gladiators, CW's partnership with SecondLife, the changing role of newspapers and tactile content, and how the writer's strike may be a precipitating factor for the rise of alternative content.

So that's the quick update. And of course the reminder: Coffee this Friday 2/1. If you make it send me an update and I'll post it afterwards. Thanks.

[The picture is a button handed out at Coffee Morning London.]

Live the question

2008-01-23T20:27:07-05:00

I just rediscovered a holiday card I received from Greenberg Brand Strategy late last year. It has a nice quote that I thought I'd share.

For those of us who are always asking questions this is a rather deep perspective on why we shouldn't stop:

"Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day."

- Rainer Maria Rilke

Not exactly a quote I'll use in an ROI presentation but a good reminder nonetheless.

Do your part to "Help Denver Suck Less, Daily"

2008-01-15T18:27:09-05:00

The Denver Egotist is accepting essays for creative souls who would love to become one of the anonymous Egotists. Those bringing the sharp end of the stick to Denver's ad community.

So if you fancy yourself a writer and are keen to help raise the bar in our fair town, put your head down and pen an essay about it.

I think they could use more insider stuff and fewer look-at-this-cool-design-thing-we-found-on-another-blog posts. A return to what made this such a cool idea to begin with. Just my two cents.

Submit your essay here: The New Denver Egotist Essay Contest

The deprivation strategy

2008-01-10T00:36:19-05:00

With Whopper Freakout upon us I was thinking about its deprivation approach in contrast to the classic Got Milk campaign.

Jon Steel used deprivation as a tool to generate research conversation around a category that was taken for granted. As we learned in Truth, Lies and Advertising the exploratory research at the front end of the campaign was the inspiration.

We imagine the research groups ablaze with stories of milkless woe, each respondent outdoing the other in their misery.

A strategy was born. The creatives went with it and the rest is history - a history filled largely with big television ads in all their witty, brilliant and decadent glory.

I say decadent because when you compare them with CP+B's version of a deprivation strategy a few things emerge.

Whopper Freakout is based on the same insight: you don't know what you've got 'till it's gone. But where Got Milk was all about wrapping this in creative vignettes The Freakout is low budget, big idea. It's human to the core. We are at once identifying with, and laughing at, the people at the counter demanding their favorite sandwich. It doesn't require the imagined reality of fantasy scenarios or take us down a long narrative path. It doesn't try to be a mini-movie; it's all documentary.

Back in the day Goodby could have hidden cameras somewhere to show people's behavior when denied milk (would have been much harder to do). But the context was different then and it would have been just weird. But now we're so used to seeing people on videos it's second nature.

Watching these two spots (is Freakout a spot? What should I call it, a video?) makes the Milk one seem so, well, it seems like such a commercial. Brilliant, yes. But it just seems like such an end to itself. A campaign only as good as its latest execution. It takes you to creative imaginaryland. But I watch Freakout and I just want to go down to BK and see (eat) what all the fuss is about.

And when I look at these two it seems to show how things are moving more towards a Google-like model of anticipate / act / adjust, rather than the long drawn out bowtie of research / insight / creative development.

Milk: Deprivation is the brief, brought to life creatively.
BK: Deprivation is the idea, period.

The path from good thinking to idea seems to keep getting shorter.

A clean vision

2008-01-08T14:13:05-05:00

"We will be completely off paid media in three years."

- Eric Ryan, founder, Method

You've just got to love that this is coming from a household cleansers company. That is, a design company run by an ex-agency planner that happens to make cleansers for your home.

Goodbye 2007, Goodbye Planner 1.0

2008-01-03T02:30:37-05:00

Time for the New Year post. A tidy wrap-up of eight significant things for 2008. I thought I'd avoid adding to the slew of top-10 ads of the year and the like. Instead I'd like to focus on planning and where I see things going.

I've been a planner now for nearly a decade but this last year has seemed so different from previous years. I feel the role of the traditional agency planner is irreversibly altered. Why?

1. Millennial talent
Like a lot of other fields, the influx of new talent is coming from Millennials - the twentysomethings who have been steeped in technology their whole lives. And as planners, they are bringing the same sentiment to work everyday. Their comfort with design and technology means they don't have to unlearn many bad habits; they haven't become jaded or beaten by spending years cranking out :30's. They are people like Daniel, Courtney and Erin, among the new breed of planning voices. They are curious, broadly talented, less inhibited, and they blog about it all. (Incidentally, I've never met Daniel, Courtney or Erin. But isn't that just a greater testament to the changes afoot?)

If you'd like to read more check out Daniel's compilation of Advertising's Young Minds: The top 27 blogs of people under 27.

2. Open-source exchange
This was truly the year of the planning blogs. As I write this there are 138 planning blogs listed on Plannersphere and the list seems to be growing by the week. Planners are melding open-source thinking with technology and it's making us all smarter. And the open planner mentality is growing slowly but steadily. I think the planner's approach to the web will move from simple sharing of ideas (blogging) to greater collaboration on problems and idea-strengthening (forums like plannersphere and Planning for Good). We're realizing that sharing wisdom and ideas - everything short of proprietary client knowledge - can only strengthen our discipline and ourselves.

3. Doing stuff
As a group we're damn good at chewing over things. We provide context, analyze, research, ask big questions and so on. But this year we took strides to connect differently. Coffee Mornings grew around the world thanks to nudges by a slew of planners and likemind, which currently has over 40 coffee events attended by 2,000 people a month around the world (Anomaly pays for the coffee).

And the guys over at Planning For Good started something truly wonderful by putting some structure around a simple idea: As long as planners are getting together over coffee and online, why not solve some problems at the same time? The result has been fantastic with three high profile PFG assignments in the last 5 months and a year-end event with GOOD magazine.

4. Underwear-changing dialogue
While I only attended the Account Planning Conference last year, reading about the Polygamous Marriage and experiencing the dialogue at APG, it seems that the yearly gathering of planners has moved from navel-gazing to pants-wetting (as a result of both gleeful change and fear of being irrelevant).

There is a sobering realization that the traditional planning-in-agency model is broken and new insight & strategy models are developing.

5. Outsourcing execution
A surgical separation of the ideators and the executors. Lowe, Leo Burnett, Saatchi, McCann, Ogilvy and Grey are starting to do it by experimenting with places like The Department of Doing.

Scott Goodson at Strawberry Frog has made a strong case for its importance, arguing that agencies can't define their true value until they decide what business they're in: the idea business or the execution business.

The shift in outsourcing execution has implications for planning. Because when creatives don't have to spend 80% of their jobs executing ideas they can spend more time with planners exploring new ones.

6. New agency models
Emerging and established nontraditional shops like Naked, Anomaly, Zeus Jones, Space 150, Strawberry Frog, ITO Partnership, Poke, and Mother are redrawing the role of strategy and it's often at the center or blurred with creative as a source of value (we're starting to walk a similar path at Integer).

Perhaps even more dramatic is the fact that most of these shops simply expect creative thinking from planners and strategic thinking from creatives. Therein lies their strength: They have internalized a way of working good thinking into their cultures instead of seeing it as an issue to be solved organizationally.

And the boundaries of planning and the agency continue to be explored as Leland and the folks at Collins are set to play with yet a new approach.

7. Changing role of research
Market research - long the tool of the planner - is entering a midlife crisis. Today's environment demands anticipation over measurement. Nimbleness over norms. It's not that planners don't get it; we do. It's just become more important than ever for us to make the case that rigorous learning is different from the dreaded T-word: testing.

Because in a climate that requires innovation it's no longer sufficient to talk to consumers to find answers. The role of research is becoming more about knowing your consumers but not letting them lead you. One emergent example that recognizes this is peep, an Anomaly backed research boutique.

8. The flatlining 'line'
The traditional agency caste system, separating those above and those below, is a dying concept. DraftFCB is the most obvious example of a macro merger experiment, and R/GA's establishment of a retail offering to "bring dynamic interactive shopping to the retail environment" has certainly broken a few molds. And the passion to erase the line is felt abroad too.

For the planner this obviously pushes things into interesting territories. Do you focus your strengths to be a 'retail planner', an 'interactive strategist' or simply a strategic generalist? Who knows for sure. But what is certain is that the Planner 1.0 will be a dying breed. Because the landscape is all at once fracturing and coalescing into a lovely strategic swamp, and we all must learn to swim. Or at least to float.

I couldn't be more excited about it all.

New look for 2008

2008-01-01T17:57:24-05:00

I've been meaning to get out from under the typepad template I've been using for this site, so here we go. A fresh layout and logo for 2008. I'm by no means a designer so who knows if it's any good but I feel it works better for me, and hopefully for you too. The three columns afford me more space for links and stuff. Also, I've committed to an ad-free blog which I hope others do too (there is far too much advertising cluttering up some good blogs out there). So enjoy, and if you have any suggestions for tweaking the design, layout, etc. by all means give me a shout.

Name that airport #1

2007-12-21T01:52:53-05:00

I took this photo this morning in an airport. It struck me as a slight departure from the uniformity and monotony of the terminal scenery.

So I thought I'd post a picture every now and then from an airport and see if you frequent fliers out there can name it.

Coffee Morning this Friday 12/21

2007-12-20T01:16:23-05:00

Well we can't guarantee you that kind of creative caffeine but some decent conversation is a given. The usual place: Common Grounds at 17th and Wazee from 8-10am. No PFG assignment this week, it's a good ol' fashioned coffee morning. The last of the year. Hope to see you there.

Also, I wanted to share some thoughts from Melissa on the last coffee morning. She was our guest host and kindly wrote this recap:

The additional topics that were discussed were quite interesting. It struck me that there are so many people that have big fancy MBAs that can't seem to find a great gig – is it because there just aren't any good jobs? Is it because they are focused on staying in Denver/Boulder (if so that doesn't say much for Denver if they can't find jobs here)? Or is it that the MBA isn't carrying as much clout or weight as it used to? If it's not as important for finding a job in the Marketing arena, then what is? What are companies really looking for now?

I also found it fascinating that so many of the people who attend the coffee mornings are interested in breaking into the Agency world, however they're finding it to be really difficult, even if they are willing to start at the bottom. What makes the agency world so intriguing that you'd want to quit a perfectly good job and work in Advertising? It also brings up another consideration for me, is the agency world too stuck in their ways to see there are some amazing people out there who might be able to help them create new ideas, even if they don't have agency experience? I recently broke out of the agency-requirement mode when I hired my Human Factor Director (she's the director of recruiting at Sprout now). She's always worked retail and has an amazing intuition and understanding of people and she's really opened my eyes to my idiocyncrasies that have been formed through my strict business associations with Advertising and Marketing people. She's enabled me look at old problems from new angles, which has reinvigorated my love for what I do.

So, those were the things that struck me the most about our conversations. Oh, and the fact, that we are all supposed to be strategic but the first thing we did when we started talking about the assignment was go to the tactics.

Curious what any of you in attendance thought that might add to this perspective.

Melissa also compiled our submission to the PFG assignment on Live Earth. Download it here if you'd like to read it:
Download live_earthdenversubmission.doc

Many thanks to Mel and the group last week who came together for this cause.

Harry Potter: a model for disruptive marketing?

2007-12-11T22:04:45-05:00

Awhile back I read HBR's Breakthrough Ideas for 2007 summary and one jumped out at me. It's an idea that confronts a core assumption about brands and marketing. The assumption that consumers will migrate into a given brand (based on their age, lifestyle, lifestage, etc.) and then migrate out of it (e.g. no more Pampers when your baby's grown up). From the article summary:

The big problem with this approach to branding is that it positively discourages customer loyalty--and, as we all know, it's a lot cheaper to keep customers than to find new ones. To get around this problem, we propose that companies like L'Oréal consider a new approach. Instead of seeking to build immortal brands that generations mature into and then out of, they could create brands around a given cohort of customers. As the customers matured, the brands would evolve with them. The aim would be to match the needs of that cohort at any moment in time. We call this "Harry Potter marketing," after the fictional schoolboy wizard who grows older with his readers.

Read the whole thing at the link below, in a section called Brand Magic: Harry Potter Marketing:
http://balrog.sdsu.edu/~shu/BreakthroughIdeas2007.htm

Meanwhile, at the other end of the spectrum is Grand Opening in New York. It's a storefront in a perpetual grand opening status. Every one-to-three months they change the business altogether to ride the wave of novelty and buzz. Currently they're configured as New York's only drive-in movie theater. They have an old convertible that seats six at a time. The thing is, they've been booked solid and have been doing the drive-in theater thing for four months and their schedule goes through January - much longer than their stated longevity for each identity.

Have they been too successful for their own good? They may have found a profitable business (drive-in) by accident. It will be interesting to see how this model pans out over time.

These two models tinker at the fringes of what is assumed to be constant about a brand. Great to see.

McLuhan on ads

2007-12-11T18:40:42-05:00

"The ads are by far the best part of any magazine or newspaper. More pain and thought, more wit and art, go into the making of an ad than into any prose feature of press or magazine."

- Marshall McLuhan

Coffee mornings update

2007-12-03T09:00:00-05:00

Well it's been a couple weeks since our last coffee and I haven't written any sort of a recap.

Briefly, we had nice group including David, Monique, Anoud, and Hillary who was new to coffee. We talked about a range of things from Jello to loyalty programs to Meetup.com and Sheeples. (David and I got off on a tangent afterwards on how to design a new breed of research facility, which led to this post).

The new news is that we have a fresh Planning for Good brief in the door. It's the last one of the year. Unfortunately I'll be unable to attend the next coffee which is scheduled for this coming Friday 12/7 but Melissa Wilhelm has agreed to be our guest host. She hasn't been at coffee for a few weeks so I'm sure she'll be fired up to work on this PFG assignment.

Oh, I should also mention that the Unicef brief we worked on a few weeks ago was presented to the client. Here is what Gareth said about it at the PFG Facebook Group:

Thank you to everyone who contributed to the UNICEF brief. As Ed said, it was a great meeting and the ideas lived beyond my scratchy voice. They were truly blown away and are due to get back to us with next steps in the next day or so.
Alisa, the client, asked us to pass on her thanks. So thank you all very much.

The guys promised to get the presentation up on SlideShare in the near future. I'll post it once it's up.

Anyway, our new brief is an exciting one and I know Melissa has a lot of heart for the cause. It's for Live Earth. Here's a brief version of the assignment, from Planning for Good's new blog:

It’s no longer a debate. Global climate change is a fact of life today. Scientists from all over the world agree that the evidence of a warming trend is "unequivocal," and that human activity has "very likely" been the driving force in that change over the last 50 years; they believe the earth could warm by an additional 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit during the 21st century if we fail to reduce emissions from burning fossil fuels. This rise in average temperature will have far-reaching effects. Sea levels will rise, flooding coastal areas. Heat waves will be more frequent and more intense. Droughts and wildfires will occur more often. Disease-carrying mosquitoes will expand their range. And species will be pushed to extinction.

Global warming is already affecting the world we know, endangering polar bears, shortening ski seasons and creating more intense storms.

The Live Earth global concerts on 7/07/07 helped to create a tipping point of awareness in the U.S. this summer. Live Earth is leading the charge to create a mass movement to influence people to address climate change, through the power of entertainment. With 8 concerts on 7 continents, and a broadcast on over 150 TV stations around the globe. Live Earth was the largest global media event in history. This event was the single largest online entertainment event ever, and in total we had an estimated live audience of 1 million people, and 2 billion total viewers around the world.

The UN secretary general has called the climate crisis “the most defining crisis of our time,” and has pointed to the U.S. (and China) as the leading emitters of greenhouse gasses. In the next 9 months, Live Earth will focus our efforts here at home where awareness and behavior change are lagging from the rest of the western world.

Background – Live Earth 2008 Campus Program:
On April 20, 2008 we will kick-off a massive Live Earth fueled student movement in the U.S. Ultimately, we aim to reach half the total student population – nearly nine million undergraduates.

Assignment:
Help us position Live Earth and create a messaging strategy that will kick-start students to take action. Help us define actions that will be the most relevant to students and help the cause. Evaluate our current messaging and inform us on how we can make it smarter, more impactful.

The Live Earth Assignment has 3 components:
1. How should LE be positioned to college students?
2. How should messaging come out of that?
3. What do the actions look like?

The assignment is due 12/17 so bring your brain and some caffeine and join Melissa this Friday 12/7! Usual time and place: 8:00am at Common Grounds, 17th and Wazee in downtown Denver.

[image: Live Earth belt sold in the UK, made from reclaimed London fire brigade hose, available for purchase here.]

Rethinking the facility, part 2

2007-12-01T12:23:14-05:00

Awhile ago after moderating some groups here in Denver I suggested that traditional qual research facilities have become the tender trap of research, that they stifle good conversations, and that we as planners should be a voice for breaking the mold.

Earlier this week I had lunch with some friends who are researchers and we talked about what a new type of facility could be like. So as promised, here are some ideas for how we could make them better. Note here that I'm assuming the research facility will stay part of the researcher's toolbox. I personally prefer non-facility options (in-homes, etc.) but that's not what this post is about.

So here are some ideas for a new breed of facility.

Nearly every idea to improve the facility is aimed at removing the many things that make people feel uncomfortable, ill at ease, distracted, scrutinized and exposed. In other words, the kinds of things that stand between what people truly are thinking and feeling, and how easy they find it to have a conversation about it.

Marriage of Content and Context
Most planners try to have conversations with people as close to where they interact with the category as possible. Talking laundry detergent? Let's do a load of laundry. Books? How about a bookstore. Cars? Let's take a spin. Of course this is not always the most cost effective means of having conversations. But what if the facility of the future was modeled more from the soundstage concept. It could shape-shift its way to different contexts. A living room, a garage, a kitchen, a convenience store, and so on.

Given the fact that a lot of urban locations are recruited to death, it makes sense to go on the fringes of major urban areas to get more 'mainstream' consumers. This in turn allows for off the beaten path locations where it would be cheaper to buy the larger space needed to tinker with different contexts.

Neutrality is Not Neutral
Most facilities have beige or white walls, working under the assumption that neutral colors keep people from being distracted or biased. It operates under a scientific principle. But the best conversations happen in warmer, more inspiring places. That's why there is art on the walls in restaurants. So the new facility would embrace art and color.

Arrival and Acclimation
When respondents arrive, they would be immediately offered a drink. Only after they have been welcomed and given their drink are they asked to sign in. When they enter the conversation room there is a place for them to hang their coat or purse. This helps people feel they've arrived, they've checked their things at the door, rather than have their purse on their lap and their jacket on the chair the entire time. Taking it a bit further, they could be encouraged to leave their shoes at the door too. Given a nice set of slippers to wear during the conversation.

One of the signs of people feeling nervous among groups of strangers is that they don't know what to do with their hands. They fold them, tuck them, generally fidget. So in the conversation room there would be a basket full of 'fidget widgets'. All would be encouraged to pick something and fiddle with it as much as they wish. Tassles, rubber balls, trinkets, etc. Not cheesy colorful toys but low-key tactile objects.

The Role of Food
Usually respondents wait in a room nearly identical to the waiting room in a doctor's office. They nibble on chips and finger sandwiches. Why not serve comfort food instead of junk food. Lemonade, hot chocolate, soup, etc.

Taking the role of food one step further, why not have the entire group take place over a meal? The facility could have a room exactly like a private room in a restaurant. Like a place you'd go for the rehearsal dinner of a friend's wedding. People get to know each other over food. Remember Dinner for Five?

Enabling Creativity
Respondents would be offered a variety of tools to better express themselves. Along a side wall would be computers where they could access images and websites to expand on their thoughts. One whole wall would be nothing but whiteboard. A separate area would be dedicated to crafts with a Color Me Mine feel.

Observation
The one-way mirror standard would have to be rethought. There would be three ways to approach observation. First, go stealth. Small cameras in strategic locations. Corners of the room. In a painting, Mona Lisa style. Imagine a chandelier above a dining table, outfitted with mics and cameras. Second, go with the one-way mirror but make it a showpiece. A creative and conspicuous frame above a table, serving more as a decorative mirror than an observation portal.

The key with these approaches is that they in themselves become talk pieces. The moderator can call out the James Bond-like chandelier, the strategically placed cameras. They become parodies of themselves to the extent that they disarm people.

Third, of course, is to break down the wall altogether. Observers sit in the room in the corner. A small lounge-like setting off to the side. A bit distracting at first but they will eventually be ignored. No laptops allowed, only notepads. Alternatively, we could take a cue from cooking schools that allow observers to watch the chef in action in a mirror in the ceiling.

Identity and Website
The facility would not be called ABC Research or anything like that. In fact it would never have the word research in the title. It could be called The Den or The Conversation Room or hey, even George's Place. Again, more like a lounge or bar and less researchy. Staff would be feel more customer service than telemarketing.

The facility would have a welcoming website with all the hallmarks of a company meant to gather groups of people who do interesting things. People could opt in to link their myspace, facebook, etc. profiles to the facility's database, allowing for first-pass digital screening. The site would also have bundled tools allowing for online collage, photo and video uploading, and other easy tools that facilitate pre-research homework.

Recontact
People often think of their best ideas when they leave the conversation. I know as a planner I've heard from facilities many times that so-and-so respondent had contacted them to give one last thought, one remaining idea that occurred to them the following evening. To facilitate and encourage these epiphanies all respondents would be given a prepaid postcard to jot any ideas down and drop it in the mail. They could do this anonymously and creatively a la post secret.

Technology
For the research geeks in the back there could be text-recognition software built into the video recording so that a transcript is instantly made of the groups. Also, a timecode display would be visible for observers to mark when they heard a key quote. Editors in the back room would pull these clips on the fly and the observers would leave with a DVD of selected clips.

Seating
Again, taking a cue from a cooking school, elevated chairs around a large kitchen island could be one approach. This cues a collaborative environment of creation. Another arrangement for more personal topics could be a series of Fatboy adult beanbag chairs. These bring people into an adolescent comfort zone without being overly childish.

Movement
As a moderator I've experienced many times a group that starts to fizzle out exactly at the time when we're reaching the crux of the subject. Usually around 45 minutes into the conversation. It's no wonder. These people have been sitting at the same table with the same group of strangers for nearly an hour. Why not get up and move around? When you visit someone's house for dinner usually you hang out in one room for a drink and an appetizer then you mozy over to another place. How about the same thing here. The group could start in a lounge / living room then move to a kitchen or dining room environment.

That's all I've got.

A few facilities out there have put a contemporary topspin on the traditional approach. The Energy Annex, Pacific Research and Greenberg Studios come to mind. But so far I've not seen anything that has really broken the mold.

I'm curious to hear from other planners and researchers if you share the same angst as I do. Would these ideas help? Have you seen any facilities out there that are doing any of these things?

One designer's visual take on Buy Nothing Day

2007-11-24T00:33:35-05:00

Spending Black Friday in Los Angeles has given me a few things to post about. One of them is this gem from the Los Angeles Times op-ed page today. Its' a visual take on conspicuous consumption by British graphic designer Jonathan Barnbrook. You could call it the family tree of Black Friday's doppelganger, Buy Nothing Day.

Download buy_nothing_day.pdf

Sprinkle Brigade finds inspiration in unlikely places

2007-11-15T22:57:00-05:00

These guys call themselves the Sprinkle Brigade. They search the streets of New York City and create their own brand of found art.

"Our mission is to be a solution to the problem, to put a smile on your face, and to meets [sic] some ladies in the process. So if you're out with your pooch and you don't have anything to pick up its chud baby, just leave it ... we got it."

Talk about finding art in unusual places. They've even created some rather nice videos of their installations.

It's a clear reminder that inspiration is everywhere. You just have to sniff it out.

If you find yourself in New York starting 11/29/07 their work will be on exhibit at Riviera.

Thanks to Andy for the link.