PIXEL MAVERICK

As you know from my previous post, I had the privilege to attend a workshop at Boulder Digital Works last week.  The topic was “Making Digital Work” and it was setup in a workshop session style with a series of fantastic speakers & leaders of the advertising industry setting the tone with their presentations.  All of the presentations will be made available online and when they are I will post them.  In addition, the entire workshop was taped and can be viewed on UStream.

I went to the workshop with fellow Martinite, Kevin Rothermel, and between the two of us we tried our best to create a Twitter Fail Whale from the massive amount of tweets coming from @edubble_u and @KevinRothermel with a #digiwork hashtag.  We tweeted the notable quotes and pics from the workshop throughout the two days as they were occuring and based on the ReTweets and comments it looks like several people were following.

I have a newfound respect for professional bloggers and journalists who manage to Live Blog and Tweet from these types of workshops and conferences all day, and then still find the energy later that evening to pound out a blog post recap on the key takeaways of the day.  Seeing as it is 1 week since the workshop and I am just now getting my blog post recap published …my hat is off to the pros.

Yes, I can confirm that it actually is this gorgeous in Boulder…

This blog post is a recap of all of the speaker action from Day 1 of the workshop.  The reason for not combining Day 1 and Day 2 recap into one blog post should be evident by the coma inducing length of this blog post.  Enjoy!

Day 1 Kickoff/ Intro – Matt Howell, CIO @ Modernista

“What can we as individuals do to move our agencies forward?”

Matt Howell, CIO at Modernista, kicked off the workshop and served as one of the primary leaders throughout the 2-day event.  He focused his intro presentation on giving everyone a good base of knowledge about the current state of advertising to use as a foundation to work/ think from.  The gist of the presentation can be summed up as …How did we get here (A Brief History of Interwebs & Advertising)?; What things have changed (Mass Media 1-way Yelling is Dead, Consumer has Controls)?; and What challenges do agencies face due to the changes (Agencies Must Change Model and Process or Die)?

Now that you get the basic idea of Matt’s workshop kickoff speech, here are the notable quotes that I thought were great:

• “The structures and processes that guided our industry for the past 25+ years has begun to fail.  It is not working now, and something needs to change.  The old structures are actually becoming liabilities to the business.”
• “83% of the Mad Men viewers fast-forward through TV commercials (..we don’t even watch our own commercials!)”
• “TV and Print are not going away, nothing is DEAD but…growth will NOT come from traditional channels anymore.”
• Tobbaccowalla quote “it is much better to have a smaller share of an exploding industry verses a growing share in a dying one”
• “Be uncomfortably unsentimental about the old days.  Rip off the bandaid already!”
• “We have a lot of money invested in people who are no longer capable (or willing) of contributing.”

The New Digital Landscape – Alastair Green, Digital ECD @ Team One

“Ideas are now more important and powerful than ever.  The big idea is not dead, but it definitely has changed.”

Alastair Green gave a presentation that provided a quick overview of the “new digital landscape”.  Since Matt Howell had just kicked off the workshop with a solid foundation on a similar topic, the bulk of his presentation was really more of a roll call of various new things (new companies, new apps, campaigns, etc) that are happening with digital advertising and communications today.  Alastair is clearly very knowledgeable about the space, and to me he actually seemed more like a developer than what I am used to for a creative director (…he had a StickyBits t-shirt on, that seems pretty KPow-ish to me).  The main points to take from his presentation is very similar to Matt Howell’s, with the notable addition that he places a TON of importance on the role that User Experience (UX) will play in digital advertising and communications going forward.

The sound-bite quotes that I took from Alastair’s presentation are the following (read them with an English accent to get the full effect):

• “User Experience (UX) is one of the most important disciplines to emerge in the new digital landscape.”
• He recommended checking out WeePlaces.com for a cool FourSquare visualizer.
• Brands who “Get It” today — Nike, Gap, Levi’s, Bravo, BestBuy, Starbucks, Old Spice (well Weiden really but OS gets some credit)
• Where are we headed — More mobile, More socialized layers and Location-Based Contextual Awareness (messaging relevant to where you are at the time)
• Some important new roles in advertising – Creative Technologist, Technical Strategist, UX Designer, UX Planner
• “If you are going to play in this space, its about commitments not about campaigns.  The conversation does not stop when the campaign does.”
• “It is ok to not know the answer.  There are a lot of geeky helpful people + the interwebs.  Just ask.”
• “Try and fail.  Fail and learn.  Failure is part of the DNA, get comfortable with it.”

Defining an Audience – Kim Laama, CD @ AKQA

“A demographic profile does not cut it.  Who are your users?  What is their story?”

Kim Laama is a Creative Director at AKQA San Francisco, and is leading the charge there for using persona development as a means to identify and segment the audience over the typical demographic profile.  Kim comes from a software design background before joining AKQA which I thought it was really interesting.  I think some type of mashup of the software design process & the advertising creative process is a good place to start when thinking about how agencies need to change.  That being said, Kim’s presentation was not about fixing the agency process — it was about a better way to identify the audience specifically for designing & developing online experiences (digital advertising, websites, etc).

Although she seemed a little nervous in the presentation delivery, Kim definitely has a mastery of using persona’s to inform how something should be designed/ developed.  She presented her topic by looking at three case studies.  I thought that the connection from case-study to UX/ Persona power was weak in parts (nerves), but in the end she made a very good case for using persona’s to really dig into the emotions, behaviors and actions of each of the user group and how to use that to inform the information architecture/ messaging/ and design of whatever it is you are creating.  I had an opportunity to chat with Kim after her presentation, and she is delightful and super-smart and someone you would want to partner with on a project to learn from.

I captured the following takeaways from her presentation:

• “Consumers today have more control over the experiences they choose to have.  The best way to reach them is to understand them & understand where they are thinking/ coming from.”
• “Personas should be driven by quantitative and qualitative research.”
• “Personas should never be anonymous.  Give him/her a name.”
• “You need to be able to map the online personas back to the demographic profiles/ segments that media is probably using as their guide.”
• “Figure out ways to make your research output be visually descriptive.  If you have the time partner a creative with your planner to reach some visually explanatory outcomes of the persona work.”
• “To me the Team Trifecta = Art Designer, Interaction Designer, Engagement Planner.”
• Two book recommendations 1) Designing for the Digital Age, Kim Goodwin; 2) Storytelling for User Experience, Whitney Quesenbery

Creative Briefs in the Post Digital World – Gareth Kay, Director of Brand Strategy @ Goodby, Silverstein & Partners

“The piece of paper is far less important than the journey.  This is NOT a baton race.”

I think Gareth was probably my favorite speaker of the group.  This is partially because I had been following him before the workshop ever since hearing of the first surfacing of his “New Brief” proposal, but also because he is a skilled presenter and has a humorous way of delivering his message with nuggets of wonderful wisdom folded right into the laughs.  As the title of his presentation indicates, the focus of Gareth’s presentation was on the fact that advertising has changed so much over the years (…well the world has changed & advertising changed with it) but for some reason the creative brief has not changed with it.  Bottom line, he thinks this is WRONG and his presentation tells you why it is wrong and what he would propose as the new brief for today.

My list of bulleted quotes is not going to do this thinking the justice it deserves.  I would recommend you click on the link and go read the presentation & his POV on the matter to get the full understanding.  Gareth was full of quotable material throughout his presentation, but the ones that resonated with me included the following:

• “This is NOT about digital.  This is about digital as a type of idea, not a channel.  This is about the long, slow channel …culture.  Advertising is in the culture business.”
• Gareth got into advertising after his band broke up in 1992.  No strategic importance in this bullet, just thought it was funny.
• “Culture has moved on — but planning has not kept up.”
• “We live in the age of ideas that DO.”
• “Customers don’t own brands …but they do want to participate.”
• “The bigger a brand gets, the smaller it should act. (PSFK reference)”
• “5% of ideas will thrive over time, but since you cannot tell which ones those are you need to try a ton of them.”
• “Doing and then learning is a much better strategy these days VS Learning and then doing.”
• “The modern ad agency should live on Madison Valley (Madison Avenue + Silicon Valley)”
• “If all else fails, go to www.whatthefuckismysocialmediastrategy.com”

How it All Comes Together – Dave Schiff + Alex Burnard, VP/ GCDs @ Crispin, Porter + Bogusky

“…Um sort of by accident, but with a hellovalotta passion and commitment dude!”

Let me start by saying that Dave Schiff and Alex Burnard are the reason “don’t judge a book by its’ cover” is accurate.  They don’t look like your average creative director, and I am pretty sure that they could kick your average creative director’s ass or at least scare the bejezzus out of him/her. While the ass kicking and scaring might be one of their skills, what Dave and Alex do for a living and do very well is to serve as Creative Directors at CP+B.  Their presentation was to tell the group how to take an innovative, progressive and no-precedent type of idea for a client and figure out how to get it done.  Oh yeah, and how to get it done on a budget that is next to nothing.

The vehicle that Dave and Alex used for covering this topic was to tell us about a groundbreaking project/ campaign that was their brainchild – Shocking Barack.  The concept was for one of their clients, Brammo Motercycles, and essentially the idea was to go on a roadtrip along the same route that the Auto-Execs took in their excessive travel to get to Washington, D.C. to get their government bailouts.  They documented the entire trip, came up with a lightning-fast process for editing/ legal/ community-management, and learned that what they had initially planned for the project turned out to be absolutely NOTHING like what the end product ended up being.  The key is that they started out with something small, and then got that out to the audience to begin building a following — and then took the community feedback to inform what their next moves were (literally if you want to look at the map).

I think the best way to gain knowledge from this presentation is truly to watch the video on UStream + to go check out the Shocking Barack site to see how things ended up.  The key takeaway for me was that the ability to build and shift and optimize on-the-fly was the key to their success, as opposed to the traditional approach of a HUGE campaign creation & single massive launch.  Here are the key takeaways that I got from their presentation:

• Previous to this campaign neither of them had any “real-time advertising” experience.  They figured it out as they went along guided by the community.
• “People began following us and our journey, but it was clear that they were holding their cards (participation, advocacy) close to the vest until they knew we were not just a silly ad campaign – until they knew we were for real.”
• They developed relationships with the PR/ Media/ Journalists who picked this up early on in the trip.  They collaborated and shared inside info with them constantly along the way which led to better stories written >> which led to more following >> which led to more stories >> and so on.
• They had a 24 hour cycle that they developed for all video, blog-posts, etc.  That cycle included several typical touchpoints along the way including …client approval and legal.  In addition they included the media team in the loop on this cycle so they could optimize based on what was coming up.

If you are still reading this, I am shocked.  This is by far the longest freaking blog post I have ever written.

If you are still reading this, then check back tomorrow for the Day 2 recap.

Hopefully the recap provided some additional value or context to the slides that will ultimately be made available for all the presentations or from just watching UStream.

I got a strange email the other day from Boingo Wireless telling me that my monthly service had been cancelled.  It was strange since I do not have monthly service with Boingo and only use their wifi in various airports as needed.

I was a little concerned by the email at first, but after noticing that I had recieved 2 – 3 of these emails from them I chalked it up to just an email database goof by a sloppy provider.

I was pleasantly surprised to see this apology email in my inbox today.

Getting an apology so quickly after the screw-up was nice to see, but really caught my attention was the honesty and the “regular Joe” style copy that they used right from the start.

“Let me start this off with a big fat apology.  We’re deeply sorry (and more than a little embarrassed)…”

I applaud Boingo for taking ownership of the screw-up and just sending out a heartfelt “whoops, sorry” message instead of a standard form letter release from the legal department.

Bottom line, I still do not need your service more than “Pay-As-You-Go” in various airports around the country.  But, you impressed me so I will keep using you for that + I have had a positive experience with your brand now and would recommend it to someone who does need it for PAYG or Monthly.

(Update to original post)

Just when I thought my praise for how Boingo handled the situation was through — I open up TweetDeck tonight and find this.

Well done.  Other companies should take notes.

Recently a friend of mine asked me to provide some answers & advice to her niece who is an undergrad considering a career in advertising.

I said “Sure!” of course, and shortly thereafter I received a nice email from “The Niece”.  Apparently, The Niece is a sophomore in college currently and she is studying journalism as a fast track pathway to a career in advertising.  She seems to have it all quite a bit more figured out than I did when I was a sophomore in college.  In fact, The Niece already has some career related options lined up for this summer that she is debating …either intern for an agency in London OR go on a class field trip to Cannes Festival.

At this point my “summer options” jealousy has kicked in and I am pretty sure that I hate The Niece …also I developed a working theory that she is mixed up in some sort of hush-hush co-ed scandal.

After getting over the internship envy and dismissing her alleged co-ed scandal, I looked over The Niece’s list of questions and prepared an email response and hoped that it will be helpful to her.

As I looked over my response before I hit SEND I realized that some of this information would be helpful to anyone who is thinking about pursuing a career in Advertising.

Here is what I wrote:

Hello ["The Niece"],

First, congratulations on your difficult summer options.  Between Cannes or London …those are both excellent work experience options.  I would need to know more about the London option in order to truly compare it against Cannes and make a recommendation.  Assuming your London option is to work as an intern at a quality agency/ shop >> my gut tells me that this would be the most helpful experience to your future.  The Cannes thing will be an excellent opportunity to network and make contacts, but you will work your butt off and learn as an intern dropped into the mix of the normal agency operations.

Now, to answer your list of questions:

How did I get started in Advertising? By accident.  I got out of college (undergrad) with a lot of ambition, but no clue about what I really wanted to do for a career.  I graduated right in the middle of all the dot.Com craziness and worked at a startup.  At this startup I was in sort of a hybrid sales & marketing role, and I quickly discovered that I loved two things; The Internet and Marketing/ Advertising.  After that startup flopped along with most of the dot.coms of that time I worked and held leadership positions at a couple different smaller agencies (web design agencies) for several years before joining a large digital agency in Dallas.  During this time I also went to grad school and earned an MBA which has been helpful in my career advancement.  After a couple years at the large digital agency I left and joined my current agency, The Martin Agency (traditional agency), and am helping them build their digital capabilities & integrating digital better into their work for clients.

What do I enjoy about The Martin Agency? The people & the brands.  I have an opportunity to work with some of the biggest brands out there, and do so while standing side-by-side with some of the most talented and humble people in the advertising industry.  There are several really great ad agencies out there today (Goodby, Crispin, R/GA, W+K…to name just a few) but The Martin Agency is a little different than all of them.  Maybe it is because they are all based in the big cities of NYC, LA, SF and we are in Richmond, VA, but the culture here is quite a bit different than many of the agencies out there today.  People come here because we are one of the best agencies forsure, but unlike everywhere else where the tenure shelf life is like 2 years …most people here at Martin stay for 7 – 10 years or even (gasp) longer.

My advice for you as you enter this industry. I am not sure which part of advertising you are pursuing a career in …copywriter, art director/ creative, producer, or account person …so there are definitely tweaks on my advice to be appropriate for each.  That said, I would advise that you follow the guidelines that I have listed below (no particular order):

• Understand Digital & Social for Advertising: Do not, I repeat do not try and come into advertising with only print or TV skills.  You will be lucky to find a job and if you do you will be asked to do digital work anyway and will get fired if you cannot hang.  So, while I do think you need to understand print, TV, outdoor, etc as part of your base of marketing understanding ….if you would like to start off on in this industry on the right foot then you should position yourself closer to the digital side.  By position, I mean know it inside and out as a marketer & also as a consumer/ user of digital media and social media.  For today, and for how things will be in the future this is probably my most important point to you.
• Go to Grad School or Advanced Degree: Depending on which (creative, account, etc) applies to you I would advise that you get a graduate or advanced degree at some point in your career.  My personal opinion is that you are better off going to work at an agency straight out of undergrad, then going back before you are 30 to get a grad degree …but I know that some advertising-specific advanced programs piggyback right ontop of undergrad so if you have that option I would take it then.  Either way, a graduate degree will set you apart from 95% of the rest of your peers that stop after undergrad.
• Experience a Nice Mix of Big & Small Agencies: People who have only worked at big agencies grow up in their career cacooned in their own silo area (creative, account) and clueless about most everything else.  On the flipside, people who only work at small agencies never know what it is like to deal with the good and bad of large agency operations, nor do they ever gain adequate experience with major brands and multi-department clients.  My advice is to not be afraid to spend a nice mix of small and big agency in your career ultimately ending up in the setting that fits you best.  Either way, you will better off if you get experience from both vantage points.
• Try on Different Hats: This sort of goes with the Big Agency vs Small Agency thing.  Most people who only work in big shops get blinders on with their specific role.  Bad idea to have blinders.  Find out what other people on your teams do …understand their role & the knowledge they have to have.  Occasionally you should work on some projects where you take on a role that is a bit outside your skillet so you can learn it and be more rounded.
• Join Local Advertising Networks/ Groups: It will pay off to know people outside of your own company & personal connections.  Find a couple things related to advertising that you are REALLY passionate about (social media, word-of-mouth advertising, ad club, whatever) and look for local networks, clubs, and/ or groups that meet regularly.  Join a couple of these and be active in it.  Don’t just go, but be active and sit on the board and be on committees, etc.  You will find entirely new opportunities and paths that you would have missed this way.

None of this advice is earth shattering new information, but I think it is solid direction for anyone who is thinking about starting a career in Advertising today so I thought I would share it.

I would love to hear from anyone who follows this blog about what you think about my list of advice for Ad Newbies …make comments on my recommendations, disagree with me and tell me why, add some recommendations of your own.

As for The Niece, …I expect to hear from her in about 10 years when she is kicking ass and taking names in what will undoubtedly be a VERY different Advertising industry (proof that a nasty college scandal can be overcome).

OK, so perhaps that title was a little harsh.  Pepsi does not stink, and some of the other drinks/brands within their portfolio are some of my favorites.  However from a branding perspective, the title is 100% accurate.

I saw this article on Kristi Colvin‘s really great blog — We Heart Branding — and had to reblog it.  The visual alone is just too great to pass up on.  If you do not follow her blog regularly, I hope you check it out.  She always finds the most interesting work to post, and typically it is stuff that is not already found everywhere already so her blog is always inspiring.

The only thing I do not see in this timeline is the whole New Coke debacle.  That probably should have made it on the graph considering it is widely thought of as one of the biggest brand blunders (a lot of B’s there) of all time.

With the exception of that missing piece, I think that the graph is quite telling of why after 100 years Coke is one of the most recognizeable brands across the globe …and Pepsi is still trying to find itself.

On a final note — WTF was going on at Pepsi in 1898?  That looks like it was scrawled out by an 5 year old.

If you work in advertising, or are a digital advertising junkie like me then you have noticed that Razorfish has published some really great research studies this year — most notably Digital Moms earlier this year and Fluent just last week.  What is so great about these reports is that instead of the boring white papers that were the norm, these reports have been eloquently prepared with magazine-like visuals and layouts as well as editing to make the information presented appealing to a larger audience (beyond just the research & analytics junkies).

I read a post from a really great blog that I read daily, Conversation Agent, that covers a recent interview she had with Shiv Singh — the VP & Global Social Media Lead for Razorfish and one of the primary proponents of the great research studies that his agency has published this year.  You can read her full interview/post with Singh here, but the key quotes from Singh that really stood out to me are the following:

“What’s interesting is that on the advertising front, we’re seeing that social media being the perfect complement to all the traditional forms of advertising. It doesn’t replace advertising as we know it but extends it enabling companies to form much deeper, longer term emotionally driven and more balanced relationships with consumers.”

“I sometimes feel that folks on the agency side of the industry underestimate their clients. Our clients are more cautious than us for good reasons. Their jobs are typically on the line, they’re less likely to be over the top on a specific phenomena and they’re always constrained by the politics of their organization.”

“I think agencies are about to transform significantly. Firstly the separation between digital and traditional agencies is going to continue to blur. Separating those two worlds doesn’t make sense anymore. Everything is digital even TV is going digital.  Secondly, agencies are going to realize that a big idea with multiple executions needs to be replaced by the notion of many small ideas that are created in response to consumer behavior and are adapted, changed or pulled as consumers interact with it. These small ideas when strung together create the brand story. To think along these lines requires a totally different mindset and organizational structure for many agencies.”

“I also believe that agencies are going to need to focus on business transformation. Helping businesses transform themselves through digital technologies to increase the value they provide consumers.  It isn’t going to be just about marketing but how can you reorient your organization to engage with consumers in real time, incorporate their thinking into everything from product development and customer service and yes also serve as the influencers for your brand. The agencies that can play this role too and move beyond the strict worlds of advertising will win.  The dependence on media is already reducing. The new model will have to be a more consultancy oriented one.”

“…I try to practice what I preach and get my hands as dirty as possible. I learn the most when I work with teams on the ground and that’s one of the special benefits with working for Razorfish – lots of really smart people who are generous with their time, energetic and collaborative.”

Huge thanks to Conversation Agent for asking great questions to produce these nuggets of insight, and in general for consistently being one of the most talented bloggers in the Advertising/Social Media niche.

I just watched the video review of the new iPhone app for Pizza Hut, and am so happy for the team at imc2 and Pizza Hut for such a great looking app after what I am sure has been a long process of creative, reviews, explaining the importance of iPhone specific UX design to a room of “huh?” faces, development, breakthroughs, delays, and late-game-twists.

As a former member of this team, I can say with 100% honesty that this app looks nothing like what we were originally brainstorming …and thank god for that because this is TONS better than we were thinking at that time.  I personally had nothing to do with this app, but as a former team leader for the imc2 PH team I am definitely proud of them and hope they get the credit they deserve for working their asses off while still managing to be brilliant.

Great work PH and imc2 Team!

If you work for in advertising on the agency side, you have probably suffered the total WTF?! moment when the client makes an absolutely ridiculous financial request.

If this incident occurred over the phone you probably were stunned and had to hit the mute button while you and your colleagues all stared at each other with your WTF faces.  If this incident occurred in person then you still had your WTF face on, but the client stared back unphased as if they had just done you a favor.

This video will not undo the terrible treatment you have received, but it is spot-on hilarious for this situation so maybe it will help ease the pain a little bit.

I read an article by Fredric Lardinos on RWW (…love that site if you could not tell) that gave an overview and a few sneak peaks at a new search engine that is supposed to launch in the next few weeks called Wolfram Alpha.  It is a search engine based on an astounding base of mathmatics & algorithmic theory that is so many miles above my mathmatically challenged brain that I will not even attempt to explain it for fear of butchering it and getting slammed by a bunch of beautiful mind dudes.  If you want to get into the details of the math, you can read Fredrick’s article here or go straight to the source and read the WA blog post here.

There is some buzz that this new search engine might be a Google Killer, but here are a few reasons why it will not be:

• It is more like Wikipedia than Google. It is a wikipedia killer (or severe pain inflictor) maybe except for the argument that even the smartest math nerd can’t be smarter than the total community that makes up the wiki part of wikipedia
• Too brainy for us regular folk. The types of search queries WA seems to provide answers to are not of the same commercial variety that Google is so great at delivering.  Sure it may kick Google’s ass if you wanted to know how far the earth is to the moon at this very second (…so wouldn’t that answer yielded be wrong as soon as it was posted?) but when it comes to the average person’s search needs….find a site….Google will not be touched by WA
• ….Umm revenue model?? Unless they have an enormous research grant of some sort, they will need a hellovalota money to steal marketshare from Google and even come close to scratching the surface of Google scale.  In fact, ironically I am certain that there is an economics math problem that could figure this out to the decimal point.
• Google will just buy them. And not just because the can in a blink, but because they will think that WA is onto something genius and are smart enough to know that this would be a very nice compliment to their existing offering.

So, I guess we will wait and see.

I read a great article by Lidija Davis on RWW this morning about how some of the newer social sites that are finding success today have utilized some of the fundamentals of anthropology – not really a science that one would normally think about when considering emerging trends on the InterWEB.  I think that many of the most successful social sites may have unknowingly performed anthropoligical studies as they figured out who their audience would be through alot of trial and error in the dorm room, but in the end it seems that the common thread in the successful sites is that they all are built on the same core elements that formed tribes, clans, etc. since the beginning of time.

The rest of the article was a bit of a sales pitch for Stack Overflow, but the presentation has several great points about the building blocks of a social site that help focus your social site’s purpose to a topic that will form a previously unattached tribe.

I need an undiscovered market.  Anyone have one they want to share?  Since nobody but me reads this freaking blog, I am OK with the sound of crickets to that redundant ass question.

All an undiscovered market is, is basically a need that everyone has every single day…something that is frustrating that everyone encounters and just overcomes but for a nanosecond is irked that they had to ..get that, do this, pick it up, etc.  There are a zillion apps, widgets, websites launched every single day that try and corner some small niche problem and solve it.

I think a good approach would be to take one of the brilliant models (Woot!) and then use that same model and apply it to that undiscovered market niche.

…I just need an idea.