Share Ideas

Today's manifesto is from my hottest agency crush, W+K:



It says "Share Ideas" and it looks like a lava lamp horizontal. And some scoffed in sheer disgust when I turned to work place into an ameoba.

Its catching on...

I just read a friend's note on my facebook account and it re-energized me about my purpose and the purpose of this here blog. Well, at least part of the purpose.

I try to expel fear, because I truly believe that fear is the enemy of creativity.

My friend is trying to make it in the entertainment industry and I'm sure nobody is awed by that, but maybe we should be.

It is a lot like bringing your ideas to the chopping board at the feet of the client, I can tell you. Except, in advertising we bring our ideas, and although we get pissed off when our idea is exalted as divine, in entertainment, you are bringing you to the chopping board. One of the great things about being a creative is the fact that our idea ability has no known capacity, we can come up with an infinite number of brilliant ideas, ideally. But in the entertainment industry, there is only one you.

So, if you are in advertising and you are afraid, think about that. Think about the fact that you can always come up with another idea. And stop pissing your pants. That smells.

Be brave. Be better. Do not fear.

Death in Advertising

Someone died in an advertising related death last week.

It was real, as in he is no longer alive.





















I don't know what to say.

A bit about S to the T to the RATEG and Y

This is the word, and the word is wonderful:




And, the face of strategy you ask?

Three Traits of Highly Crazed People

If you are in advertising, I'm sure at some point you were either pronounced or self-diagnosed as a bit insane. Well, wonderful. I have thought about it, and these are the three most important traits one must have if he or she is to be called or proclaim to be an "AD Person". Those three things are:

1. A Steady Mind
2. An Unwavering Belief in What they Do

and,

3. They must be a Hopeless Romantic

Gossage makes up words too!

My new favorite word: Interestingness. I would say Interstingnessification.

The best Trend Map. Ever.

Click on it, silly.

I'ts not breaking a rule if no one has thought of it yet

The End:
Make the world a better place

The Means:
Make a lot of boring people very uncomfortable.

*

Okay, enough with being self serving as that little playful digg was ment to pester one of the few and only readers of this most humble of blogs. :)

* What this is aiming at is to provide a reference point for the advolutionaries among us. Those of us who have a great understanding of how things work now, but can't help the feeling that they are a part of the advolution. When I say rules are for assholes, I am being a little misleading. What I mean by this controversial statement is to inspire those among us who have the capabilities to push things forward, to guide things into a new age. It is a statement meant to provoke those people, those people who are capable but still functioning within the status quo or the accepted establishment because of a fear.

Fear of punishment.


Take one for the team, Assholes.

Ever feel like this?



Well, you may be an asshole.

I hope that cleared up my "rules are for assholes" manifesto. Thanks for reading, and thanks Hugh for always providing me with purrfect illustrations.

Agencies Agree, Defiance Rules, and rules are for Assholes.

I am researching around trying to prove that rules are for assholes* and that those who make truly great, core shaking advertising are not into following the rules. It just ain't their bag, babe.

I <3 London. Progressive is the name of the game across the pond. So, I took a looksie at a great advertiser's website: TBWA/London and this is what they have to say of their approach to great advertising:





hmm... Disruptive, Defiant and Refreshing, sounds like a couple of words that have been used to describe a certain someone we all know and love, or hate, or hate to love. (me)

Segmenting, more like segmenting.

Think about it.

The Chaos factor

In a good way. Tornado's can be destructive, but from that destruction comes potential. Breaking something isn't bad as long as you rebuild something better. AND, better is always better than not better.

So here are five tips on how to be better by being innovative.



1. Source your inspiration from your consumers. Why would an executive know more about what the customer wants than the customer him/herself?

2. Allow for constant, spontaneous consumer involvement. Judge not your consumer by the thickness of their wallet, but by the content of their contribution and desire for that contribution to be completely on their terms.

3. Let your key innovation driver be a deep understanding of your consumer needs. The more you deliver on those consumer needs, the more the consumer needs you. It’s not that hard really, is it?
4. Your toolbox should be packed full of dialogue tools to reach out to your consumer. Email. forums, blogs, smart POS and other forms of dialogue media are the new combine tractors harvesting the fields of innovation.

5. Your process to innovation should be controlled chaos. Straight and narrow process will deliver straight and narrow innovation. Open up your process to a little structured chaos, and a universe of potential is unleashed

And what type of activities can get you in trouble and make an uninnovative enviornment? Funny you should ask, I will tell you.


1. Is the executive team the main source of inspiration for your company’s innovation?
2. Is customer involvement in innovation structured?
3. Are your key innovation drivers your products and current assets?
4. Does your innovation toolbox primarily contain surveys, storyboards and focus groups?
5. Is your process to innovation a linear structured one?

Be better.

Today's Manifesto

Be innovative or die.

The Marketing Revolution, oh children...

WILL NOT BE TELEVISED!

I have said it before and I will say it again... TV is on the way out! This is not blasphemy! NAY! This is not anarchy! This is revolution...NAY! This is, ADVOLUTION! Those who are fearsome will expire, or retire. So, its not about being stagnant or staunch anymore, fools. Join the pools and get social because you can't shake hands with a clenched fist.

Today, it's about social media and it is not a FAD.

Top ten Social Media Applications:

#10 Tagging
Descriptive words, aka metadata, assigned to content like blog postings, photos or videos to facilitate in-site searching and sharing.

Leaders: Flickr Del.icio.us Digg Shadows
Opportunity: 100 bricks of gold to the company that combines this well with SEO
#9 PodCasts
Audio and/or Video content downloadable to a device like an iPod for playback. PodCast is a fancy term for content on demand.

Leaders: Podcast Alley, Odeo, PodShow, Juice, itunes
Opportunity: Content is still king in this medium. Find the right programming that will appeal to the 24% of online North Americans interested podcasting but don’t do it, and it’ll rain pennies from heaven.
#8 C2C eCommerce
Sites that enable Consumers to sell to Consumers with web properties often skimming a facilitation fee.

Leaders: eBay, Amazon, etsy, craigslist
Opportunity: About a quarter of online North Americans and just over a fifth of online Europeans buy and/or sell online. The biggest drag (and always has been) is delivery charges. Couriers should get into this business.

#7 Comparison Shopping Sites
Head to head comparison sites where consumers write and review the content.

Leaders: PriceGrabber, Froogle, Shopzilla
Opportunity: Corporate transparency is quickly becoming a reality in modern business. If you make a good product and don’t lie in your marketing, you will win. This is true of every product and service in every industry. If you don’t follow this advice, your company will fail within 10 years. Radical Trust me.

#6 P2P File Sharing
Here the users act as both client and host, exchanging audio, video, photos, software, etc, over a decentralized server network.

Leaders: BitTorrent Kazaa eDonkey
Opportunity: The music business should stop fighting and start feeding it. Provide your content on these networks, and make your money in concerts and royalties from other sources. Simple enough eh?
#5 Wikis
Shared web publishing software that allows users to edit content.

Leaders: Wikipedia, Socialtext, Basecamp, jotspot
Opportunity: Accolades to the Dr. who puts this type of social media into scientific research. Think of the wiki application to track bird migrations in ornithology. This is also the ultimate democratic tool. Unite “the left with agreements on environmental, social and economical issues with a wiki-policy tool.
#4 Search Engines
Web searches based on user specified terms.

Leaders: Google, Yahoo! MSN AOL Technorati Ask
Opportunity: Almost 80% of American surfers use search engines weekly. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) of your content is the most important thing you can do to raise your profile online. If I had it to do all over again, I would make myself an expert SEO’r.
#3 RSS
Call it Really Simple Syndication, Rich Site Summary, or whatever you want, RSS is quickly becoming the new norm in content collection. Why go to a each site via bookmarks when you can bring the site to you?

Leaders: Bloglines, Newsfire, FeedBurner Pluck, NewsGater
Opportunity: 6% of online North American’s use RSS feeds weekly, this number is growing rapidly. The OS that integrates RSS tightly into the UXP will be the winner of this race for sure. Marketers take heed. “Design, build and post may not cut it in the future. What you need is post and feed.

#2 Blogs
Online journals with content management systems allowing for rapid publication. Blogs often include text, photos, video and other media.

Leading Blog Enablers: TypePad, WordPress, Blogger, Weblogs, Windows Live Spaces
Leading Blogs: Boing Boing, Autoblog, Gawker Network, LifeHacker
Opportunity: This is the new journalism. Blogs will eventually replace newspapers as 10% of online North Americans already go to them weekly.
#1 Social Networks
Destinations that enable users to customize, maintain and control their own personal network of contacts.

Leaders: MySpace FaceBook Friendster Linkedin YouTube
Opportunity: This rapidly growing segment has increased by 50% from 2004 and the trend is expected to continue. Marketers should stop trying to build and start partnering with these guys. The people that can truly crack social networks with sustainable relationships will literally change the face of marketing.

So there it is on a silver platter. A quick cheat sheet of the best Social Media Tools, each complete with description, best practices and the business opportunities they present. You have no excuse not to succeed!

Go forth and ADVOLVE.

Personality...

Is something that every person in advertising has. Strong is usually another word that preceeds personality. This is the way it is. and if you learn to appreciate every personality you will be better off.

Sometimes you will detest the personalities you are faced with.

Sometimes you will be thought of atrocious.

But, in the end these emotions come about as a by product of a much larger, much more powerful emotion: love.

There is so much love and so much passion, but sometimes a party feels like they lack control, then they may lose trust.

But if you trust in one thing, trust in love.

Nothing will ever be perfect. No person will ever see anything in exactly the same manner you may. Try to see from every side. Then make your conclusions.

Love is a scary, powerful, wonderful thing.

This is the word: Failure.

Great minds wil say embrace failure. Never lose your capacity to invent and learn because it becomes too risky. Take risks. ItÂ’s better to learn from glorious failures than from losing in the marketplace due to fear of failure and inaction.


T
A
K
E

R
I
S
K
S


FEAR is the enemy of creativity. Losers are motivated by fear.

RULES are for assholes. If you have to do what you are doing because you fear punishment or failure, you disgust me.

Just do more. and then do some more. Not because of money, not because of a grade..But because of failure and because of the OPPORTUNITY to create something TRULY great.

And then some wise words from Nathan," A man hasn't is not a failure until he refuses to get up."

My-steph-I

Why is creativity so damned important? Why should it be the driving force in our bidness? Dan wieden puts it beautifully:

"We believe that creative insight is one that you don't expect and that is why it is powerful..It makes you think about things in a different way. A place you wouldn't have gone if you would have just followed logic and reason and focus groups. There is something that comes out of the intuition, the inspiration or the HEART that defies all the logic of that other stuff. Somehow people are talking to people and sharing something that's important to them... People have a relationship with an honest to God emotion."


This is why, Circles, we will NOT ever settle for, as we wrote 2 years ago for Yahoo!, flimsy or flaccid work.

IS the Idea BIG?
Is it Relevant?
Is it Insightful?
Is it worth Sharing?

If your idea doesn't make you want to shout from the rooftops...If it doesn't make you so excited that you CANT STOP, WONT STOP. Keep going.

Brilliance is exhausting. But when we find it we will know it. Until then PERSEVERE. Want it, but more importantly LOVE it.

*This is not a message to Circle disguised as a very clever joke.

Q. Why do advertisers call traditional channels of media "Mediums"?



A. Because they are neither rare nor well done.



Cool.

MAKE HASTE!

Love.

As my other half posted about the do more manifesto, I think I should talk about the one word manifesto, LOVE.

Everything you do, make or create should be some MANIFESTATION of love. The greatest brands in the world exist and continue existing because of love. Maybe their creators know this, maybe they don't, but what is unquestionable is that if you were to ask one of these creators whether or not they love what they have created they will tell you yes.

Love what you do. If you don't love what you do, stop doing it. No, I am not saying quit the thing, but rather I'm saying change the thing. Don't be content with being content. Be impassioned about something, and if your not make it something you are impassioned about.

This is how evolution happens. This is why things become new and improved. This is why brands get competition.

Love is a gift. Love is a privilege.

If you have the privilege of being in love with something then for God Sakes LOVE IT. Love it like there is no tomorrow. Refuse to let it go, refuse to let it die. Care about it. Treat it with respect. Buy pretty things for it.

If we are advertisers than our thing is brands. Fall in love with your brand and let your advertisements be manifestations of this love and you will have great advertisements.

Have you told your brand "I love you" today?

Love Love Love Love Love Love Love Love Love Love.

Do. More.

Culture can not continue on mediocrity.

Culture decays when it's not growing.

Cultre needs us: The Creaters, The Bringers, The Makers, the Risk Takers.

If it were up to the safe, we would be bored. If it were up to the careful we would be dead.

Do beautiful things with advertising. Because you can, and because you should, and because with out us... everyone is doomed.

Concise manifestos

The two word manifesto:

Do More.

The one word manifesto:

Love.