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THEMdidit

March 03, 2010
11:12
The art of movement and timing
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This has to be one of the most tedious, well planned and interesting videos we’ve seen in a long time. Kudos.

Here is the story of the build and the shoot.
February 25, 2010
14:41
New York State of Mind
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This link was posted by our friend Jim Hord. It is a beautiful take on New York City and made us really miss the energy, the life and the inspiration of one of the greatest cities in the world. Watch and enjoy. Go full-screen for the best experience.

The Sandpit from Sam O’Hare on Vimeo.
February 04, 2010
15:04
As real as real can be
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This is one of the most touching, honest and real stories we have seen in a long time.

Last Minutes with ODEN from phos pictures on Vimeo.

We don’t share this only for entertainment value. There is a lesson here for marketers as well.

In this age of financial challenge and competition for consumers, marketers and companies alike MUST be honest, strait-forward and REAL with customers. They won’t settle for anything else.

It’s not about being perfect.
It’s not about being slick.
It’s not about being all things to all people.

This is not to say that we can’t continue to come up with smart and conceptual ways to communicate with customers. We just all need to make sure that we’re doing it in a truthful, honest and supportable way.

Tell your story.
Tell it with truth and honest representation of your product/service.
Treat your customers as part of your family.
Respect the strength of reason.
Respect the power of emotion.
January 13, 2010
17:04
Lessons of youth, passion and following your soul
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Some years ago I was a creative director for the international agency known as ATTIK in their New York studio. For years and years I’d yearned for total creative freedom that so many young creatives dream of. To me, this was creative Nirvana.

Many of you are familiar with the Noise series of books published by ATTIK and I had been a fan for a long time. These are books filled with design experiments and explorations with absolute creative freedom. This led to some really interesting and stunningly beautiful works that inspired people like me.

Things that you look at and (if you’ve been in the business of advertising for a while) think “That’s great, but you’ll never get a client to buy something like that”. But that is one of the things that made ATTIK so amazing.

The two founders Simon Needham and James Sommerville founded ATTIK in James’ grandmother’s attic with passion and a dream. (Read the story here.) They took their youth and passion for great work and focused everything they had on feeding the fire within. To date, they have created amazing work for clients like Scion, AOL, Adidas, SONY, and so many others, at a level that most “experienced” advertising people would never believe could be commercially viable. Now, ATTIK is part of Dentsu, one the largest global players out there.

NOTE: If you ever have the chance to work with ATTIK, do it. You won’t be disappointed.

Was this Simon and James’ goal from the get go? That I cannot honestly answer, but I would guess not. So why was ATTIK able to succeed where so may others have not?

Innocence? Why not.

Luck? Maybe.

Passion? Definitely.

Unwavering dedication to an idea? Damn straight.

No one can define what exactly is going to make a successful company or effort. It just has too many varying elements. But more oft than not, the companies that I see succeed, and companies that inspire me, share these same attributes.
1. A willingness to explore, push boundaries and have fun
2. No acceptance of “failure”, only learnings toward future progress
3. An unwavering passion and belief in who you are and what you do (not ego driven!)
4. The ability to get out of your own way and let your zeal lead you to people who share the same ideals and values
5. An openness to always learning new things and new ways
6. The absolute rule of never settling for “good enough”
To return to the beginning of the story, when I was at ATTIK we would get hundreds of portfolios from young creative hopefuls every week. So much great design talent out there, but so few with vision beyond the trends of the day.

One of the portfolios that came across my desk was from Ji Lee. There was something unique and different about his work and his perspective. I had the opportunity to meet him. He was an unassuming young man with vision and passion for creative thought. As much as I wanted to work with him at the time, we were unable to make him a permanent part of the ATTIK NY team. I have never forgotten his work, his passion or his ideals.

Today I came across a video of a lecture he’d given discussing the power of personal projects and how that translates to your professional vision. He hasn’t only lectured on it. He lives it. One of the really interesting things I remember from his portfolio was the Bubble Project that he talks about in the video below.

Ji Lee was born in Seoul, Korea, and raised in São Paulo, Brazil, he studied design at Parsons School of Design. In the past, Lee has worked as the branding director at Droga5 and art director at Saatchi & Saatchi. He currently works as the Creative Director at Google Creative Lab in New York and teaches design at School of Visual Arts. Success indeed.

So my point is this. Don’t let what might NOT happen, what may NOT be “feasible”, what hasn’t been done, or what everybody else does, stop you from thinking, from dreaming or from following that little voice inside that drives you.

Two great thoughts before I leave you with the video. There’s a sign in my office sent from one of our clients (Thanks Leslie!) that says

“Live What You Love”.

And another thought that I ran across today that said

“Redefine what is possible”.

So there are no guarantees of anything here. Just a viewpoint and fire that I continue to feed. That I have to feed. There are a lot of you out there. Don’t let the fire ever go away.

This post was written by Tim Scott, founder and creative director of THEM!. Find out more about THEM! at www.THEMdidit.com or call 541 306 6723 for more information.
December 17, 2009
11:42
The future of “Print”?
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There has been much debate on the future of “print”. As technology progresses and information is made available quicker and quicker, print will indeed have to change or die. But also, we need to look at how we define “print”.

To us, print can be defined as any presentation of words or content that the user can take the time to personally engage with. So, therefore, print can be almost anywhere. It’s how it’s executed and presented that make the difference as to whether it will be successful in communicating a message. Or being compelling enough that people will take the time to read, or experience it’s content. Much like any endeavor, it’s the consumer experience that make a difference.

There is some amazing technology being developed that will indeed change how we view, and interact with, print. The goal is still the same, to create a user experience that is both rewarding and fulfilling for the consumer and financially feasible for the producer. Magazine and newspaper publishers have been dealing with this for years. Hell, anyone who produces any type of content that they want consumers to notice have been dealing with this for years. The methods of delivery are changing and we’d better be ready to change with it.

The goals are still the same.
1. Take content, information or some type of message and make it compelling enough that people want to interact with it, or “consume” it if you will.
2. Provide such a unique message or experience that when they “consume” it that it provides a value to them to the extent that they are willing to either take some type of action based on this message, or be willing to pay some amount to be able to continue to have that experience.
3. Be able to “own” this particular space, content or experience for the furtherance of your “brand”.
If these goals sound like the goals of almost any good communications or advertising plan, you are correct. It will be the way that we use these new tools that will make or break the success of these efforts.

The next two often overlooked parts of this equation are design and interface. You may have all the right elements and content, but if they are not presented in the right way to create the best user or consumer experience, there’s a good chance that it may fail.

This is not to say that that things need to be “hyper-designy” or overly pretty. A great example of this concept is the SONY Walkman and Apple’s iPod. The iPod was able to take over the world because it made all of its bells, whistles and music available to the average consumer in a seemingly simple way. It wasn’t over designed with graphics or features, nor was it lacking. The SONY Walkman is actually a brilliant piece of technology. It was designed to do all of the things that the iPod was plus even more things that consumers said they “wanted”. So why is the Walkman not even really mentioned in the music device “wars” anymore?

The Walkman was designed by brilliant engineers and functions as a brilliant engineer thinks and interacts. Your average consumer is not a brilliant engineer (myself included) and just wants to simply access our music, or other digital files or games and be able to use them in a very simple way. iPod was able to create a delivery of a product(s) in a very simple, approachable way. Its design is beautiful in it’s simplicity and the user experience and interface is beautifully simple.

In essence, a lot of what people now use their iPods and iPhones (and any other “smart” device) to access can, by the definition above, be defined as “print”. Read it again and see if you agree. Don’t try to define it in literal, tangible terms, but what it’s trying to accomplish.

So let’s re-examine “print”, how we use it, and how it becomes a valuable asset in the future. We still need great writers, designers, photographers, illustrators and content. Now, with the technology we have coming available we will be able to even further tailor the user experience with the interface design and creating a unique experience with our content. It can be beautiful, inspiring, relevant and valuable just as people in yesteryears defined “traditional print”.

This is a great example of how the “print” experience is evolving and some of the opportunities and possibilities that will be emerging any day now, and it’s beautiful.

Mag+ from Bonnier on Vimeo.

Mag+ (video prototype footage only) from Bonnier on Vimeo.

This post was written by Tim Scott, founder and creative director of THEM!. THEM! is a creative company founded to find new ways to help companies create marketing efforts that get results and create opportunities, through any technology or media possible. Contact THEM! at www.THEMdidit.com or call 541 306 6723 for more information.
December 08, 2009
11:53
Start a Revolution
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It’s really easy to make our jobs in advertising just another job.

The routine goes on day-in and day-out. Briefs, ROI, turn-key, blah, blah, blah.

Take a second today and try to remember why it is you got into this business to begin with. Mine began at Miami Ad School. Late nights working on a concept, forgetting to eat or drink for hours while you were so engrossed in creating something you believed in with all of your heart. The hours spent tweaking type even thought there was no thought of billings or time sheets. The passion that you talked about an idea with and the fire that burned inside you to create greatness. This is the determination that we need to find again to make our work great.

“Don’t mistake a message for communication.”

Our agency mission is this:

THEM! We exist to create, to experiment, to generate thought, to move people, to push buttons, stimulate conversation, to change minds and to provoke action.

Focus on the idea, the concept, the message, the communication, and not just all of the cool bells and whistles you can do to make it “cool”. Have a great concept before you even begin to think about the execution and let THAT dictate the communication.

Follow that with every bit as much creativity and thought as your concept as you plan your execution phase. Amazing design, perfect media execution and placement, and a thorough and complete understanding of who you are trying to reach will all add up to a successful effort. And let’s face it. We’re all in the sales business.

We don’t have to sell our creative souls to be successful.

Look at how many of the campaigns and efforts that have inspired us to get into this business to begin with have been successful sales efforts for their clients. Doyle Dane Bernbach and the amazing work for Volkswagon. Chiat Day and the iPod campaign. And too many more to list.

“Don’t just start a business. Start a revolution”

Please, let us as an industry get back to our youth. The days of great ideas at all cost. The days of creating movements and not accepting mediocrity. Let’s add some fuel to the fire of our industry and make it respectable again in boardrooms around the world. We do truly have the power to change the world. We just have to believe in ourselves like young students again.

This post was inspired after watching this interview with John Hagerty of BBH. Watch, learn and fuel the fire.

What is your inspiration? What campaigns moved you? Please add your comments below.
December 01, 2009
11:24
Tap into Your Super-Consumers
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Tap into Your Super-Consumers
8:39 AM Wednesday November 25, 2009  by Eddie Yoon

In any product category, roughly 10% of the consumers account for more than 50% of the profits. These super-consumers, as we call them, are the hot dog buyers who eat five pounds of hot dogs a month, wolfing down as many as 4 per sitting. They are the stapler users who own 8 different staplers. They know what they want, they’ll buy a lot of it, and they’ll pay a premium for it. They’re passionate and engaged — sometimes even a little obsessive — and they exist in every category, from soft drinks and air travel to fast-food and oral care products. Many managers assume that their super-consumers are a unique species whose extreme appetites say little about what more casual consumers might go for. They also figure that their super-consumers are already sated, so there’s no point in probing them further. That’s a mistake.

We’ve found that companies that listen to their super-consumers and use their insights to refine their message ultimately grow sales and margins across all segments. These companies aren’t trying to convert light users into heavy users. Rather, they’re figuring out what it is the super-consumers like so much and then offering it to them. Invariably, acting on the insights from those consumers who spend disproportionate time and energy in the category uncovers insights and innovations that encourage trade-up behaviors across other segments as well.

Consider this: A stapler company we consulted for found itself heading for a price war with competitors. What to do? Market research with its community of stapler groupies — users who stapled ten times as much as the average person — found that they valued anti-jamming above all other features, and would happily pay a premium for high-performance, jam-free staplers. Running with this insight, the company redesigned its point of sale to emphasize electric staplers and refocused its marketing message across all products on benefits (like reliability) rather than features (like color). The strategy boosted sales by 20% and improved margins overall. Not only did electric stapler sales increase (fueled by super-consumers), but the merchandizing strategy emphasizing the benefits of trading up increased sales of heavy-duty manual staplers across other segments.

Or consider how a refrigerated-meat manufacturer used super-consumer feedback to develop a fuller understanding of its true core customers — teenage boys and their moms. Their heaviest users, they found, were not summertime backyard grillers, as they’d thought, but households with teenage boys who eat hot dogs for after school snacks. The boys liked the taste of the all-beef products, and how filling and easy to cook they were. The moms liked their quality (certainly compared to the junk teenage boys normally eat). Armed with this insight, the manufacturer focused its portfolio strategy on all-beef products, emphasized taste at point of sale, and shifted its marketing to extreme sports and gaming environments to build awareness among teen boys — who’d push their moms to buy the brand.

While these decisions were grounded in the insights of the super-consumers, the strategy ultimately paid off across all segments. The brand grew over 40% in three years, increased its share of household penetration and successfully usurped the number one position in the category. While super-consumers accounted for more than 40% of that growth, those weekend backyard grillers drove a nearly equal percentage, with the remaining 20% realized through category expansion. Delivering the optimal product to super-consumers was certainly the primary goal, but in the process the brand succeeded in commanding a price premium and encouraging trade-up behavior across other segments as well.

Has your company tapped the wisdom of its super-consumers? Are you willing to listen to them — and respond?   

Eddie Yoon is a Principal with The Cambridge Group. During his more than ten year tenure with the firm he has helped global clients across industries leverage super-consumer insights to fuel profitable growth.

This post is originally from HarvardBusiness.org and can be found here.
November 30, 2009
11:32
McBess is awesome!
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A short while back, some friends of our were asking us about what motivates us to be “creative”. Our answer, INSPIRATION. Inspire us and the wheels start turning, the juices start flowing and the thoughts begin to tumble in our heads like snow in a blizzard. This is one of the things that has inspired us lately…

WOOD from mc bess on Vimeo.
November 24, 2009
13:56
The Muppets do Bohemian Rhapsody
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We love the Muppets!

We only have one question. Where are the grumpy old men? What were their names?
November 20, 2009
14:18
Renegade Rollergirls Roll Again!
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One of our really fun clients is the Renegade Rollergirls of Central Oregon. You will probably never meet a group of more interesting ladies than the rough-and-tumble girls that are known as Renegades. The thing is, underneath the “my-mom’s-tougher-than-your-mom” persona, they are some of the nicest, most fun-loving people we know. It’s an honor to work with them.

This season kicks off on Sunday, November 21st at the Midtown Music Hall in Bend, Oregon. Tickets for this event are only $10 and kids under 10 are absolutely free. You can get tickets at the door or pre-order at the Renegades web site.

We really wish you ALL could come out and enjoy this event. If you don’t live close enough to make it, find your local team of Renegades and support the efforts of these ladies. You won’t be disappointed!
10:17
Google Chrome OS explained
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All this talk about Google Chrome OS. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But what does it really mean? What’s the thought behind it? Here’s a video that explains Google’s next step towards world domination.

If you are complete nerds like us, you can read more on Mashable, here.
November 19, 2009
13:57
Inspirational video — Fire on the mountain
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This video inspired us on two levels. First, the story and message is powerful. Second, the art direction and concept is beautiful. The planning and production of the individual elements in this video are quite amazing. We hope you enjoy it.
11:24
Thursday animation inspiration
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Enjoy.

Here is more about this video, who made it, and some production info.
November 18, 2009
16:34
Social media is not for you?
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Watch this and then think again:
November 13, 2009
10:56
The Illusion of Brand Control
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9:00 AM Friday November 13, 2009
ANDREW MCAFEE

You’ve probably heard by now that “your brand is no longer yours.” The assertion’s based on simple math. In the era of blogs, discussion boards, Facebook, Twitter, and other Web 2.0 tools, virtually everyone can get online and talk about your company and its offerings. As a result, the amount of information your marketing and PR departments can generate is only a small percentage of the total volume of content on the Internet about your firm.

What’s more, if some of the external voices become as popular, or perish the thought, more popular than your official voice, then they’re going to show up high in organic (as opposed to paid) search results. For example, I just typed “Hummer” into Google. The second result is the Wikipedia entry about the vehicle, and the fourth one is a site full of user-submitted photos that are not likely to please the brand’s owner.

Every large organization I’m aware of is highly sensitive about its brand, and few are happy about losing or even sharing control over it. They react to the reality of Web 2.0 era in many ways, but most of them amount to some form of trying to exert or reestablish control. Some move their mass media campaigns online to counteract the outside conversation. Some try to influence the influential external voices. Many companies monitor the new online conversations, and also participate in them by setting up official Facebook fan pages, Twitter accounts, and so on. More than a few try “sock puppeting” or having someone on the payroll pose as an outsider with nothing but good things to say. This rarely works; Web users are reasonably good at sniffing out inauthentic voices and ignoring or blowing the whistle on them.

A few large, brand-sensitive organizations have taken another approach; they’ve accepted their lack of brand control and have actively encouraged insiders to join the online conversation without making any attempt to censor or even guide them. They’ve said, essentially, “You know us really well. Talk about us on the Web. We want the world to hear what you have to say.”

Does that sound risky to you? Can you envision dozens of ways in which that approach can go horribly wrong? Me, too. And yet, I keep reading stories like the recent one in the New York Times about MIT’s student bloggers, and they make me appreciate the brilliance of this approach.

Five years ago Ben Jones, then the director of communications in MIT’s admissions office, added a single student blog to the office’s web page; there are now eleven of them. Student bloggers are selected after submitting writing samples, and are paid $10 per hour.

I was an undergrad at MIT (just a few years before the blog era) and I assure you that most students there would treat the administration’s suggestions about appropriate self-expression about the same way Roger Federer might treat the local club pro’s tips on improving his forehand. The admissions office understands this, and wisely doesn’t try to edit posts or comments.

And not all content reflects glowingly on the institution. One blogger complained about problems with the resident advising system, while another wrote that she’s felt several times that she didn’t fit in at MIT. She also went on to say, as the Times story reports, that “MIT is the closest you can get to living on the Internet…IT IS SO TRUE. Love. It. So. Much.”

MIT could spend lots of money on their brand and image and never come up with a better advertising tag line than “The closest you can get to living on the Internet.” Indeed, part of what makes it so effective is not just its clarity and cleverness, but the fact that it’s being shouted across the Internet by a current student who is clearly speaking in her own voice. It’s just tremendous marketing; the admissions office couldn’t ask for, or pay for better.

Putting student blogs front and center is a mark of MIT’s confidence: confidence in itself as a healthy organization where the pros outweigh the cons, confidence in the members of its community who represent it to the world, and confidence that the people who come to its website will know how to interpret the information they find there. According to the Times article, potential applicants to the university are “less interested in official messages and statistics than in first-hand narratives and direct interaction with current students.” Does that sound at all like your customers?

Is your organization as confident as MIT? Are you ready and willing to let more internal voices communicate and shape your brand over time? If not, why not? Is it that you don’t trust your people, or your customers? Is it that you don’t want any negativity at all to appear on your digital properties? Or is it that you’re afraid there might be too much negativity?

I don’t think these are unfair questions, or trivial ones. Their answers will reveal not only how your organization sees itself, but also about how it’s responding to a world of reduced control over brands, conversations, and messages. Leading organizations are embracing this trend and, like MIT, they’re giving up tight control even when and where they don’t have to.

Lagging organizations are holding on to the illusion that tight control is still possible.

———————————————————

The original post is from the Harvard Business Review and can be found here. It was written by Andrew McAfee. Andrew McAfee studies the ways that information technology (IT) affects businesses and business as a whole. His research investigates how IT changes the way companies perform, organize themselves, and compete. He coined the phrase “Enterprise 2.0” in a spring 2006 Sloan Management Review article to describe the use of Web 2.0 tools and approaches by businesses. He also began blogging at that time, both about Enterprise 2.0 and about his other research. He also maintains a Facebook profile and Twitter account.

McAfee is currently a principal research scientist at the Center for Digital Business in the MIT Sloan School of Management, and a fellow at the Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

He received his Doctorate from Harvard Business School, and completed two Master of Science and two Bachelor of Science degrees at MIT. McAfee is the author of Enterprise 2.0: New Collaborative Tools for Your Organization’s Toughest Challenges (2009, Harvard Business Press).
10:14
Art inspiration
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Chris Piascik from Quarter Productions on Vimeo.

You can find the artist’s web site here.
November 10, 2009
11:47
Strategy vs Execution
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This is a great article from 2005 that holds true today. Let’s refocus our efforts and thinking to a way that truly benefits everyone.

THE MARKETING COMPANY COMMUNICATIONS DISCONNECT
And Why Ad Agencies Are Viewed as Laborers Rather Than Architects
June 06, 2005
By A. Louis Rubin

Marketing communications companies are not being given a seat at their client’s strategic table. It’s the sad truth that no one in the communications business wants to acknowledge or admit.

It’s not that brilliant communications ideas don’t have a profound strategic impact on a business, because they do, but that clients view their communications companies as purveyors of execution with a bias toward the “what” of “what’s for sale” in the back room of their various “factories.”

The problem is widespread. A recent informal survey of corporate communications officers found them all in agreement that their CEOs did not value their marketing communications firms as a complete strategic partner to their business.

Boards of large public companies
More telling is how few communications professionals sit on corporate boards of large public companies. An examination of the Fortune 20 finds only GE with two working practitioners on their board (Ann Fudge of Young & Rubicam and Shelley Lazarus of Ogilvy & Mather). J.P. Donlon, editor in chief of Directorship, a monthly publication on corporate governance, notes that the “reason why there are few communications professionals on boards per se is that only a handful understand that communications is an amplification of business strategy — not something separate or apart from it. Certainly CEOs need to understand this as well.”

The bottom line is that few communications professionals are invited into the inner sanctorum of marketers’ strategy and planning sessions on the executive committee level.
How did this happen?

Somewhere along the way, ad agencies and other communications companies started thinking less about the strategy and more about selling execution. Worse yet, they started to fill their staffs with people who were craftsmen and not strategists. The result: They began to be viewed as laborers, not architects.

It wasn’t always so
It wasn’t always so. At Scali, McCabe Sloves, Ed McCabe invented some memorable advertisements that were also great strategic synopses (for Volvo: “Safety”; for Nikon: “We Take the World’s Greatest Pictures”; for Purdue: “It Takes a Tough Man to Make a Tender Chicken”). Looking back on those executions today you can see they are pretty simple demonstrations of the strategy. No talking animals, no hordes of barbarians storming the shopping mall, no bikini teams. The executions were not a pantheon of special effects. They had a strategic underpinning that reflected the clients’ overall business goals. They were strategic organizing principles upon which to base all brand communications.

The work that Young & Rubicam did for RadioShack in the early ‘90s is another good example of how good strategy affects a business and cements the relationship between client and agency. RadioShack’s “You’ve Got Questions. We’ve Got Answers” campaign was created to recognize that service at the retail level is what was for sale. It gave customers a reason to seek out RadioShack — not just a piece or a part. It told employees what their jobs were about. It was a big strategic idea and Len Roberts, then CEO of RadioShack, invited his agency team in on every key business decision because they offered strategic insight into the client’s most urgent business needs.

What these examples have at their core are big strategic ideas, because the only thing that binds people in an asexual entity called a corporation is an idea that people understand and live by. Says Donlon, “No executive or employee is going to throw himself or herself on a grenade for shareholder value. But an employee at Merck or Pfizer might stick his or her neck out to get a cure for cancer. The job of the communication strategist is to ensure the idea is big enough and powerful enough to convince people that the [business] goal is worth the effort and treasure. It’s also the CEO’s job to reinforce this every day.”

Puerile jokes and titillation
But these examples tend to be the exception, not the rule. Nowadays, execution trumps strategy, special effects reign and puerile jokes and titillation are the platforms from which products are sold. And very few communications efforts represent the strategic underpinning for how a brand can utilize all the tools of an integrated marketing communications program — from Web and public relations to advertising and trade shows, collateral sales material and internal communications.

It’s great strategy, not execution, that can inform every constituent, from customer and salesman, from factory worker and portfolio manager to Wall Street analyst on how to view the brand and the company. The right strategic platform helps employees understand why they work for the company and provides a badge of pride that gets translated directly to the bottom line through productivity and purpose. It tells the investment community why this is a good company to invest in. And finally, it gives customers a deep, fundamental, thoughtful, considered and enduring reason to do business.

How to Develop Good Strategy

1      First acknowledge that strategy is what you are selling. Not an ad. Not a logo. Not a list of public relations tactics. These are only executions and that makes them commodities to be evaluated subjectively, or worse yet, based on price of execution.

2      Tell the truth. Suppress your excitement at having a revenue-potential client at the table and focus on the truth about product reality, competitive strengths and weaknesses and organizational problems and issues. CEOs have trouble determining truth from myth because everyone around them has an agenda to sell. To stand out, tell the truth.

3      Throw out your factory — the daily special on the menu — to offer what the customer wants, not what you have in inventory. You must solve the client’s business problem, not go in with your CFO’s cost structure of how you have to utilize the specialized resources on your payroll.

4      Focus on the client’s customer. Avoid the product attribute discussion that your client wants you to execute. Building a great strategy begins with an understanding of customer needs. And too often execution panders to internal audiences versus a strategic insight about the end-user.

5      Hire people who think strategically. Now this may sound just plain dumb, but how many of you have recruiting policies in place where you go and visit Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Swarthmore, etc. in the spring to find the smartest, most imaginative minds in the world? How can you expect your organization to grow with the best talent if you don’t have a program in place to find them?

If you want your client marketers to respect your thinking, start thinking from a strategic vantage point in an unbiased way. Start telling the truth. Divorce yourself from execution. Find the best fresh minds in the world to help. And maybe then you’ll get invited into that walnut burled conference room.

Another good article on marketing strategy vs. tactics here.
November 05, 2009
10:57
Do you love sushi?
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We are working with a new restaurant in Bend, Oregon that is promising to have THE BEST sushi available at great prices. Here’s the best part. They want to know what kind of sushi YOU love. Help us help them come up with some really great sushi combinations. Add your comment below with your favourite sushi and what it is made of (if you know). Imagine that, a restaurant that is asking what YOU want to eat. Life is good.

Thanks in advance for your comments!

THEM!
November 04, 2009
14:09
Fantastic animation from Emmanuelle Walker
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Après la Pluie ©2008Gobelins from Emmanuelle Walker on Vimeo.
October 29, 2009
15:23
Selling Simplicity — Not Just Marketing It
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Thursday October 29, 2009
by Ron Ashkenas

Have you noticed that more and more companies are marketing “simplicity” as a reason to buy their products or services? For example, Philips Electronics advertises “Sense and simplicity” while Bank of America promotes “Clear, easy-to-understand products.” Simplicity also is the subtle message that Schwab conveys when it says “Talk to Chuck” and that Fidelity suggests when it says just “Stay on the line.”

The reality is that simplicity is highly appealing in a world that is getting more and more complex — where consumers have too many choices, where technology is constantly evolving, and where the political and economic environment is unpredictable. In the midst of all this instability and change, people want to get back to basics. They want uncomplicated products, straightforward guidance, and things that work quickly and simply the first time, without lots of extra effort.

What is interesting about this phenomenon is that it is in sharp contrast with the thinking of the past few years — which was that consumers wanted unlimited choice so that they could customize their products and services to fit their own unique needs and lifestyles. As such, technology companies pushed for more and more bells and whistles, while other firms drove towards mass customization. The result was a huge array of choices that became almost overwhelming and costly.

For example, office furniture manufacturer Herman Miller discovered that it was giving consumers so many choices for customizing its popular Aeron chair that it had to be prepared to produce over four million variations on the basic model — even though only a few thousand configurations were actually being ordered. Similarly, Cisco Systems learned from its top corporate customers that all the new features in its networking products were actually causing instability in the corporate networks because they couldn’t be integrated easily with existing hardware and software.

It’s easy to create slogans and marketing materials about simplicity. The challenge is to truly make things easier for the customer so that simplicity becomes a competitive advantage.

To do that, companies need to listen to their customers and truly engage them in dialogue about their needs — and their perceptions of products and services offered. For example, Cisco works with a number of customer advisory groups that meet regularly with senior executives and product developers; Fidelity executives either answer their 800-number consumer phone lines or listen to tapes of the calls; ConAgra Foods product managers make field visits to consumers’ homes and to grocery stores.

In addition to listening to customers, companies also need to design their products and services from the customer perspective. When Intuit developed its small business accounting software package, the product developers realized that most small business owners were not familiar with accounting jargon, and in fact were intimidated by it. So instead of using the term “accounts receivable”, they called it “money in.” Similarly, “accounts payable” became “money out.” As a result of developing a product from the customer perspective, Intuit sold 100,000 copies of the software the first year.

Not every company needs to create its own version of the iPod, an icon of simplicity. But there is no reason why every company can’t listen to their own customers and design products and services in ways that better satisfy their customers’ desires for greater simplicity and ease of use. If you don’t, your competitors probably will.

Ron Ashkenas is a managing partner of Robert H. Schaffer & Associates, a Stamford, Connecticut consulting firm and the author of the forthcoming book Simply Effective: How to Cut Through Complexity in Your Organization and Get Things Done

This article is from the Harvard Business Blog. Original article can be found here.
October 08, 2009
10:44
Moments
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October 06, 2009
11:38
Your business can help make a Big Difference
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We have just launched a fundraising effort for the St. Charles Foundation and the United Way that benefits the people of Central Oregon. You can learn more about this effort at www.LittleThingsBigDifference.com. This program will benefit many hundreds of people in our community in too many ways to list.

Part of the incentive to be involved in this effort is a packet of “Thank You” coupons/certificates that the people who contribute will receive as a thanks for being involved and supporting this worthy effort. We are looking for Central Oregon businesses that would be willing to donate a product or services as a discount offer that we can give to all who participate in this program. We are not looking for anything free here. Just an offer or discount that will make people happy and bring more traffic to your business.

What do you get in return? More awareness and traffic to your business, and that great feeling you get when you support a great cause and your local community.

These coupons/certificates will have an expiration date on them and will be managed so that people cannot overly take advantage of the offer you so graciously contribute.

If you are able to participate in this effort, please send an email to tim at themdidit dot com with your offer and a way to contact you. Also email this address if you have questions or would like more information.

Thank you for your participation!

UPDATE

A big THANK YOU to the following businesses for their participation!

Thump Coffee – Bend
Madeline’s Grill – Redmond
Arctic Circle – Prineville
Checkers Coffee – Prineville

Would still love to find a few more!
August 27, 2009
11:40
Is Purpose Bigger Than Product?
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By Anthony Tjan via harvardbusiness.org.

I recently sat down with my BlackBerry voice recorder and Mats Lederhausen to ask him to share his philosophy of “purpose bigger than product.” Mats is a great entrepreneur and also had one of the most successful careers at McDonald’s where he was a driving force for its turnaround. He currently runs his private investment vehicle Be-Cause and is a Special Partner at our firm, Cue Ball.

What is your philosophy of “purpose bigger than product” all about?

At its core, it is about being real and idea-driven. Trust is perhaps the most important currency in business, and big ideas may be the only true source of competitive advantage. Lack of trust is a form of tax. And that tax rate has increased in the past number of years. Customers simply don’t trust institutions as much today. Particularly large businesses. The main reason is that we now live in an “information everywhere” and more transparent world. Every customer has a camera in their cell phone, a Facebook in their pocket and Twitter at their fingertips. This means we hear and see evidence of businesses not walking their talk. Their products don’t match their promise. In order to regain this trust you must simply make sure that all your products, your merchandising, your advertising, your people and the totality of your touch points with consumers sing from the same hymn. And that hymn is what I call purpose. Some people call it vision. Others call it focus. It is the same thing. It is source of your promise. It answers the question: Why are you here?

Talk a little more on the notion of “big ideas.”

I often talk about “altitude creates attitude”. When you meet people that have a big idea it is almost impossible to be unaffected. It is like a perfume. You can smell it miles away. I firmly believe that the source of human energy and creativity can be found in the distance between where we are and where we’d like to be. It is that creative dissonance that is the entrepreneurial rocket fuel. If human beings could have walked everywhere on the planet I don’t believe we would have invented trains, planes and automobiles. So, if you really want to build great companies you need big ideas.

Certainly, not all big ideas may be viable in all incarnations. What about the reality of these ideas?

Of course they have to be believable. They can’t be pipedreams. Or as John Naisbitt once said: You can’t get so far ahead of the parade that no one knows you’re in it.

From an execution perspective, you have to think big, start small, and scale fast. You can’t think big and start big, that’s almost impossible. You need miniature versions of your grand idea so you can validate its parts, and then iterate and tweak constantly. There’s nothing wrong with having a really big idea and launching only aspects of that idea. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Take Chipotle, for example. Steve Ells had a very big idea about food, but he didn’t start by executing 100% of his vision; he gradually did what he could towards that theme.

It is also important to remember that your purpose is not what you “tell” customers, but what you do. The best way to disappoint everyone is to over-promise and under-deliver. Therefore you must be humble AND committed at the same time. In fact, customers are more forgiving when you make mistakes if those mistakes are honest efforts in trying to improve towards a known and worthwhile direction.

How can a purpose be instrumental in leading an organization?

I look at purpose as the guiding star. The compass. The soul. Steve Jobs once said “Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation”. And everything we do is design in one form or the other. And if you have a fuzzy idea of your own soul, your design will suffer. On the other hand, like Steve Jobs does, if you have a sharp idea of your soul and what footprints you want to leave, all your design will complement and reinforce that soul of yours.

How did you come to have this philosophy?

There are a few parts of the answer. First, to be honest, it’s hard to know the answers to the bigger questions in life, like why we believe what we believe. To a certain extent it’s the result of the sum of all of our experiences since birth. Second, I’ve been influenced by seeing what really works. I think strong conviction and a sense of purpose enables focus, and the biggest culprit of bad performance in a company is lack of focus. It’s hard to set direction if you don’t know who you are. Thirdly, I’ve decided that I only want to work with companies that are trying to do something important. It’s about human progress and adding value to society.

What do mean when you say “important?”

While we have significant global issues to be concerned about, an important business doesn’t have to be grandiose or socially driven in order to be important. General contribution to the well-being of another human being is worthwhile. It could be a restaurant that’s creating jobs and leaving customers just a tad bit happier than when they arrived. Or a concept such as MiniLuxe, our Cue Ball investment that is trying to “Starbuck” the nail salon, which has innovated a lot around hygiene and customer experience. It is an example of a business with a clear purpose that is trying to do something remarkably better than the industry norm.

What companies really celebrate this philosophy?

Nike is a company that understands it. They have always had this idea that it’s more than a sneaker. They are about getting into the game, being more than a spectator in life, and embracing activity. In their words, “Just do it.” If you go to their headquarters in Oregon, it’s like being in a gym: it breathes “active lifestyle.” That’s what they’re about and they have consistently executed around it.

Southwest Airlines is about giving people the freedom to fly. They are about seeking and loving freedom, and they enjoy being a bit nutty about celebrating that notion. And there are many others as well. Apple, Berkshire Hathaway, Microsoft, Google, Patagonia, IKEA, and a host of others. There is one thing that is interesting to me to note about all these companies. They are very different in so many ways. But they are also very similar in one way. They all have their founders alive and kicking. When the source of the original idea is still around it is harder to lose why you came to this world in the first place.
August 25, 2009
11:12
Still funny
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July 24, 2009
12:03
An image to remember
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Sometimes an image is just so powerful it stops you and makes you pay attention. This, in our opinion, is one of those images. There is an entire story captured in a moment. We love work like this. Sorry it’s too big for the post but we had to include it in all of it’s glory.
July 20, 2009
11:30
Vice Versa
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vice versa from jacques khouri on Vimeo.
July 16, 2009
10:52
I want to break up
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The state of the “ADVERTISING” business.

Preview:

Inspiration, anyone? The trailer
by geertdesager
The Breakup:

The plot thickens:

Inspiration, anyone?
by geertdesager
Thought for the day:
Build relationships. Not impressions.
July 07, 2009
11:31
You need to fail to succeed
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Success rarely comes easy.
There is a quote that I have loved for a while:

“Push yourself farther than you think you can go or you’ll never know how far you can reach”.

I’m not sure where this came from but it’s been a powerful push in my life for a while now. This article from HarvardBusiness.org seemed appropriate for today. -Tim

__________________________________

Why You Need to Fail
Monday July 6, 2009
PETER BREGMAN

“Peter, I’d like you to stay for a minute after class.” Calvin teaches my favorite body conditioning class at the gym.

“What’d I do?” I asked him.

“It’s what you didn’t do.”

“What didn’t I do?”

“Fail.”

“You kept me after class for not failing?”

“This,” he began to mimic my casual weight lifting style, using weights that were obviously too light, “is not going to get you anywhere. A muscle only grows if you work it till it fails. You need to use more challenging weights. You need to fail.”

Calvin’s onto something.

Every time I ask a room of executives to list the top five moments their career took a leap forward — not just a step, but a leap — failure is always on the list. For some it was the loss of a job. For others it was a project gone bad. And for others still it was the failure of a larger system, like an economic downturn, that required them to step up.

Yet most of us spend a tremendous effort trying to avoid even the possibility of failure.

According to Dr. Carol Dweck, professor at Stanford University, we have a mindset problem. Dweck has done a tremendous amount of research to understand what makes someone give up in the face of adversity versus strive to overcome it.

It turns out the answer is deceptively simple. It’s all in your head.

If you believe that your talents are inborn or fixed, then you will try to avoid failure at all costs because failure is proof of your limitation. People with a fixed mindset like to solve the same problems over and over again. It reinforces their sense of competence.

Children with fixed mindsets would rather redo an easy jigsaw puzzle than try a harder one. Students with fixed mindsets would rather not learn new languages. CEOs with fixed mindsets will surround themselves with people who agree with them. They feel smart when they get it right.

But if you believe your talent grows with persistence and effort, then you seek failure as an opportunity to improve. People with a growth mindset feel smart when they’re learning, not when they’re flawless.

Michael Jordan, arguably the world’s best basketball player, has a growth mindset. Most successful people do. In high school he was cut from the basketball team but that obviously didn’t discourage him: “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career, I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game wining shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

If you have a growth mindset, then you use your failures to improve. If you have a fixed mindset, you may never fail, but neither do you learn or grow.

In business, we have to be discriminating about when we choose to challenge ourselves. In high risk, high leverage situations, it’s better to stay within your current capability. In lower risk situations, where the consequences of failure are less, better to push the envelope. The important point is to know that pushing the envelope, that failing, is how you learn and grow and succeed. It’s your opportunity.

Here’s the good news: you can change your success by changing your mindset. When Dweck trained children to view themselves as capable of growing their intelligence, they worked harder, more persistently, and with greater success on math problems they had previously abandoned as unsolvable.

A growth mindset is the secret to maximizing potential. Want to grow your staff? Give them tasks above their ability. They don’t think they could do it? Tell them you expect them to work at it for a while, struggle with it. That it will take more time than the tasks they’re used to doing. That you expect they’ll make some mistakes along the way. But you know they could do it.

Want to increase your own performance? Set high goals where you have a 50-70% chance of success. According to Psychologist and Harvard researcher the late David McClelland, that’s the sweet spot for high achievers. Then, when you fail half the time, figure out what you should do differently and try again. That’s practice. And according to recent studies, 10,000 hours of that kind of practice will make you an expert in anything. No matter where you start.

The next class I did with Calvin, I doubled the weight I was using. Yeah, that’s right. Unfortunately, that gave me tendonitis in my elbow, which I’m nursing with rest and ice. Sometimes you can even fail when you’re trying to fail.

Hey, I’m learning.

The original article can be found here.
9:59
Evian babies get down!
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Here we go again. Are babies, bunnies and cute baby chickens going to work forever?
July 01, 2009
12:04
A salute to all non-morning people.
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June 24, 2009
14:27
Karim Rashid on ideas
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“I think people who are sacred with and idea and they feel like they don’t want to be copies, have no other ideas.” – KARIM RASHID

More here: [www.idsgn.org]
June 18, 2009
11:53
Buy this coffee or else
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June 10, 2009
10:33
When Post-Its Attack
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If this is an example of the creativity of youth, we’re pretty stoked. Stoked? Whoa. Where did that come from?
June 05, 2009
11:42
Creativity can be anywhere
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It doesn’t matter what business you’re in, there are creative ideas you can use to make your customer’s experiences with you unique and memorable.

Remember that marketing is not just about cool ads. Marketing is based on a relationship with your customers. Let them have fun with your brand and give them something to talk about. Word-of-mouth is still the best form of advertising. Did we just say that out loud?
May 29, 2009
17:26
Powerful. Disturbing. Effective.
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From DDB Poland.
May 28, 2009
11:27
Want to Understand Your Customers? Go Pyscho.
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ANTHONY TJAN

Customer research tends to be demographically-biased in its design. But it is time for us to go a little psycho on customers — psychographic, that is.

When it comes to purchasing behavior, it is obvious that personalities matter. So why is it that we so often look at detailed website usage or customer data along impersonal demographic dimensions like age and gender? While useful, those characteristics don’t describe attitudinal trends which may be more important — and need to be a critical complement to other data.

Psychographics are the data points that describe a user’s values, opinions and lifestyle. Think of psychographics as the kind of data a psychologist or anthropologist would use to profile someone, as opposed to the demographic data that a census surveyor wants to collect.

Or consider what information you might want to collect for a blind date. Demographics may be useful to narrow the pool down to, say 30-year old males in Chicago, but would that be enough? To choose your partner, you likely want to consider personality, interests, and values. Similarly, for customers to fall in love with your product or brand, you need to understand their personality and passions and see how those connect with your product or service.

While there’s no standard psychographic profile, we can borrow some ideas from psychology. A psychographic profile should tell us about how a person interacts with the world (are they extroverted or introverted? analytical or emotional?) and what they value most (security? family? the environment?). You can combine more “classical” survey methods with questions that are personality or association-based. For example, ask the question: If you (or this product, or this service) were a car, what kind of car would it be? A Mini, a Mercedes, a Range Rover, or a Prius? Each of these cars connotes a different personality and you can use such responses to infer desired personality traits.

In the pre-digital world, gleaning sufficient information to constitute a psychographic profile would often require prohibitively expensive customer anthropology. Imagine researchers observing and following customers as they interact with a product. Now, however, as consumers spend increasingly more time online, a level of digital anthropology is more feasible because consumer data can be better aggregated and analyzed — cheaply.

Cameras within stores can also share tremendous insight. Video anthropologist and consumer researcher Paco Underhill has filmed thousands of hours in retail settings. One discovery: customers buy less when their arms are full of products; shopping baskets in the middle of the store can help increase sales. In an intense retail customer research assignment I once did, we discovered that new mothers were significant purchasers of both diapers and digital cameras — placing these two seemingly disparate product categories closer together helped drive cross-selling.

So, how can you use psychographic data? Suppose you wanted to market a new brand of organic, flaxseed-infused cereal. While there is no clear demographic group for that product, there may be a well-defined pyschographic one. You could target anyone who identified Whole Foods and Eastern Mountain Sports as favorite brands, expressed a concern about health and fitness, and is environmentally conscious. You can also use psychographics to inform how you market to a particular group. You could market to “analytical and research-oriented” folks by talking about the cereal’s unique formula, while you could reference case studies and endorsements when marketing to people who value expert opinion.

The task for next-generation online audience measurement and sentiment tools, then, is to start understanding traffic along psychographic axes. There are a few ways to do this.

First, members of an audience measurement firm’s user panels could complete a psychographic questionnaire: What are their three favorite brands? What kind of car would they like to be? On a Friday night, would they rather stay in and watch a movie or go out on the town?

The second way is to understand what your users are doing before and after they interact with your company and profile the content and audience of those sites. In my HBR piece on customer strategy, we discuss a technique we used at Thomson Reuters called the three-minute rule; we observed what users were doing three minutes before and three minutes after each interaction with the product.

Lastly, so-called “single sign on” services will make associating user behavior on different sites much easier. Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo! all participate in the OpenID project, and Facebook has a competing platform called Connect, which allows a user to log into many sites with one set of credentials. A central database could contain everything from blog comments and self-descriptions on social networking sites to purchasing data and search history.

Pyschographics offer us an ability to understand current and potential customers in terms of the beliefs and values that drive their purchasing behavior. In our more voyeuristic and measurable digital world, psychographics will increasingly drive customer understanding.

Original article can be found here.
May 27, 2009
17:31
A Charlie Brown Ad Agency
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16:37
Find the Unexpected
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Here’s a creative challenge for you. Find the unexpected. That was the challenge posed to Seattle agency WongDoody for the Seattle International Film festival. Many agencies might stumble on this one but WongDoody pulled out some great ideas. Kudos WongDoody, we’re fans.
May 22, 2009
10:51
Friday music and cool animation
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WOOD from mc bess on Vimeo.
May 15, 2009
23:19
Entrepreneurs can change the world
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Amen.
May 13, 2009
14:21
The Architecture of Participation
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It’s time to reinvent how we do business.

Never in my 18 years of being in sales and marketing have I ever seen a market like we are currently in. I think that may be a good thing. Here are some observations and recommendations for how we do business and what will work today and in the future.

Business is all about relationships.

Now I know you can say that business has always been about relationships, however, in the past those “relationships” could be created with glitzy advertising campaigns and celebrity endorsements. Consumers were much quicker to accept what they were told by advertising and the media with little thought to the validity or cost of many of their claims.

Today consumers are so much more analytical and sensitive to marketing. This completely influences the way we create and maintain a relationship with them. Our messages need to be compelling, transparent and honest. There is little to no tolerance for fluff or manipulation. You may get away with it once, but you’ll be hard pressed to get another chance.

Don’t mistake a message for communication.

When we were riding the wave of a healthy, growing economy, consumerism was at an all-time high. Companies were throwing out messages in every shape and media. It was a no-holds-barred competition for that miniscule moment when you could make any kind of impression on a consumer. Shock-based tactics were prevalent because there were so many messages out there that consumers just became numb to all of them. To overcome the numbness, marketing resorted to shocking people in an effort to be memorable. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. Just because consumers got the message didn’t mean that they got what we were trying to communicate.

Consumers vs. Producers

In the early 2000’s we, as Americans, were the poster children for consumerism. We consumed (and still do in a lot of categories) a large part of what we and the rest of the world produced. We had the money and the access to anything and everything money could buy. And buy we did. Much of the global economy was supported by our blatant consumerism. This allowed many of the “producing” countries and their economies to grow and thrive. China, India and many other emerging markets became extremely powerful players in the global economy. But when the bubble burst in America beginning with the financial and housing crisis, it impacted the entire global market as the consumers slowed their consuming and the markets based on producing had nowhere to go with their products. Now that we’re consuming less, the competition for what we choose to consume is so intense it’s completely changed the game.

So what can we as business people do to market ourselves and our wares in this advertising-adverse economy?

1. Create an “Architecture of Participation”

I believe it was Tim O’Riley that coined this term. You can find his write-up on this here. But I would like to expand this definition somewhat to cover all aspects of your sales and marketing efforts.

Consumers have begun the change from being defined by consumption and now are being more closely defined by their participation. With less disposable income available to consume, people are becoming producers. Not necessarily of physical products, but of opinions, ideas and feedback. Thanks to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and the many other “social media” networks, people are producing more than ever. Don’t be afraid of this participation. Sure, it will definitely change how sales and marketing traditionally works — it already has. But this participation is here to stay, even after the economic situation improves. This level of participation will allow truly open-minded business people to access information and feedback we never had before. And, in doing so, it will allow us to create an even better product or service. But, only if we allow our consumers to participate and, most definitely, only if we LISTEN.

If we start truly listening and implementing what we learn, we will build these much desired relationships with our customers — relationships that facilitate a true interaction with your product or brand. This, in turn, leads to happy customers and repeat business.

2. Realize that interactivity is not only on-line

True participation is not only an on-line experience. Even if you are amazon.com, eBay, or any other web-based business, the experience your customers have is not only on-line. It’s the entire experience from beginning to end.

Take, for example, Amazon. A customer goes to amazon.com and places an order. If the ordering and payment process is not simple and intuitive the “experience” of the Amazon brand will suffer. Continue on to the fulfillment process. If the item ordered arrives later than the customer expected in a tattered package, the perceived value of both the product, the service and the Amazon brand suffers. This is where having participation can become painful. Trust me, those consumers are going to participate in some serious conversations. Even if you as a company don’t facilitate the conversation, they will vocalize their opinions in one or many of the other avenues available. Even if they do have a negative experience, if you are willing to listen, communicate and make it right, you can create a life-long customer.

This thinking needs to expand into your personal customer interactions as well. Find ways to have your consumers interact personally with your people and product in the way it best benefits them. Allow them to have a voice — even when it’s an unhappy one. Again, if they don’t vocalize to you, they’ll vocalize to someone else. And that can hurt a lot more.

3. Balance your messages with unique ways of communicating

Advertising and sales are not a bad words. Improper tactics and messages are. To “advertise” is defined as “to promote or draw attention to”. People can’t interact with something they don’t know about. The true challenge lies in communicating with the right people with the right message at the right time in the right place. No one tactic or strategy is going to solve all of your marketing needs effectively. Work to develop a strategy, tactic and a message that is right for your audience and stay focused on it. Work with a solid, proven marketing partner who will be your eyes and ears into the best way to accomplish these goals. Work with them to develop these goals and hold them accountable for the results.

Sales and marketing is not rocket science, nor a walk in the park, nor does it have to be fantastically expensive to be effective. Smart thinking (strategy), the right message and medium (creativity), the right execution(s) (advertising, PR, social media, interactive, etc.) and the right participation by your customers will help you successfully reinvent how you do business.

Tim Scott
Executive Creative Director
THEM!

___________________

Here is a really interesting video that is well worth 17 minutes of your time discussing consumerism, time and participation. We would love to hear you comments below.
May 07, 2009
11:40
When I Grow Up
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This is an odd but strangely interesting video we found. Some interesting camera work in here.

When I Grow Up from Fever Ray on Vimeo.
May 06, 2009
15:55
How Artist/Leaders Do Things Differently
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JOHN MAEDA & BECKY BERMONT – REDESIGNING LEADERSHIP

9:41 AM Wednesday May 6, 2009
by Becky Bermont
A student once asked John, “If RISD is such a creative place, why aren’t we led with more creativity?” That comment has stuck with him. Since both he and our Provost (Chief Academic Officer) are truly artist/administrators (rather than artists-turned-administrators), they have undertaken a quest to redesign leadership is both lofty and explicit. They’ve made a commitment to leading our institution using the principles that RISD’s artists and designers use every day.
I’ve always operated in more traditional management environments, so the advantages (and challenges) of this kind of leadership reveal themselves to me daily. I won’t lie — for non-artists like me, working in this leadership paradigm has taken some adjustment. But it’s an essential part of our collective commitment to leading our organization authentically. Here are four differences in perspective I’ve noticed our creative leaders putting into practice:
1. Passion fuels the work. In most corporate discourse, the conventional ideal to strive for is a “balanced life” — one in which the personal and professional are neatly separated and don’t interfere with each other. Contrast this with the conventional picture of an artist’s life — consumed by his or her work, and uncomfortable carrying around an idea until it can be “let out” through creative expression. When artist and administrator combine, the passion that was once channeled into creating art is now poured into leading. The 80/20 rule is not the natural barometer; instead, the assumption is that by choosing to commit yourself to the work of administration, you’ve taken it on as “your work” and chosen to commit to it fully.
2. Form and content can’t be decoupled. Predictably, in an artist-led administration, there is much more careful attention paid to visual presentation of information. The first time I made a PowerPoint deck while working for John, atop the list of comments when it was returned was a directive: “Never use yellow text on a white background. Always orange.” It was a shock: I had never had my design edited, nor had my ideas evaluated by how effectively they were communicated visually. When presenting complex information to a community of visual thinkers, though, the how demands as much thoughtful consideration as the what. It’s not just that a well-designed document is more palatable; it’s that the ideas within it can truly be understood.
3. Iteration is expected. In traditional work environments, the goal is for careful planning to precede thoughtful execution. Undoing plans that have been approved and set into motion feels like chaos, or worse, a reflection of your failure to plan properly. Viewed through the eyes of a creative leader, though, tweaking a presentation at the last minute or reconsidering the order of an event that’s about to happen is being alive to the moment and in tune to possibility. According to our Provost, iterating on a concept or plan is a lot like teaching — it’s feeling the moment, and responding with real-time agility.
4. All failures are opportunities for course correction. Inevitably, though, marks are missed. Just last week, in a meeting I’d carefully set up a month before, a presentation we’d fiddled with up until the moment we entered the room hit like a ton of bricks. Afterward there was the predictable debrief of what we could have/would have/should have done differently, but there was something else as well: excitement. To fail meant we took a risk, and because we did it with intention, knowing what we were aiming for and what went wrong, we could immediately go back to the drawing board and approach it again.
Original post can be found here.
April 30, 2009
11:06
“Onward” Nike + AKQA = Good stuff
» ‎ THEMdidit

Tags: [edit]

Here’s a great animation done for Nike by James Jarvis. Simple, engaging and a great story-telling example. We enjoyed it. We thought you might too…

Onwards from AKQA on Vimeo.

See it full-size here.
April 29, 2009
15:39
Creativity as a commodity
» ‎ THEMdidit

Tags: [edit]
Businesses have been trying to make creativity a commodity for years now. If only it was that easy.

Coca-Cola announced on April 27th, 2009 their intention to move toward a pay-for-performance model. P&G has been experimenting with this model for a while now. The idea in itself is nothing new and honestly is not a bad idea. At first glance is seems a great idea for both agencies and their clients. Agencies are challenged with a goal and have to provide the “creative” ideas and executions to answer them. That’s what we all claim to do, right? Step-up or shut-up. However, there are many things to consider in the actual application of this theory that makes it challenging.
1. Who actually determines what these “goals” are and what is financially reasonable to reach them?
2. How do we define that these “goals” have indeed been reached?
3. If the model is a percentage, how is the level of “success” decided?
From the 10,000 foot perspective all of these questions are easily answered. In all honesty, it is quite similar to what the “traditional” process has been for quite a few years now:

A goal is set = the brief;

the agency develops strategy, tactics and execution = the creative;

the effort is reviewed and critiqued by the clients = the feedback;

the creative is modified and launched = the execution;

the goals are either met or not = the results.

Simple. The difference is, the agency is only paid based on the results and not on a previously generated estimate.

Here, in our opinion, is the way that the pay-for-performance model could work:
1. The agency and the client need to work hand-in-hand to set goals. It will take a mutual respect at this phase. While it’s great to set huge goals, the goals should be based on at least on a semi-realistic expectation and then add a bonus option for quantifiably overachieving. As the relationship evolves and the agency continually “over-delivers” on results, then raise the bar. It’s good for both of us.
2. Recognize that some goals are quantifiable and some are not. If the assignment is coupon, direct mail or click-thru based, it is easy to track specific redemption of offers. If you are working on more “brand” driven efforts, it is much harder to quantify exact results. Again, agree on some attainable general results that can be justified. Please, please, please don’t under-value the power of brand. It is always a vital part of your marketing equation, but most definitely not the only one.
3. When setting the goals and targets of the project be perfectly clear of what the definitions of success are. If this is not implicitly done the project will invariably end up in a “he said - she said” stalemate. And we’ll tell you right now, the client will always win - and they should.
Accountability vs. Ownability.

One of the other difficult points comes from the perspective of client changes. If the agency has done complete due diligence and the client makes changes that the agency thinks will affect the performance of the effort, where is the line drawn?

“If all targets are hit, the agency could make as much as 30% on a project; if all targets are missed, the agency won’t make any profit at all.”

To use the Coca-Cola model above as an example, if the client wants to make changes to an effort the agency believes to be the most effective, does the agency’s “risk factor” go down? In real world ideals this (very roughly) means that if the client makes significant changes, can the agency charge for work done as the client will have to accept more of the risk since their changes are being included? Also, the wording “if all targets are missed, the agency won’t make any profit at all”. Does this mean that the agency can charge hard costs and then gets a percentage bonus on performance review? Confusing indeed.

What now?

In all honesty, we’re not against the pay-for-performance model at all. In fact, we like the basic premise of accountability and shared risk/reward. We’re not afraid to stand behind what we do. But we need to find a simple (or as simple as possible) way to handle the nuances and risk/reward balance.

We welcome and would love your comments and thoughts. Please chime in!
April 23, 2009
19:08
America Is F*cked…(Graphically at least)
» ‎ THEMdidit

Tags: [edit]

America Is F*cked…….(Graphically at least) from Jess Gibson on Vimeo.
April 15, 2009
9:18
Beautiful animation that inspires us.
» ‎ THEMdidit

Tags: [edit]

The work of Joaquin Baldwin originally from Paraguay. The voodoo dolls rise up against their master. Beautifully executed.

Sebastian’s Voodoo from Joaquin Baldwin on Vimeo.

Found on fubiz.net.
April 08, 2009
13:44
Our list of useful “Social Media” resources.
» ‎ THEMdidit

Tags: [edit]
With all of the “information” about Social Media running rampant out there we’ve decided to start an ongoing list of Social Media references and links that we’ve found useful. Feel free to send yours over!

General Social Media:
Twitter Resources:
Blog Resources:
Facebook Resources:
1. 5 Tips for Optimizing Your Brand’s Facebook Presence
Tools we like and use:
1. Tweetdeck
2. Yahoo! Sideline
We will continue updating and adding so check back often. If you find any dead or inactive links please let us know.
April 01, 2009
10:58
“Small is the new big. Sustainable is the new growth. Trust is the new competitive advantage.”
» ‎ THEMdidit

Tags: [edit]

Fear seems to be the big ruler of large organizations right now. And understandably so. But fear is paralyzing and inhibitive. Exactly what we DON’T need right now. It’s a time of change and transition, but it’s also a time of growth and creativity.

Impersonal and disconnected just doesn’t work in this environment. People want to trust, want personal contact and definitely want a reason to believe. “Because I said so” isn’t acceptable any more.

Consider the strong trend of “social media”. People are looking for personal contact and a feeling of being personally connected. Granted, a lot of the “connections” are strictly virtual, but it’s still a direct connection with the outside world and information. Companies are slowly beginning to understand and several are doing new and innovative things with communications outlets like Twitter. Check out people like @zappos, @SouthwestAir, @JetBlue, @GMblogs and others. They are working to connect directly with their consumers. Some better than others.

One of my personal biggest frustrations when I was working as a creative director at the “big agencies” in New York City was the lack of connection and understanding of the business needs that were driving our assignments. We have so many tactics and medias available today I cringe at the number of dollars wasted simply because major decisions were made almost blindly simply based on gross tactical generalizations.

Now as a smaller agency, our goal is to truly get to know and understand our clients. Not just on the corporate laugh level, but to truly understand their challenges and their consumers and marketplace. That is the best way that we can effectively create a plan and execution that will work as effectively as possible with todays smaller budgets.

We strongly encourage our clients to give us a business challenge or a desired outcome rather than a request for a print ad or a “viral campaign”. This allows us to dig into the myriad of opportunities and medias to create a message that is as targeted and effective as possible. And last but not least, we strongly encourage our clients to be part of the process. The more we know and understand about you, your organization and your product or service, the better we can communicate that to your customers.

It doesn’t matter how big or small your company is, your consumers want to feel like you are vested in them and that you care about them and their business. We have been told time and time again that “it’s not personal, it’s business”. But business now is personal. What we do in business affects people in personal ways. And we should never lose sight of that.

This post was inspired by a post at harvardbusiness.org entitled “Why Small Companies Will Win In This Economy”.
March 30, 2009
10:25
Social media is not rocket science
» ‎ THEMdidit

Tags: [edit]

“Social media” can be defined a lot of different ways. Does it have to be on-line? Nope. It’s simply a way of socializing with people. The “media” in this case is a simple 8.5″x11″ piece of paper. But it’s effective. So that’s the lesson in this short to us business folk. It doesn’t have to be fancy or elaborate to work. It simply has to have the right message at the right time and place.

This is a great little short film Directed by @RadicalMedia’s Patrick Hughes for the Schweppes Short Film Festival. It may bring a smile to your face. And that’s a good thing…
March 27, 2009
12:45
Where the Wild Things are!
» ‎ THEMdidit

Tags: [edit]

“There’s one in all of us.” Directed by Spike Jones.
An adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s classic children’s story, where Max, a disobedient little boy sent to bed without his supper, creates his own world–a forest inhabited by ferocious wild creatures that crown Max as their ruler.
March 19, 2009
16:55
Play to pay
» ‎ THEMdidit

Tags: [edit]

If you ask my wife she’ll tell you that I vary between the ages of 12-15 on any given day. And I’m proud of that.

As a person in the “creative industry” it’s important that I never forget to play. It’s vital that we all never lose that child-like hope and optimism for fun things. It’s super easy as a “grown-up” to come up with all of the reasons that something just won’t work.

Have you ever watched a child with their mind set toward accomplishing something? They will try anything and everything in the pursuit of this goal. Sometimes it won’t work. Sometimes it will.

One of the biggest challenges that we face as grown-up, professional, business people today is that the things we used to do and the ways we did them simply aren’t relevant any more. What are we to do?

Before we go any further I’m going to tell you a big secret.

“Creative” is not a person and it certainly is not a department. True creative is a mindset. It’s a way of letting go of adult constraints and reverting back to the way we were when we were children, always looking for new possibilities and ways of doing things. It’s taking what you have available to you and making the absolute most out of it. Don’t let what you don’t have be the excuse for doing nothing.

It’s time to PLAY.

There are two benefits to just playing. The first is that we get to escape from the pressures weighing down on us every day. And often times when we take a step back and escape from what we have to figure out the answer is sitting there, in plain sight and we couldn’t see it because we were too focused on the end result.

The second benefit is that the mindset of play broadens our thinking with opportunities that our “grown-up” mindset wouldn’t allow. Playing and problem solving becomes habit, and a valuable one at that.

Baby steps.

The next time you have to solve a seemingly unsolvable issue, try these simple steps.

1. Start with no limitations. Take the word “no” out of your vocabulary. Open the child in you. Think “why not?” and “what if?”. Be completely open to new ideas.

2. Create a complete list of ALL of these thoughts and walk away. Don’t edit any of these ideas yet.

3. Play! Do something now that that had absolutely nothing to do with what your challenge is. Something that lets your mind escape and wander. For some people this is driving, for others it’s crafts, for some it’s tinkering in the garage, for others it’s cleaning (I’ll never understand that one). Whatever it is for you, step out and play.

4. Now go back to your list of ideas. This is your toolbox. Examine the tools you have and create the best possible plan to solving your problem.

5. Now try it. If you don’t try something you’ll never know if it’ll work.

6. Don’t be afraid to be wrong. Thomas A. Edison said “Just because something doesn’t do what you planned it to do doesn’t mean it’s useless.” Take that new knowledge you’ve gained and use it as part of your new toolbox.

7. Repeat.

Now wasn’t that fun?
16:42
The Beauty of Simplicity.
» ‎ THEMdidit

Tags: [edit]

We just launched a new web site for Affect Strategies (www.affectstrategies.com), and we’re pretty darn proud of it.

Now to be clear here, let’s talk about what we didn’t do. When we first started discussing this assignment, the original wireframe, basic structure and starting look had already been established, so there wasn’t much here for us as a “creative” company, right? We honestly believe that’s where a lot of companies miss the boat. Instead, we looked at this as a great way to get to know a new partner/client AND to demonstrate that creativity and professionalism is not only based on how hot your designs are.

Our role in this project was to take the clients’ vision and execute it in a way that was functional and effective, both consumer facing and on the back end. If the back end is too complicated or difficult to use, it won’t be utilized properly and the content will get stale quickly. As Affect Strategies is a driven and growing company, they are extremely active both on the primary web site and on their blog (www.techaffect.com), we had to make sure that it was functional, accessible and intuitive.

From the consumer perspective the site is very content heavy. So, how did we execute the volume of information that is contained in a way that doesn’t appear daunting to viewers when exploring the site? We utilized very subtle ways. With careful choice of typeface and colours, to the way that the content is divided between the pages, to the tiny details of line spacing and distance between content, we were able to keep it simple looking while communicating a lot of content.

Working with a great client who has a clear vision and expectations is a wonderful thing. The President and founder, Sandra Fathi, and VP, Partner, Leslie Campisi, made themselves available for discussions and were always open to ideas and suggestions. This definitely allowed a great two-way conversation and helped make this project a success.

Take a few minutes and explore affectstrategies.com and meet a great group of people who are passionate about what they do. Explore the site and enjoy it for what it is, a communications portal that represents a professional company that offers their clients a myriad of services to help their business grow.

We at THEM! always strive to add that extra effort and creative thinking that help our clients be more successful. Regardless of how simple or complex your project might be we’ll help you take it to a great place. Visit us at www.themdidit.com.
16:05
Play to pay.
» ‎ THEMdidit

Tags: [edit]

If you ask my wife she’ll tell you that I vary between the ages of 12-15 on any given day. And I’m proud of that.

As a person in the “creative industry” it’s important that I never forget to play. It’s vital that we all never lose that child-like hope and optimism for fun things. It’s super easy as a “grown-up” to come up with all of the reasons that something just won’t work.
Have you ever watched a child with their mind set toward accomplishing something? They will try anything and everything in the pursuit of this goal. Sometimes it won’t work. Sometimes it will.

One of the biggest challenges that we face as grown-up, professional, business people today is that the things we used to do and the ways we did them simply aren’t relevant any more. What are we to do?

Before we go any further I’m going to tell you a big secret.

“Creative” is not a person and it certainly is not a department. True creative is a mindset. It’s a way of letting go of adult constraints and reverting back to the way we were when we were children, always looking for new possibilities and ways of doing things. It’s taking what you have available to you and making the absolute most out of it. Don’t let what you don’t have be the excuse for doing nothing.

It’s time to PLAY.

There are two benefits to just playing. The first is that we get to escape from the pressures weighing down on us every day. And often times when we take a step back and escape from what we have to figure out the answer is sitting there, in plain sight and we couldn’t see it because we were too focused on the end result.

The second benefit is that the mindset of play broadens our thinking with opportunities that our “grown-up” mindset wouldn’t allow. Playing and problem solving becomes habit, and a valuable one at that.

Baby steps.

The next time you have to solve a seemingly unsolvable issue, try these simple steps.

1. Start with no limitations. Take the word “no” out of your vocabulary. Open the child in you. Think “why not?” and “what if?”. Be completely open to new ideas.

2. Create a complete list of ALL of these thoughts and walk away. Don’t edit any of these ideas yet.

3. Play! Do something now that that had absolutely nothing to do with what your challenge is. Something that lets your mind escape and wander. For some people this is driving, for others it’s crafts, for some it’s tinkering in the garage, for others it’s cleaning (I’ll never understand that one). Whatever it is for you, step out and play.

4. Now go back to your list of ideas. This is your toolbox. Examine the tools you have and create the best possible plan to solving your problem.

5. Now try it. If you don’t try something you’ll never know if it’ll work.

6. Don’t be afraid to be wrong. Thomas A. Edison said “Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless.” Take that new knowledge you’ve gained and use it as part of your new toolbox.

7. Repeat.

Now wasn’t that fun?
March 13, 2009
10:30
Haters gonna hate
» ‎ THEMdidit

Tags: [edit]

How true it is...
March 09, 2009
10:26
The Beauty of Simplicity.
» ‎ THEMdidit

Tags: [edit]

We just launched a new web site for Affect Strategies (www.affectstrategies.com), and we’re pretty darn proud of it.

Now to be clear here, let’s talk about what we didn’t do. When we first started discussing this assignment, the original wireframe, basic structure and starting look had already been established, so there wasn’t much here for us as a “creative” company, right? We honestly believe that’s where a lot of companies miss the boat. Instead, we looked at this as a great way to get to know a new partner/client AND to demonstrate that creativity and professionalism is not only based on how hot your designs are.

Our role in this project was to take the clients' vision and execute it in a way that was functional and effective, both consumer facing and on the back end. If the back end is too complicated or difficult to use, it won’t be utilized properly and the content will get stale quickly. As Affect Strategies is a driven and growing company, they are extremely active both on the primary web site and on their blog (www.techaffect.com), we had to make sure that it was functional, accessible and intuitive.

From the consumer perspective the site is very content heavy. So, how did we execute the volume of information that is contained in a way that doesn’t appear daunting to viewers when exploring the site? We utilized very subtle ways. With careful choice of typeface and colours, to the way that the content is divided between the pages, to the tiny details of line spacing and distance between content, we were able to keep it simple looking while communicating a lot of content.

Working with a great client who has a clear vision and expectations is a wonderful thing. The President and founder, Sandra Fathi, and VP, Partner, Leslie Campisi, made themselves available for discussions and were always open to ideas and suggestions. This definitely allowed a great two-way conversation and helped make this project a success.
Take a few minutes and explore affectstrategies.com and meet a great group of people who are passionate about what they do. Explore the site and enjoy it for what it is, a communications portal that represents a professional company that offers their clients a myriad of services to help their business grow.
We at THEM! always strive to add that extra effort and creative thinking that help our clients be more successful. Regardless of how simple or complex your project might be we'll help you take it to a great place. Visit us at www.themdidit.com.
March 02, 2009
14:31
Is improv the key to innovative teams?
» ‎ THEMdidit

Tags: [edit]

According to Webster’s Dictionary the word improvise means “to compose, recite, play, or sing extemporaneously; to make, invent, or arrange offhand; to make or fabricate out of what is conveniently on hand“. I actually prefer the definition of improvisation that Wikipedia provides though. According to Wikipedia, improvisation is “the practice of acting and reacting, of making and creating, in the moment and in response to the stimulus of ones immediate environment. This can result in the invention of new thought patterns, new practices, new structures or symbols and/or new ways to act. This invention cycle occurs most effectively when the practitioner has a thorough intuitive or technical understanding of the necessary skills and concerns within the improvised domain.” Wow, now that’s a definition! But what I love about this definition is that it recognizes the link between the response to the immediateenvironment and the invention of new thought patterns. In short, it recognizes that improvisation and innovation are intimately linked.

Most people associate improv with acting or comedy. But, you don’t have to be an actor or a comedian to apply improvisation to your work. In fact, I think there is more opportunity for improvisation in the professional world than most people think. Gary LaBranche of the Association Forum of Chicagoland says:

“Board meetings and committee meetings, dialogue with colleagues and other everyday situations give professionals plenty of opportunities for improvisational responses. Improv is all about adapting to constant change and unexpected situations, which is familiar territory for most professionals.”

I think Gary’s statement is right on the money. We have more opportunities to use improv as professionals than we realize. In fact, a few weeks ago, I wrote about Pixar and their use of improv in their creative process. Pixar boils down their use of improv to two essential principles:

1. Accept every offer. You don’t know where that offer is going to go. But one thing is for sure: If you don’t accept that offer, it’s going nowhere! So you have a sure thing on one hand: a dead end. And you have possibility on the other.

2. Make you partner look good. That means that everybody on your team is going to try to make you look good and vice versa. It’s about saying “Here’s where I’m starting. What can I do with this?”.

I think Pixar was able to break down their use of Improv into these two principles because of their long, shared experience with improv. I like these two essentials principles of improvisation for innovation, but wanted to expand on a few other principles for teams and organizations that are just starting to experiment or have never used improv before. So, to add to Pixar’s principles, I would advise those new at improv think about these as well:

1. Keep questioning what works. Good is the enemy of great. When something is really awful, we know we need to fix it, and we usually do. But when something is good, we settle. We don’t necessarily think about how we can make it better. So, take a look at what you do everyday. Consider the things that are good and ask yourself or your team “Can this be better?”

2. Be a risk taker and take chances. Sure, you can do things the way you’ve always done it. And you’ll probably get predictable results and that might be good enough for you. But if you want to be innovative, you need to break through barriers, take risks, take chances. You may not always be successful when you take chances, but if you don’t, you won’t ever have the chance to really innovate. The most innovative companies and creative people have failed more than they have succeeded. But, when they did succeed, it’s been with market-changing and world-changing innovations.

3. Always be changed by what is said and what happens. Innovative people and innovative teams always uncover new information. But more than uncovering new information, they learn to react to that new information. Instead of locking up when change comes along, these innovative people let that change inspire new ideas and let what unfolds next guide them on. They welcome and thrive on change. And they allow themselves to be changed. They have the beginner’s mind and are always able to learn and change.

4. Create shared, dynamic plans and agendas. The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry right? We’ve all heard that a thousand times before. So, why stick to a plan that is going awry? The answer…DON’T. Abandon them to serve the reality of what is right there in front of you. That’s right, ABANDONthem. Let your plans and agendas emerge in real-time in response to what’s right there in front of you.

5. Be fully present and engaged. So, you get your team to abandon static, concrete plans. You’ve gotten out of planning and into being. But, this comes with a caveat. To do this, your team has to be completely engaged and have their attention completely focussed. You have to always be ready and able to ask the question “Yes and?“. You have to be engaged and present to always be asking this question.

6. Keep moving forward. When you’re constantly in the flow of improv and innovation, you can’t stop to analyze. It slows you down and stifles creativity. When something unexpected happens, take advantage of this new situation and move forward with it. If something goes wrong, learn the lesson and move forward. The whole idea is to keep moving forward. The road behind you is not the road that leads to innovation. Keep moving forward.

7. Understand the good of the whole. When you personally understand what is good for the whole, you have a deeper understanding of when to hang back, when to grab the reigns and how to grab them, and how to support the other members of your team. When the whole team has this attitude and understanding, it creates a truly collaborative, improvisational environment.

8. Lose control. We don’t want anyone on our team to be the star or orchestrator. We want to make sure that no one gets into the “controlling mind“. As soon as one person assumes control or seeks the spotlight, the creativity, improv, and innovation of the team suffers. We need to lose the control aspect of the team and allow everyone to respond to the moment.

9. Self-organize. Creativity is naturally a self organizing system. Teams that allow themselves to explore and play find this self-organization with ease. The team may set some very basic guidelines of play, but once they do, their roles and organization emerge naturally and creativity flourishes. This type of self-organization allows all kinds of things to be possible.

From my own personal experience, the most innovative teams I’ve ever worked on embraced these basic principles of improv. In fact, a few years ago, I worked on a truly creative, innovative team. That team always asked the question “What else can we do with this?”. We opened our minds to all possibilities. There were many times we said, “We’ve never done this before”. Often, we had no idea how the idea would play out. But we always accepted the offer to see where it would go. Sometimes we failed. But, we learned and moved on. And, when we were successful, we produced some of the most innovative software the mapping world had ever seen. I don’t think we ever tried to be improvisational or purposely forced these improv principles. It emerged naturally on a team full of incredible talent with no egos, and I think that made all the difference in the world.

This is reposted with permission from Chris Spagnuolo. The original post can be found here.
14:22
Is improv the key to innovative teams?
» ‎ THEMdidit

Tags: [edit]

According to Webster’s Dictionary the word improvise means “to compose, recite, play, or sing extemporaneously; to make, invent, or arrange offhand; to make or fabricate out of what is conveniently on hand“. I actually prefer the definition of improvisation that Wikipedia provides though. According to Wikipedia, improvisation is “the practice of acting and reacting, of making and creating, in the moment and in response to the stimulus of ones immediate environment. This can result in the invention of new thought patterns, new practices, new structures or symbols and/or new ways to act. This invention cycle occurs most effectively when the practitioner has a thorough intuitive or technical understanding of the necessary skills and concerns within the improvised domain.” Wow, now that’s a definition! But what I love about this definition is that it recognizes the link between the response to the immediateenvironment and the invention of new thought patterns. In short, it recognizes that improvisation and innovation are intimately linked.
Most people associate improv with acting or comedy. But, you don’t have to be an actor or a comedian to apply improvisation to your work. In fact, I think there is more opportunity for improvisation in the professional world than most people think. Gary LaBranche of the Association Forum of Chicagoland says:
“Board meetings and committee meetings, dialogue with colleagues and other everyday situations give professionals plenty of opportunities for improvisational responses. Improv is all about adapting to constant change and unexpected situations, which is familiar territory for most professionals.”
I think Gary’s statement is right on the money. We have more opportunities to use improv as professionals than we realize. In fact, a few weeks ago, I wrote about Pixar and their use of improv in their creative process. Pixar boils down their use of improv to two essential principles:
1. Accept every offer. You don’t know where that offer is going to go. But one thing is for sure: If you don’t accept that offer, it’s going nowhere! So you have a sure thing on one hand: a dead end. And you have possibility on the other.
2. Make you partner look good. That means that everybody on your team is going to try to make you look good and vice versa. It’s about saying “Here’s where I’m starting. What can I do with this?”.
I think Pixar was able to break down their use of Improv into these two principles because of their long, shared experience with improv. I like these two essentials principles of improvisation for innovation, but wanted to expand on a few other principles for teams and organizations that are just starting to experiment or have never used improv before. So, to add to Pixar’s principles, I would advise those new at improv think about these as well:
1. Keep questioning what works. Good is the enemy of great. When something is really awful, we know we need to fix it, and we usually do. But when something is good, we settle. We don’t necessarily think about how we can make it better. So, take a look at what you do everyday. Consider the things that are good and ask yourself or your team “Can this be better?”
2. Be a risk taker and take chances. Sure, you can do things the way you’ve always done it. And you’ll probably get predictable results and that might be good enough for you. But if you want to be innovative, you need to break through barriers, take risks, take chances. You may not always be successful when you take chances, but if you don’t, you won’t ever have the chance to really innovate. The most innovative companies and creative people have failed more than they have succeeded. But, when they did succeed, it’s been with market-changing and world-changing innovations.
3. Always be changed by what is said and what happens. Innovative people and innovative teams always uncover new information. But more than uncovering new information, they learn to react to that new information. Instead of locking up when change comes along, these innovative people let that change inspire new ideas and let what unfolds next guide them on. They welcome and thrive on change. And they allow themselves to be changed. They have the beginner’s mind and are always able to learn and change.
4. Create shared, dynamic plans and agendas. The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry right? We’ve all heard that a thousand times before. So, why stick to a plan that is going awry? The answer…DON’T. Abandon them to serve the reality of what is right there in front of you. That’s right, ABANDONthem. Let your plans and agendas emerge in real-time in response to what’s right there in front of you.
5. Be fully present and engaged. So, you get your team to abandon static, concrete plans. You’ve gotten out of planning and into being. But, this comes with a caveat. To do this, your team has to be completely engaged and have their attention completely focussed. You have to always be ready and able to ask the question “Yes and?“. You have to be engaged and present to always be asking this question.
6. Keep moving forward. When you’re constantly in the flow of improv and innovation, you can’t stop to analyze. It slows you down and stifles creativity. When something unexpected happens, take advantage of this new situation and move forward with it. If something goes wrong, learn the lesson and move forward. The whole idea is to keep moving forward. The road behind you is not the road that leads to innovation. Keep moving forward.
7. Understand the good of the whole. When you personally understand what is good for the whole, you have a deeper understanding of when to hang back, when to grab the reigns and how to grab them, and how to support the other members of your team. When the whole team has this attitude and understanding, it creates a truly collaborative, improvisational environment.
8. Lose control. We don’t want anyone on our team to be the star or orchestrator. We want to make sure that no one gets into the “controlling mind“. As soon as one person assumes control or seeks the spotlight, the creativity, improv, and innovation of the team suffers. We need to lose the control aspect of the team and allow everyone to respond to the moment.
9. Self-organize. Creativity is naturally a self organizing system. Teams that allow themselves to explore and play find this self-organization with ease. The team may set some very basic guidelines of play, but once they do, their roles and organization emerge naturally and creativity flourishes. This type of self-organization allows all kinds of things to be possible.
From my own personal experience, the most innovative teams I’ve ever worked on embraced these basic principles of improv. In fact, a few years ago, I worked on a truly creative, innovative team. That team always asked the question “What else can we do with this?”. We opened our minds to all possibilities. There were many times we said, “We’ve never done this before”. Often, we had no idea how the idea would play out. But we always accepted the offer to see where it would go. Sometimes we failed. But, we learned and moved on. And, when we were successful, we produced some of the most innovative software the mapping world had ever seen. I don’t think we ever tried to be improvisational or purposely forced these improv principles. It emerged naturally on a team full of incredible talent with no egos, and I think that made all the difference in the world.
This is reposted with permission from Chris Spagnuolo. The original post can be found here.
13:39
Entertaining and inspiring.
» ‎ THEMdidit

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An amazing animated short. Enjoy.
13:31
Entertaining and inspiring.
» ‎ THEMdidit

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An amazing animated short. Enjoy.
February 28, 2009
11:08
How Twitter's spectacular growth is being driven by unexpected uses ( Evan Williams )
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Evan Williams is the co-founder of Twitter, the addictive messaging service that connects the world 140 characters at a time.
11:08
How Twitter’s spectacular growth is being driven by unexpected uses (Evan Williams)
» ‎ THEMdidit

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Evan Williams is the co-founder of Twitter, the addictive messaging service that connects the world 140 characters at a time.
February 27, 2009
12:32
Lessons learned and people I’m thankful for.
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Many, many years ago, I was living in Ft. Lauderdale trying to figure out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I had recently moved from Southern California where I had left behind a six-figure sales and consulting job. I had been extremely successful at sales after some intense training while working for LifeTouch Studios, a fantastic school photo company based in Minneapolis. So, I was good at sales but I wasn’t truly passionate about the traditional corporate sales process and was feeling restless.

I accepted a position for another photography company in South Florida thinking that a change was what I needed and quickly found out that I was wrong. Shortly thereafter, I left that job and started waiting tables at Mangos, a trendy restaurant on Las Olas Blvd., while I tried to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up.

I had purchased my first Apple computer (IIvx baby!) a few years before and had done a couple of “ads” for small businesses previously. I knew I really enjoyed doing that and I knew that I was absolutely horrible at it.

So I did some research and found that the Miami Ad School (miamiadschool.com) had opened on South Beach the year before and looked really interesting. I took a second job at a local service bureau (remember those?) to learn more about the computer. I waited tables during the day, ran film in the afternoon and started classes at Miami Ad School in the evening. I arranged to sleep on the floor of the back room at the service bureau at night so I would have access to the computers to do my homework. Long days indeed.

I had some really great teachers at Miami Ad School including Alex Bogusky, Bruce Turkel and many others. In the middle of all this, I received a job offer from a local magazine to do sales for them. The money was really good and I was really struggling. Not sure what to do, I went to Bruce Turkel for advice. What I got was advice that has helped guide my success to this day.

I remember vividly standing out in the parking lot of the school talking with Bruce about an ad I had done for a “client” that had come to the owner of the service bureau where I was working. I still have that “ad” and still hear Bruce’s voice kindly telling me that there was “no big idea” to my masterpiece and to go back to the beginning and come up with an idea.

Secondly, when I asked him about my job dilemma he said this: “It would be really easy to take the money, get comfortable and miss out on the passion you have for what you’re learning now. It’ll be much easier to keep sacrificing now for what you really want, then to take the money and then later have to walk away from it to begin your career in advertising”. Wise words indeed.

So, I promptly asked him for a job.

Bruce owned a successful agency called Turkel Advertising (www.bruceturkel.com), had mercy on me and hired me to do production. This was my first “real” advertising job.

Day after day, I was able to observe how truly big ideas and concepts were developed. I got to see how these ideas were produced and executed. I got to work with Bruce and learn to pay extreme attention to details. I can’t tell you how many times I got to go back to the computer and fix the leading and kerning until it was exactly right, how many times I had to hand comp a presentation brochure or pitch book until it was perfect. I would not trade that education for all of the money in the world.

Another one of the great things I learned from Bruce was that great ideas can come from anywhere. I will not forget the day that we were working on a pitch for Carnival Airlines and Bruce called everyone from the office into the small conference room in the front corner of the office across from the receptionist. When I say everyone, I mean everyone. In fact, he locked the front door and had the entire office, from the creative teams, account teams, receptionist and cleaning staff all in this little conference room. If I remember correctly, there was even a UPS driver who was there and we were all quickly briefed and throwing out ideas and thoughts as quick as we possibly could. This also left an indelible impression on me that would help me for years to come.

Bruce was not only my first creative mentor; he was a brilliant and ethical businessman as well. All of the things that he taught me and all that I was able to observe have helped to guide me through my career. I’ve had the honor of being a creative director at agencies like Y&R, ATTIK and TracyLocke on some of the biggest brands in the world and I would never have had these opportunities if it wasn’t for people that took the time to guide and mentor me. Now, I get to use all of that knowledge and experience in our work at THEM! (www.themdidit.com) in ways that make us a successful little agency. For that, Bruce, I say thank you.

Now as we are in difficult times in our business, I challenge you all to take the time to find young, hungry minds and share your knowledge. With all of the technology available to us, with all of the methods to get messages out there, there is still no substitute for a great idea and attention to the little things. These are the things that make good, great and make our work, work.

Lastly, don’t forget to take the time to say thank you to the people that have taken the time to help you. You know who they are.

Here are a few of mine:

Bruce Turkel
Cliff Courtney

Alex Bogusky

Miami Ad School

Will Travis

James Sommerville

Jim Hord

Thank you all.
February 25, 2009
11:55
The drive to create
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What is the drive to create and where does it come from? Honestly, I'm not really sure. But here's one perspective and a whole lot of talent...
February 24, 2009
14:24
Creativity 101
» ‎ THEMdidit

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GUY KAWASAKI OF HOW TO CHANGE THE WORLD | FEBRUARY 4TH, 2009 - 01:05 AM
I just came across an interview called “The Hidden Secrets of the Creative Mind” with psychologist R. Keith Sawyer, author of the book Explaining Creativity: The Science of Human Innovation. Sawyer’s research examines the secrets to the creative process, and the interview makes four great points that every small businessperson should take to heart:
1. Give yourself permission to think up many ideas. Creative people have tons of ideas, but most of the ideas simply don’t pan out. That’s okay because even though most of your ideas will suck, they help you get to the great ones. The trick is to let your mind wander and come up with many ideas and then cull the good from the bad. Nobody has only good ideas. (Almost everybody has selective memory, though, so they might think they had only good ideas.)
2. Keep chewing on the problem. Creativity is not about the rare giftedness of a “visionaries” and “geniuses” with their Eureka! moments. Research shows that most ideas are the result of thinking about a problem over a long period of time Creativity is about big numbers and hard work, so don’t feel frustrated if you haven’t had an epiphany yet. Certainly don’t believe that if you aren’t “gifted” (whatever that means), you’ll never come up with good ideas.
3. Build on ideas that came before. The iPod isn’t a miracle that came out of the blue—it was built on the Sony Walkman’s concept of a shirt-pocket device coupled with early MP3 players from other companies and the online store of a company like Amazon. The concept that creativity is built on what came before has important ramifications: consume information voraciously, go outside your market niche, and don’t be too proud to steal inspiration.
4. Put yourself in environment that will use different parts of your brain. Often this means taking a break. Sawyer refers to the three Bs—bathroom, bus, and bed—as places that stereotypically produce groundbreaking ideas. If you’re stuck on a project, try something that will get you to find new creative paths. One way to do this, for instance, is to schedule time for unstructured conversation with your peers. Personally, I get my best ideas while driving; this has led me to believe that if I bought a better car I would be more creative because I would drive more, but I digress.
If you do these things, some day an author like Sawyer may feature you in a book about creativity, and then you can claim that you’re a gifted visionary whose ideas come in flashes of brilliance during your regular ole awesomeness. Only you and I will know the truth. And if you like to read about innovation and creativity, check out Innovation.alltop.
9:37
The crisis of credit visualized
» ‎ THEMdidit

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Great explanation and great execution.

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.
February 19, 2009
14:39
An open letter to "creatives".
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As we weather these tough times, things are going to become more and more difficult for us. Clients are going to be more concerned with ROI and immediate gratification on assignments. This is how they keep their jobs. Get used to it. It will matter less and less how spectacular the artwork looks or how amazing the concept is if it cannot be justified from a business (read financial) perspective. And you know what? THIS IS GREAT!
This is a huge opportunity for us. This is a time to truly demonstrate how "creative" we actually are. Start thinking beyond typefaces, directors, awards, and Cannes. Step out of your comfort zone and instead of fighting the clients "needs", find a way to be truly creative within "the box". Start with a list of tangible things that you have to make happen and agree on it with your clients. Then is the time to be creative. Be prepared to justify every choice you make and explain how it will work to accomplish the previously agreed upon goals. This will help YOU grow as a professional and will build respect for what we do in our clients eyes.
Now I'm not saying that we should become marketing monkeys, jumping at every whim. No, we still have to deliver a final product that we can be proud of. It's how we get there that has to change. We also should still have a voice and opinions when we get to the table. But now we have to be very prepared to justify that voice and opinion in an educated and respectful fashion.
If you really work hard, take a vested interest in your clients and demonstrate that you bring a valuable perspective and objectivity to the assignments you work on, you will find yourself at the client table sooner and sooner. You just might gain a very valuable understanding of what and why decisions are being made and maybe even have a voice in guiding some of those decisions for the better of all. Haven't we been asking for that for years?
So "the box" is going to be here for a while. To be successful we're all going to have to work, and continue to be creative in that box. BUT, as we respect our client's needs, share the burden pressing down on them from every angle and creatively deliver new solutions that get the results they need, something amazing happens. "The box" begins to get bigger and bigger as we prove that we do work that works. And as all things pass with time, a lot of these economic pressures will loosen their constraints. And pretty soon "the box" will be so large that you won't even know it's there.
So please don't give up on being "creative" just because it's much harder right now. RIGHT NOW we need true creatives more than ever. Sally Hogshead posted on her Twitter (@sallyhogshead) the following: "Necessity is the mother of invention. A recession is the father of innovation." Now is our opportunity to earn a little respect in these trying times and truly be creative doing it.
10:04
The race is on. Enjoy.
» ‎ THEMdidit

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February 17, 2009
16:56
The future of interaction and interface design
» ‎ THEMdidit

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So the iPhone is the global hit of massive proportions right now. I, Tim the nerd, have fallen deep within it's seductive qualities. As the saying goes "I am special and unique, just like everybody else" (who also owns an iPhone). I truly believe that the reasons that Apple has succeeded where so may others haven't is because they have made the complex, simple. The confusing is (more) intuitive. What this takes away is a fundamental inhibitor of human progress, and that is FEAR. We no longer have to fear failing to be able to operate our fancy-schmancy digital devices. It (almost) makes sense now. We have reached the pinnacle. Well, not by a long shot.

As professional communicators (that's what it boils down to what we (THEM!) do) we have to find ways to actually communicate with our client's consumers. The old model was simple. Tell consumers how to act or what to buy and they often times would. Now, we have talked AT consumers so much, in so many different ways, that we have actually conditioned them to tune us out. And it's our own damn fault.

As Ogilvy said years ago "The consumer is not an idiot. She's your wife." and in the context of today's connectivity and access "your wife" is way more often than not, smarter and better educated than you can ever imagine. So now what?

Now, more than ever, we have to learn from smart designers like Apple and others. We have to make information and truly desirable and innovative products accessible and simple. The foundation of the product or service can be as complicated as need be, but the end result has to be functional and useful to your consumers. And not only that, we ALL have to be willing to listen and evolve our products or services as needs change. And believe you me, they are a changin'.

So why the heck am I talking about this? In this market, it is incredibly easy to become obsolete quicker than you can say Government Bailout. How do we side-step this 10,000 lb gorilla? That is the magic bean my friends.

So now I am going to post a completely inner-nerd inducing video. I am going to ask you to watch this video twice. Once to even begin to understand what the possibilities are in the near future for incredible interface and interaction design on so many different levels. Second, watch it again and think about the beauty of the thinking of this technology which is letting people interact with your product or service the way is suits them. The more we create business solutions for our customers that follow this simple frame of thought, the more loyal our client's consumers and therefore our clients will be. And that makes everybody happy.

So every day we all strive to be better communicators. And to do that we need to be better listeners, to take our hands off of the reigns so to speak. The more we let go of, the more we can gain. Wow, that almost sounds easy. Almost.
February 16, 2009
17:19
Education and Creativity - One perspective
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So recently I was browsing through my Twitter followings and from @phemey I found a really interesting (and entertaining) perspective on the education system as we know it now and it's effect on "creativity". I will be the first to say that I do not have an in depth knowledge of the educational system as it exists today nor is this post meant to be a critique of the current educational system, it is instead, an interesting point of view that I hope sparks some conversation.
February 10, 2009
17:28
Proud to be working with the Central Oregon Renegade Rollergirls
» ‎ THEMdidit

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We're proud to launch the next event poster for one of our clients, the Central Oregon Renegade Rollergirls. If you ever get the chance to attend one of these events, do it! It's a blast! The first 3 people that send an email to them at themdidit.com with their contact information and that live can attend the February 21st event will receive a free pair of tickets for the event!
February 04, 2009
17:39
The need to be inspired.
» ‎ THEMdidit

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It's hard not to fall into the trap of "fear of failure" in this marketplace. And believe you me, I am one of those people as well. So how do we stay inspired?
1. Play.Look around you for things and people you admire. Do something new "just because".
2. Get out of your comfort zone. Now is not the time to be doing all of the same things you've always been doing. Use this time to grow and evolve. When things do finally turn around don't be surprised to see that business has changed. It has to.
3. Hang with the kids.This is some of the best research into what the future holds that's available. It'll probably scare you, but that's ok. Watch some MTV. You can grow up, but try to never grow old.
4. Keep a big perspective.The world is a really big place. You'll find inspiration in really diverse places. Me? I really love to spend time on www.current.com and on Current TV as well. Really great stuff that comes from everyday people. This is good.
5. Don't be afraid to ask.It seems that everyone is afraid of everything right now. Fear is not the answer, it's the inhibitor of growth and opportunity. On the other hand, don't be foolish. Take extremely calculated risks and be prepared to make immediate adjustments. Don't fear. Explore. Ask questions and don't fear the answer. Instead look at the answers as an opportunity to grow. You might be surprised where opportunity comes.
One of the very smart people on our advisory board said something to me the other day that really inspired and challenged me. He said "Nothing breeds success like success". No, really think about that statement. Little successes build on themselves. With every little success confidence builds, people notice and more opportunity presents itself.
So prepare and believe in the little successes. No matter how little every one is a gift and a step towards bigger success. Believe in success. No one else will do it for you.
January 04, 2009
5:43
Failure to Communicate
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Here's an article from AdWeek and my good friend Mr. Martin Bihl. One of the smartest people I've ever had the pleasure of working with.
Failure to Communicate
-By Martin Bihl

Ladies and gentlemen, what we have here is a failure to communicate.

Traditionally, brands have spoken in a "monologue" form to consumers. Print ads. TV commercials. Billboards. They talk at, or to, consumers. They say, "Here I am. This is what I am/do." And for a long time, the only way consumers could engage a brand was with their wallets. If people bought the product, well, then whatever the product was saying was working. And if they didn't, then it wasn't.

This began to evolve when brands started asking people what they thought of products. Emotions. Feelings. Focus groups. Product testing. The stuff that Procter & Gamble is famous for (or notorious for, depending on your pain threshold). And suddenly the consumer could talk back -- albeit in small doses. "Talking back," however, is not the same as having a conversation (as anyone who has endured a focus group knows). So, while consumers suddenly had a voice, they used it the only way they could -- to deliver monologues right back at the brand.

Another path for the consumer was promotional items. Coca-Cola T-shirts. Tide race cars. McDonald's holiday ornaments. The pursuit and display of items like these by the consumer became another way for them to deliver a monologue on the brand they prefer -- announcing to a broader audience than a focus group (that is, everyone who can see it) that they align with this brand.

So what started as a simple financial transaction between two interested parties -- I give you money, you give me product or service -- evolved into "matched monologues." Brand: This is what I am. Customer: This is what I want.

But look what's happening now. Now, those simple monologues are evolving into a genuine dialogue. The consumer takes the brand message and reconstitutes it (via mashups, sampling, etc.) and feeds back to the brand a variation of itself -- which the brand may either embrace, build upon, or ignore at its peril.

When the means of production (to use an ironically archaic expression) are in the hands of the consumer, the matched monologues turn into an actual conversation. Think of how consumers turned Mentos into a pop icon in 2006 when they mixed it with Diet Coke and YouTube. Or consider how Scion has used "tuner" culture to shift their customers purchase cycle from the showroom to the longer aftermarket customization

Nowhere is this more brilliantly illustrated than in the 25th anniversary Web site for the Brian Eno/David Byrne album My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. In 1982, they built an entire album around sounds and audio clips they found on other albums, on the radio and on television. Back then it was unheard of. Today, we call it "sampling" and it's the foundation of hip-hop and rap.

So what did they do to mark the album's 25th anniversary? They posted all the mixing tracks to two of the album's songs, allowing -- indeed, encouraging -- the public to build new songs with them -- just as they themselves had, 25 years earlier. And these songs are then reposted on the site, adding another generation to the conversation begun a quarter century ago. Check it out at: www.bush-of-ghosts.com/remix/bush_of_ghosts.htm.

This is what user-generated content really means, and this is what it will look like in the future: A genuine "back and forth" between consumer and brand that regularly evolves and changes. What's holding us back is that brands -- trapped in a monologue mentality -- are merely using the trappings of the new technology to help consumers create their own monologues.

Ultimately, the successful brands will be the ones who learn how to talk with consumers. The others? They'll be the ones just talking to themselves.
December 18, 2008
14:05
Go to War Against Wasted Marketing Spending
» ‎ THEMdidit

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What Marines Can Teach CMOs About Success Under Fire
by Casey Jones

Published: December 17, 2008
Casey Jones
As marketers, we jointly spend hundreds of billions of dollars communicating what we believe are critical messages to our target audiences. All of us, from entry-level brand managers to CMOs, know there is enormous waste in our industry. As Wanamaker famously said, "I know half my advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half." My strong suggestion, especially in an economy where every single marketing dollar must count, is to improve your aim.
Without looking closely at your marketing spending, I can already tell you that the waste starts because astonishingly little attention is paid to the development of messages that will persuade your key customers and audiences to change their perceptions of your brand or love your products. Like a mob of first-week recruits at Marine Corps boot camp, most day-to-day marketing troops are spraying ammo (your money) at their targets. The first thing I learned many years ago on a Marine Corps rifle range was the acronym BRASS: breathe, relax, aim, squeeze, shoot. My bet is, especially in times of panic, there is a lot of shooting going on and not enough aiming.
The persuasive power of any marketing-communications effort is directly proportional to three things: the quality of the messaging; the quality, reach and frequency of exposure to those messages; and the voltage the creative adds to the messaging. Great creative can have an exponential impact on your brand, but if the message is worthless, if your aim is off, all the creativity in the world is going to be off-target.
The battle against waste
I've spent an entire career at war with waste. Part of what attracted me to Dell was Michael Dell's obsession with optimization -- of everything. The first thing I learned there was that we had a truly insane number of agencies. The second thing I learned was that there was absolutely no playbook -- no standardized system for developing and determining the quality of the assignments we were giving those agency teams. I was not surprised, although you may be if you take a similar close look at your marketing processes.
Here's the first step: Survey your assignment or creative briefs. Find out exactly how many people in your company are responsible for briefing agencies and spending the marketing budget. Use a simple survey tool such as Survey Monkey to determine how many assignments that involve messaging are being done per quarter. At Dell, the number was in the thousands, against a budget of more than $1 billion annually.
Now the somewhat tricky part: Have every team member who is writing briefs send a copy of every finalized brief that went to an agency to one e-mail inbox. Take the time or have your most strategic team member take the time to audit 5% to 10% of those briefs.
What you'll find
What you will find will appall you. First, you will learn there is no standard approach for briefing the teams, internal or external, who create your marketing materials. Second, you will discover that the majority of the briefing documents focus on features rather than benefits and are poorly organized, poorly written, too long, overly complex and generally built from internally popular messages rather than key insights into what demonstrably persuades your customers or other key stakeholders. You will also find that a high percentage of the work done does not clearly communicate the key messages in even the best-intended brief.
ABOUT THE AUTHORCasey Jones is a proud veteran of both the United States Marine Corps and Dell, where he was VP-global marketing.
If you take the time to audit messaging briefs on a regular basis, your teams will get the message, and their aim will improve dramatically. Don't think you have time to focus on taking better aim in the middle of a market crisis? The question is: Can you afford not to?
Remember BRASS. Breathe: Set aside time every week to focus on what your brand is communicating. Relax: Remember that the brand will not fail if you pause for a moment to focus. It may fail, however, if you continue to waste marketing shots that are off-target. Aim: Make sure your messaging briefs are standardized and contain these essential elements:
1. A clear definition of the target audience that is focused enough to establish common interests
2. A clear statement of the audience's current mental and emotional perceptions of your brand, the context in which they will make purchase decisions, and the competitive set.
3. A short statement of the "desired" perceptual state -- one that is reasonable given your budget. What do you want the audience to think and feel after you communicate with them?
4. A clear list of the minimum points you must communicate in order to achieve your goal. If it doesn't persuade, don't say it!
Now put steady pressure on the trigger, squeeze and shoot. Bam! An on-target shot. Do it consistently, and pretty soon, your competitors will be waving white flags.
From AdAge.com 121808
December 04, 2008
10:31
Surviving an economic downturn
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Your business survival or success should not be based on your advertising. Yep, I said it. And that's the business I'm in. In fact, it's advertising that gets a lot of businesses into trouble. There is a quote that goes something like this:
"The best way to put a bad company out of business is good advertising".
Now don't get me wrong here. I'm not saying that your business is bad. I'm saying that if you have a really successful advertising effort and then the customers that it brings in don't have the experience or get the product that your advertising promises then you're doomed.
The biggest opportunity for success in this difficult economy lies in your relationship with your consumers. Advertising is only one part of your relationship with your consumers. It is an important one though. Just like any successful relationship you have to have good communications. This doesn't mean that you talk at your consumers. It means that there has to be a two-way dialog between you and your consumers. And you really need to listen to what they have to say.
So, you have worked hard to develop you product/service and have it down to a science. It's a personal and passionate point for you. How do you pass that passion and zeal to your consumers? How do you have your product or service become personal to your consumers? That is the real key to longevity in this downturn. Make sure the messages you communicate to your consumers match the actual experience of doing business with you. Better yet, go old-school and make sure sure that your consumer's experience exceeds what they expect.
With this strategy you actually accomplish two very desirable outcomes. One, you build a less volatile and consistent income base, and two, you build that most desirable thing of all, A BRAND. Always keep in mind, your brand is not what you say it is. It's what your consumers say it is.
For more ideas or personalized strategies for your business call us at 541 306 6723. Success is no accident.
October 20, 2008
16:14
Notice Me: Cutting Through the Marketing Clutter
» ‎ THEMdidit

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Words of wisdom from the Wall Street Journal

It's hard to cut through the clutter.
Even as customers are constantly bombarded with advertising messages, they are getting progressively better at tuning out the endless stream of come-ons. Companies then typically up the ante and try to out-shout their competitors to draw attention. All of which just leads to more shouting, and everybody is drowned out.

So, what can a company do to get noticed?
Here are five questions marketers should ask themselves as they craft new strategies to capture customers' attention in an increasingly noisy marketplace.
Can the marketing stimulus be delivered at a time when the customer has few other distractions?
Marketing messages should target customers at times when they are unoccupied, perhaps even actively seeking some sort of information to process. Consider, for example, an airplane on the landing path into an airport. Sitting upright, with in-flight entertainment and electronic devices switched off, passengers have little to do but to look out of the window and wait for the aircraft to land.
Seeking to capitalize on this opportunity, London-based Ad-Air Group PLC places advertisements flat on the ground over an area as large as five acres alongside flight paths in and out of the world's busiest airports. Depending on their landing approach, passengers are provided with an unrestricted view of an ad for more than 10 seconds.
Can the marketing message be designed to pique the customer's curiosity?
Piquing customers' curiosity can be more effective than inundating them with information. Stimuli that are carefully placed, so that they are encountered in sequence, can be particularly successful at this task.
Consider a series of billboards along a busy interstate proclaiming the approach of a business, but not really saying what the business does. To find out what the business is all about, travelers have to take an exit off the highway. While some may be disappointed with what they find and may not plan a second visit, there are always millions more of the uninitiated coming down the highway. This technique has been used to good effect by South of the Border, a Mexican-themed shopping and food cluster on I-95 near the border of the Carolinas.

Can the marketing message piggyback on another brand?
With television and newsprint media being increasingly saturated, marketers need to seek out new and interesting formats and media for their messages.
Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., for example, has teamed with Adidas AG on a range of motorsport-inspired driving and sports shoes. The soles of these shoes are made of rubber with tread patterns designed by Goodyear. If customers viewed the shoe purely as an Adidas product, Goodyear's contribution would remain unnoticed. However, the Goodyear brand is prominently displayed on the outsoles of the shoes. The result is that every person wearing the shoes is now a messenger for the Goodyear brand.
Can the product or service occupy a piece of the physical environment that the customer frequently interfaces with?
Consumers today tend to spend inordinate amounts of time interfacing with just a few objects -- for many, it is their computer screen at work. Marketers must consider how they can capture the customer's attention when they interface with these objects. Customers, however, guard access to these objects zealously.
Southwest Airlines Co. has figured out how to do this, using a small software application called DING! This application, which customers can download, occupies a space on the icon bar of a desktop computer. Limited-time offers and news from Southwest are announced with a sound and highlighted by an envelope that displays over the icon. Customers can react to the offers by booking trips to their favorite destinations.
Can your company build into its messaging a consistent stimulus that affects one or more of the five physical senses?
Successful marketing messages excite customers not only when they first encounter them -- they ingrain themselves into the customers' permanent memory. Once a message is embedded, customer resistance to processing it drops when it is encountered in the future.
Cough-drop maker Ricola AG, which uses herbs cultivated in the Swiss Alpine regions for its products, invokes the image of the Alpine mountains and meadows in its advertising, which often features herders who harmoniously sing out the word "Ricola" into open, echoing meadows. The singing is accompanied by the blowing of an alpenhorn -- a long, curved wooden wind instrument with a distinctive, booming sound that was used by Swiss herders to call their cows from the pastures. The company has employed the sound and the imagery with such remarkable consistency that today, for many people, the sound of the horn alone is sufficient to invoke the rich imagery and heritage associated with the brand.
Not each of these five questions will necessarily generate a great idea for every company. But they do provide a common language for comparing, debating and improving managers' proposals.
—Dr. Balasubramanian and Dr. Bhardwaj are professors of marketing at the University of North Carolina's Kenan-Flagler Business School in Chapel Hill, N.C
September 23, 2008
10:50
CEOs: How to Confront the Financial Crisis
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BBDO's Andrew Robertson and Others on the Challenges Facing the Industry

By Michael Bush   Published: September 22, 2008

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- To no one's surprise, the first topic of discussion at Advertising Week's CNBC CEO Summit was the meltdown of the financial markets last week.

"You can't talk about the impact in general terms," Andrew Robertson, president-CEO of BBDO Worldwide, told the nearly packed PricewaterhouseCoopers Auditorium in Midtown Manhattan this morning. "You have to look at it on a client-by-client basis. But there are definitely clients where the emphasis is going to switch, and there will be clients for whom the value message is going to become a much bigger component of the overall messaging mix, because that's something that's going to be pretty motivating to consumers."

Moderated by CNBC anchor Maria Bartiromo, the panel, made up of Mr. Robertson; Nick Brien, CEO of Mediabrands; Sarah Fay, CEO of Aegis Media North America; and Irwin Gotlieb, CEO of Group M, discussed a variety of topics, but the fallout from last week's financial mess was never far from top of mind.

'Best-case scenario'
"I'm not sure how consumers will react to this," Mr. Gotlieb said. "At the moment I don't think the consumer can comprehend what has just happened. The best-case scenario is that the consumer doesn't comprehend what went on and goes on merrily about their way."

He said regardless of a person's ability to fully comprehend what transpired, consumer confidence has a way of coming back. "There is quite a bit of elasticity in consumer confidence, and it does tend to bounce back, whether the situation is understandable or not," he said.

Ms. Fay said one of the questions was just how big an impact Wall Street's woes will have on ad budgets. She said her advertising media company has "just rounded down" its 2008 growth forecast, from 6% to 4.9%.

Mr. Brien said of the financial crisis: "Between natural-resource prices, the housing market, what's happening on Wall Street as well as technology and its impact on marketing, it's a more challenging environment in terms of turning suspects into prospects into buyers," he said. "It's going to challenge the professionalism of everything we do."

Fundamental shift

The panelists also discussed the evolving nature of the marketing business, the need for more integration across disciplines and the growing relevance of data such as consumer behavior when it comes to constructing a campaign.

"The nature of marketing is going to be less about the vehicles we choose to target and how we use those vehicles," Mr. Brien said. "It's going to be more about the fact that we need to refine the persuasion-based activities we have all grown up with with user influence. This balance is going to challenge agency structures."

Mr. Robertson called this the fundamental shift that people need to start recognizing in order to reach consumers.

"We have to stop thinking of media as bridges that we march messages over into people's minds and start thinking about creating experiences that change behavior and providing access to those experiences in the most relevant places," Mr. Robertson said. "That's a different language and different way of thinking from the way the business was approached even three years ago."

Consumers behavior

"Rightly or wrongly, the consumer trusts their peers more than they trust some of the most recognized publications," Mr. Gotlieb said. "And because of that the communications today are not just about talking at the consumer. It's about managing their perception and trying to get them to participate in the discussion in a way that is favorable to your client. The challenge is none of us can do all of these things. What we have to get to is a single, integrated strategy that can be implemented by multiple entities. None of us has the ability to implement all of the components of that strategy."

Mr. Robertson said the only thing that matters to him is consumer behavior, and marketers should focus on creating experiences to change consumer behavior and not so much on messaging.

"We used to think about messages that created a case for a particular behavior," Mr. Robertson said. "It's not about that now. It's about creating experiences that, by participating in them, change consumer behavior. I'm only interested in behavior. Everything else is just a proxy for it. Unless behavior changes, it's all been a waste of time and money. That's an important lens through which to look at everything, because there's a lot of interesting stuff going on, none of which is going to change behavior. And our clients can't make any money unless behavior changes."
September 19, 2008
9:38
Things that inspire us today...
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Metallica identity redoFilm is not dead Beautiful visuals created by science Urban Typography
September 17, 2008
15:07
The Renegade Rollergirls rule!
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Some agencies have great clients. We happen to be one of those lucky ones. The Renegade Rollergirls of Central Oregon have welcomed us with a zeal that's amazing. Just to explain, these ladies balance jobs, families and their other family, The Renegade Rollergirls. This is no small commitment. In addition to competing pretty much twice a month, they also practice and work out twice a week as a group. Now keep in mind they don't get paid for this. In fact, they pay to participate. This is dedication.

If you've never seen a Renegade bout, you're missing out. Hands down these ladies are some of the most dedicated, competitive people I know. They also happen to be amazingly genuine and talented people. The events are super competitive and intense yet still completely suitable for family viewing. So, it was with a lot of enthusiasm we began brainstorming a campaign for the 2008-2009 season.

The beginning of our challenge was to look at the experience of the event itself. While the teams were skating and competing the event was riveting and exciting. But before the bout and during the 2 ten-minute intermissions people were restless.
The second part of our challenge was creating an idea and a look that would translate throughout the entire season and would not get old or be easy to overlook. The previous work that was done to promote the events was well done. However, there was no consistency in the look, feel or message so it made it more difficult to generate any big brand awareness or ownership.

Thirdly, the idea had to suit the mood and tone of the league and be appealing to the ladies that work so hard to be a part of it. If they don't like it, well let's just say it wouldn't have any chance of succeeding. As my mom used to say "If mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy".

With these basic challenges in mind we developed several potential directions and finally settled on the idea of "SIDESHOW". Now this is no freak show. There are no bearded ladies or 3-headed snakes. This is an event loaded with excitement and action you can't find elsewhere. This idea is also unique visually to what other roller derby teams are doing. And finally, it's an idea that can be integrated into the experience of the events. Because ultimately, it's the entire experience that brings people back, keeps people talking and makes it entertaining.

Our campaign efforts will cover many medias and tactics. We'll have posters all over the area, a radio campaign, smaller postcard size posters with event details and schedule, and a limited amount of newspaper ads as well. But it doesn't stop there.

We are also working closely with the Renegade Rollergirls to develop offers and promotions to drive people to the events. Coming up with ideas to increase ticket sales and retail opportunities. And finally, by having an idea in which anyone and everyone can be involved, we make the whole idea come alive.

So here we are, at the beginning of a super fun project with clients that have the vision and determination to create something great. We've created our first event poster and radio spot soon to be followed by so much more. We hope to see you there!

For more information on the Renegade Rollergirls visit www.renegadesor.com.
September 02, 2008
13:45
Welcome to THEM
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First off, we'd like to say that truly great creativity and thinking is what pushes our buttons. It's not something that we really chose. It's just kinda part of who we are.
We are a non-traditional marketing agency in the sense that we don't have a ton of committees that review and kill great ideas. We don't have employees with God complexes. And, we believe a great idea can come from anywhere.
The key to our success will be the partnerships we forge with people like you, our clients, our employees and even our vendors. We don't need big names on the door to be successful or groundbreaking. We don't need $30 billion budgets to do work that works (although we'd love it!). It's a combination of thinking (strategy), a touch of insanity mixed with insight (creativity), mixed with an unrivaled passion for making all of these ideas come to life (execution) in a way that gets attention and makes things happen. That is what makes THEM! tick.
So how do we work best? We absolutely love to be challenged. Sit down with us and give us a business challenge...
"We need to sell 500 sets of Speed Racer underwear in Q2" (ohhhh, tough one). "We need to make Squizzienikle Widgets a household name in the next month". "We need a sales strategy and sales tools for our team in about a week" (yeah, it happens a lot and we can do it, but with a little more time we can do even better!).
You get the point. Challenge us and we deliver a strategy and creative combination of tactics, tools and on-target creative that will help you get where you need to go. That my friends, is our schtick. And we're damn good at it.
Now, if it's something specific that you need, an ad, a new identity and stationary package, a promotional campaign for a sales event, etc., we can do all of those things for you as well. Ok, not just "well" but with a dedication and enthusiasm you probably haven't experienced. We're a bit crazy like that.
So, really, who are THEM!? THEM! is a team of exceptionally driven and experienced people striving to create opportunities and solutions for your business. But THEM! is also you, your ideas and your passion for your business. Because THEM! is an idea, a thought, a drive to create something new and innovative without boundaries. Wanna play?