The Truth About Youth
Earlier this year, we featured a beautifully filmed, intimately narrated short documentary about Scott Schuman, better known as The Sartorialist, part of Intel’s Visual Life series. This month, the series is back with a fantastic episode about iconic designer Michael Wolff of Wolff Olins fame, whose insights on curiosity and appreciation as a central gateway to creativity resonate deeply with our own mission.
I have three muscles, without which I couldn’t do my work. The first is curiosity. (You can call it inquisitiveness, you can call it questioning.) The second muscle [is] the muscle of appreciation. It’s not questioning so much as it is noticing… how joyful things can be, how colorful things can be, what already exists as an inspiration. The muscle of curiosity and the muscle of appreciation enable the muscle of imagination.

Everybody knows that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. What few people realize it is only through the parts that the whole gets delivered. I see seeing as a muscular exercise, like I see curiosity. It’s a kind of being open, really: If you walk around with a head full of preoccupation, you’re not going to notice anything in your visual life.” ~ Michael Wolff


A brand is really a way of remembering what something is like for future reference — something you value, something you feel attracted to. The job of a brand identity, how you package all of that — the purpose, the vision, what it does, what it brings — how you make that so that people can take it and receive it and value it and treasure it and choose it, that’s the whole process of branding. That’s what it is.” ~ Michael Wolff
The film comes from the fine folks at m ss ng p eces, the same team who took us behind the scenes of a TED talk in January.
There’s a certain packaging of human beings that takes place in order to reveal ourselves authentically, or in order to pretend to be something other than what we are.” ~ Michael Wolff
Wolff’s wisdom on branding and identity is encapsulated in the 1995 classic, The New Guide to Identity: How to Create and Sustain Change Through Managing Identity — a thoughtful blueprint for design-driven adaptation in a world of impermanence and inevitable change.
Another great post from Maria Popova at Brain Pickings
Coke's Latest Videos Feature 'Happiness Truck' by Karlene Lukovitz, Saturday, February 26, 2011, 9:23 AM

Since last January, when it staged its first "happiness" event for use as a viral video (no use as a TV spot) -- a goodies-dispensing "Happiness Machine" installed on a U.S. college campus -- Coca-Cola has been busily producing and video-ing a host of other "happiness moments" in countries around the world.
The results are evident on the brand's YouTube channel and particularly on its Facebook page, which features a "Where Will Happiness Strike Next?" (WWHSN) hub that provides a global locator feature for all approximately 25 videos to date -- each documenting a Coke-generated happiness event. The hub offers tools for easy sharing of or tweeting about the videos, and encourages fans to buzz about where the next happiness event should or may occur. (Coke's Facebook page currently has nearly 22.6 million fans, including ones generated through the WWHSN hub.)
In addition to the original blockbuster U.S. Happiness Machine effort -- which generated 645,000 views in its first week, and at 3 million-plus views, is still the reigning champion -- the videos show events staged in the U.K., Philippines, Japan, India, Hungary, Egypt, China and Brazil.
The events have included a "Transformer" character hiding under a Coke machine in a mall and "live" Coke machines running around on a beach and a busy city street (all in Hong Kong); a "Happiness Store" in which pulling a Coke from a cooler triggered confetti showers and transformed the convenience store into a multimedia disco (Brazil); a supermarket in which consumers' purchases were paid for by Coke during Ramadan (Egypt); recreations of the Happiness Machine scenario at colleges in several countries, and other delight-inducing scenarios.
The latest twist: a "Happiness Truck" -- a Coke delivery truck converted into a mobile vending machine that dispenses free Coke and other unexpected prizes, such as surfboards and inflatable toys.
Definition 6, the Atlanta-based interactive agency that created the U.S. Happiness Machine event/video (which won a 2010 Clio), as well as the recently posted Brazilian Happiness Store video, also created the Happiness Truck Brazil entry, filmed in the streets of Rio de Janeiro. A similar truck event was staged and filmed in the Philippines, by a regional agency. Both truck videos were posted on Feb. 22.
According to Coca-Cola's senior manager, marketing communications, Petro Kacur, the brand's marketing teams around the world were excited by the success of the U.S. Happiness Machine video and eager to adapt the viral video "happiness moment" concept within their own regions.
So ... will we soon be seeing a Happiness Truck, or another new happiness event, here in the U.S.? No firm answers from Coke at this point. Kacur says further videos in the U.S. (and elsewhere) are clearly possible, depending on their popularity levels. "Certainly, at this point, the videos do seem to be resonating with people," he notes.
Link: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=145533&nid=124198
The obvious advantage to advertising during the Super Bowl is the number of people your campaign can reach at one singular moment in time. With Pittsburgh and Green Bay in the game this year, will campaigns actually hit their target markets? Football-wise, these are two markets that boast massive fan bases, yet as far as DMA rankings are concerned, Pittsburgh is only #23 and Green Bay isn't even in the top 100.
Clearly, these commercials are expensive advertising investments for priceless exposure, but are they worth the price?
If reaching consumers is the main advantage, advertisers can rest easy knowing that the Super Bowl is one of the few events considered "TiVo proof." Viewers will be watching the commercials, instead of changing the channel or fast-forwarding through to the game. Ratings have climbed over the past four years, with last year's game surpassing the finale of "M-A-S-H" as the most viewed telecast in history at 106 million viewers. Facing these big numbers, the pressure for ads to succeed is just as big, if not bigger. And at the water cooler on Monday, everyone will be discussing not just the game, but also their favorite advertisements.
The truth is that these ads can make or break a company's entire year. Remember those dot.com ads of the '90s? A failed advertisement could end up being a waste of a company's money and time. Even worse, if the game is a blowout, what happens to ads in the fourth quarter? Commercial time was budget-priced last year at $2.5 to $2.8 million, according to CBS News -- not so this year with the price back up to $3 million. That is a big-ticket item, plus the cost of the commercial, which must produce the "wow" factor with the audience.
Super Bowl advertisers have to think in different terms. You can't just deliver a good commercial; it has to be the great and memorable part of a fully integrated campaign. Perhaps this is why companies like Papa John's opted to promote just a giveaway this year, without advertisements during the game.
Making headlines last week, Papa John's is offering free pizza for America, if the Super Bowl heads into overtime (which would be the first time in NFL history). Papa John's decided to use the giveaway strategy, especially with Pizza Hut buying a game-time slot for the first time in years. Or maybe the pressure of creating a memorable ad was too much to bear. Whatever the case, its strategy seems to be working so far, generating a lot of buzz among the media and on Twitter and Facebook.
From an Engage:Sports piece by Barry Janoff, we learn there is a resurgence of car companies airing ads both during the Super Bowl game and pre-game. Companies like Mercedes and BMW aren't satisfied with just a 30-second spot, they are getting in on the social media and giveaway trend. BMW is offering a two-year lease on a new X3 model; and Mercedes has a twitter-fueled contest with a giveaway of two C-Class coupes to followers of the winning team. These auto companies seem to be reaching for a younger audience, but will their ads only result in awareness, or will this ignite a car-buying season?
No doubt the giveaways and rewards for customers are a unique aspect of this year's Super Bowl advertising, perhaps a way of rewarding customers for their perseverance through the difficult economy and hoping to catch their attention and any new-found dollars. The companies, for the most part, are classic, blue-chip American companies, which are ready to get back in the proverbial advertising ring.
So like any boxing match, expect this first round to be fairly tame, middle-of-the-road type ads, no one going for the "knockout punch," so to speak. Look for ads focused on the consumers and America, with a patriotic feel and/or "green" theme. But with a potential NFL lockout looming, maybe these companies think their Super Bowl ads are worth the price while pro football is still around.
![]() | Larry Mann is executive vice president at sports marketing and media agency rEvolution. In 2001, Mann created the rEvolution Sports Network (rSN), a media buying, selling and planning division within the agency. Prior to rEvolution, Mann was vice president of sales for ESPN, and led the development of a national network of hometown teams' sports media for Fox Sports. Reach him here. |
If you haven't been to this site then go and see why it is the best website of 2010:



Mobile Time-Spent Equals That Of Newspapers & Magazines Combined by Mark Walsh,

The average amount of time spent per day on mobile devices has grown faster in the last two years than time spent using any other medium, according to new research findings from eMarketer. The 32-minute average in 2008 has increased more than 50% to 50 minutes in 2010 -- equal the average time spent reading newspapers and magazines, combined.
That ranks mobile fourth behind TV and video, at 4.5 hours a day; the Internet, 2.5 hours; and radio, 98 minutes. If time spent on mobile continues to climb at least the 28% rate of 2010, it would surpass radio at its current average in a few years. Mobile vendors and publishers may be tempted to cite the growth in time spent to try to convince marketers to boost money spent on mobile as well.
Internet companies have long complained the Web doesn't receive a share of media dollars equivalent to the share of time people spend online. Now mobile companies may start doing the same, suggesting the medium deserves more dollars than newspapers or magazines based on people spending more time on mobile than with print media.
However, the eMarketer time-spent figure for mobile includes time spent talking as well as on mobile media -- everything from texting to Web browsing to watching video. That makes it harder to make an apples-to-apples comparison with other media. And just looking at one category within mobile, say, video, shows how wide the disparity is -- not just in time spent, but in audience.
In the U.S., the average time spent watching mobile video is about 3.5 hours a month among an audience of about 22 million -- a 44% increase in mobile viewership from a year ago, according to recent Nielsen data. Still, compare that to the monthly average of 143 hours per person for TV, with an audience of 287 million, as of mid-2010.
What's more, there's always the long lag in ad spending between new and old media as marketers catch up with changes in consumer habits and adapt to new ways of doing business. Consider the well-documented collapse of the traditional newspaper industry as more ad dollars have shifted to digital media in recent years. Even so, it will still be two more years before online ad spending overtakes newspaper ad spending -- which brought in $117 billion worldwide in 2013, according to a Magna Global forecast earlier this month.
The Magna report estimates mobile ad revenue globally at $2.7 billion in 2010, growing to $6.6 billion in five years. By then, with the proliferation of more sophisticated devices and upgraded wireless networks, people will be spending a good deal more time with mobile media. But don't count on anything like an equivalent share of ad dollars flowing to the segment anytime soon.
check it out here:
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=141418&nid=121782

PEPSI: Refresh Project
The social-media-driven campaign from TBWA/Chiat/Day, L.A., which saw the marketer divert its Super Bowl budget toward social causes, has been one of the most -- dare we say -- important brand efforts of the year. Demonstrating what a reallocation of a portion of a mega media budget could do, the campaign ended this year with nearly three billion media impressions, 51 million votes from a broad demographic sample and millions given to worthwhile grassroots causes. The campaign has been a massive success in terms of awareness and -- say Pepsi bottlers, no less -- palpable goodwill toward the brand.
ARCADE FIRE: Wilderness Downtown
Director Chris Milk, data viz artist Aaron Koblin, Google, B-Reel, @radical.media, mr. doob and others brought their combined tech wizardry and artistry to bear on this phenomenal interactive video for the Arcade Fire song, "We Used to Wait." Milk's motivation was to endow the music-video experience with the same emotional resonance as music itself. The video, which uses Google Earth to provide a powerfully personal angle on the song, succeeded as an HTML5 case study, a nifty calling card for Chrome, a giant PR boost for Arcade Fire's new album and, most importantly, a powerfully personal way to experience a great song.
DOMINO'S: Pizza Turnaround
With the help of Crispin Porter & Bogusky, Domino's bared its soul and turned to focus groups and social-media channels to find out what consumers really thought about its pizzas. After discovering that eaters were likening their pies to "cardboard and ketchup," the brand went on a quest to turn opinions around with a major recipe overhaul, documenting its efforts in a series of web films and spots and on the website PizzaTurnaround.com. The experiment in transparency was a success, and according to CMO Russell Weiner, resulted in plenty of media buzz, more satisfied customers and third-quarter same-store sales increase of 11.7%.
MITSUBISHI: Virtual Test Drive
Mitsubishi, its agency 180 L.A. and digital production maestros B-Reel made test- driving a car much more accessible to potential buyers (and, doubtless, much less nerve wracking, smelly and awkward for dealers) with what the marketer called an auto industry first -- the Live Drive. Part of an integrated campaign for the Outlander, Live Drive allowed 5,000 web viewers to drive an actual vehicle on an actual course, via a remote control software system. It's perhaps not the most enduring effort, but demonstrated how a big tech-enabled idea could come to life and create energy around a brand.
DARE LABS: Remote Palette
London agency Dare made an investment in creative technology in 2007, launching Dare Labs to foster new-product development. This year, the Labs bore fruit in the form of Remote Palette, a magical app that links iPad and iPhone, allowing users to paint on the iPad using their fingers as brushes and phone as palette. The app garnered huge online buzz, helped along by a web video featuring a man dressed as a certain artist, trying to shake ketchup onto his iPad -- a nod, of course, to the 1982 art clip, "Andy Warhol Eats a Hamburger."
NIKE: Write the Future
The cornerstone of this World Cup campaign, from Wieden & Kennedy, Amsterdam, was a stellar anthem spot directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, starring an elite cast of athletes and celebs. Other components included a digital outdoor effort whereby users generated headlines that were projected onto a prominent Johannesburg building, and an online push that allowed visitors to see their own glorious rise from soccer unknown to all-star athlete in an interactive film and promo posters.
JAY-Z/BING: Decoded
Ubiquitous and massive -- two words that easily describe Droga5's campaign to promote Jay-Z's book, "Decoded." The multiplatform effort gave new meaning to "outdoor," and brought every page of the book to life on practically every surface imaginable -- from the rooftops of a building in New Orleans and the bottom of Miami's Delano Hotel pool, to the lining of suits -- giving fans a preview of the content at the locations that inspired them. For those who couldn't view the physical pages, a partnership with Microsoft Bing allowed Jay-Z followers around the globe to search for each page online via a scavenger hunt.
WWF: Space Chimp
The World Wildlife Fund Australia collaborated with musical artist Ben Lee and Leo Burnett, Sydney, on this gut-wrenching video. Serving as a music video for Lee's "Song for the Divine Mother of the Universe" and an environmental-awareness message, Space Chimp follows the titular astronaut returning home from a long voyage to find himself alone on a ruined planet. The visuals, orchestrated by director Steve Rogers, are superb and the effort is a great example of inter-brand collaboration.
CONAN O'BRIEN: Comeback Campaign
When it came time for Conan O'Brien to return to TV land with his new TBS talk show, he and the cable channel leveraged his legion of online supporters, aka Team Coco, and launched a slew of social media-minded pushes that included everything from a Foursquare-linked blimp, web films and a webcam showing live antics from his new office. The campaign also included hilarious TV promos, including a massive actioner starring the host in an explosive cliff dive. And, of course, there were the hilarious Twitter missives of O'Brien himself. All resulted in a successful opening night, with O'Brien surpassing both Jay Leno and David Letterman in the ratings.
credit these guys for this:
This is ingenious - if your not scared of bees...
| By Tim Nudd on Sep 2 2010 |
Honey-bee populations are mysteriously dwindling worldwide. In England, the Banrock Station winery created the "world's first ad with live bees" to call attention to the problem. They used queen-bee pheromones to attract a giant swarm of bees (as many as 100,000, according to the BBC) from a nearby honey farm to spell out an "SOS" message on a billboard. No bees were harmed and no one was stung during the stunt. The winery is also donating 5p to the honey-bee cause for every bottle sold. Clare Griffiths from Banrock Station tells the BBC: "We thought there was no better way to raise awareness of the British bee decline than get the bees to tell their story themselves. We hope the billboard has created a bit of a buzz in Devon and beyond." Via Copyranter.
Original here:
http://adweek.blogs.com/adfreak/2010/09/100000-live-bees-plead-for-help-on-billboard.html
Beloit, Wis. – Born when Ross Perot was warning about a giant sucking sound and Bill Clinton was apologizing for pain in his marriage, members of this fall’s entering college class of 2014 have emerged as a post-email generation for whom the digital world is routine and technology is just too slow.
Each August since 1998, Beloit College has released the Beloit College Mindset List. It provides a look at the cultural touchstones that shape the lives of students entering college this fall. The creation of Beloit’s Keefer Professor of the Humanities Tom McBride and former Public Affairs Director Ron Nief, it was originally created as a reminder to faculty to be aware of dated references, and quickly became a catalog of the rapidly changing worldview of each new generation. The Mindset List website at www.beloit.edu/mindset, the Mediasite webcast and its Facebook page receive more than 400,000 hits annually. The class of 2014 has never found Korean-made cars unusual on the Interstate and five hundred cable channels, of which they will watch a handful, have always been the norm. Since "digital" has always been in the cultural DNA, they've never written in cursive and with cell phones to tell them the time, there is no need for a wrist watch. Dirty Harry (who’s that?) is to them a great Hollywood director. The America they have inherited is one of soaring American trade and budget deficits; Russia has presumably never aimed nukes at the United States and China has always posed an economic threat. Nonetheless, they plan to enjoy college. The males among them are likely to be a minority. They will be armed with iPhones and BlackBerries, on which making a phone call will be only one of many, many functions they will perform. They will now be awash with a computerized technology that will not distinguish information and knowledge. So it will be up to their professors to help them. A generation accustomed to instant access will need to acquire the patience of scholarship. They will discover how to research information in books and journals and not just on-line. Their professors, who might be tempted to think that they are hip enough and therefore ready and relevant to teach the new generation, might remember that Kurt Cobain is now on the classic oldies station. The college class of 2014 reminds us, once again, that a generation comes and goes in the blink of our eyes, which are, like the rest of us, getting older and older. The Beloit College Mindset List for the Class of 2014 Most students entering college for the first time this fall—the Class of 2014—were born in 1992.