Take a look at the new spot I just did at my new agency for Sea Best. I don’t get to write music often, this was really fun to do.
Lululemon Loses It’s Mind
What to think about this campaign? Not sure.
Check out my post about this issue over at Under The Microscope, a blog by Science Creative.
New Valero Texas Open Creative
I wanted to share this new work. I’m really proud of the creative. The campaign was fun and the client is great. These are the first set of outdoor executions. The idea behind the “Unapologetically Campaign” is to capture the spirit of the Texas attitude which lies at the heart of the tournament, the region and the people of the state.
Good Read: The Brand Gap
Read this book. Digest it. Ingest it. Think about it. Internalize it and please, God please, use it if you’re a writer, designer, creative director, account executive or if you in any way work with products, services or anything that may enter the public sphere.
Neumeier and his company Neutron, LLC has brought some of the freshest and most insightful thinking to the brand / marketing / communications conversation. The Brand Gap is the first in a series of books that have created considerable dialogue within the industry and signaled a paradigm shift toward the power of differentiation and design centered thinking.
Yet, it’s still shocking how resistant some are companies are to going against the cliché and predictable bandwagon jumping that so often characterizes many marketing department strategies.
Note to everyone: Sameness is not a marketing strategy.
Let’s be bold. Let’s take chances and stand for something meaningful and relevant. Who knows, we might just collectively raise what has been a very low bar.
Open Source Everything
I keep thinking that the best ideas will come when we can get past self-interest and get to a baseline of true collaboration. In my own work, I’m fortunate to have a tremendous creative partner that has great ideas and insights that feed well into the way I think and together we’ve been able to create work I’m very proud of as a creative.
However, this isn’t always the rule. My question is why? What do we have to lose by opening up and letting good thinking in regardless of where it comes from? Are we that territorial?
This from Get Back In The Box by Douglas Rushkoff.
Open source is more than a computer-programming ethos. It’s the impetus to an approach toward work and life that makes secrets and protectionism obsolete, and opens the floodgates of innovation on an unprecedented scale. As of yet, however, most people and businesses are still unprepared to confront the challenges to their own sense of competence that go along with it.
In other words, as Rushkoff writes, “Open source may be a new business model but it’s also a well tested, even ancient, approach to innovation.”
Personally, I like the notion of transparency. It’s honest and sincere and in an industry plagued by deception and skepticism, we need a fresh dose of truth. This begins with the ways in which we work and conduct ourselves. Besides, if we haven’t figured this out yet, people don’t want to be sold, they want instead to be inspired by brands that mean something to them, brands that resonate with their value systems and sense of self.
We gotta start somewhere. Why not the creative process?
When Designful Companies Are All The Rage
If you want a bit of future focused brand insight, read The Designful Company by Marty Neumeier from Neutron, LLC. His previous book are must reads ( ZAG being my favorite) and his newest provides a swift kick in the operational jewels of corporate America.
Reading this book made me feel all dreamy and idealistic about the possibilities of a world where companies, marketing departments and even governments where run by designers, creative thinkers, conceptualists and other aesthetically minded leaders. Just imagine what kind of world this would be.
Pipe dreams aside, we are moving ever more quickly toward a designcentric world as the cultural creative class grows, consumers become more brand savvy and the last true differentiation point is the core notion of really great design. We’re headed there now. Take a look at brands like Apple and you’ll see that some are already there and have been as the rest scramble and staff to keep up or in some cases simply get started.
Don’t lag behind. Read The Designful Company and jump on board.
There Has To Be More To It Than This, Right?
So, is this culture?
There must be more to it, right? Or is consumption all we have left? It sure seems that way to me. Of course, I’m on the inside looking at this problem because I help build brands. Yet I don’t think it’s the marketing that’s the problem. It’s the unchecked consumption. I just read a book that shared some shocking insights regarding consumer tendencies.
For example, did you know that the Self-Storage business has become a $17 billion annual industry? That’s larger that the motion picture business. Which means that in a nation of couch potatoes, the only thing we like more than movies is hoarding stuff like little symbol using squirrels.
Or, here’s something else: We spend more on trash bags than ninety other countries spend on everything. (Via A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink. Pink was citing a March, 2003 Polly LaBarre article from Fast Company magazine.)
So we buy and buy and store and store and when we can’t store stuff, we throw stuff away, lots of it, which creates more room to buy even more stuff.
What is that all about?