There's a new book that is worth your time. It's called "Glimmer" and is a new way of looking at design -- as a way of helping business, but also tackling some of the world's problems.
In the business part of the book, it also argues that "design is the new advertising" -- meaning marketing today has to be treated more like a cohesive design project than a series of one-off ads. Something StrawberryFrog has been aligned with since we started ten years ago.
Glimmer is written by Warren Berger who is a respected scribe who's written about our industry for a long while and is famous for capturing cutting edge agencies and campaigns for magazines such as Business 2.0 and Communications Arts.
Glimmer spends time getting to know the designer Bruce Mau. Warren spent two years hanging around Mau and a dozen other of the world's top designers, studying how they think and solve problems. I spoke with Warren and asked him what he'd glimmered from Mau after all the time they spent together.
You have to read the book to find out the answer. His secret is probably just recognizing that advertising is not about graphics or how things look, etc. It's about "the human capacity to plan and produce desired outcomes." (Mau's definition of design). And Glimmer tries to break it all down to plain English -- what is design, how does it work, what can the rest of us learn from how designers think.
Morgan Stanley's "World Wise" campaign was acknowledged by the Business Marketing Association of New York City. Morgan Stanley was presented with its Communicator of the Year award.
The 48th annual presentation of the award was made at Tavern on the Green during the 2009 Advertising Week in New York. The
financial services company is being recognized for its "World Wise"
campaign, according to BtoBOnline.
I was treated to Jacques Bughin's conversation starter about the fast evolving wireless web. If you have not read Jacques' piece, click here and spend ten minutes reading his vision about the not so distant future.
His point of view is simple: the era of the nomadic Web is upon us. And he makes his case by answering a few self-posed questions:
Will the mobile Web become a substitute for wired access?
Will mobile match the performance of fixed access?
Where will people go for the best content and Web applications?
Which mobile Web are we talking about?
The Web is constantly in flux, and the latest shift toward
a world untethered from broadband networks could have huge implications and create new opportunities. The questions raised above only
begin to scratch the surface.
According to the BBC, Rio de Janeiro and Madrid are vying to be the host of the 2016 Olympic Games, after Chicago and Tokyo are eliminated in the first ballot of voting for the 2016 Olympics on Friday.
Not even the presence of President Barack
Obama and first lady Michelle Obama – nor a long list of celebrities –
was enough to help the United States' third-largest city.
The Huffington Post described the Chicago as having picked up momentum in the last few days, with many International Olympic Committee members seemingly charmed by Mrs. Obama. But when IOC president Jacques Rogge announced the results of the first vote, Chicago was the city that fell out.
Rio in my mind has the strongest bid. Never before has the Olympics been held in South America. Never before has Rio had such a strong proposal for how they would hold the games, and never before have they had the kind of experience they've mustered over the past few years, having held numerous international sporting events such as the
pan-American games in 2007. Chicago made a valiant attempt and they had a great bid.
A few years back, I was the Creative Director for the 2004 Stockholm
Olympic Bid, and Rio was one of the contenders. The Rio bid was very
good, though the city remained risky and unproven. The bid process is
an enduring multi-year marathon, with an unending list of marketing
communications and elements that must be developed and honed, produced
and disseminated.
The intricacy of pumpkin caring is becoming a new art form. Who would have thought this perishable gourd-like squash was such an inspiring canvass? Look through some extraordinarily carved pumpkins and vote for your favorites here.
Just finished reading an extraordinary article by Josh Lovinson, entitled "Looking up: Mobile from 2010-2015", about where the mobile phone is headed as a media tool in this month's Media magazine. His vision is realistic and inspiring for those of us developing ideas for multiple platforms. "The true impact of changes" he says will happen with the introduction of 4G, which is around the corner. The impact of a truly open system will be the new white space. The only thing missing from the wonderful piece is the potential impact of other countries technologies and content carrying systems which eventually will become border-less by companies such as Nokia and which may start to have greater impact on US consumers.
Josh also suggests that one of the biggest stand outs to come will be augmented reality. I would also add various applications of holographywhich are underdevelopment.
Obama has changed his mind and will travel to Copenhagen this Friday to deliver a personal appeal to the IOC on behalf of the Chicago bid for the 2016 Olympic Games. My friend George Hirthler (one of the very best sports marketers today) who is working hard on this bid thinks this decision may well break the tape for Chicago. Many other people think Obama's decision significantly increases Chicago's chances of winning the games. Many an IOC member has been swayed by the passionate voice of a city advocate. An Olympic win would be a bright and piercing bit of positive news in America this autumn.
Rio in my mind has the strongest bid. Never before has the Olympics been held in South America. Never before has Rio had such a strong proposal for how they would hold the games, and never before have they had the kind of experience they've mustered over the past few years, having held numerous international sporting events such as the pan-American games in 2007.
A few years back, I was the Creative Director for the 2004 Stockholm Olympic Bid, and Rio was one of the contenders. The Rio bid was very good, though the city remained risky and unproven. The bid process is an enduring multi-year marathon, with an unending list of marketing communications and elements that must be developed and honed, produced and disseminated. Much of the work we did hangs in the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland.
The Stockholm Bid film I responsible for:
I worked on the Stockholm 2004 bid with George too. He did much of the writing in the bid books, with a steely resolve and an incredible natural lexicon of Olympic vernacular. But getting back to Rio for a moment, back then it faced a number of problems, many of which have been overcome by a dynamic city that is world class. Today, Brazil is a country on the rise, one of the world's fastest growing economies, Brazilian sport players have inspired people around the planet, and Rio is majestic, fragrant and safe.
It's down to the wire and it's mighty exciting. Both cities would be terrific Olympic venues. The breath-taking Chicago coastline along Lake Michigan, one of North America's five Great Lakes and the grand beaches of Rio would be equally inspiring and soothing to the soul during a hot summer games. Here is the official site of the Chicago bid and here is the official site of the Rio bid.
I'm holding my breath. Peralta the CEO StrawberryFrog Brazil was in New York last week and we were debating the two bids. We talked about how incredible the games would be in Rio and I told him about the beauty of Chicago. In the end after hours of discussions, we agreed that whichever way the IOC went, we would meet up at these games for a celebration. The only difference between the finalists, we agreed, other than Obama's decision to attend the final IOC meeting, is a growing movement of Chicago's citizens wanting the games to go to Rio: Chicagoans for Rio 2016 vs an unprecedented 85 percent of Rio's citizens standing behind the bid. Strange twist of logic but an added element in the nail biting finish.
On Wednesday, Sept. 23 at 4:00 pm, Sophie Kelly, Partner of StrawberryFrog is speaking on a panel called Cutting-Edge Creatives on the Evolution and Impact of Digital.
This talk is a part of the annual Advertising Week in New York and will focus on a key question of this year's event: how to do cutting edge creative work in an ever fragmenting, ever expanding media universe, while still stewarding the brand?
The subtext of this will be how to do this while maximizing social media. "After all, in the not so distant future, all media will be social." says Bob Greenberg in Adweek Magazine yesterday. I agree with Bob's sentiment that all media will be social and there are a lot of really amazing things going on in this space.
If you have any examples please leave ideas for me to pass along to Soph. She is working on her talk and over the next few days anybody interested in this topic please contribute your thoughts. Since StrawberryFrog's DNA is Cultural Movements, if you have great examples of movements send them along as well.
t appears that the panel discussion, which will be led by Microsoft's Mark Young and include Omnicom's Organic CCO Conor Brady; Razorfish's creative director Marc Lucas; The Barbarian Group's CEO Benjamin Palmer; and WPP Grey NY's COO Tor Myrhen, and StrawberryFrog's Sophie Kelly, is a popular event and tickets are going quickly.
The rest of the week has some terrific speeches, discussions and debates. You can find a list of them on advertisingweek.com/events
The advertising world is spinning with change, with an ever expanding array of new media. It's exciting. It's also dizzying. But still, brands need big ideas inspired by universal insights that are executed in a multiplicity basis.
What mindset is needed to create these ideas?
One way to approach this is with a mind that is open and receptive. A mind that's not limited by agendas, roles and expectations. The great Zen teacher Suzuki Roshi, said, "In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few."
It's an interesting thought that in today's advertising world, radical change has brought all of us back to the starting line. From this vantage point you learn to look with fresh eyes.
