scott goodson's writings

COOL WALLPAPER

COOLEST MODERN WALLPAPER

I'm in the process of renovating a house. Yuk...it's already 2 months late. But then, it's such a wonderful adventure to remake your dwelling from scratch...pull all the walls down, rip up the floors, crack open the granite counters and make your dreams come true. Everything your heart desires is available to help design the perfect house. Everything that is except wallpaper. And now that wallpaper is HOT, finding the place that offers extraordinary wallpaper has taken me the better part of the day. So, here are the oysters of the wallpaper world...those select few gems I've found which offer truly original and wonderfully creative wallpapers. My favs are the following: Namarococo (which has an amazing website and some of the hottest out there), Susie Mendive at SUM, Wallnut Wallpaper, and Papermills.

MEDIABISTRO HONORS 10 MEDIA PROFESSIONALS

I received a call the other day informing me that I had been selected for this truly fantastic honor. I am very grateful to Mediabistro.com for this wonderful and inspiring recognition, as the company I am in regarding the rest of the honorees attests. Wow.

mediabistro.com honors 10 Outstanding Media Professionals at October. 4, 2007 Event in NYC.

mediabistro.com (www.mediabistro.com, a division of Jupitermedia Corporation, Nasdaq: JUPM), will mark its 10th anniversary with a gala celebration on Thursday, October 4th at The Plumm, 246 West 14th Street in New York City. To celebrate mediabistro.com's remarkable growth over the past decade, mediabistro will honor ten individuals whose media careers have skyrocketed during the same period with Golden Boa Awards in the 10 verticals that mediabistro.com serves. Festivities will begin at 7:00 pm.

"So much has changed in the media landscape over the last decade - it's an entirely new world. I wanted to honor some of the people who have contributed to that," said mediabistro.com founder Laurel Touby.

2007 Golden Boa Honorees

Advertising - Scott Goodson, StrawberryFrog

Book Publishing - Jane Friedman, President & CEO, HarperCollins Worldwide

Design - Luke Hayman, Partner, Pentagram

Photography - Tyler Hicks

Interactive - Craig Newmark, Craigslist

Magazine - Adam Moss, Editor-in-Chief, New York

Newspaper - Dean Baquet, Washington Bureau Chief, The New York Times

Public Relations - Ken Sunshine, Sunshine, Sachs & Associates

Radio - Adam Davidson, Correspondent, International Business and Economics, NPR

Television - Stephen Colbert, The Colbert Report

The event celebrates mediabistro.com's extraordinary growth over the past decade. What began as an informal series of cocktail parties for freelancers has grown into one of the premier outlets serving the media industry - a Web site providing editorial content and a widely-read network of media blogs, the leading job board in the media industry, and courses, seminars and multimedia content. Mediabistro.com recently merged with Jupitermedia. "When I started the Web site ten years ago, it was so one-dimensional compared to what it is today," said Touby. "It seems as though every day now, I run into someone who says they found a job, took a class, or otherwise had their lives enriched by mediabistro."

Members of the media interested in covering the event should contact Rachel Edelman at Rachel@mediabistro.com or (212) 929-2588 x316 to be added to press list.

Honorees present at the event will be awarded with the Golden Boa, named after the feather boa that has become mediabistro.com's trademark. Brooklyn-based artist Jude Tallichet sculpted the award, a bronzed feather boa. To toast the occasion, guests will raise a Martini glass courtesy of Chopin Vodka, the ultimate luxury vodka from Poland.

About mediabistro.com

mediabistro.com started over ten years ago with a series of salon-style events for the New York media community. Today, mediabistro parties have spread to 22 cities, and the mediabistro.com Web site is the hottest place for media/publishing/content people to find jobs, share resources, and connect with each other. One million unique editors, writers, television producers, graphic designers and other "content" people visit www.mediabistro.com each month and generate more than 6 million page views to keep up with the industry and find features that include daily media news, classes and seminars, and recruiting services.

EMARKETER GEOFF RAMSEY SAYS VIDEO ADVERTISING IS FUTURE

"With video you can do a heck of a lot better job of story telling," said Geoff Ramsey during his keynote on the first day of the OMMA - Online Media, Marketing & Advertising conference and Expo being held in New York. He set the optimism bar pretty high when it comes to the creative potential of the web. As the only growth market in the world of media and marketing, online ad spending will expand 28.6% this year. Next year, Ramsey says we can look forward to an increase of 32%. Ramsey claims that web videos are watched by 72% of Web users or 135 million people, every month. With those numbers more and more clients are going to start running faster and faster, and demanding increasingly more ROI.

ILANA BRYANT - NEW CHIEF STRATEGIC OFFICER STRAWBERRYFROG

ILANA BRYANT REJOINS STRAWBERRYFROG AS GLOBAL CHIEF STRATEGIC OFFICER

NEW YORK - September 20, 2007- StrawberryFrog has appointed Ilana Bryant Global Chief Strategic
Officer overseeing the networks strategic offering. StrawberryFrog has offices in New York, Amsterdam and more recently, Sao Paulo. Bryant will be working out of the shop's New York office and will assume a senior management role in the as a partner in the firm said Scott Goodson, Founder of StrawberryFrog.

Bryant, who joined StrawberryFrog in 2005 as Director of Strategy of its New York office, briefly left the firm to set up The Talent Business last spring together with Cindy Gallop and Lucy Meredith.

Under Bryant's previous tenure as Director of Strategy at StrawberryFrog, the agency landed accounts such as Unisys globally and Wal-Mart's Sam's Club.

Bryant rises to the new role with over 15 yrs experience working in the US, Europe and Asia developing global brand strategies and international communication platforms for multinational clients such as Unilever, Diageo, InBev (Interbrew) and M&M Mars.

In her career, Ms. Bryant has developed award winning communication for iconic global brands like Smirnoff, Sony PlayStation and Levi's.

Ms Bryant has had a distinguished career in both the United States and Europe at agencies such as Lowe and Partners, HHCL/Red Cell and Bartle Bogle Hegarty.

Bryant says "This is a really unique opportunity to re-join the Agency as it enters a new stage in its growth. I'm excited to take StrawberryFrog's innovative, non-traditional approach to communication on to a much larger stage."

Goodson adds: "Adding Ilana back on our team brings even more experienced senior management to our team in New York as we grow."

THE OLD MAD AVE BUILT ANEW?

Jon Fine's piece in this week's BusinessWeek is great. It's an interesting spread that asks the right question , just prior to the start of 2007's Advertising Week in New York, since MDC is not well represented in this year's line up.

Here is the story...more on the BW website...

The Old Mad Ave, Built Anew?
Miles Nadal aims to buck the corporate mindset in marketing

Miles Nadal juggles two BlackBerrys and four cell phones. (Plus two backups.) You may forgive him since his company is rather diffuse. Nadal's business, which is based in Toronto and has offices in New York while he resides in the Bahamas (got all that?), is MDC Partners (MDCA ). MDC, founded in 1980, has amassed a crazy-quilt of 40 companies that individually focus on specific aspects of the marketing ecosystem: public relations, creative agencies, design, brand strategies, and media buying. It focuses on the boutique rather than the big-big. MDC's calling card is the star creative shop Crispin Porter + Bogusky, a Miami ad agency that, thanks to its renowned work for Burger King and a host of others, has, despite occasional misfires, remained hot pretty much since the turn of the century.

These days, Nadal is expanding MDC's portfolio through a novel strategy that he calls "lift-outs"—creating startups by backing talent lurking inside other ad companies. He has made four such deals this year, most recently in mid-August with an as-yet-untitled New York agency aimed at the Hispanic market that launched with two executives from Young & Rubicam agency Bravo and one vet of independent agency Vidal Partnership. Previously in 2007 came lift-outs with a group of Canadian employees of Publicis Groupe (PUB ) who now make up Push Interactive, the digital arm of MDC agency ACLC, and with refugees of Interpublic Group's (IPG ) Futurebrand, who now toil for Nadal at MDC strategy-and-branding firm Ito Partners. While marketing and ad mavens fret and obsess over clicks, metrics, and bang for the buck, Nadal is selling creativity and cool—or, more precisely, his company's understanding of both. Another selling point: Those involved in his lift-outs—and acquisitions, for that matter—typically maintain significant equity stakes in their companies. "You are either perceived to be innovative and enterprising as an institution or you're not," says Nadal. "We sort of want to be the Goldman Sachs (GS ) of marketing services."

DEPENDING ON WHOM YOU TALK TO, a certain glamour still clings to the world of advertising. But there's a reason why the AMC series Mad Men seems as elegiac as a sad song. Those glory days are almost a half-century old, and the ad world long ago consolidated into massive conglomerates. The aggregate revenues of WPP Group, Publicis, Interpublic, and Omnicom Group (OMC ) last year approached $35 billion. (As with big media companies, their track records sometimes argue against the wisdom of chasing bulk for its own sake.) There is also a new wave of renowned independent creative agencies, including StrawberryFrog, Taxi, Droga5, and Anomaly. Somewhere between these poles lies MDC, which last year posted revenues of around $425 million. But it has a rep that still makes it attractive to wild-minded creatives and entrepreneurial types alike. "I don't love the holding-company thing," says Ito's David Melançon. (MDC is by definition a holding company, but Melançon is referring to the giants.) "With Miles, I get both financial support and a network of like-minded people to grow the business with."

FAKE MODELS? 9 THINGS TO LEARN ABOUT STOCK PHOTO MODELS.

Here are the 9 things Maddox learned about the world according to anonymous stock photo models.

This website hits the nail on the head. This most scientific input comes to us from "The (self proclaimed) best page in the universe". Witty.

MIXIM - FANTASTIC TEEN CAR

I'm not much inspired by concept cars. But this year at the Frankfurt auto show, I think this is pretty darn cool. This new Nissan looks a bit like a small Wii Nintendo unit that George Jetson would have enjoyed taking for a spin through Blade Runner. The Nissan concept car Mixim is a futuristic three-seater that looks more like a video game centre than a car and was designed with the help of teenagers who hate cars from around the world.

JAPAN SPEECH AT HAKUHODO TOKYO

Futaba Tanaka of Hakuhodo Japan asked me to make a presentation to a select group of their strategic and creative management today in Tokyo, including Mr. Sugimoto and Mr. Ando. The speech lasted over two hours and went on into the night at the nearby T.Y. Harbor restaurant. The speech included several excellent questions about the future of marketing and the discussions evolved into a broad review of the state of the Japanese advertising industry and Hakuhodo's perspective on where it is going. Most inspiring for me actually. I feel we in the west have much to learn about the way marketing is done in Japan and especially by Hakuhodo, which by the way is the challenger brand here in Japan against the huge Dentsu organization. More on this speech and the discissions when I am back in NYC.

HIP FUTURAMA HOTEL TOKYO

I am in Tokyo this week for meetings and to give a keynote speech for Hakuhodo. I am staying at the Conrad. It is INCREDIBLE. Conventional wisdom holds that anyone hoping for a glimpse of the future need look no further than Tokyo; this is as true in the hotel business as it is in fashion, technology or anything else. Here even the big-chain luxury properties cut a stylish silhouette with the kind of good looks that used to be the sole purview of the hipster boutiques, and the kind of high-tech infrastructure and obsessive service that the boutiques never could muster.

The newest big name on the Tokyo scene is the Conrad. In modern-classic Tokyo style it occupies the top floors of an imposing skyscraper, this one in the Shiodome complex, in one of the city’s up-and-coming districts. The experience begins in a speedy elevator opening onto the 28th-floor lobby, a rather monumental space with a sweeping view of Tokyo Bay. Guest rooms are perhaps even more impressive, with novel modernist fixtures and furnishings somehow seeming utterly serious and calmingly conservative, in that way it seems only the Japanese have a handle on. The bathrooms are properly excessive, with freestanding tubs, separate rain showers and a window through which you can watch TV from the tub (or draw the blinds for privacy). And there are more light switches in my bedroom that I have in my entire house back in New York.

CHINA'S MEDIA SCENE BLASTS OFF - MEET GET IT LOUDER

Get it Louder is a project initiated by a group of young independent thinkers. Jiang Jian and Qian Qian came up with the idea of doing an exhibition to focus on the new generation of Chinese designers and artists. They looked around for sponsors and finally found Modern Media Group. Modern Media has since developed a unique media marketing method: it seeks to sell its advertisement spaces through exhibitions, rather than making money through selling artworks. This can be said to be the first of its kind in China's media industry.