June 2009
26 posts
Jun 1st
May 2009
18 posts
2 tags
Harsh Truth.
You will have an ideal, you will have a Way Of Doing Things that you will consider inviolate. You will also need to keep yourself working, afloat, and able to support your workload, any necessary expansions, etc. If your ideal isn’t equipped, from the beginning, to deal with the realities of survival, reconsider it. Look at your plan, and decide what of your ideal is necessary and...
May 28th
3 tags
Specialization.
Having a specialty is a wonderful thing. But the assumption shouldn’t be that you do everything, for a specific market or industry. That isn’t specialization, IMO. That’s loving X more than Y. While it’s technically possible to learn every single aspect of your broader field, in a specific industry, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. There’s always better...
May 27th
2 tags
Intentions are not Excuses.
People don’t care what you meant to do. It’s irrelevant. And yet, intentions get a lot more airtime in planning discussions than they should. The only thing that matters is interpretations. Which ones are likely, which demographics will associate your ideas with something positive or negative, and the cultural/generational touchstones you will evoke. This is where time should be...
May 27th
1 note
2 tags
Remixable.
You do not own the message, the experience, or even the product you create. It goes out into the world, and if you do it right and are lucky, it comes to life. Actually to life, as in the concepts behind memetic theory (which, for the record, I was interested in pre-lolcats). Conceiving of ideas as organisms means you need to design them to be evolution-friendly. Let people play with it, and see...
May 23rd
3 tags
Paul Bunyan: one hundred year-old branded content
spiegelman: There may have been Paul Bunyan stories that circulated throughout the logging camps of the United States and Canada during the late 19th century, but the evidence for this is not entirely clear. Of course there were “tall tales” and legends about extraordinary exploits that happened in the logging camps - but there does not appear to be any trace of a character ...
May 22nd
3 notes
2 tags
Measured.
Cool is a great goal, but it’s meaningless. Cool to whom is a start. Cool to whom in which demographic is better, and so on. Measurement is not only a way to justify your existence, it’s a way to make sure everything you do in the future is as valuable as it can be. Measurement is a way of learning, not a way of patting yourself on the back.
May 22nd
“Journalism is going to become all about branding.In this gigantic mass of...”
– @bmorrissey: Journalist brands (via heyitsnoah)
May 21st
2 tags
Unique.
A repeatable experience is wonderful in terms of cost, and in terms of scalability, but it’s not always worth remarking on. The second time an idea is done, it needs to be, at the least, more extravagant than the first time. Beyond that, it also needs to disassociate itself from the ideas of the past. You are already competing against an unknowable amount of messages and ideas for attention...
May 21st
2 tags
May 20th
2 tags
Cheap.
Cheap means experimental. Cheap means freedom. Cheap means risk. It’s noble and honourable to take a risk on something expensive, but Conde Nast isn’t going to try to launch another Portfolio anytime soon. Cheap failures are learning experiences. Expensive failures are learning experiences that deny you the opportunity to apply the lessons.
May 20th
3 tags
“Mr Fawkes likens the new agency model to a film production company with a...”
– Piers Fawkes, PSFK.com, quoted in FT I’m convinced that ad-hoc agencies / companies are key for actually achieving platform-agnostic strategy. [I do not condone the excess of buzzword my last statement required.]
May 20th
2 tags
May 20th
3 tags
peashoot - social media campaign tracking. →
I seriously think SkyNet has a Peashoot account. Seems like this is a great way to gather a large amount of the valuable information most social media campaigns leave on the table. But seriously, if measurable impact, reasonable use of resources, accountability and ease/speed are important to you in the way they are to me, you want to play with this.
May 19th
3 tags
Showing / Telling.
Show, don’t Tell is one of the core rules of storytelling. This is why I have a problem with pages that include an “our approach” section. I understand the utility, but I disagree with it. Your approach shouldn’t be so arcane that it needs to be spelled out, it should imbue every aspect of what you create. You, everyone you work with, and everything you work on, should...
May 17th
May 15th
2 tags
Cube Grenades. →
Creating something to interact with, and using it to drive discussion. Beautiful art, perfectly designed to be incorporated into the personal narrative of the audience. Building the conversational meaning of the artist, and driving interest in the high end prints that are also available for purchase. Hugh MacLeod is a genius, if you didn’t know.
May 15th
1 tag
Introduction.
Attention Industry is about narrative as the most important tool in building a brand, experiences and connections. Not telling people a story, but creating a story that can be incorporated into their lives. My aim is for this to be a collection of media / communications concepts, and examples of work that I think fit the mold of what comes next. Idea driven, fast, iterative, inexpensive, and...
May 15th