Hasta La Creative!

David Carr of The New York Times paints a bleak, sorely accurate, picture of the print media business today.

It’s been an especially rotten few days for people who type on deadline. On Tuesday, The Christian Science Monitor announced that, after a century, it would cease publishing a weekday paper. Time Inc., the Olympian home of Time magazine, Fortune, People and Sports Illustrated, announced that it was cutting 600 jobs and reorganizing its staff. And Gannett, the largest newspaper publisher in the country, compounded the grimness by announcing it was laying off 10 percent of its work force — up to 3,000 people.

The paradox of all these announcements is that newspapers and magazines do not have an audience problem — newspaper Web sites are a vital source of news, and growing — but they do have a consumer problem.

The “consumer problem” Carr talks about actually sounds more like a manufacturing and distribution problem. Newspapers are funded by print ads, but increasingly they are read online.

More than 90 percent of the newspaper industry’s revenue still derives from the print product, a legacy technology that attracts fewer consumers and advertisers every single day. A single newspaper ad might cost many thousands of dollars while an online ad might only bring in $20 for each 1,000 customers who see it.

The newspaper business is vital to the economy, and to our democracy. Who is going to rescue it? Not Washington. Will readers? Or will innovators in online publishing work their way to a grand solution? One might install ticket takers at the gate. Another might make interactive ads perform. The opportunity to get it right is massive and now overdue.

(TrendHunter.com) Have you ever played with Capcella as a kid and built robots or space colonies?  If so, the RFM FM Radio Station headquarters in Poland must bring back some great childhood memories.

The unique architecture…

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — American Express Publishing, whose magazines include Travel & Leisure and Food & Wine, is eliminating 22 jobs across departments, a spokeswoman said today. The move comes as magazine publishers including Time Inc. and newspaper companies such as Gannett slash jobs in a bid to protect margins as costs rise and revenue falls.

AKQA has brought John F. Kennedy back to life in a spot that’s nearly as creepy as Crispin’s reanimation of Orville Redenbacher.

The shudder factor aside, the message is that we need change now if we’re going to make the switch to renewable energy. In Greenpeace’s words, the spot “challenges world leaders to tackle climate change by embracing renewable energy and setting efficiency standards.”

JFK’s Message:

“Will we look into the eyes of our children and confess that we had the opportunity but lacked the courage, that we had the technology but lacked the vision?”

Well, in the context of the actual speech during which JFK posed that question, no we won’t. Why? Because we’ve already made it to the moon. And back. More than once.

For us this is a stretch (albeit a nice effort) on AKQA’s part to turn JFK into a puppet for the sake of their client, Greenpeace. His mouth doesn’t look right, his voice doesn’t sound right, and it isn’t right to twist a great man’s words for even the most idealistic purposes (ed’s note: Amsterdam based The Ambassadors procured the CGI effects). More on this, after the jump.

More: “AKQA’s Many Bodies“

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media

In typical ADD (or is it the brilliant acknowledgment of the public’s ever shortening attention span) style, Crispin Porter + Bogusky is out with yet another iteration of Microsoft’s $300 million campaign.

Advertising Agency: TBWA, Vancouver, Canada
Agency Producer: Mike Hasinoff
Creative Director: Paul Little
Copywriters: Addie Gillespie, Jon Murray
Director: Christopher Hutsul
Production Company: Soft Citizen
Exec Producers: Eva Preger, Link York, Jacqui Wilkinson
Line Producer: Tracey Nomura
Editor & Editorial Company: Melanie Snagg, Tonic Post
Audio: GGRP & Pinewood Sound

Advertising Agency: TBWA, Vancouver, Canada
Agency Producer: Mike Hasinoff
Creative Director: Paul Little
Copywriters: Addie Gillespie, Jon Murray
Director: Christopher Hutsul
Production Company: Soft Citizen
Exec Producers: Eva Preger, Link York, Jacqui Wilkinson
Line Producer: Tracey Nomura
Editor & Editorial Company: Melanie Snagg, Tonic Post
Audio: GGRP & Pinewood Sound

(TrendHunter.com) When a crazy mechanic gets a burst of creative inspiration, both the beautiful and bizarre can be achieved. A British mechanic has had his strange set of automobile creations recognized as art, and the…

The nostalgic mechanical noise of an old typewriter made me think about how the tools we choose define the creative process and how creative work morphs and evolves with new technologies. Sometimes, when the new tools emerge, the people who know how to use them don't always create the best work. Sometimes, great creative minds just can't master the new tools.

For its ongoing “Visionaries” campaign, ABSOLUT launched a three-month digital exhibit of Helmut Lang’s Alles Gleich Schwer, a set of print artworks.