Hasta La Creative!

Everyone knows that if you tell people what you wish for when you blow out the candles on your birthday cake, it’s not going to come true. Unless, of course, you wish that you could eat a giant piece of cake in two minutes.

Old Navy turns 20 this year, and to celebrate, it’s sharing the fun with a giant machine that takes your selfie and converts it into a giant balloon portrait. Yes, if you happen to be in Times Square on Wednesday or in Los Angeles on Saturday, and you tweet a birthday wish with the hashtag #Selfiebration, you could see your mug rendered in blue balloons. 

It might not be quite as sophisticated as the Grand Prix-winning MegaFaces Pavilion from the Sochi Olympics, but the Selfiebration Machine is a neat contraption consisting of almost five miles of wire and 1,000 balloons custom-made to withstand the city elements. It will generate two selfies per minute, and 1,000 selfies per day. 

My wish is to install this thing in my living room. 

Via Design Taxi.

Jill Abramson, the former New York Times Co. executive editor ousted in May, is looking to get back into journalism, this time with a startup.

Ms. Abramson said at an event Monday night that she’s seeking funding for a business she would lead along with Steven Brill, the journalist and author who founded Court TV and the American Lawyer.

“We’re talking to some investors who are sounding very interested and we are going to do great stories,” Ms. Abramson said at the event in Boston hosted by radio station WBUR. “We’re talking about doing a discrete number of great pieces and I would be involved in recruiting the writers, in helping edit and conceptualize the stories.”

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Playstation teamed up with MOFILM for the latest installment in the ongoing “Greatness Awaits” campaign promoting the PS4, which debuted during Sunday Night Football’s San Francisco 49ers vs. Denver Broncos’ game.

While last year’s installment from BBH New York at least felt like it tweaked the formula a little bit, the latest iteration of “Greatness Awaits” struggles to differentiate itself from its past. The 60-second “Friendly Competition” opens with two buddies throwing it down on the basketball court. “What do you got?” asks one friend. “I’ve got Kevin Durant,” the other replies, and morphs into the gaming version of the NBA star. From here, the friends find themselves thrown into a series of games in a now very familiar formula, set to Daft Punk’s “Contact,” ending with Destiny and the “Greatness Awaits” tagline. Maybe it’s just that it’s been used so much, both in and out of this particular campaign, but the approach now feels somewhat stale and “Friendly Competition” does little to expand upon or revitalize it. (more…)

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In our latest installment of places where you wish you worked, a California creative agency named thinkParallax recently gave each one of its employees $1,500 and an extra paid day off to travel somewhere they’ve never been and get inspired. The catch? They have to blog about their journey.

“Some people might call this crazy. We’re calling it Parallaxploration,” says the agency. Which is great because parallax is the difference in perspective you get by looking at the same object from two different positions. In other words, the agency’s very name suggests that traveling to new places gives you a new perspective on the same old thing.

“The goal of Parallaxploration is not only to ensure happy employees, but also to provide them with energizing experiences that will allow them to continue creating exceptional work for our clients,” the agency adds.

The little design inspirations that naturally come from exploring new cultures are exactly what you see in the four blog stories already posted—Germany, Holland, Peru and New Zealand. From ancient to modern, pastoral to urban, those four locations have already created a breadth of influence for creative exploration.

The agency also says it hopes its experiment makes other companies think differently about employee engagement, and I wonder if this sort of thing could catch on. The agency where I work gave each of us a $1,000 Delta credit last year for the same reason, but we didn’t blog about our journeys. (Missed opportunity? Or a welcome lack of corporate oversight?)

The important part is, there’s nothing preventing this good idea from becoming a movement. Or an individual creative from remembering how important it is to always be open to travel and new experiences.

A piece of career advice I’ve consistently heard high-ranking advertising execs dole out at industry panels is to “find a hero” — someone whose career you admire or, if you’re blessed with the proximity to do so, whom you can personally learn from.

And as a general rule, it makes sense.

But as a planner, it’s always confounded me. Because, while I’ve had the pleasure of working for some incredibly bright minds (seriously, people smart enough to make me wonder if they “just weren’t interested” in becoming nuclear scientists), I find that this advice doesn’t easily translate to our world.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Phil Drye, development director, JCDecaux and John Pizzamiglio, lead- advertising strategy, TFL talk about the new digital screens at Old Street roundabout with local insight into the tech hub area from Peter Briffett, COO, YPlan and John Spindler, CEO, Capital Enterprise.

Um estudo realizado pelo Facebook em parceria com o Instituto Ipsos revelou que os brasileiros são os latino-americanos com maior volume de engajamento com personalidades, celebridades e marcas através da rede social.

Entre os brasileiros entrevistados na pesquisa, 67% declararam ser influenciados por marcas ou por ações de amigos no Facebook, 44% dizem curtir uma marca ou empresa na rede social e 41% leem conteúdos customizados pelas marcas, destaca a pesquisa. Os mexicanos aparecem na 2ª posição em número de interações com marcas, seguidos pelos chilenos.

Os resultados mostram que o público tem sim interesse em brand content, contanto que ele seja alinhado com seus interesses particulares, e não apenas propagandas e comunicações institucionais.

Post originalmente publicado no Brainstorm #9
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It’s makeover season for cable — the time of year when a handful of networks look to make noise by giving themselves some plastic surgery. While some of these makeovers are major facelifts, others are just touchups of Botox. Either way there’s the acknowledgement that what they were doing previously has grown stale, become limiting or, sometimes, gone too far.

As a result, TVGN, The Hub and Discovery Fit & Health are now getting new names; Boomerang is repositioning itself in the kids’ space; and Oxygen, We TV and TruTV are redefining their core programming strategies and target viewers.

The moves come as the competition for viewers grows increasingly heated, with cable networks fighting for viewers not only against broadcasters but streaming platforms like Netflix, Hulu and YouTube. That makes it more important for cable brands to have a focused, identifiable message that appeals to both viewers and advertisers. The trick is staying focused while still expanding your audience. Some cable networks are remaking their brands after losing focus, while others became too broad or adopted copycat programming.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

If you’ve work in an agency, for an agency as a freelancer or are on the client side, you’ve heard all these phrases before. They are unproductive, don’t help thew workflow and certainly don’t contribute to creativity.

But here’s how you can deal with the five worst things said in the advertising world and how you can turn things around and improve productivity.

Yes, it’s a white paper download but you’ll get a kick a schadenfreude-tastic out of it and the really cool graphics within. Well, that is until you realize you say these things too and then you’ll have an intimately private face palm moment and continue to say these things day in and day out.

Download this white paper now and have a laugh. And learn how to avoid these productivity-killing phrases.