Hasta La Creative!

Check it out — a car that both flies and wheezes.

Creativity takes us on a video tour of CP+B’s Integrated Production department.

While the piece does appear to be more pr than journalism, if you put that aside there is some learning here for people interested in the organizational challenges presented by online media.

[via Agency Spy]

The best way to implement your vision is to set up your own shop, and that’s just what two friends of mine have just done. Skylab-B is the new venture of Mike Martin & Grant Holland, a creative team that, both together and separately, have done some kick-ass work at a whole bunch of agencies around the country.

Skylab-B will maintain offices in both LA and Atlanta. Check out their site and their work. This thing could get huge. Good luck, fellas!

Ad Age named Boston’s Hill Holliday, “Comeback Agency of the Year.” Which led Agency Spy to dig up this year-old video celebrating HHCC’s 38th anniversary.

Ad Age chose Goodby Silverstein and Partners as its agency of the year.

Two things jumped out at me from the article. GSP’s understanding of content’s central role in our business.

“Content is an evolution of where agencies are going,” Mr. Silverstein says. “We have become a content house. We, in a sense, are our own Pixar. [In 2008] I hope to evolve to a point where we make more content for our clients and ourselves.”

And the challenges GSP continues to face.

David Roman, VP-worldwide marketing communications, Personal Systems Group at Hewlett-Packard, who praises the agency for significant contributions to HP’s success, also says Goodby still has to master the social web and work out its position on public relations, where the line with advertising has begun to blur.

Content, the social web and pr are intertwined practices that help create conversation around a brand. By next year at this time, I’m sure GSP and others will have solved some of the riddles native to this new culturescape.

I think we can all agree that agency websites suck. Ad peeps claim to know how to make them for clients, but when it’s their turn to step up, they choke.

Minneapolis agency, Zeus Jones however, did not choke. They bunted. But that’s not bad when the point is to get on base.

The shop’s home page is simple. It’s merely a map to the content they’ve created that exists elsewhere on the inters. If you want a capabilities presentation, hit up their Slide Share page. If you want to see how they think, there’s a blog. And so on…

I found their list of goals on 43 Things to be particularly telling. For instance, Zeus Jones wants to “always add something new to culture,” “invent the next form of media,” “inspire a generation of business leaders” and “bring out the best in people.”

We’ve seen how many premium brands fool customers into thinking a product is of a higher quality when in reality, it may not be the case.

So check out this study as reported on Bloomberg.com:

Volunteers in California who were given sips of wines with fake prices said they preferred the cabernets they thought were more expensive to the ones they thought were cheaper about 80 percent of the time, according to the study published tomorrow in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Researchers scanning the volunteers’ brains while they drank confirmed they enjoyed the pricier wines more. The experiment helps explain how marketing practices can influence both the preferences of consumers and the enjoyment registered by their brains, said Antonio Rengel, one of the study’s authors.

“The lesson is a very deep one, not only about marketing but about the human experience,” said Rangel, an associate professor of economics at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. “This study shows that the expectations that we bring to the experience affect the experience itself.”

I’m sure there’s a bit of a wine snobbery in effect here, but there’s an argument to be made that this principle extends across a whole range of products. Which is why attractive, elaborate packaging works well, too.

But what about advertising agencies? Can a BDA (Big Dumb Agency) charge more and fool clients into thinking they’re getting better work because there’s a prestige factor as opposed to getting less expensive work from a relatively smaller, independent agency?

When you win an account, you want it to be an account you can believe in and profit from. That can mean any number of things, depending on the account and the people who win it.

While a sunglasses account isn’t a car account, I’ve got to believe McGarrah/Jessee is pleased to beat out Fallon and Carmichael Lynch to win the Costa Del Mar business.

I used to work on Bolle at Integer/Denver and they’d invite us over to their warehouse for employee-only blowouts, where I’d walk away with six or seven pairs of glasses and goggles for $10 to $15 each. Perks are important.

According to The Austin American-Stateman, McGarrah/Jessee has 51 employees, and is expected to report about $70 million in billings this year.

The agency’s clients include Whataburger, Shiner beer and Frost Bank.

Here’s the scoop on the new building Ogilvy NY will occupy beginning next year, on the West Side.

The building at 636 Eleventh Avenue was built in 1913 and originally housed the Auerbach Chocolate factory. Ogilvy is calling its new space the “Candy Factory.” It has high ceilings on the first floor, a courtyard and a roof-top terrace that Ogilvy plans to design as a garden space.

Thanks to Google Maps, here’s a sneak preview:

What would David Ogilvy think of this?

I’m in Boulder today, so I thought I’d take a drive out Diagonal Highway toward Longmont to see where Crispin Porter & Bogusky has set up shop in a nondescript office park. And look, there are a bunch of cars in the parking lot. On New Year’s Day. Which leads me to believe it takes extraordinary drive to reach the top and even more to stay there.