Hasta La Creative!

Image from Nbcsports.com

The NFL Scouting Combine is a lot like speed dating—appearances trump substance. Executives make snap judgments about prospects. Players are valued by physical measurements and statistics. The fastest football players are like the most attractive girls at a bar waiting to be picked up by rich suitors who will drop them without hesitation the moment they find a more attractive—or faster—replacement. When it comes to the NFL, the corporations have all the power. Not just the league and teams, but the sponsors as well.

Accepting these truths about NFL business makes adidas’s promise to sign the prospect with the best 40-yard dash time to an endorsement deal smell like a desperate grab for headlines. The news, first reported by Darren Rovell at ESPN.com, seems particularly strange considering NFL players aren’t allowed to wear adidas gear during games; rules only permit Nike and Under Armour apparel. Would sponsoring the fastest player help adidas slice into the NFL money pie? Probably not, even if that player was good. The fact that the contest is predetermined for a single skill rather than an overall body of work is dumbfounding, since speed does not guarantee ability.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Would you like to know who is using social media in Australia? Thanks to the recently released Yellow Social Media Report for 2012 we now have a thorough overview on who, how and why Aussie consumers and businesses are using social media.
The report is highly detailed and a great insight into understanding the social scene in […]

We got some great news coming from the upcoming AdTech data summit at The Hilton. A joint Publicis team consisting of Aaron Michie (Zenith Optimedia), Phil Zohrab (Performics) and myself (Mojo) have submitted a paper and will be part of the event on July 18. Given there were a solid 100 submission, we are quite chuffed.

In […]

I was recently asked to prepare a response to this question: Here is what I wrote.
A well integrated digital campaign is underpinned by a process and structure that harnesses the strengths of various elements of a campaign, it should have clearly defined roles for the recommended channels and utilise insights to inform and iterate the […]

OK, that’s a big statement. But have a look at the well-produced case study of Nazi-SciFi-spoof ‘Iron Sky’ that is hitting cinemas worldwide at the moment.
The German-Finnish-Australian co-production had about 75% traditional funding and manged to rake in the rest via crowd-sourcing and crowd-investing. More interesting from a creative stand point is how listening to […]

I am not sure I would call this a trend, as WIRED does. But it is true that for every mainstream movement there is an opposite idea catching on: like collecting vinyl instead of downloading music, customising bikes instead of cars, slow instead of fast food.
The smartphone evolution and its myriad of apps has given […]

FBi Radio, your radio of choice if you live in Sydney, is screening the most excellent “Press.Pause.Play” to raise much needed funds. Check out the trailer featuring luminaries of modern digital creativity such as Moby, Lykki Li and Seth Gordon. A film about fear, hope and digital culture. Get tickets here.
As their site asks: “The […]

Different speakers at Circus 2012 have mentioned it in their talks: Nick Law (RGA), Sarah Robb O’Hagan (Gatorade) and Joe Crump (Razorfish) all stressed how exponential the growth of digital communication is. Yes, they are all working in the US but here is undeniable proof that the same is happening in Australia. Marketing Mag’s chart […]

This edition is going to feature a few of my favourite data visualization pieces that will hopefully help you drift off into tranquil space full of swirling shapes and colours as you grind through the last hours of the week… and you might learn something interesting as well.
First up, one of my favourite piece of all time. […]

I will be speaking at Sydney’s AdTech 2012 on “Fragmented Storytelling In An Evolving Media Environment” (Wednesday 11am). My co-panelist is Jeff Julian, a great production designer who among other films has worked on Spielberg’s ‘Minority Report’. I thought it might be a cool idea to document the evolution of my own talk here:
http://storify.com/tbuesing/fragmented-storytelling
Storify is […]