Caffeinated posts from an ACD/Copywriter. I write about advertising, design, astronomy, cooking, and pretty much anything else that strikes my fancy, including random bits of reference info for work purposes. You may also know me as 'that other gal' who helps run Adland.
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Sunday, January 29, 2012
[ This and That: 01.29.12 ]


+ Super Bowl XLVI is coming up next weekend. If you want a sneak peek at what you will see, check out the Super Bowl Commercial Spoiler Alert for 2012 that I've put together. Quite a few ads are already "released" to the world, with a good number of teasers as well. Still a few keeping mum, like FedEx (although I double they'll top my all-time fave of theirs, Apology.) Do check Adland leading up to the big ad game, as we'll be posting updates as we go.

+ This past week, JC Penney launched a new logo and campaign from Mother which are part of a major brand overhaul planned by Apple exec turned JC Penney CEO Ron Johnson. Perhaps it's just me (although from the twittersphere it doesn't seem like it), but I think it's horrid. Looks like it was designed in Powerpoint. And the other elements for it look like they are trying to be Old Navy. C'mon. Where's the creativity? I get that it's quite different from where JCP was before, but isn't not the most amazing work overall. Maybe they can call GAP and commiserate together. Sorry Mother. And just because Johnson was at Apple, that doesn't make him infallible either.

Labels: ad news, adland, advertising, branding, creative, design, Super Bowl, Super Bowl 12

Monday, January 02, 2012
[ A look back at posts from 2011 ]

Everyone does it. I know. But this was less for you and more for me to take a trip back through my activity on the blog here over the past year. Below are some of my favorite posts or ones that I feel had some meaning or value.
+ John Cleese on Creativity
+ Why a Good Brief Leads to Good Creative
+ Why Social Should Drop the Media
+ Creativity in the Digital Space: Part 2 & Part 3
+ QR Codes: Hot or Not?
+ 6 Tips for Ad Peeps, Old and New
+ Why Copywriters Need to Care About Typography
+ Your Ideas Are Your Value
+ Using Websites to Tell Stories
+ 10 Things That Scare Creatives
+ Branding and Digital: Part 1 and Part 2

Labels: adgruntie, advertising, copy, creative, digital, trends

Sunday, December 04, 2011
[ Branding and Digital: Part 2 ]

+Part 2: The birth of digital

About 13 years ago when I was just getting into the business, I would have never thought really about doing what I do today. If someone had asked me in an interview for my first job if I ever thought I'd be creating campaigns where users used a app on a branded Facebook page to control a water gun as part of a game to melt ice and free a cup of a client's product to win a prize, I'd have thought it would be awesome and cool, but possible? No way. Nor would I have thought that I'd ever need to come up with an idea like that.

What was happening then was that people were building websites. In fact, one of my first projects at my first agency out of school was working on redoing the agency brochure and website. Soon there after, we were also getting into banner ads. Good old 15K gifs. Oh yeah. Super sexy. But I was at a traditional agency where those were asks of clients for whom we were also doing radio, TV, print and collateral. The approach to digital was as it was for any other project. There was a brief. There was a copywriter/art director team that brainstormed ideas together. Comps were boarded up for presentations.

After that job, I continued working on digital as it grew and became more of a staple. But, a lot of it was also being done by folks with more of a tech background. It wasn't about the idea. It was about repurposing the TV spot or print ad for the web that the "branding" agency created. Digital or interactive shops weren't seen as having the talent to create something new. And, at the start of digital only shops, that might have been the case.

Thank god things have changed.

I'll be honest. It bothered me a lot that I had clients and even employers who didn't think that it was OK for a good idea to come from the digital shop. I've heard things like "That's branding. Our broadcast agency handles that." Really? So you'd lose out on a great idea, just because it didn't come from the right people? Now, that takes us down a different path, but seriously, this is the kind of thing that has been going on. You also had copywriters and designers working separately, even though Bernbach's efforts showed how much better the work tends to be when you team them up together.

So, what's changed and why?

Well, for one, digital shops are actually seeking out conceptual thinkers. They're looking for the storytellers. They're looking for more well-rounded creatives, technologists, and even account people and then designing better ways for them to work together. That's a huge piece of it.

I think the other is a function of integration. With that there has already been a couple trend cycles of agencies trying to do everything/be full-service or being very specialized. There's a sway back and forth over time as clients think they want one or the other. But what they really want is integration. No matter which agency comes up with the main idea, they want all agencies playing nice around that big idea so it is seamless to the consumer. Well, sure, great. We all want that. Unfortunately, in order to get there, a lot of times it forces agencies to compete against each other. This has caused those digital only shops to look outward and try to learn from the bigger agencies who may at one time be winning more accounts than them depending on where in the cycle we are. Rather than trying to create a new structure, they've looked to the way in which traditional agencies have set themselves up. They also started bringing in more people who had started at those agencies, brought the ideas with them and implemented them because that's what they knew.

And then there's the agencies who were full service to begin with, and remained that way and added digital as just another offering, like GSP and W+K.

With only about 15 years under its belt, digital is still new. It's still figuring out what it is and what it needs to be...and what it wants to be.

Labels: advertising, branding, digital, interactive

[ Branding and Digital: Part 1 ]

+ You so often hear about branding and broadcast, print or even out of home. But what about in relationship to digital? Social? Email? 

I recently watched Art & Copy. Yes I'm late to viewing this film. But that's not really relevant. I spent an hour and a half listening to some of the greats talk about the business. Talk about branding and the work they've done. Folks like Lee Clow, Hal Riney, George Lois, Dan Weiden, and Mary Wells Lawrence. They talk about finding key ways to talk to people. Finding the nugget of truth about a product or life and wrapping them together. Making someone feel something. Telling a story of what the company could do for you. Campaigns like "Just Do It", "Think Different", and "I Want My MTV" struck a chord. They're as Weiden says like lightening striking. Concepts and ideas that resonate with the population and become part of pop culture.

It's all about branding. But what is branding? Branding is defined as "the promoting of a product or service by identifying it with a particular brand." So, then what is a brand? 

David Ogilvy's defined a brand as: "The intangible sum of a product's attributes: its name, packaging, and price, its history, its reputation, and the way it's advertised."

The American Marketing Association defines a brand as a "Name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller's good or service as distinct from those of other sellers."

For a very long time, the role of branding has been held by TV spots, radio ads, print ads, billboards and the other rash of tactics in the realm of traditional advertising. That role has been all about storytelling, image and the emotion it conveys to the customer.

This is what i learned in school and what I practiced at the start of my career when my bread and butter was radio spots, print ads and the like. 

These days I spend all my time working in the digital world. And I try to apply these concepts to the work I do on a daily basis. But how does any of this thinking really translate to the new media that's out there? Or does it?

For the five or six of you that actually read this blog when I post something new, this is what I want to explore. Because I think what is going to finally happen in the near future is that we will see much more of these concepts brought into the digital workplace. And for sure, this is already starting to happen. But I have a sense that it will blow up even larger in the next few years while taking some different turns.

Stay tuned.

Labels: adgruntie, advertising, branding, digital, interactive

Sunday, November 06, 2011
[ This and That: 11.6.11 ]

+ In the madness that ensues from returning from vacation and just the general craziness, here are a few things I've read, am in the middle of reading, or have scanned to go back to read or look at that I thought you might find interesting or useful.

Shape of the Industry
+ Forrester’s Nate Elliott has some interesting things to say in his Interactive Brand Ecosystem report.

It’s time for marketers to start taking the brand-building power of interactive channels more seriously [...] Your online content and experiences should be the first piece of the brand campaign you develop, and not the last piece. After all, the Internet is the deepest, richest, and most trusted branding channel you possess — and within a year or two it’ll probably be the biggest too. Your customers have entered an era of interactivity, and it’s time for your brand campaigns to do the same.

For me, leading your brand with interactive marketing isn’t about choosing one channel over another; it’s about rethinking how all our marketing channels work together. The way we “coordinate” our marketing channels right now is broken: Even today, most marketers develop their TV ads first and then hand them to the interactive team and hope they can build a site or a banner campaign that matches. As we’ve all seen, this rarely works well.

Management of Cubelife
+ An interesting read on "engagement" and looking at how it's losing (or lost) its meaning from overuse, wrong use, and more.

Talking about ‘engagement’ is as about as helpful as demanding that communications be ‘good’.

Meaningless and bankrupt, when we talk of ‘engagement’ we reveal ourselves as victims of industry fashion. Or in pursuit of our own self-serving agendas. Or in love with pontificating and generalizing at the expense of understanding the specific and actually being useful.

+ A good read from Nancy Vonk and Janet Kestin for Fast Company, Stumbling Up The Ladder: Ad Agencies Neglect Their Brightest Prospects. Here's a excerpt:

Agencies are losing status as go-to thought leaders because frankly, leadership is in short supply. Clients are parceling out their projects to consultants and 'specialists.' The best and brightest grads aren’t choosing advertising the way they used to, nor taking it as seriously as other talent-based businesses.

Advertising is an industry careless of the talent under its roof. Its greatest asset is the people who go up and down the elevators each day, yet a dearth of investment in their growth has left them feeling that they lack value. Even though employees continue to rank training as one of the primary motivations to stay in a company, it has mostly gone the way of the dodo. Cost has long triumphed over benefit. So people feed their sense of worth by changing jobs more often. The best recognize that without mentors and employer commitment to their personal development, their growth is limited and, well, see ya. Meanwhile, smarter, newer businesses are biting at the heels of agencies, offering campus environments for their newly-minted workforce, as well as training, sabbaticals, and jobs that feel more rewarding.

Design
+ If you're looking for some cool visual eye candy or inspiration, check out 50watts.com, a great resource of book-related design and illustration.

+ Just Be Nice Studio out of Moscow created a typeface that includes all frequently used iconographics and symbols. Web Symbols is a set of vector html-compliant typefaces, so it might be used in any size, color and most browsers.

+ Copy Paste Character is another handy, dandy website and iPhone application for copying the
‘hidden’ characters that comes with the computer’s typefaces, to be pasted into emails, tweets, text documents, forums and whatever else you might need to spice up with an extra ♔, ฿ or, ❒.

Labels: adbiz, adgruntie, advertising, creative_management, cubelife, design, digital, inspiration, this and that, wisdom

Monday, October 31, 2011
[ 10 things that scare Creatives ]

+ Somethings are even scarier than ghosts and zombies. In honor of Halloween, here's a list of 10 things that can scare the bagezus out of Creatives (in no particular order).

1. Moving deadlines--especially those that move closer, rather than farther away.
2. Computer crashes, a.k.a. the color wheel of death--especially if the work hasn't been saved.
3. Clients who think they are creative.  They say their line or visual idea is just an example, but you know they really want you to use it.
4. There's no beer left in the kitchen fridge. Or bottle of booze in your desk. Or your AD/CW's desk. Or our Account person's desk.
5. Being forced to use Comic Sans. Because it's the brand font.
6. Being told to modify an idea someone else did that was cool and retrofit it to the project.
7. When all the concepts get killed in the internal, which was pushed to 1 day before the big presentation and having to start from scratch.
8. Noticing that no one proofed the presentation deck and auto spell check changed the clients name to something else...everywhere.
9. You're left to pitch someone else's half-baked idea.
10. You're forced to use a PC instead of a Mac...

Got others? Leave them in the comments. And Happy Halloween!

Labels: adgruntie, advertising, creative, cubelife, fun

Monday, October 10, 2011
[ Why Tim Gunn Can By My CD ]

+ Maybe it's because I watched too much Project Runway this weekend (I had a couple weeks of episodes to catch up on), but I started thinking about how sweet it would be to have Tim Gunn as a Creative Director. But then the question one would have to ask, obviously, is why?

 - Gunn never cuts down the designers. He nurtures them and their ideas in the few minutes he spends with them. He looks at their idea, listens to their concept and asks them the questions to help get them in right direction. How can you improve that? Are you editing well? Are you listening to what the judges (clients) have said about your work in the past?
 - While some designers clearly end up with of "the outfit that should be put to death" before they hit the runway, Tim tries to work with them by giving guidance. It's not instructive, it's directive. "Don't be too literal". He provides the right hints. It's up to the designer to figure out how to interpret them.
- When the designers succeed, Gunn is happy for them. He's their cheerleader. He wants them to succeed. - His catchphrase "Make it work" is one I could deal with hearing on a regular basis. (In fact, I've used it myself).

Labels: agency, creative, cubelife

Wednesday, October 05, 2011
[ This and That: 10.5.11 ]



+ It's been a while since I've done a This and That post. Here's a few things of note that I've come across in my web surfing.

- Coca Cola replaces brand with fan names for campaign: As part of its ‘Share a Coke’ campaign in Australia, Coca-cola is replacing its brand name on its bottles and cans with 150 different names in the run up to Christmas.


- Ericsson Envisions Creepy-Cool Smart Home that Posts to your Facebook Wall: Hard to say if this future is cool or creepy. Maybe both.


- Pantone ornaments for all your holiday designer needs. Would be a great gift for your Pantone-happy friends.


- Check out the new tats from Tatt.ly (also good designer gift ideas) FPO, Crops,  and CMYK.


- Steve Jobs Day 2011 is Friday, October 14th. My agency (Studiocom), came up with the idea to honor the man for his work and vision by dressing like him on this day. Hit up the link for more info.

Labels: digital, gifts, this and that

Tuesday, September 27, 2011
[ Using websites to tell stories ]

+  Yesterday I came across a post on the Zeus Jones blog about websites as storytelling. The poster talks specifically about using HTML5 to create one page sites as storytelling devices. These tend to be long scrolling sites like Lost World Fair’s Atlantis and Nike Better World, as mentioned in the post.

But I think there's something to be said about looking at your site, no matter how you build it, as a way to tell a story.

Most brands use their websites more like a brochure. Who we are. What we do. What we create. How to reach us. All of these items tend to be treated as one-offs that are not necessarily connected. They are factual points of information.

But, why? Why can't these sites be created in such a way that they actually tell the story of the brand? There's no reason why they couldn't, or shouldn't. Some of this is inherent carryover from the early birth of the web, where sites were created more often by tech savvy folks, and less by marketing people.

The crutch of a familiar system is still used today. It's a collection of links to pages that are fleshed out bullet points. When you don't see it, it's usually some microsite for a particular campaign. The corporate site must remain as a brochure. It's a level of comfort.

Let's start making them uncomfortable. Advertising, whether its on or off-line is about storytelling. We can do more with the websites we create to tell that story (using HTML5 or not).

Labels: advertising, creative, digital, website

Wednesday, August 31, 2011
[ Why Copywriters need to care about typography ]


+ If you're a copywriter, you might think something like typography is a thing that is only in the realm of designers and art directors. But, you should think again. Typography is the design of your words. It's what visually communicates or reinforces what your words are getting across. It's what makes your words legible and adds extra impact and meaning to them.

Now, I'm not saying copywriters should be typography experts. But there should be an understanding when looking at the layout of your words if it's working or not. Should the font be more bubbly and fun? Serif and serious? Is that grunge font affecting the ability to read what the words are actually saying? Here is an example of bad font choices.

Are letters being touched or hit by the characters from the lines above or below? Is just one word left on a line (called a "widow")? Are words breaking and requiring hyphenation?

When it comes to web design, typography overall has less love than it does in print or broadcast. It's rather sad, but perhaps a remnant of the fact that many early web designers were more technologists than designers. This is changing--thanks to the mighty Design Gods.

But, dear Copywriters, it is also your job to stand up for your work and make sure that intent and creativity doesn't die by the hands of bad typography.

You can find thousands of articles on the web about the topic of typography with a simple search. Here are a few links to read and check out:

Web Typography Sucks - A good selection of links and slides and audio of the presentation from SXSW 2007.

Smashing Magazine has a plethora of resources on typography.

8 Rules for Creating Effective Typography - I think it's missing a couple things but, has a good list of basics.

Bad typography kills good web content. Yes.

Here's an introduction to web typography.

Some fun with Crimes Against Typography.

Labels: copy, design

Saturday, August 20, 2011
[ Job Well Done ]

+Couldn't resist posting this. Via SavageChickens.

Labels: advertising, creative, cubelife

Cup of Java © 2002-2011
keep on using that brain.