Our COO, Scott Rye, reads Esquire. That and books about boats and wars and stuff.
So I’m looking forward to seeing the December issue in his office. It’s seems that the magazine has decided to get its augmented reality on. Read more about it here.
Does this signal a new way forward for print? Is it cost prohibitive to produce? What will Scott think?
Tough questions on a Thursday night.
We live for great advertising. It changes the game, moves popular culture and makes brands famous. So when we first heard about the documentary film Art & Copy, we got kind of choked up. Finally, someone made our Rocky. Our Karate Kid.
ART & COPY is a powerful new film about advertising and inspiration. Directed by Doug Pray (SURFWISE, SCRATCH, HYPE!), it reveals the work and wisdom of some of the most influential advertising creatives of our time — people who’ve profoundly impacted our culture with campaigns like “Just Do It,” “I Love NY,” “Where’s the Beef?,” “Got Milk,” and “Think Different.”
We are super pumped to be bringing the film to our agency for a special Red Tuesday. The noon screening will be for agency personnel only, and the 6 pm screening will be for students and invitees (and any Red Square kids who want to see it a second time).
Jimmy Greenway, the film’s co-producer, will be at both screenings for Q&A. It’s going to be all kinds of inspirational.
We are excited to share with everyone that we’ve been awarded five 2009 W3 Awards. It appears we are huge in France and huge on the Internets. Crazy.
Matt was so excited that he made some pretty amazing art out of the trophies. Creativity cannot be stopped people. It just is.
Congratulations to everyone who worked so hard to earn this recognition. Let’s win more in 2010. Imagine what Matt could do with twelve or so of these things.
There are lots of things that can make or break a television spot, and music is one of those things. It can set tone, create emotion, take the audience to exactly where you want to take them. And that’s what brands should do too: make people feel something.
So it’s poll-taking time: What are the current best ad/song combos? What are the worst?
The Ask.com jingle is immediately disqualified for being so bad that I kind of like it. I keep that bottled in a very secret place, where I keep things like my admiration for Justin Timberlake.
I first wrote about Nicholas Feltron on March 10, 2008:
The guy keeps meticulous records of what he does during the course of the year: how many taxi rides, pounds of magazines received, how many iTunes tracks played, days spent on a plane, how many cups of coffee and so on. Then he issues an infographical representation of his year (he began issuing reports in 2005). And it’s amazingly interesting.
Today I read something from Feltron far more compelling. With the launch of CNN.com’s redesign, he was asked to examine stats from the site from the past thirteen years and develop an infographic illustrating the findings:
Ultimately, I think the most fascinating story here is the change in our news habits after September 11, 2001. After this day, a new and higher baseline for visits to the site is established, and the inference is that this event really established CNN.com and the greater Internet as a reliable, timely and indispensable source for news.
Beautiful work.
Okay. As a follow up to the last blog post lamenting the lost art of the mixtape, here’s something that was passed around the agency yesterday: the Mixtape USB stick.
Street cred for your digital music, I guess.
Kate wants to draw your mixtape. I love this idea.
I love it for many reasons. What’s nagging at me and is hardest to articulate is this: you can’t draw an iTunes playlist. Which leads me to a bigger thought: what happens when there is no more tangible media?
Photographs, records, mixtapes, all of that stuff that now resides on your hard drive.
I went to a Yankees game in the new stadium this summer, and the tickets were print-outs from my email. I can’t wait to share that with my grandson.
Is it me or does lo-fi have more soul? Is the iLife lifeless?
Note: I realize writing this on a blog is ironic or hypocritical or both. Just a random thought on a Tuesday night.
The kids at the Square are super excited today. Communication Arts is featuring our site as their “webpick of the day.” This is really amazing recognition for a couple of reasons.
1) Communication Arts is the largest international trade journal of visual communications.
2) There are over 3 billion active web sites and over 1 trillion URLs registered.
(Source: Janine counted them.)
So for our little site to be picked is quite humbling.
Site credits include Rich Sullivan, Matt Whitfield: creative directors; Diana Nichols: associate creative director; Rich Sullivan: copywriter; Laura Rainey, Chris Rowe: designers; Miller Mobley: photography; Sara Miles Agee: producer; New Uniform: development.
Thanks CA!
