On my Sunday search for inspiration on the Interwebs, I found this photo and laughed. Then I thought immediately of the most obsessive detail man in our agency, Willie. The dude completes a crossword puzzle every day. Not just occasionally. Every day. He knows words and rules.

In communication, words tend to be important. The classic less/fewer rule is a good example of a grammatical error that many of us make on a daily basis.

Thanks Willie. You help the agency operate more affectively. Kidding. Just kidding.

Read More

Football fans know awesomeness when they see it. According to today’s ESPN Sports Nation poll, 65% of Americans are more pumped up about the Senior Bowl than the Pro Bowl this weekend.

You may be thinking yeah, but is that statistically significant? With over 80,000 votes from all 50 states, yes.

The kids at the Square would like to think it’s the advertising, but we’re willing to admit that the game, the players, the organization and the sponsors make it great. We’re glad America agrees. Hooray for football! Hooray for democracy!!

Read More

Building a new website is one thing. Building a new business model is another. With NDI, manufacturer of the finest floral and botanical reproductions in the world, we did both. Here’s the story.

NDI had previously only sold product through high-end retailers, such as Neiman Marcus and Nordstrom. They came to us with a challenge: build a site that sells direct to the consumer without alienating our trade customers. And make it awesome.

We’re happy to present to you our solution: NDI’s new storefront.

Visitors can shop the entire inventory (over 4,000 products) in a very intuitive manner; products are organized by five different filters. The store recommends similar items and optional upgrades for products like trees and greenery. Customers can come back and quickly reorder previous purchases or update their information. The site also serves trade customers, with trade-specific content for logged-in trade users.

From a management standpoint, the site is built with a custom CMS (content management system) that allows NDI to update everything in their online store: track orders, edit individual items or multiple items at once, and reorganize categories for seasonal promos. They can also access their customer database for real-time info on each customer.

In the two weeks that we’ve been live (and debugging), the site has already seen good results. Sales are happening—66 percent of the visitors are new to the site and the average site visit is almost 9 minutes.

Take a look around, buy some flowers. And if you see any bugs in the site, holler at Janine.

As we continue to develop the site, we’ll keep you updated.

Read More

The recent dustup over NBC’s The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien has been nothing short of entertaining. Show business aside, this little episode of popular culture offers a unique opportunity to witness challenger brand positioning and public perception unfold on a grand scale.

What I’ve found particularly interesting is the inordinate amount of public outrage at NBC (and Jay Leno) and the beloved, nearly deified status that Conan has attained with even the most fair-weather fans. I think it boils down to a couple of things: the public has an innate sense of fairness, they gravitate almost uniformly to the underdog or challenger, and they love it when the underdog exhibits real backbone.

Would I necessarily call Conan O’Brien an underdog? Probably not in a vacuum. In fact, Michael Ian Black articulates quite well the irony of feeling sorry for Conan in his blog post, Norma Rae:

How did a Harvard-educated, multi-millionaire late night talk show host magically transmogrify into a guy who got laid off at the local car plant? The overreaction to Conan’s departure has been kind of astounding; as a nation, are we really that concerned about who hosts “The Tonight Show,” a television program that stopped being culturally relevant around 1986?

When you consider the Conan brand in the late night television competitive environment, maybe he is a challenger brand. Rob Sheffield, in the latest issue of Rolling Stone, describes Jay Leno as the Godzilla of late night TV:

Leno’s got the stomach for fights. Like Paul McCartney, another nice guy wrongly dismissed as a cream puff, Jay made his bones in the sleaziest, nastiest showbiz shark pools on earth. He plays nice for the old ladies, but his street-fighting instincts are off the charts. He’s left plenty of carrion on the late-night highway. Arsenio Hall, Chevy Chase, Magic Johnson — Jay knocked them all off the air, and you can bet he still savors the memory of their death cries.

Whether Conan’s ratings would’ve been better had NBC not led in to his show with a watered-down and (in my opinion) not terribly funny hour of Jay Leno will never be answered. NBC’s decision to revert back to Leno is seemingly the late night equivalent of Coca-Cola’s decision to yank New Coke off the shelves. The experiment didn’t work. However, that logic doesn’t hold up because, unlike New Coke, Conan has cemented his iconic status with existing fans and endeared himself to millions more.

The public realized he was getting a raw deal. They saw Conan as a put-upon underdog, and they cheered when he pushed back with weeks of (in my opinion) hilarious barbs at his bosses at the network. The fact that Conan’s exit speech was heartfelt and genuine sealed his canonization:

To all the people watching, I can never thank you enough for your kindness to me, and I’ll think about it for the rest of my life. All I ask of you is one thing: please don’t be cynical. I hate cynicism — it’s my least favorite quality, and it doesn’t lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen.

It’s simple. People love an underdog with tremendous heart and nothing to lose. And that’s Conan O’Brien. The patron saint of failed late night programming.

Read More

We love French people. And apparently they love us.* Our Van Kampen Investments “Give Smart” campaign was just featured on a French television program showcasing advertising from around the world.

If you are inclined to view our work with subtitles, this link is for you: click on the “L’Actu section” in the right nav.

*We think they love us. We don’t speak French, so we can’t be sure. But they are smiling before they introduce our work, so that’s gotta be a good sign, right? Any translations would be appreciated.

Read More