Random Culture

Tostitos: NOLAF

Great site from Tostitos, the NOLAF website (National Organization For Legislation Against Fun) is a funny site that uses full screen video to its fullest. Worth checking out. Designed by Mekanism and Element 79.

Why Sh%t Matters to Design

Great outtake from the PSFK conference in New York, featuring Allan Chochinov from Core77. While he's coming at things from an industrial design perspective, these are clearly words of wisdom that anyone working in a creative field can take heed of.

Link via Fresh Creation.

Nike Soccer: The Next Level

Awesome video for Nike Soccer, directed by Guy Ritchie.

TiVo Redesign

After starting work at the end of last year, the agency I work for (Click Here, the interactive arm of The Richards Group) has just launched a redesigned TiVo.com. It's an honor to work on such a great product and with a great client. Our team here at the agency, as well as the client-side team worked very hard... kudos to everyone!

How To Create Great Interactive Agency "Reels"

I've been having some conversations lately about interactive agencies creating reels, just like offline agencies. Reels have the potential to be much more powerful when pitching your agency than clicking through screenshots of the sites you've created. Here are a couple examples of interactive agency reels:

• AKQA
• Cobra Creative
• Reflex Interactive

I think all are great examples of showcasing interactive work in a more dynamic manner. After all, visitors to the websites we create don't have a "screenshot" experience. Why should we give prospective clients anything less?

Here are a few tips that I can gather from looking at these interactive reels:

1. Show interaction with the website
2. Provide context by showing the complete page
3. Use Flash for reels on websites... Quicktime can load horribly slow
4. Don't use text or captions
5. Music selection is HUGE, and should reflect the type of work you do

Have any other examples of great interactive reels? Let me know.

The Next Creative Revolution

Nick Law is the Chief Creative Officer at R/GA, and he has a few words of wisdom about "integration"...

"..."The Big Idea." It consisted of their famous "funny story" tied up neatly with a conceptual bow called the "tagline." It worked pretty well for 50 years. Making the stories sufficiently funny and the taglines sufficiently memorable was enough to get products attention, so it became doctrine. But now the industry has a problem."

Read Nick's complete article, "The Next Creative Revolution."

Facebook App Best Practices

The folks at the Three Minds blog have a great post up about advertisers and Facebook Applications. Just as Second Life is home to numerous advertiser locations without a soul in site, advertiser created Facebook Applications are starting to become deserted islands, with little to no usage. Here are five key guidelines they spell out for advertisers wanting to create a Facebook App:

1. Don't start a new version of something that's already popular
2. Don't overcomplicate the concept or interface
3. Don't extend a campaign without thinking about the social context
4. Don't separate your fans, reach them where they already exist

Great guidelines for the agency or advertiser wanting to get involved. I would add the following in addition:

1. Don't require invites to use your application
2. Don't require registration at your website to use the application
3. Don't send users outside of Facebook unless you have to

Here are a few valuable questions to ask as you're concepting the application:

• Would a user want to display this app in their profile? (remember, this is optional)
• Are you giving them a reason to interact with the application frequently?
• Will they really want to forward this application to a friend?
• Have you included funds or plans to drive usage of the application?

And a couple technical questions:

• If your app becomes a huge success, can your hosting handle the traffic?
• Are you building the application in a way that it can be utilized in other social networking formats?

Thanks to Three Minds @ Organic for a great conversation starter!

Good Design Friday: Starbucks Coffee At Home

Starbuckscoffeeathome.com is a nicely designed site to promote the purchase of Starbucks beans you can brew at home. Designed by Draft FCB and Your Majesty.

Beautiful Sites: Adobe Cards

Adobe has launched a new website at: www.adobecards.com to promote Creative Suite 3. The site starts with a single card, and as you move the scrollbar to the right, advances through a beautiful animation sequence. The site was created by Goodby, Silverstein & Partners.

Friday Fun: Coke Zero Advergame

Coke Zero has launched a great advergame in Germany. It's a testament to the type of quality entertainment you can create online, leveraging a ton of video and 3D. Yes, the site's in German, but you can play the game without understanding it, and if you choose the "standard" options, you aren't required to register. Visit CokeZeroGame.de to check it out.

Link via Culture Buzz.

Best Ads: Super Bowl 2008

Kind of a lukewarm year for Super Bowl ads, but there were a few shining moments... As my previous post suggested, there are a couple places you can see all of them, including YouTube.com/adblitz and MySpace.com/superbowlads. Below, I've included a couple of my favorites.

2008 Super Bowl Ad: FedEx - "Carrier Pigeons"

2008 Super Bowl Ad: Bud Light - "Breathe Fire"

2008 Super Bowl Ad: Audi - "Truth in Engineering." Not the world's greatest ad, but the R8 is one good looking car. Find more at TruthInEngineering.com

2008 Super Bowl Ad: Bridgestone - "Scream." Yes, I'm a bit biased since this spot was created by my agency, The Richards Group, but this one stuck out as one of the better spots.

2008 Super Bowl Ad: Tide to Go - "Interview." Loved this commercial, and Tide had the foresight to create a nice website supporting the effort. Visit MyTalkingStain.com.

2008 Super Bowl Ad: eTrade - "Banking Baby." If you get past the whole draw of a "talking baby", I actually liked this one.

The worst ads? Well, Sales Genie has got to be at the top of the list... not only for some of the lowest budget ads of the bunch, but I thought the voice impersonations of Chinese and Indian characters were borderline at best. The Sobe "Thrillicious" ad also struck me as derivative, and should for anyone who's seen the Thriller dance video from a wedding that took the web by storm recently. Under Armour had a horrible ad that they spent way too much money on. It left me scratching my head wondering what the heck the commercial was all about. Cars.com had a few ads, which seemed to try way too hard to be funny, and wound up having the opposite affect on me. In general, I was also disappointed that almost no one really used websites to support these ads.

Super Bowl 2008: Ad Blitz

Want to view a comprehensive list of all the Super Bowl 2008 ads? Want to vote on them and see what people liked the most? YouTube has launched the "Ad Blitz" channel... a comprehensive channel with all the ads from the big game, where users can vote on what the best ads are.

Visit http://youtube.com/adblitz after the game to see them all.

Shepard Fairey: Obey Obama

Shepard Fairey of "Obey" fame has created some nice posters in support of Barack Obama. According to the Creative Review Blog, the Obama campaign said Fairey wasn't on the campaign payroll, and created these posters on his own. Fairey offers the following on his site:

”I believe with great conviction that Barack Obama should be the next President. I have been paying close attention to him since the Democratic convention in 2004. I feel that he is more a statesman than a politician. He was against the war when it was an unpopular position (and Hillary was for the war at that time), Obama is for energy and environmental conservation. He is for healthcare reform. Check him out for yourself: barackobama.com. Proceeds from this print go to produce prints for a larger statewide poster campaign.”

You can buy posters or find out more by visiting ObeyGiant.com.

Link via Creative Review.

Branded Entertainment: Kit-Kat

Following in the footsteps of animated branded entertainment such as Coke's Happiness Factory, Kit-Kat has created a short animated film. Watch it below...

Link via Adverblog.

Embracing The Free Exchange of Ideas

Prior to Macworld, many websites were buzzing with links to a beautiful application for ordering at Starbucks. Turns out, it wasn't an official Apple release, but the imagination of a multimedia designer, Phil Lu. You can view an animated concept of the application here, and the folks at Influx Insights have a short interview here. If someone doesn't hire this guy and treat him like a rock star, something is wrong with the universe.

Ideas like this make me even more sad that Apple didn't embrace developer applications from the outset. As we've seen with Facebook, the value of opening platforms to developers can have an amazing impact. We're waiting...

Friday Fun: Cadbury vs. Sony

It seems that the Cadbury drumming gorilla isn't the only musical monkey. Check out this great ad from 1987 for Sony in Japan...

Link via Hi-Res.

More 2008 Trends

Why settle for just one list of trends when you can have them all? Darren Herman has complied THE Digital Media and Internet Uber 2008 Prediction List... It literally has every trend list you could possibly want. Some of my favorites include:

Trendwatching's 8 trends to watch in 2008
The Futurist magazine 2008 trends
McKinsey's 2008 trends

Advertising Age: 2008 Trends

Advertising Age has posted two articles on trends to watch in 2008. Some of them are the usual suspects, like the growth of digital and the desire for more accountability in advertising. However, there are a few interesting items of note.

EMERGENCE OF THE 'RENAISSANCE MARKETER'
A new breed of marketing professional is emerging -- individuals with a holistic view of the world and extraordinary observational powers. These "renaissance marketers" will be part humanist, part psychologist, part anthropologist and part technologist. Cookie-cutter marketing will no longer survive as marketers must take a broader view of the consumer and customer. This includes the need to be socially responsible and to embrace key trends such as green.

MARKETERS HIT A ROUGH PATCH
2008 will be about the economy and politics. Growth is slowing, fuel prices are high and credit is tight. That's a difficult mix for marketers to face as consumers will continue to pull in the reins as disposable income tightens dramatically. With caution flags waving, marketers will keep expectations and spending plans modest. Combined with lots of political "tax-raising" rhetoric , there will be plenty of room for nervousness. But political ad spending will more than make up for sluggish brand-marketing investments.

You can view both trend articles here and here.

Whopper Freakout

Crispin Porter has created yet another magical piece of advertising with the Whopper Freakout. To show how much customers love the Whopper, watch this seven minute video in which Burger King "pranks" customers by telling them that the Whopper has been discontinued.

The Coolest Ad Campaign... Ever

No seriously, it is one of the coolest campaigns I've seen in a while. The campaign, created by MediaFront in Norway, required three copywriters to create banners by writing them "live", and related to the content that visitors were seeing elsewhere on the page. They're quite interesting.

Check out this video of the writers publishing these "live" ads here. You can also access the complete writeup on the campaign here.

Link via Adverblog.

Homepage Hijinks: Spirit Airlines

Pay special attention to the homepage promotion. Is this a joke? Or is someone's job at Spirit Airlines in serious jeopardy...

Firebrand: All Commercials, All the Time

Firebrand, the "all commercial" video site, has launched. There's been a lot of discussion online about the viability of the site, and if it can really command an audience. It's certainly a well designed site, with a flexible flash interface that shrinks and expands, so you can avoid scrolling. It also has something YouTube doesn't... the ability to download videos!

But there are some key features missing... comments. That's right, it seems that some of the advertisers, who are clearly getting involved in the site through contests and giveaways, must have expressed concern about people commenting. You can rate the videos, but comments are out.

I think it's safe to say that Firebrand has a shot with at least one niche... people in the ad industry! Beyond that, I don't think Firebrand will be sporting numbers like YouTube.

Link via AdFreak.

Let the Holiday Marketing Begin!

Kicking off holiday marketing this year, Dell has launched a website where an odd assortment of celebrities "pitch" the Dell products you select. You can find the website at YoursIsHere.com. The site allows visitors to send these celebrity "pitches" along to friends and relatives to let them know you're interested in the product. The site isn't designed in a very festive manner, which is a bit troublesome to me. However, it includes a really interesting feature, where users can attach their PayPal information to the "pitch", so friends and relatives can contribute to your "fund."

Link via Clickz.

The Never Ending Web Page: Orange UK

Orange UK has launched a new website, created by Poke London. According to Ian Tait, one of the founding partners of Poke (who also writes a great blog), it's a "never ending web page." The site can be found at: www.goodthingsshouldneverend.co.uk. It may appear at first that there's not much there, but dig around a bit, and you'll find lots of things to click on.

What is Mainstream?

Beth Comstock, the President of NBC Universal Integrated Media, spoke at the American Magazine Conference on Monday, saying that we're in the "Golden Age" of media. She referenced the explosion of online video content, and anyone who's paying attention should come to the same conclusion... this is indeed an important time in the history of media.

But what struck me about her talk was something that Advertising Age mentioned in their coverage of her talk... the "40% Rule." According to Comstock, technologies can't be considered "mainstream" until 40% of houses adopt them. Using this litmus test, video games are considered "mainstream", but MP3 players are not, as her research has them only at a 34% reach. I hope this doesn't mean that Comstock is saying technologies that haven't reached "mainstream" levels aren't worth paying attention to... because something in the assertion that the iPod hasn't reached enough critical mass is absurd to me.

What's more, there's a larger discussion that this spawns. Namely, that businesses or technologies no longer need to reach ubiquity to be important. The Long Tail, anyone? I would argue that technologies are worth paying attention to long before they meet the standards of the "40% Rule", and that using it as a benchmark for importance can limit early opportunities to get involved and reap the benefits.

So what's the magic number? Simply stated, I don't think there is one. You have to look at more than just household reach. Who's being reached, even if it's only 5%... and how fast is it growing? Even if a technology plateaus at 5%, if those 5% are your most important target, dive in... don't wait for technologies to become "mainstream", you may just miss the boat.

Read the full Advertising Age article here.

Link via AdPulp.

Full BK Halloween Costume

Burger King started selling the King masks a while back, but just in time for Halloween, they started selling the complete King outfit. Even though the costume looks like it was made in a country with horribly poor standards of construction and design, I have to give it to Burger King... I think they may sell more than a few of these.

Link via Adland.

Download the 2007 Web Design Survey

The folks at A List Apart have released a great survey of over 33,000 web design professionals. The survey is a comprehensive profile of web designers across the world.

"Like many aspects of web design itself, our research process took the form of a dialog and included multiple stages of discovery. Preliminary findings answered some questions and raised others requiring additional study. The more we unearthed, the deeper we dug.

The attached report shares everything we learned. We offer it freely to this community that has given us so much. For the curious, we also provide an “anonymized” version of the raw data. It contains every answer to every question by every respondent, excluding only personal information—no names, just the facts. Crunch it yourself and tell us what you find."

Download the results of the survey here.

A Few Good Creative Men

Watch the video, it speaks for itself... Thanks to Todd for the link!

Arcade Fire: Interactive Music Video

I don't know what to call this other than an "interactive music video", but it's amazing. The site, built for the Arcade Fire for the song "Neon Bible", allows visitors to interact while the song is playing. But the site guides the user as well as allowing interaction, and the possibilities of what you can do change in conjunction with changes in the song. This is a must see... no word on who created the site.

Nike Supersonic

Nike has launched a MySpace community, which can be found at www.NikeSupersonic.com. The community supports a special invite-only run in London for 1,000 runners and 2,000 of their friends. It was designed by AKQA in London.

Sony Bravia Play-Doh Ad Released

As a follow-up to the original post, the Sony Bravia Play-Doh ad has been released! Watch it below.

Sony Bravia | Play-Doh
Uploaded by YforYerom

Teaser Video: New Sony Bravia Play Doh

Check out the teaser for the new Sony Bravia Ad... Play Doh.

Speaking in Dallas: AAAA New Media

I'll be speaking at a one day event for the American Association of Advertising Agencies, "Connectivity and Stickiness": Keeping Up With the Changes in New Media. The keynote speaker for the event is Gordon Crovitz, publisher at the Wall Street Journal, and I'll be part of a round table discussion at the end of the day. If you're in Dallas, the event will be held at the CITYPLACE conference center on October 4th.

View more details about the event here.

Influx Ideas Conference

The folks at Influx Insights, who publish one of my favorite blogs, are hosting a conference. The event, Influx Ideas, is taking place on October 19th in San Francisco, and is sure to be a great one. The speaker lineup includes Kent Nichols from "Ask a Ninja", Jonah Bloom from Ad Age and the CMO from Charles Schwab, Becky Saeger, to name a few.

In addition, those who register are given the opportunity to speak in a special session of the conference. Once you've registered, just visit the participants section of the site to propose a topic.

Halo 3: Believe

A new site has been launched to promote Halo 3, which will be released later this month. It's a great interactive experience that focuses on a fictional "diorama" memorial created in the future to commemorate the war between humans and aliens. The site includes video and some interesting ways to navigate.

Visit Halo 3: Believe, here.

No word on who created the site, but I'm betting that some resourceful readers have the answer!

Cadbury Dairy Milk UK

Who cares if you don't know what an ad is about? This, quite simply, is advertising GOLD!

Link via Adthropology.

Creating Flash Advertising

A co-worker of mine, Jason Fincanon, has just published a book that I feel is worth recommending. It's entitled "Creating Flash Advertising", and definitely stands out among existing Flash books. Why? Because it's targeted at advertising folks, and specifically addresses the types of things we're interested in, like Flash ad units, microsites, using video and more. Sure, I'm biased because I work with Jason, but he's filled a niche that wasn't being addressed, which is why you should totally buy it.

Didja Hear NBC is Taking on YouTube?

You've heard about the mysterious video venture that NBC and News Corp are launching as a frontal assault on YouTube, but it appears now that it's a multi-pronged effort. According to a Variety article published today, NBC is launching Didja.com, an "all-advertising" site.

Didja stutter? No, I said an "all-advertising" site.

I'm not sure if I even need to keep writing this post, because you don't have to be a crystal-ball gazer to figure out how this is going to turn out. According to Variety, the site:

Will offer a vast archive of current and classic TV spots, movie trailers and other "brand-related content." USA-Sci Fi Channel prexy Bonnie Hammer said the goal is to "become the go-to destination for on-demand advertising content."

The intent behind the site? Variety continues:

"Didja.com is the logical next step in the changing dynamic between consumers and advertisers," Hammer said. "There's no doubt that commercials are major drivers of pop culture -- all you have to do is check out traffic on any video-sharing site. We want to own that watercooler conversation."

Actually, go to YouTube right now and see how many commercials or movie trailers are in the top viewed videos... there aren't many. In fact, when I took a cursory glance at the top 50 viewed videos of all time on YouTube, there was one movie trailer and I didn't see any ads. Most of the content, in fact, was music videos, clips from TV shows, and some user generated content.

NBC also isn't the first company to start a site around this idea. Variety points out that TBS launched VeryFunnyAds.com, and another site called adTV offers similar content. The fact that anyone could call this a YouTube competitor is laughable, and if Didja is a sign of the type of competition that YouTube will be facing from the joint NBC/News Corp venture, I think YouTube is going to have a very bright future for quite a while.

Link via MIT Convergence Culture Consortium.

Creating Possibilities: AAAA Planning Conference

It's been more than 24 hours since I got back from the 2007 AAAA Planning Conference in San Diego, and I've had time to digest everything. Rather than give a play-by-play, I thought it would be appropriate to focus on the things that stuck with me.

Opening Keynote: Sir Ken Robinson
If you watched the videos from the TED conference, you may have seen Sir Ken Robinson speak. Sir Ken is definitely an inspiring guy, and he used those inspirational skills to address a topic he specializes in, creativity. He talked about the dangerous division we've created between creativity and intelligence, and challenged us to be "farmers" of creativity... setting up the ideal situations for others to find their creative medium.

Seven Deadly Sins
This first breakout session I attended featured Gareth Kay of Modernista! and Mark Lewis from DDB. As stated in the description, this session was a "provocation about new ways to think." Each "deadly sin" made sense, such as operating under unchallenged assumptions, self-importance and thinking only big things matter, but one that stuck with me was to learn, and then do. Too many brands hang their hat on one campaign, with little testing about what will actually work. As Gareth and Mark point out, none of us knows 100% if our idea will be effective. Why not let 1 dollar out of 20 be used to test several ideas? The Internet has created the perfect test bed. They Office Max as an example, who created almost 20 viral sites last holiday season, one of which, Elf Yourself, which according to AdAge, received 36 million hits in just a few weeks, and resulted in a 20% increase in holiday traffic to OfficeMax.com. You can view the complete slides for the presentation here on SlideShare.

Eric Ryan, Method
Before launching the company, Eric Ryan was a planner. He saw an opportunity in the cleaning product category that wasn't being filled, and launched Method, which became a competitor by breaking convention. More than that, Method embodies all the ideals of innovation and creativity that the conference was all about. Eric encourages creativity in his employees, expects his agency to truly be a partner, and is willing to experiment with the product to actually LIVE the brand promise, instead of talk about it. I highly recommend watching the webcast of his speech here on the AAAA website.

The Third Eye - Seeing Opportunity
According to Adam Morgan of Eatbigfish, our jobs shouldn't be about finding innovation, they should be about finding opportunity.

Know who invented the Cheeseburger? It wasn't McDonald's... it was JWT. They had Kraft as a client, who wanted to sell more cheese. JWT saw an opportunity to pair the product with the most popular food of the day.

Truly, seeing opportunities is a "mindset", being open to information, how you think not just about communication, but about the business, the category, assets, distribution and more. Sadly, we often only think about these things in the new business phase, but Adam challenges us to really be a partner, and be catalysts for opportunity.

Massive Change, Bruce Mau
The perfect rallying cry for the end of the conference came from Bruce Mau and the Institute Without Boundaries. Massive Change is all about a revolution of possibilities... It's not about crisis, but about optimism.

We design everything around us. Energy economies are designed, information economies, market economies and more. Bruce asserts that we should intentionally use design and technology to solve the problems in our world.

He may have convinced more than one planner to take a different career path.

Stuck in the middle
Overall, the general sessions were hit and miss, and the breakout sessions were good. I didn't attend the conference for the digital content, which is a blessing. Apart from a breakout session from Brandon Geary, the director of planning for Avenue A | Razorfish, interactive was represented by sales executives from Yahoo, Google and Facebook, who offered little insight into how digital is being integrated into the planning process and the agency world at large. I would have liked to see interactive planners from agencies like Goodby or R/GA, rather than "vendors." The planning world, like the agency world at large, still doesn't know what to make of interactive. It's an exciting time, and I feel that excitement, as I'm building an interactive planning group at my agency.

There seemed to be some uncertainty about the future of planning, and certainly a "call to arms" for planners to be more innovative, to examine our roles and re-evaluate our practices. I'll be interested to see the fruits of those labors over the next year.

Sprint Waitless

Sprint has launched a new website at Waitless.org, which offers time saving ideas in the form of "Sprintcuts" videos. There's also a time calculator that lets you figure out how much time over your lifetime you're wasting on any task. Overall, the site is promoting unlimited calling on Sprint that starts at 7pm instead of 9pm. It's a simple idea executed well. The bigger question is... are they doing anything to promote these "Sprintcuts" videos outside of the site? Yes, they are! The videos have been distributed on YouTube as well.

Link via Three Minds @ Organic.

AAAA Conference

I'm in San Diego this week, attending the AAAA planning conference. There looks to be some good sessions on the docket, including some interesting breakaway sessions on integration, and a talk by Ed Cotton from Influx Insights, one of my regular blog reads that you'll find as a familiar reference here.

I'll be posting here about my thoughts on the conference, so stay tuned. And if you happen to be attending, give me a shout!

Toyrama: Great New HP Site

HP has launched a great new site, Toyrama, to promote a new machine they're targeting towards animators. The website provides some interesting tools for users to create their own homemade animation, as well as a contest for animators to submit their own stop motion films. The site was created by Arc Worldwide.

Link via Adverblog.

Simpsons Promo Swiped from Leo Burnett?

According to NPR's "Morning Edition" from yesterday, July 18th, it looks like the clever promotion for the Simpson's Movie may have been "co-opted" from Leo Burnett when they pitched the business.

Listen to Morning Edition's take on the story.

Sad to hear, if it's true, that one of the best promotions I've seen may have been the result of this kind of behavior.

Patron Social Club

So I have to toot the proverbial horn every once and a while... The company I work for, Click Here, the interactive division of The Richards Group, has launched a new website for Patron. This is the second website we've launched for the premium tequila brand, and it's called The Patron Social Club. Over the weekend, Adweek wrote an article about the site, which you can read here.

It's a great community site, and we're excited about its launch. Check out the site by visiting PatronSocialClub.com.

NBC Parodies Itself: Zeroes

A pair of YouTube videos that parody the popular NBC show Heroes have gotten almost a million views on YouTube. The parodies, called "Zeroes", feature normal people with "pointless" abilities... and yes, the videos were created by NBC. Here's the first video:

According to an article in Variety, NBC promo guru Vince Manze admits they created the pair of videos, and admits that these were just the tip of the iceberg:

"The "Zeroes" clip is just one of dozens, if not hundreds, of NBC-created viral videos the network has unleashed over the past year."

Variety also points out the irony of the situation... that NBC sees value in utilizing the video sharing website to increase viewing of their shows, yet they're suing YouTube at the same time?

Link via Adthropology.

Putting on an Integrated Face

Integration has been a hot topic lately, and since I'm in the thick of it every day, I thought I'd weigh in. There have been numerous articles lately that have had both clients and agencies alike asking questions.

One of the recent articles that sparked debate and sent shock-waves through the agency world was written by Suzanne Vranica in March of this year. The article, "On Madison Avenue, a Digital Wake-up Call," was about Nike taking away interactive business away from Wieden + Kennedy because their digital experience wasn't up to snuff.

Since then, a number of agencies have been touting strategic hires they've made to increase their digital expertise. That's great, and I agree that these agencies should have hired "digital czars" a long time ago. It's a step in the right direction, but there's an ugly truth that lies beneath... even with these strategic hires, many advertising agencies are outsourcing their interactive work.

Gooby has been touted in numerous publications as being the best at integration. They've done some notable work, including a recent website launched for the California Milk Processor Board, "Get the Glass." It's an amazing website, one of the best in recent years. But guess what... another digital agency created the site.

That digital agency is North Kingdom, an amazing shop in Sweden. According to a recent Business Week article, Goodby acknowledges that it "collaborates" with a number of these digital agencies, which the article refers to as "production houses." The truth is, these shops are far from "production houses", they're creative agencies in their own right. We can see the primary dilemma in this excerpt from the article:

"We work in a way that is similar to the traditional broadcast paradigm," McGinness says. "We concept and design in-house and then work closely with the appropriate company to bring the work to life."

Given that these companies are so "creative" in themselves, do you still need creatives in the agency? Couldn't you just farm out briefs to the likes of Barbarian? "We control the brand DNA. The brand tonality and voice all needs to come from one place. That includes how we conceptually speak to our consumer," argues McGinness. "If we outsourced the way we speak to our consumers, then we would be irrelevant."

Doesn't Goodby realize that clients want an agency that can "bring the work to life" in-house? And aren't agencies such as Gooby selling themselves under that guise? I have a hard time believing that the perfect model of integration is creative ideas being farmed out to digital "production houses."

I feel fortunate to be working at an agency that's living integration every day. We didn't wait until 2007 to appoint a digital czar. Our interactive group was created by The Richards Group in 1995, and we've been "bringing the work to life" within our own walls for 12 years.

Update: Make sure to check out the comments on this post, as it's generated some great responses. Thanks to Hashem from Goodby for being one of the first!

Cannes Videos From Arnold

Some folks from Arnold Worldwide are publishing daily videos from the festival in Cannes. You can check out all the videos at the Arnold website here. In addition, you can subscribe to them on YouTube here.

I've posted the first two days of video below. Check them out!

Link via Adrants.

FOOA: The Future of Online Advertising Is...

I'm back in Dallas from New York, with a full report on the Future of Online Advertising conference in New York. Overall, the event was great, with some good speakers, and great folks attending. Rather than giving a play-by-play of the conference, I thought that I would provide some of the overall themes and challenges facing the future of online advertising that were brought up at the conference:

1.) The Future is Direct
Online advertising already has the reputation of being a "direct marketing" medium. Unlike offline ads, they can be held accountable for performance due to tracking. This perception isn't softening. Rather, advances in technology are forcing online ads to be even more accountable as advertisers look to use this trackability to personalize the online ad experience and reduce wasted spending. Sure, this is also having an impact on offline advertising, with advertisers demanding more accountability in offline media, but advertisers are still devoting far more dollars to offline. This perception of online advertising as a "direct" medium has always left a bad taste in my mouth. Simply put, ROI isn't the only measurement we should be looking at. Online can be a powerful media for awareness and branding as well.

2.) Media Planners... Get Ready
Simply put, the online advertising marketplace isn't just becoming more accountable, it's becoming fractured. Online media planners now have to deal with an almost unfathomable number of online outlets for advertisers, with new online channels being added every minute of every day. While this is certainly a challenge, it's also an opportunity. Media planners that can stay on top of these emerging channels, and create truly versatile campaigns will become invaluable resources.

3.) Online Video's Infancy
Wow... where to even begin. Online video has exploded over the last year, and presents its own unique set of challenges. One of the major topics of conversation at the conference was what type of ad formats fit this new medium the best. Many people talked about the ineffectiveness of pre-roll and re-purposing 30-second spots, but what's the right way? Simply put... no one knows. There were calls for standardization, but how can standards be established when what's effective is still being determined. What's clear is that experimentation is happening, and happening quickly. Lightning fast, in fact, and picking up speed.

4.) The Future of Measurement
"Effectiveness" is becoming a cryptic phrase in online advertising, and many speakers addressed the need for new ways of measuring campaign performance. Measurements such as click-through rates and standard branding metrics are no longer sufficient. As websites become more about "experiences" and media becomes more viral, how are we to measure things like "engagement" or "influence?"

5.) A Little Guts Go a Long Way
Finally, I think one of the biggest lessons from the conference is that advertisers need to have more guts. Wired magazine VP Drew Schutte talked about this very topic. Why is it important for advertisers to have guts? Because consumers do. Without guts, agencies and advertisers will always be months, maybe even years behind consumers.

You can find more information in the live coverage section of the Future of Online Advertising conference website. In addition, it appears that they were shooting videos, which I assume will be made available, and we got word that presentations will be made available in the near future.

I wanted to say thanks to Ryan Carson from Carson Systems, who put on the conference. They provided myself and several of you free passes to the event.

Great Cat Ads

It's been a long weekend, and after pouring through volumes of email, you deserve a break. Therefore, I bring you the greatest cat commercials ever made.

American Express Does Social Media Right

American Express has launched an interesting foray into social media with the launch of the Members Project. It's an impressive idea... card members register on the site, with the ability to submit an idea for a social project, such as rebuilding a school in New Orleans. The ideas are voted on by members of the site, and for each member that joins, American Express kicks in money (up to $5 million), with the winning idea getting funded!

Kudos to American Express for doing something that's actually engaging, and paints the brand in a positive light. Unlike most advertisers, they actually are putting some real money behind the effort, in a way that makes sense, and certainly provides some incentive to participate.

Link via B.L. Ochman.

Video and eCommerce: eBay

Advertising Age has a great article that got me very excited about the prospect of using video on ecommerce sites. It seems that eBay sellers have been trying to incorporate video into their listings, but eBay won't let them embed videos from YouTube or MySpace. So eBay is embarking on a quest to provide users with the ability to post videos in a more controlled manner. Read the full article here.

Pay attention to this one, folks. How long before a big online retailer has videos of all the merchandise? It's not that far of a stretch. Digital video is becoming cheaper, and some retailers certainly would rather demonstrate their product, rather than just show some still shots or spin a 3D model around.

We Don't Need No Stinking Plug-ins

ABC has launched a new version of their