Angela Natividad is online.
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Thinker by nature, wordsmith by trade.
Strategist + writer looking for the holistic in technology and the profound in advertising. Cali*-born, Paris-based. Fluent in English, French, Mac + PC.
Creator of life on the weekends, but strictly single-celled. (Nobody likes a mutiny.)
You may email if you like.
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*It's possible that I am too old to say things like this. No one has stopped me yet.
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Posts
Sears: Repositioning your dad.
Sears has spent the last decade and a half disappointing us with desperate attempts to mingle with the cool kids (1, 2, 3) and rediscover a focus, a reason for existing. This ad hits closer to the mark than any single execution has in a long time.
Because when I think of Sears, I think of the rare times I spent at the mall with my dad. Instead of wandering a soul-killing labyrinth of clothes, we lost ourselves in the tool section — he checking out the biggest new toolbox (wince), me playing with a wide array of “grown-up toys”: giant tape measures, exercise equipment, an electric saw that was thankfully not plugged in.
Those were happy moments, and I could tell my dad — and other dads — would hibernate there all winter if they could. But at some point they stopped going. (Probably around the time “The Softer Side of Sears” came out.)
Those are the people Sears needs to remember: the ones with projects, the makers, keeping nests well-equipped and running smoothly. Power tools? Yes. Exercise equipment? Why not. Flannel shirts? DON’T NEED TO ASK TWICE. These people invest in their lawns and spend a lot of time trying to convert empty garage space into Ultimate Man Caves. And they always need a bigger toolbox.
These are the guys that loved themselves some Sears, that saw its logo and imagined a Craftsman paradise unrolling in front of them. They’re my dad, and my good friend who likes making cheaper versions of really expensive furniture.
This ad indicates that maybe Sears remembers. The timing is right, because mens’ roles in the home are more complex than ever: they might spend less time at the barbeque and more time in the kitchen (my boyfriend loves cookware!), trying to nail that soufflé. They may be pondering how to build the biggest, safest, coolest playroom ever. Or maybe there’s a zen garden in the works, waiting to be cultivated.
They need a brand that speaks directly to them and reinforces the agency they feel when they want to make something with their hands. Sears? You’re a shoo-in for that. Leave prom dresses, lingerie and all that other stuff to the rest of the mall. People already have places they’d rather go for tulle … and it isn’t side-by-side with the gardening paraphernalia.
Also: Man of Steel collabo? Good choice.
- the moon is not made of cheese
Apparently, it’s more like a lime. This Corona billboard in NYC captured a lime-sized sliver of the moon at just the right moment to appear in their virtual bottle.
While it’s unlikely that many people would happen to spy the billboard from just the right location at just the right time - this is an awesome example of using traditional media to create content that can continue to be shared long after the billboard has been removed.
The hashtag that saves your shows.
To get people watching more Sky hdTV, the network partnered with AgenciaClick Isobar to create a Twitter hashtag that remotely records shows for you back home.
How it works: Sky TV will tweet programme highlights in real-time. If you catch some savoury tweetage that makes you want to watch the ep, Tweet hashtag #SkyRec and Sky will automatically record it for you.
Great value add for users, with a solid incentive to tweet (and thus promote) the service.
Seal it with a kiss … without ever touching paper.
You can kiss your microbey phone instead. But since we’re sure you guys are all super-clean people who Windex your phones nightly (and don’t take them to the bathroom), we’re gonna go ahead and say Kisses.Burberry.com is a cute idea.
So much has been lost in the transition from analog to digital … like real, handwritten love letters, sealed with kisses. In collabo with Google, Burberry improves on this olde tradition thus:
- Letters: instant! But with nice paperlike stationery for extra cutesauce.
- The imprint of your kiss and video of the kiss being made, which lends the impression that you’re kind of being kissed.
- Since this is INTERNET and touch-based, men can leave kisses too — without having to panic over choosing the right shade of rouge.
Charming work that flaunts Burberry’s soft side and nicely markets brand opportunities with Google. Just too bad they missed V-day.
Love him back … with the right brand of dog food.
If you ever shared your life with a pet, you’ll probably enjoy Cesar’s latest ad. It’s simple work that illuminates two lives, and the emotional layer that binds them, without overreaching.
What do we want people to feel?
Here’s the design philosophy video, “Intention”, that introduced Apple’s Monday keynote. However you may feel about its new design direction, we think you’ll find inspiration in “Intention”, which is calmly-paced and almost hypnotic in the interplay of language and visuals. There’s art here.
PV Nova’s Evolution of Get Lucky
A catchy hit today would’ve been a totally different catchy hit a decade ago. PV Nova walks us through how “Get Lucky” would have sounded from the 1920s onward.
- twisted throat?
These new product wrappers for Ricola make getting a sore throat more fun than ever. Just unlock the victim’s throat, and then soothe your own.
Don’t Drink + Drive, + for Chrissakes Never EVER Use a Public Mirror While Alone
…because you never know if you’re about to walk into a traumatising ad-driven horrorbox. Leo Burnett’s #PubLooShocker for THINK! is doing the rounds for good reason; my heart’s still palpitating in my throat. Don’t wanna give more away than that; let’s just say Leo Burnett could make a killing producing content for your kid’s drivers ed class.
Via.
- Banksy says: trademarks are yours
This piece by Banksy proposes that outdoor ads aren’t too different than street art, and perhaps should be treated as such. “They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs.”
Beautiful.
Finally, a piano that won’t annoy your neighbors.
While NYC has a program that puts pianos on the streets for everyone to enjoy, Yamaha tackles the exact opposite problem: how do you practice your piano at 2am without waking everyone else in the house?
The new Silent Piano makes magic in your headphones. Or, if you’re like classical pianist HG Lim, you can play your piano on the commute to the office.
Tiny Desk gets OK Go to help it move.
Tiny Desk, an NPR segment that hosts little in-office concerts (which we love), recently relocated. To push the news in a way people would remember, it got OK Go to move with them … all while singing “All Is Not Lost”. The result? A video worthy of your Facebook wall.
Total takes: 223. Total number of times OK Go had to sing that song: hundreds, apparently.
This is A+ branded content production: it’s good standalone entertainment, the collabo feels natural and fitting, the message (the move) is clearly conveyed, and Tiny Desk’s persona shines through brilliantly and unmistakably. Just another reason to love NPR … and OK Go.
The Red Wedding — in Photo Booth pictures!
Every time you feel reach for the milk, relive the climactic ending from last week’s Game of Thrones with a set of photo booth pictures that captured everyone’s magic day.
Teddy Has An Operation
Ze Frank provides us with today’s creative inspiration and weirdly touching entertainment. Think of Teddy while constructing your next story. Is your brand kidney full of gangrenous crayons? Okay, we’re stretching the metaphor. Just watch it because it’s creepy and delightful.
You’ll never see the same nap twice.
Because that’s all the animals ever seem to be doing when we’re at the zoo. Still, this lovely production for Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo by agency Wong, Doody, Crandall, Wiener and production company Crush almost makes us want to pay another visit. Just in case.The spot depicts the animals storybook-style, fanning out of natural patterns like a living surprise. Deliciously tactile work. Also, aren’t sloth bear cubs neat? They’re like the animal kingdom’s version of The Dude.
- Laid Off from the Sun Times: a story in iPhone photos
If there’s a poster child for the Chicago Sun Times’ decision to fire its photographers in favour of reporters with iPhones, it’s Rob Hart.
The fired photog’s launched Tumblr blog Laid Off from the Sun Times, where he’ll use his photojournalist’s eye to document his new life … using an iPhone.
We’re not really sure what the story is he’s trying to tell. But like Rob, we’re willing to figure it out as we go.
Clarity: For a shoulder to cry on (and support for your lumbar)
Facebook claimed to be one and Clint Eastwood lambasted one, but there’s something we’ve lacked in this (painfully slow) unfolding saga: the chair’s perspective.
Until today.
Here’s the story of Clarity, a real chair. A chair for all chairs. Witness his strength, his ambition, his artistic eye, his catlike reflexes and sensitivity, his desire to lend comfort to the most aching of bottoms, backs and lumbars. Not since The Giving Tree have we known an inanimate friend to be so loyal, so surrendering of itself. But unlike that kind and wise tree, you can actually buy Clarity for yourself. Go ahead. He deserves it.
…and if he actually ends up laying eggs jam-packed with furry friends, please share pics.
Nice storytelling (and nice pitch!) for the most neglected (and yet most important) of office musts, by Crown Chimp and director Nickolas Duarte.
Your Dream ‘Location’ Wedding … on Google+ Hangouts
Prior to May 30, same-sex marriage was illegal in France … but not in neighbouring Belgium (where Gerard Depardieu most notably ran off to hide his money from the new government). The early-adopter solution? Google+ Hangouts, where French same-sex couples could be digitally hitched in advance by a Belgian officiator.
Is call-in marriage as exciting as running off to Tahiti, or taking revolutionary vows in front of the weirdly-hot Gavin Newsom? Probably not … but it gets the job done, and nobody you invite could possibly come up with an excuse not to make it. (Probably dampens the afterparty, though.)
People get sensitive about whether politics is fair game in marketing (consider how many brands jumped into the marriage equality fray Stateside). The safest view is probably the simplest: if you’re a brand who wants to help out or show your stripes, you might get hate today … but it never hurts in the long-term to be on the right side of history. (Unless you pull a Kenneth Cole.) It isn’t always clear what the right side is — but in cases like this one, I don’t think you need to flip a coin.
When executed tastefully and well, political marketing signals cultural awareness and brand values, even if it’s easy to point to as pandering. (Who’s not pandering? Half my emails probably count as passive aggressive panders.)
Anyway, nobody hates on Virgin Mobile for jumping on every sex scandal it can find. So why not jump on a topic that actually matters?
Good thinking, Ogilvy Paris!
Perspective: Life in your 20s vs 30s
This video is slightly funner (i.e. less work?) than scrolling down an overlong blog post loaded with GIFs, plus it makes us feel better about surrendering what too many people we secretly dislike call “THE BEST DECADE OF MY LIFE!”
We also hasten to add that the brain’s frontal lobe isn’t fully formed until the mid-20s, which probably contributes to the “quarter-life crisis” (the most bullshit crisis in existence) and that sense of invincibility. Just another reason to hurry into the 30s, where naps … are paradise.
- Promaxbda Europe: For LEGO, Social is a Long Game Global social media director Lars Silberbauer of LEGO talked engagingly about the one non-tech brand we all love to fawn over. Quotables below. On social: “It’s not simple, it’s not black and white when you work in social media. It’s a lot of challenges with actually navigating, and chaos, and driving a business strategy that is consumer-focused in an area where you are dealing with millions of people and billions of relationships, emotions, and conversations that you have to handle at the same time.” On LEGO’s social strategy: “We are focusing on the consumer and on their social needs. We try to connect the brand with a consumer’s need for peer recognition, or for building stuff with others, then we build the social media engagement on top of that.” That engagement must then be connected to the overall business strategy (sales, more efficient marketing, brand affinity, protecting the brand and mitigating risks). Misperceptions of social: “You shouldn’t go into social media if you want to have a huge return on marketing spend on just one seed campaign. You’re creating a relationship. That’s a long-term thing. “If you are willing to … create relationships, then at some point you will also mess up, and hopefully you’ll have built up the trust and credibility so consumers will stay with you. They will teach you what you did wrong, and then you have to be very humble on the task of maintaining and nurturing that relationship.” He also describes what, to him, is so captivating about the LEGO brand. You’ll be able to catch that toward the end. Listen here!
(No streaming audio available)57 plays - Promaxbda Europe: HBO Europe’s Gabor Varga on Linear Channels + Quality Content Like TV? Of course you do. I think most of us will agree that HBO’s another league of television, though. Head of Creative Services Gabor Varga of HBO Europe spoke with us this week about HBO’s newly-launched European outpost and what differentiates it from the US. (A hint: it’s not the DNA.) He also talked about HBO Go, its importance to their long-term strategy, and why Europe is aggressively focused on local original productions. Listen!
(No streaming audio available)60 plays - Promaxbda Europe: Anthony Rose on Steve Jobs, Big Bananas, + Who NOT to Target When people talk “social TV”, the first brand that often comes to mind is zeebox, for which Anthony Rose acts as cofounder at CTO. We spoke Monday after his talk at Promaxbda Europe. Forgive the sound quality; another discussion was happening behind us. A few quotables: People often conflate second-screen and social. Some people want social, but others may just want an easier way to find their shows. Often, “people are looking for things a lot simpler” than what we think. On who NOT to target: “You think about ‘an audience’, and the reality is they’re very different audiences … you should know who to target and who not to target.” Zeebox identified 10 different types of audience members, each of whom has a different behavior and expectation surrounding their entertainment experiences. “Gadgeteers” don’t get why people watch Kim Kardashian or tweet around shows; they just care about gadgets. “TV mavens” want to find the next season of their favorite show and are perhaps not interested in “social bits”. “Social watchers” want to talk about shows with show fans, not necessarily their friends; while “pop idols” watch big shows (X Factor, American Idol) to discuss them with friends, not random people. “It’s actually amazingly important to try and create propositions that might be a little different from show to show rather than making something that’s the same for everybody,” Anthony observes. On not letting your own genius run away with you: “As a technologist, and someone who is in some sense tasked with delivering a future, you often get a bit too caught up in your own worldview. There’s always the reality check of a real-world audience.” We live in a bubble, Anthony clarifies: will Middle America get your complicated UI? “There’s nothing like giving your app to a couple of users and them going ‘I don’t know what this does’,” he quipped. Where’s the banana? This is my favourite part of the interview (it starts at 6:35 if you want to jump ahead. I’d asked Anthony if he had a story that informs zeebox’s trajectory, sort of like Steve Jobs’ “calligraphy classes” mythology. After some reflection, Rose talked about “Where’s the banana?”. “Where’s the banana” refers to how scientists will try to get monkeys to do something specific, then, when successful, conclude that the monkeys are using all kinds of complex reasoning. But really, the monkeys are focused on the reward they get at the end of the exercise: they are looking for the banana. “People don’t really focus on the things in the UI. The first thing that jumps to mind is the thing they’ll click on: the biggest, brightest thing,” Anthony said. “When people visit your website, you should think of it as ‘where’s the banana?’ What they’re looking for is a reward for doing something. If you give them 17 things of equal prominence [on a page], and they’re forced to think, it’s a fail. So what I like to do is on every page there should be one big thing. And if you can’t figure out what to do, push the big thing — and it shouldn’t be the close button — and that is the banana.” Each zeebox page is a demonstration of this philosophy: one major action should always jump out at you. Off-air, we also talked more about how brands can better integrate with zeebox. The company’s currently working with NBC and Viacom to produce some next-generation branded entertainment for the platform — according to Anthony, “there are things you can do on the 2nd screen that you just can’t do on the first.” They also plan to incorporate brand shout-outs and social shopping opportunities; integration with AmEx to make the social shopping experience easier, for example, is something they’re prioritising. Keep your eyes out for that. Appetite whetted? Listeny-listeny! Photo credit: Jennifer Roper.
(No streaming audio available)71 plays - Promaxbda Europe: James Walker on Disability, Creativity + Digital Yesterday at Promaxbda Europe, Channel 4 Head of Marketing James Walker talked to us about taking the Olympics digital, building awareness for the Paralympics, changing perspectives about disabilities … and what a difference an in-house creative team can make. Listeny-listeny! Photo credit: Jennifer Roper.
(No streaming audio available)64 plays
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Posts
- Feb 04, 13
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It’s the End of Days Year-End special! Which means A) We just now put out a show recorded weeks ago and B) we cover everything BUT the End of Days. That you’re reading this now only proves you can’t trust a Mayan. OR SO WE HEAR.
Pick a topic and it’s in this jam-packed episode: Starbucks and talking mermaids, our top five no holds barred/one-nite stand picks, iterative Lincoln films and filmage en général. It’s 2013 – you know what to do. LISTEN YOU SOME! - Feb 04, 13
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We cover NT1’s zombie guerrilla campaign, candy corn Oreos, book vandalism and why Bill is sick of zombies and vampires. In keeping with Halloween, there’s also a horror films tangent — appropriately kicked off by Angela’s recent decision to watch Cabin in the Woods. (Epic.)Linky loos:- Zombies attack Twitter users for NT1 and Walking DeadHappy zombieween, kiddies.
- OPI’s horse-off
- Bill is obsessed with this political ad because he hates it.
- Candy Corn Oreos! Angela loves these. Have you some.
- Bill is this, Angela is this. Good times!
Disclosure: since her blog post on the Walking Dead operation, social TV agency Darewin’s asked Angela to help spread word about the campaign internationally. She said yes because she thinks Darewin’s work is cool and merits more exposure. Just a heads-up! - Sep 25, 12
Mitt Romney's spirit animal.
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Your hosts with the most are back in a fresh and fruity new AdVerve. Angela attempts to impose new organization onto the show, and all goes horribly wrong as things derail and we drift into wild, weedy territory: themed weddings, connectomes and Einstein, tattoos, and — this was Bill's fault — the prospective superpets of Superheroes™. (We’ll let you guess who got stuck with the koi pond.) Recent ads, pop culture flubs and some good movies make it in there too.
Onto the good stuff:- The Brain Preservation Bill of Rights
- Gangnam Style wedding
- The new iPhone 5 ads
- Dominic Wilcox's snappy GPS-powered "There's No Place Like Home" shoes
- Oreo on Talk Like a Pirate Day
- Obama doing swashbuckling foreign policy
- Lucille and Mitt.
- Moonwalking With Einstein.
- Sep 25, 12
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The Colorado theatre shooting, and mayhem in general, take center stage in this episode, along with more subtle forms of slaughter: Jim Henson’s moral cutting of the Chick-Fil-A cord, followed by the latter’s distortion of Jim Henson’s kids meal toys (photo above); NOAA’s mermaid debunking; Bill’s refusal to entertain speculations of android humanity; and Angela’s failure to make the Proust questionnaire stick past one question.
As always, we rehash films, make jokes we’ll be sorry about later, and take the twisty conversational turns you love to scream at alone in the car. All here, all yours, in AdVerve Podcast #87! Download that ear candy, kiddies, it’s good for you. - Jul 04, 12
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We mighta outta shoulda called it The Rant After Cannes! It’s your extra spicy, extra ranty edition. SO ALL PAY HEED. We work in tech conference d-bags, the world of Cannes beaches (and oh yeah, agency who repped there), social startups vs. agencies, and enough discussion around local colloquial to make ya sick.
(Previous episodes.) (Image.) - Jul 04, 12
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You’ve waited long enough for the magic. WE’VE BEEN BUSY. For episode #85, guest, loyal listener and content manager Hal Thomas (@halthomas) joins us for a show that kicks off with vampires, detours through Pink Floyd and Pinterest’s new TOS, then finishes with whether Apple’s gonna do for TV what it did for mobile.
Links:
- This is Why The Internet Was Created - Hal et al’s pet project on Tumblr.
- Breathe & On the Run by Pink Floyd, and their Classic Album.
- Hal was a zombie.
- Pinterest’s Etiquette page
(Previous episodes.) - Mar 05, 12
But will it print you a dream...?
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Get your rage rant about social media lunacy, whether there's a point to Pinterest and Bill's latest discovery: Chill.com. We take on pirates and breach Kevin Smith's reality TV series Comic Book Men and Angela talks about the Pirate Bay's new project: 3D Printing! Never buy a pair of Air Jordans again, not when you can make your own and fill that shit in with a Sharpie.
Buffy wiggles into the conversation for a sense of the familiar, intermingled with a delightful tangent in social service wordplay, and we finish off heavy with the ethics of piracy. LISTEN YOU SOME.
Linkypies:
- Kevin Smith's reality TV show, Comic Book Men.
- Penn Jillette on media and silos. Quotable: "If they're not communicating with people, what the fuck are they doing?" Priceless.
- Kevin Smith's Smodcast.
- GSD&M's #SXSurvival page.
- The Makerbot store.
- The Pirate Bay declares 3D printed “physibles” as the next frontier of piracy.
- Neil Young on piracy.
- Photo credit: "3D Printer Makes Edible Food", CNN Money. - Jan 25, 12Gus gets Joe Sabia!Play the show now. Subscribe in iTunes.
(Previous episodes.)
This AdVerve 'cast has been waiting so long to get out that we were cup-runneth-over with catch-up riffs! We tear the crap out of bad community management cases and people who interrupt your well-paid public diversion with their cell phones. (Who still uses ringtones?)
There's also mad catch-up on movies we watched between shows. Angela finally saw Biutiful, and Bill reveals which Spanish director he prefers. (It's not Almodovar, bitches.) Also, because you liked it so much the first time, we do another profiles segment! Like shootin' fish in a barrel, you say? We got a fish profile for you. There’s also some crazy scrapbookers and at least one vampire TRUCK DRIVER (all caps).
Linktastic-shmastics:
- Boner BBQ client burn. (Article's in French but the screenies are in English.) Read her Yelp review here.
- Jay-Z and Beyoncé want to explore the final frontier. Also, read about the overview effect.
- The call that stopped the New York Philharmonic. (And another virtuoso eff-you.)
- Alamo Drafthouse angry voicemail.
- 3D Printer for chocolate cupcakes! ...and concrete.
- Giancarlo Esposito talks to Breaking Bad fans on Reddit.
- Gay parents - the best parents?
- Making way for more width on transit.
- Girl transforms herself into Drake. (And transforms Drake into her in our minds forever after.) - Dec 06, 11
We hit all the bases this week, folks -- from Twilight duvet covers to wince-worthy holiday ads to Occupy Wall Street. WE EVEN COVER TWITTER PROFILE TERRORISM! Kicking off with a quick 3 for 3, we roll into the holidays and wrap up with a long and glorious rant about bad Twitter profiles (examples included!). Sorry if you were one. (Not really. We still like you, just take a few exclamation points out of your elevator pitch.)
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(Image.)
- Nov 15, 11
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Primal fears will always make great movies, and we hit all the points this ep: our favorite horror flicks and why, the best villains, and an opening tribute to the best villain-slash-hero of them all: Steve Jobs. All that angry action, coupled with Halloween ads, reflections on the ethics of stealing, the mindset of startups, race in costume, and when the world will be ready for an evil unicorn movie.
(Also, whatever happened to movies about sea monsters?)
Our movies of choice:
- The Exorcist
- The Shining
- Silence of the Lambs
- The Rocky Horror Picture Show
- The Nightmare Before Christmas
- The Countess
- I Am Legend
- Juon (English version: The Grudge)
- Paranormal Activity
- The Saw series
- The Friday the 13th series
- 30 Days of Night
- The Lovely Bones
- The Hunger
- The Addiction
Linkaphoria:
- The Method Method
- Apple iPadfomercial
- Joshua Hoffine's horror photography
- Bill's Instagrid
- Angela's Instagrid
- Halloween ads: Axe and Agent Provocateur - Sep 13, 11
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First, an announcement. LADIES AND GENTS, WE GIVE YOU ADVERVEBLOG.COM, a labour of love that incorporates the magic of Make the Logo Bigger, Live & Uncensored and Darryl Ohrt's Brandflakes for Breakfast. (Some math: Bill + Angela + Darryl = BAD. THAT'S DESTINY!)
Here's our launch article. Follow with great enthusiasm and mass. Also, expect more Darryl action on future podcasts.
This episode kicks off on a battle of the films, then drifts fast and loose into TV show territory. Breaking Bad plays a starring role and Angela demonstrates once again that she can work a Buffy reference into any conversation -- in this case, Bill's reflection on the heroization of white male criminals. (Jack the Ripper wiggles his way in somehow, too. Who do you think he was, by the way? This guy or this guy?)
Movies we're dying (not literally though) to see? Red State and This Must Be the Place. WATCH THAT SHIT!
You also find out what stars get us going and -- and! -- what our superpowers are. It's a show-stopper like no other.
Linksophrenia:
- Kevin Smith protests the protesters at his "Red State" Sundance - not mentioned on the show, still worth watching though
- The hyper-awesome OK Cupid blog
- Jetpacks' awesome AdVerve Blog post. Credit also goes to him for our Supergroup comic up top
- Caustic Soda's Jack the Ripper episode
- Dior's new Charlize Theron ad - Aug 29, 11
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Wait, that’s the end of the world, innit. WELL IT’S NOT. We have more AdVervial goodness for you people and that other stuff will just have to wait. Pick a topic because like a pot luck from hell, it’s in here. Movies to watch, commercials to avoid, and politicians to vote for. But wait, there’s more: Other podcasts of note and blog projects to read. Angela dishes on why Egypt is a swell place to visit and why the liraiswas an even sweller currency. But we digress. Which is why you listen.
The Linkage You Need:
- Vintage Palmolive ad: "Most man ask 'is she pretty?', not 'Is she clever?'"
- Mohr Stories
- This Week With Larry Miller
- Big Lebowski
- Sarah Palin’s Grizzly spot
- The 3six5 Project
- The 3six5 Project, Chicago edition
(Image.) - Aug 14, 11
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We breach hot social music solutions: Spotify, GrooveShark, Songify. Then it's a hard turn into licensing and piracy, dipping into the Netflix price hike, the true cost of content (if any) and Kevin Smith's latest (and last) directorial oeuvre (no more Chasing Amy for you). Angela squeezes in helpful facts about advertising to monkeys (sex and celebrity still sell) and lets loose on the unique qualities of ants. Bill wiggles in a vivid reflection on Tarantino and his Inglourious Basterds catharsis. It's an AdVerve ride like no other! Did we mention the hot eyepatch talk?
(Also, don't forget to ping Angela and force her to watch Big Lebowski.)
Link derbyshake:
- “When Advertising to Monkeys, Sex May Sell, Too”
- @WeArePrimates
- Empire of the Ants by Bernard Werber (READ THIS SHIT)
- Kevin Smith and Wayne Gretsky
- Kevin Smith and Prince - Jul 11, 11
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Not just because it’s episode 76, but we were supposed to record over the Great American holiday that was the Fourth. Instead, work took over and we’re actually closer to celebrating Bastille Day as co-host Angela prepares to kick it live and uncensored, French style. So what’s new in this one? We actually cover a Wrap Of Cannes and her trip there on behalf of Yahoo! But wait, there’s more: Official French grammar watchdogs - yes they have them - why The Dude wears a bathrobe and why no guy outside of a Big LeBowski convention ever should. You will not believe the places we go. Or maybe you will. Listen you some.
Linky-loompas:
- Paris Syndrome strikes Japanese
- Yahoo Scene's Cannes Coverage
(Image.) - Jul 04, 11
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Aka, another ‘cation’ episode, aka, wherein your two cohorts in ad podcast deviancywaxrant poetic about social media hacks and posers, among other things. It’s been a few shows since we went off on those deserving of our... going off, so why not social freaks? What, you were expecting a cake for our 75th episode? Maybe next time.
(Image.) - Jun 05, 11
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Aka, that big, juicy badge in the sky. It was one mic/two guys as Bill took a roadtrip to Savannah to join one of his co-strategists in crime at BFG. The Frenchman Known As Cyril Guichard (@luxregina) went live and uncensored as we kicked back for a high-rolling adventure on the topic of gameification.* It’s probably a word you're sick of, but he takes us deep into the philosophy of gaming, and why sites that "gameify" – like Foursquare – aren't games, per se (but will need to be).
Want more? We also find a way to pose that age-old question: can social media sites like Twitter really be used to construct the governments of tomorrow? Learn all the nuanced answers to this riddle, and others, this week. WE EVEN TALK 3D. Of course we also take our trademark™ left into fun areas like politics and discuss how Gen My dealt with the end of Osama, if at all.
(Also, learn why you're becoming a symbiant.)
Linkfegnugen:
- Heineken Star Player
- Cyril's blog on Luxgames.net
*Gamification or Gameification. Spell it any way you want, we don’t judge.
(Image.) - May 30, 11Play the show now.
Alongside special guest Ken Wheaton (@kenwheaton), we cover stuff from book publishing and promoting, to the rise and further decline of American airline service, to whether advertising will protect us from the maniacal ambitions of Donald Trump. (Angela tries broaching the topic of The Royal Wedding, but ultimately fails to make it stick.)
There's also a smidge more Southern Comfort for those of you riding Bill’s ongoing fascination with his new homeland.
Linksomania:
- Ken Wheaton’s blog
- Ken's Book, The First Annual Grand Prairie Rabbit Festival - get it before Amazon runs out!
- Advertising May Be the Thing that Saves Us from Donald Trump
- TINY MINY MINUTE SUITES
(Image.) - May 20, 11To distract you, we give you electro.
It's been a few weeks since we've published a 'cast, and no, it's not because we've decided to screw all of you and call it quits. The honest-to-goodness goes something like this:- Managing the six-hour time difference thing is tough, especially now that your two hosts with the mosts have full-time agency jobs. When Bill finally leaves work, Angela's like, oh hell no, I am not conscious.
- Bill's family has just moved in! Yay! That means big transitions.
- Did we mention our jobs? Wow, agencies just eat you. They just eat all of you.
We love you guys, and we'll be back on air soon. Promise. For the time being, chill out and listen to Swingset Committee. - Apr 24, 11
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Michael McSunas (@adlawguy) of law firm CBS – the guy we'll call if things go awry – joins us to give perspective from the legal point of view. We cover everything from incest gameshows (they exist! ...don’t they?) to legal precedent in cases involving both source protection and blogger disclosure. Sprinkled in is an uncomfortable discourse about death and whether your online "assets" count as property; if so, who do they go to?
For those following Bill's southern evolution, Mike tosses in a swashbuckling funeral tale. And in case you were wondering how any of this comes together, Angela manages to string it all along with everything she learned at MIPTV, that scary place in Cannes where TV networks sell each other what they'll be selling you, all year long. (And if you're in Japan, yes, you may just get an incest game show.) It’s techno mind tricks & legalese and it’s not for the faint of heart.
Linksopolis:
- Official trailer for Tiffany Shlain's "Connected: An Autoblogography about Life, Death and Technology." Her keynote talk here.
- Piracy: a path to innovation? Matt Mason's full 30-minute talk at MIPTV.
- Cmp.ly: the new short-linky way of disclosing.
- Baroness Greenfield talks about how the brain is changing as a function of technology use. - Apr 11, 11*
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Where we get AT&T’s Director of Social Media Chris Baccus to join us for among other things, gas station taco talk, organic food, and why Detroit does deserve a second chance. So yeah, pretty much what you’d expect from a guy who works for a telecom. It is nothing short of pure aural delight the likes of which you haven’t heard... since the last episode. Yes, we even get him to work in an f-bomb and as we also discuss the general online disdain for mobile carriers.
Linkage:
- Chris on Twitter
- His Auto Marketing blog.
- Him on Dallas Food Nerd.
- The brilliantly named GAS STATION TACOS.
- Barfblog.com
*OF COURSE ADVERVE & CHRIS DO NOT SUPPORT DRIVING AND TALKING ON CELL PHONE TOUCHTRONIC DEVICES.
(Image.) - Mar 28, 11
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We run a solid flowing gamut from customer service on Twitter to what travel's lost post-9/11. We throw back to Vinny Warren a little, ruminate on the pros and cons of unexpected fame (is it ever unexpected?), and where the New York Times went horribly, horribly wrong with its payment wall.
Angela also rants heavy on the merits of Monocle, the little print publication that could - and could so, so good.
Linksomania:
- Edward Boches buys a shirt on Twitter
- @NordstromDave
- How Sharpie uses social media
- Monocle (read this shit!)
- Werner NCAA ladder fun
- BusinessWeek's profile on Monocle founder Tyler Brûlé
- Beer for textbooks
- AdVerve episode featuring Vinny Warren, the man behind the Wheat Thins
- @Chrismacho
- Bandwagon likeness
- Sheex - the bedsheets for the active bedtime man - Mar 21, 11
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We hit you with some old-school 5 for 5, running the gamut from natural disasters to sports marketing. Bill also wilds out on pet rights, and the whole thing basically devolves into a rumination on horror cinema. Vampires and zombies manifest heavily as usual, but no opportunities for a Twilight or Buffy joke are taken. (This means we’re maturing.)
Hell, there's even a little tangent on hot music streaming sites! We hope we lead you to something magic for your ears.
Super Linkamaroo:
- Supermoon (& on Flickr)
- Samsung Galaxy microchip art
- Grooveshark
- Soundcloud
- Hypemachine
- Daytrotter
- The Hood Internet
- Mad Decent
- Some Kind of Awesome
- Said The Gramophone
- RCRD LBL
- Super Mario live action
- FPS Mario
- “Undeveloped”
- DDB Blog featuring Angela's singularity manifesto
- BFG Comm Blog
- Bandwagon - Mar 14, 11
Play the show now.
It’s located somewhere between Utopia and SxSW. What are we on about this week? Things like... how pop culture is subtly changing as a result of technology, and even how changing technology has affected not only cartoon culture, but advertising and what we're being taught about human behaviour in entertainment. Take the animational revolution known as Pixar, which changed children's entertainment with Toy Story and as a result, entertainment itself. Cartoon life is now more intelligent than it ever was with complex values Buzz light years of your dad’s Acme anvil. The Incredibles, Megamind, Despicable Me and Up are cartoons that tell you that being a hero or villain means being fallible.
Of course at the other end of that spectrum, we also talk Jersey Shore.
Linkage:
- Chrysler tweet.
- FedEx tweet.
- Always remember: Cross at the green, and Aladdin before Toy Story.
- Speaking of: The Pixar Story doc.
- Sapient Nitro vending.
(Pic.) - Mar 09, 11
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Did we go off on a thematically classic – for us anyway – stream of consciousness sojourn? Bet. Our love for Franco-American political discourse was matched only by our love for Franco-American recycling schedules. We then became winners as we discussed the fall and further fall of Charlie Sheen, replete with fond tales of rehab glory. How else to complete this trifecta of gray matter than with a look at the Oscars. THIS SHOW HAS IT ALL... AND NOW YOU DO TOO.
Also, quick note: when Angela talks about "redistribution," she's referring to redistricting. >_Linkage:
- The book with no name shall be named: Strauss and Howe’s The Fourth Turning.
- Where winners live. - Mar 04, 11
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Dear friend and fellow podcaster Bob Knorpp of the notorious BeanCast (@TheBeanCast) joins us to get intimate about relationships in advertising:- How your personal life gets affected by your strange work, weird hours and random traveling
- How love can bloom in the damnedest ways
- How a combination of loneliness and drinking can make even the most stalwart ad soldier a slobbering mess of hold-me-closies
- How intimacy can bloom in many awesome, dangerous or dangerously awesome forms. We talk Father Figure Complex!
- Prioritising personal + professional time
- NEPOTISM <-- this is Bill's favourite
The whole thing wraps nahcely with our homegrown takeaway relationships-in-advertising advice. And there’s a few stories in there that as usual will probably get us all into trouble. We live dangerously in these here internets.
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Posts
‘Inocente’ makes history as first Kickstarter-funded film to win Oscar
Kickstarter is an official contender in the arena of serious entertainment.
Wrist-Worn Sensors that track finger movements
via singularityhub:
Microsoft developers in the UK working with researchers from Newcastle University have recently announced an intriguing project: a wrist strap sensor that tracks finger motions in real time. Appropriately called Digits, the wireless system allows wearers to control computers remotely by recognition of individual finger movement and orientation using an infrared camera and an inertial measurement unit. That means not only the orientation of the wrist but the angles of each finger can be used for gesture control. […]
[read more @singularityhub] [Newcastle University]
Sebastian Lindstrom’s What Took You So Long is a “disruptive filmmaking lab,” dedicated to traveling to the most remote corners of the globe to document people who are doing good things (and making money making ads for companies doing good things, too, of course).
Galactica: Blood & Chrome; or why Machinima is most definitely the future of TV
Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome, a prequel to that most amazing scifi TV series, was supposed to be a TV series too. Except NBCUniversal’s SyFy channel got cold feet, and cancelled its airing plans. Perhaps because this CGI-heavy production - made with scans of the original sets, and featuring a young William Adama - was delivered somewhat late. Still, it’s all good for gaming network Machinima, one of YouTube’s very biggest channels: further to Universal’s decision to run it online as a 10 x 12 minute web series, the first episode (above) got nearly 2 million views. Sure, the subsequent 3 parts, also free-to-watch, didn’t retain that audience (part 2 is at 600k) but still: this is top-notch entertainment, totally free and legal on the interwebs. SyFy must be rueing the decision to run B&C as a movie next February: and Machinima rubbing its hands. Indeed, why should producers and brands bother with networks when they can reach such audiences so easily? Welcome to the future, friends!Gamers Beat Medical Residents at Simulated Surgery
Using machines that simulate live surgical techniques, like needle passing and suturing, a study at University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston found that high schoolers who play an average of two hours of video games a day fared “slightly better than our physicians in training,” according to Dr. Sami Kilic of UTMB Galveston.
“Our physicians in training have already participated in actual cases. It tells me that this computer games helps a lot to transfer the knowledge and skills gained from the computer games.”
This research also confirms a decade’s worth of evidence indicating recreational video games improve visual intelligence.A Brand for Disrupting Gender Roles
My favourite thing today is GoldieBlox: engineering toys for girls. Just another Kickstarter success that’s brought a little more magic into this world. A fun and inspiring concept dveloped just this year by Debbie Sterling, a female engineer from Stanford who hopes to motivate more girls, from cradle-age, to cultivate an interest in engineering.
Anywhere Can Be a Keyboard.
This app turns any surface into an iPhone keyboard. Because a world in which we have one less bulky thing to carry is most definitely the world of tomorrow.
You Know You Want To.
We give you the Romo. Inspired by the Bondi Blue iMac, it’s the ultimate way to make a robot friend out of what is probably already your most intimate companion: your iPhone.
Drive: the driving companion that knows you better than you do
Here’s a not-stupid idea: Drive, a companion app for drivers, cuts out all the extraneous stuff that you’re not gonna need on the road and limits you to four basic things: calls, texts, music and maps. Easy on those texts though, buddy.
One step closer to a more perfect union with our technology.
- Zombie 'Walkers' Attack Twitter Users!
Our Follow list is crawling with walkers. And you thought the internet was safe!
French network NT1, which has just licensed Walking Dead for syndication in France, is running a guerrilla operation that gives people the thrill of being zombie-stalked … from Twitter.
A news article on their Walking Dead subsite alerts users to a “zombie virus” that’s contaminated NT1 employees. To avoid contamination, you’re advised:
- NOT to Tweet the #walkingdeadNT1 hashtag
- NOT to comment on #walkingdeadNT1 posts on Facebook
- NOT to comment on the site.
The article went live yesterday. Since then, hundreds of people have tweeted the hashtag:
When you tweet it, a huge array of zombies starts following you on Twitter and will sometimes even @ you to go, “AAAAAAAH!”
No bites yet, but do you really want to risk it…?
Nice work by social TV agency Darewin. Noting that Twitter has taken to deleting the zombie accounts mere hours after they’ve been created, founder Wale Oyekanmi just laughed. “They follow you, you look at the accounts, and maybe some are dead,” he told us. “It’s coherent with the strategy.” In an ideal world, zombies don’t live long anyway.
checkthis: super simple social shouting
OK so there’s tumblr (right here), and there are clever module-based online flyer offerings like webdoc. But we’ve rarely seen as simple and effective “digital posters for social media” (their own words) as checkthis.
If you’ve got something to say, you can chuck in text, photo, video (this playlist example’s particularly smart) and even polls and the like (cf. our own checkthis what I just made, pictured above), then share it on Facebook/Twitter/Pinterest etc.
Crucially, when you do so on Facebook inparticular, your checkthis is shared as a proper piece of content (like a YouTube video, for eg.), as opposed to — god forbid — just a link!
Yes, it is very similar to webdoc: but hats off to checkthis’ superior usability & overall quickness.
Try our poll & you’ll see! Plus we’ll be eternally grateful :)
Google Launches Nonprofit Campaign ‘Thermometer’
Google’s just launched YouTube Campaigns, a “digital thermometer” to support its nonprofit partners. Gleaning inspiration from those thermometers nonprofits so often draw to indicate how close they are to their fundraising goals, this digital version can be used on videos and in channels to show progress of an overall campaign — except it’ll measure video views instead of cash.
The theory is that this’ll compel to share the video when they’ve seen a contribution is as simple as a view.
Over 18,000 organisations use the YouTube Nonprofit Program. YouTube also includes a Live Streaming feature and a donate button for its organisations.
Europe Taking Largest Share Now
Reblogged from TechCrunch, by NATASHA LOMAS
The global social TV market is already a multi-billion dollar industry, with TV giants betting big money on second screen viewing, but the market is set for double-digit growth in the the next five years, according to a report by market research firm MarketsandMarkets. The research firm expects the market to grow from $151.14 billion this year, to $256.44 billion by 2017 — an estimated CAGR of 11.2 percent from 2012 to 2017.
“The future for the television is social through integration of social interaction on the television. Broadcasters are developing and enriching social TV integration; they are targeting the tune-in customer, engagement and their loyalty to boost the rating and they are also discovering the social TV challenge,” the report notes.
Currently Europe grabs the largest slice of social TV market revenue. MarketsandMarkets calculates the region will take $55.48 billion this year, and expects Europe’s portion to grow to $77.74 billion by 2017 — at a CAGR of 7 percent, slightly below the overall market growth rate.
As well as social TV startups attracting big investment from established media and tech industry players, the space is seeing lots of tie-ups between broadcasters and social networking players such as Twitter and Facebook… [Read More]
Go, Europe!
Everpurse: The Clutch that Charges Your Mobile Phone
Everpurse, a Kickstarter project by Dan and Liz Salcedo, enables users to wirelessly charge their mobile devices wirelessly and on the go.
Using the Qi standard for inductive charging, the purse itself must be charged for six hours on a charging pad before use. Dan Salcedo says that give your iPhone two times more battery life — meaning that when your phone’s going dead at a party, you need only pop it into the bag to get it back into service with a minimum of downtime.
There is no dock, but a magnetic charger within the purse pulls your phone down into the plug and starts charging it once you’ve slipped it inside. And the technology isn’t heavy: in total, the battery and receiver combined weigh a grand total of six ounces.
Find it in a variety of colours on Everpurse.com. Guys are also welcome — isn’t function the perfect excuse to go man-bagging? But if the murse is too girly for your taste, the Salcedos say they’re working on suit jackets and pants with similar technology. They likely won’t appear, though, until the Kickstarter campaign is over.
No worries, though — the campaign ends in six days and they’ve already more than doubled their hoped-for $100,000 funding goal. Minimum pledges for the bag are sold out, but you can still lock yours down for just $129!
Reddit: Making Waves in Fact-Checking
Fact checking is part and parcel of our political events — the responsible act you commit to during the hangover of the event itself. (Consider The New York Times’ detailed fact checks on the complete First Presidential Debate.)
Fact checking in real-time? A tall order that demands as many multi-tasking skills of its audience as it does of its decryptors. But to take it on, no one is better-equipped than Reddit, the forum-cum-social news site whose audience possesses three crucial qualities:
- It’s massive
- It’s college-educated
- It’s enthusiastic and super-anal about details (to wit: this complete explanation of Obamacare for five-year-olds)
As of yesterday it’s taken on fact checking itself. Reddit’s Live Fact Checker for the October 3 Presidential Debate actually made it possible to crowdsource fact checks from the most informed resources possible in real-time:
The subreddit, like its more professional counterparts, would be devoted to the often difficult work that is assessing politicians’ claims in, essentially, real time. Because “if you’re watching the debate,” another redditor put it, “you might as well get the facts, not just the spin.”
Results were mixed, which The Atlantic concedes is unsurprising, given that organisation and the momentum of the project were left entirely up to the audience. There was, of course, bickering. But for the most part it represents an incredible experiment in demystification à la carte.
Read it here, and make it your super power to ensure the verbal destruction of anyone who ever discusses the debate to your face ever again.
Here are some fun charts on the current State Of The Internet. TV’s still holding its own!
Is the Workplace the Worst Place to Work?
It’s hardly the scoop of the century. And we’re getting a bit fed up with infographics. But when they’re as well done and as useful as this, we just have to tell you about them.
Here are just a few tidbits from “You Waste a Lot of Time at Work”:
- US businesses lose $37bn a year because of unnecessary meetings. No doubt because most people think they’re wasting their time in them (cf above image)
- The average employee is interrupted 56 times a day. Which leads to 2 lost hours per day. Seems a lot to me, but it echoes this excellent TED speech, which reminds us you need at least an hour to do anything creative. Not easy when you’re being interrupted every eight minutes
- You can lose 10 IQ points when fielding constant email: the same effect as a sleepless night. Not to mention poorly-written emails, which can cost over $4000/year/employee…
Yes, as with all infographics, this one’s paid for by an interested party, namely a team collaboration tool. But still. A corker. And you can even tweet/FB/Pinterest different bits! Which allowed yours truly to tweet it from a meeting. FTW!
- And Here It Is: Twitter-Based Retail.
Pay-by-Tweet is now a reality, at least for Special K buyers in the UK. The cereal brand has opened The Tweet Shop, in part to punt its move into the chips market. This also represents its first foray into retail in England.
Instead of whipping out a wallet, customers are encouraged to pay for the new Special K Cracker Crisps by Tweeting a message about its low-calorie snacking merits.
The shopgirls all sport red dresses, charged with checking every Tweet before handing the crisps over.
From Special K’s Sarah Case:
The value of positive endorsements on social media sites is beyond compare so we’re excited to be the first company to literally use social currency instead of financial currency to launch this new product in our bespoke Special K shop.
This is big news for Special K and we are hoping the brand’s move into crisps and the high street will create a major buzz on and offline.Find the Tweet Shop on Meard Street in Soho. It’ll be open from the 25th to the 28th and, in addition to its ménagerie of chips, is equipped with a “community noticeboard” for capturing social media reactions.
Photos + story via CreativeBoom. Tip via So Particular.
New Myspace in “not shit” shocker
Yes, it’s just a video. Yes, it was tweeted by new backer Justin Timberlake himself. Yes, sideways scrolling has been seen before, as have elegant interfaces used by, well, noone (Windows Phone 7).
But there’s something about this “new Myspace” demo that make us want to believe. And it’s not the fact its music was chosen by Entourage’s music supervisor. It’s the design, of course. But it’s also the understanding that Myspace (yes, that lower case “s” is now the way you write it) now seems to be taking on Facebook — cf. the party photos — as well as social music sites like Bandcamp, cf. the rather nifty “Tobias Muller is your most influential fan” snippet (as he got 20% of your views in Ohio, or wherever). And throwing those two sides together, cf. party photos including the playlist I dropped that night (NEATO).
We also like the “Trending” section, which seems inspired by music apps like Shufflr.fm, scrobbling hot tunes off the internets with nicely laid-out artist pics, for easy discovery. And the “top fans” list, which allows you to share exclusive content only with your most loyal followers.
It’s no proof, then, that the new Myspace will be any good; but as a statement of intention, it’s pretty damn persuasive. From there to worrying Zuckerberg, however? That’s quite a step.
- Shazam to Give TV Networks a Helping Hand in Digital Sales
The Guardian writes that as Shazam hits 250 million mobile app users, it’s expanding US-based social features. All shows can now be tagged, versus just networks or producers that have a marketing deal with it. Soon, Shazam also plans to link its app to Facebook, permitting people to publish tags to their newsfeeds.
“With more than a quarter of a billion people who have used Shazam worldwide, no other app has our scale when it comes to offering the opportunity to engage with the media that interests them the most, whether it’s music or television,” stated chief executive Andrew Fisher.
Some background: people typically use Shazam to identify — and therefore tag — any music track in its database. Now you can do the same thing with ads of partner brands and American TV shows. According to Shazam, over 160 channels have been covered for the latter.
When you tag a show, you’ll receive cast info, soundtrack details, trivia and news, as well as Twitter updates and data from IMDB and Wikipedia.
“With our expansion into television, we’ve seen a surge of activity due to recent Shazam-enabled events such as the NBC Olympic broadcast, where more than one million people tagged the closing ceremony,as well as the US Open tennis grand slam event on CBS earlier this month,” said Fisher.
“We think that broadening our television service and offering more comprehensive social features will continue to drive activity and engagement.”
Expanded features are expected to launch in the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain “in the coming months”. Until then, those countries can tag ads from partner brands, including Renault, Reebok, Unilever, Pepsi and Microsoft.
Shazam reports that users produce about 10 million tags daily. It claims to have generated about $300 million in sales of digital goods for the music industry alone (as it enables users to purchase songs they like from iTunes). It hopes to do the same for producers and broadcasters in the TV industry.
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- Jun 14, 13We're a breath away from Cannes Lions, and it's usually around this time that everybody starts wondering what The Point of this conference (or even our jobs!) is. Is it Awards? Notoriety? The Networking* that may lead to a Better Job, Awards and Notoriety?I'm in freelance. We get no Awards and probably no Notoriety (unless maybe we write a book). So for me, The Point has to be something else.I've been working in freelance for nearly seven years, only the last four of which involved Real Agency Work. One of the biggest things I learned when I actually got inside was how hard it is to do work you're proud of. All the vitriol people lobbed at me for critiquing their babies on Adrants suddenly made sense: when you've got crazy clients (vague briefs but high standards!), a political agency system, a fixed budget, and a pile of conviction-laden creatives in the mix, you just wanna go home at night.You don't want some coffee-fueled CPG epiphany to be your fucking cross to bear. Not when there's sleep to be had and children to (almost) watch grow up. Because this industry? It takes your whole life: complete sacrifice for cereal slogans, holding company positioning statements and the merits of Flash versus HTML5. If you go Joan of Arc every time things go pear-shaped, you really will lose your shit.A certain freedom comes with the uncertainty of freelance. All that hopped-up agency madness? You can enjoy it for the lifecycle of a project, then peace out and take a nap. You can travel. You can do sports. If you're stuck on something, you can move onto another, then come back to it. You can say, "Catch you later, I'm going to Cannes Lions -- FOR MY BLOG!" and nobody can say "SIT YOUR ASS DOWN, THERE ARE NO AWARDS WAITING FOR YOU."**Professionally, freelancers may not be part of a big agency network, but we do form groups: clients and other freelancers we look forward to seeing randomly throughout the year. It's more Lost Boys than Ogilvy, but it's people we like -- not the prickly ones you secretly hate and have to deal with every day until somebody finally leaves.And it isn't just work relationships that bloom. I once thought there was no time for more than 3 reasonably good relationships in a life, but now the world seems full of people to go to dinner with, learn things from, collaborate with, and plan last-minute weekend picnics with. At any given time I feel a deep, meaningful intimacy with all of them. They aren't just local: with Viber, Gchat, iMessage, Twitter and Facebook, I feel intimately connected with people far away. Like my sisters. (Although the distance probably helps them like me more.)The biggest tradeoff, though, is having to make your own success metric. It's hard to find; at an agency, you do a pipeline of good-to-great things, win awards, get promoted and maybe someday you'll be ECD. I don't deny I'd like that, and often wish I was drawing closer to (instead of farther from) it.Now, work changes day by day; it's stuff that challenges and that I enjoy, so I don't question it or wonder what it's building to. But that Big Question -- what's the next step? -- seems secondary now.At this point I feel strangely okay not knowing its answer. I realised today that while the projects are important, it's in great part because the people I've managed to cultivate in the Darwin Dice Toss of Freelance are so good. As long as I have time for them, and they for me, life seems full -- generous, even. The Bottom Line is no longer the metric, but it seems to take care of itself: it's hard to drown when there are so many hands around to grab you.Then I thought, maybe this is The Point. The Point of Social: what we should be telling brands in the first place. The money, the endless search for more ways to penetrate a "consumer occasion", and the mind-numbing hammering of TV ads are not The Point. The people you can really touch, truly befriend, mean something to? That's where it is.
To make those connections, there are risks to take: a certain giving of yourself so that people can see what your insides are like. But in the commercial arena, that seven pounds of flesh will be withdrawn with or without your consent; it may as well be on your terms. Isn't it worth it? Because then you don't have to be scared. There'll be so many hands that you simply won't drown; at the worst of times they'll drag you kicking and screaming forward. They'll never lose faith if they can trust that you'll remember what The Point is.Going into Cannes Lions, that enormously drawn-out stomach pump of an event, it's a reassuring thought. Talking to creatives high off a win (or close to one), they start waxing poetic about what they learned about people. Often the road to that insight was finally understanding something about themselves: I'm this way. I love this. I hate this. If the stars are aligned, you execute well and production and timing are just right. And like good comedy, this tiny propped-open window into your own naked and trembling subconscious yields an unanimous universal AHA! -- and for a breathtaking second you feel like you're holding hands with the entire fucking world.It's precious. That connection, the birth of something worth cultivating? That's The Point. And it nourishes the entire ecosystem.***---*Running into that Stockholm ECD who had an Alky Nap on your porch last year?**They probably want to, though.
***It is true, however, that for every inspiring storyteller you come across there'll likely be a troupe of Certified Douchebags waiting to claim him. Our industry is rife with these and they are merely an occupational hazard. Make like a freelancer and RUN AWAY. - Jun 14, 13
- Adult onesie
- Trip to Waterworld
- Gummy bear multivitamins
- Peanut butter
At one point or another, these have all seemed like very effective reasons. - Mar 27, 13
“You are now entering a technology and device free zone. Please refrain from using your cellphone inside this space. The use of WMDs (wireless mobile devices) is not permitted.” Word about the Device Free Drinks party, billed as an occasion to “enjoy a few hours off the grid,” had spread through Facebook and other social media ... and drew about 250 participants. But asking people to surrender their digital tethers at the door still required some coaxing...
- Andy Isaacson, "Learning to Let Go: First, Turn Off the Phone",
The New York Times
Eight years ago a much older friend said, "One day, only the rich will be able to disconnect." Hipsters off Union Square are hardly the richest slice of the populace, but their little Digital Detox shindig captures the spirit of his idea: disconnecting has become some novelty thing you do in a club over drinks with other giddy friends eager to "experiment".
But what really got me was the party's structure: little activity stations encouraged you to type, draw and chat in "analog" ways that, in order to reassure (or be relatable), still bore traces of the digital world: you didn't just draw; you drew profile pictures. And what would you type at the typewriter station, if not a tweet? Finally, perhaps for the most adventurous, a jar labeled "Digital Detalks" included strips of paper with questions you could ask others in order to start a conversation.
I remembered a scene from Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. In the book, the US government is overthrown by a theocratic conservative extremist group, under which women lose most rights, including the right to read, and people's lives become tightly regimented. The country's name is changed to the Republic of Gilead. At some point the protagonist, a "handmaid" or concubine for a wealthier couple, finds herself at an underground party where people wear makeup, dance and dress the way they did before the Republic was established. There is something sad, desperate and deeply caricatural about the way people at the party interact, as they draw mainly from memories of how they used to behave -- memories that grow less unreliable and more cartoonish with time.
The purpose of a Digital Detox party is to remind us of the importance of establishing and maintaining real non-digital connections, but part of doing that is remembering how it's done. I guess that's why the activities, so heavily (if playfully) inspired by our digital lives, struck me as imaginative but sad: have we come so far that the only way we can be cajoled into drawing is by using the template of profile pictures? Or by pulling talking-points out of a jar...?
What'll a party like this look like 10 years from now, or even five? Maybe we'll only be able to paint if the utensils are arranged like Photoshop features: life's cheap imitation of digital. And I thought the iBook page-turner feature was sad.
I'm being glib. All this is to say don't let yourself get so disconnected from reality that you need a themed party to explore the concept. (I'm saying this for me, too: I'd be the first in line at a Digital Detox to turn my phone in ... then cry.) Digital will penetrate every aspect of our lives -- and our bodies -- soon enough. So soon, in fact, that once it's arrived we'll have no time to turn back and remember what the world was like before, much less ask ourselves what we've lost for this gain.
We're running out of time to relish in the freedom we really do still have. Why surrender it so readily? - Mar 16, 13
If you haven't already heard of CentUp, you will. Co-founded by our friend Len Kendall, it's an opportunity to improve content produced by hard-working folks like YOU (and US!) while paying a little forward to charities making change around the globe.
How it works: Alongside your standard sharing buttons, blogs and other content sites will have the option to add a CentUp button. If you like what you've read or seen, you can toss a few cents to the content provider; half of what you give will go to a worthy charity. It's that simple.
You have just 40 hours to contribute funds to CentUp's launch on IndieGogo. Take advantage; we think they're worth it, and not even just because Len proposed to his fiancée via meme. - Mar 27, 13"Dare. Change", an ad for Peruvian clothing brand Saga Falabella. It is old but captures the spirit of this post nicely. It's a symphony of modern womanhood: our own battle with the timidity and shame that's strong enough to stay that next step. And when we do dare to fight those feelings, it's beautiful, right? So we should all get up and clap, right? So why don't we?So Sheryl Sandberg, who's enormously wealthy and successful, published a book called Lean In, which is supposed to help women achieve career success in the context of a sexist environment.
This sounds politically charged, but it isn't. Any woman who has been in any primarily-male workplace ever has likely been made to feel uncomfortable, put down, come onto, or passed over for reasons that somehow tie back to her gender. It is not something I or any of us really complain about, it just is, and among the many talents of being a career woman is learning how to dissuade people, change perspectives, or find other loopholes to achievement without making this a "gender" thing. Because making this a "gender" thing can result in the worst alienation of all.
That is just life in the workplace today, and there are plenty of reasons why it is thus, and they are not really the subject of this post.
I haven't read Lean In, but I did read an enormous number of angry reviews about it -- most written by women. There have been so many, in fact, that Michelle Goldberg of The Daily Beast wrote a takedown of these critics, arguing that they're "aimed less at what the book says than at who Sandberg is."
Sandberg, as I mentioned above, is now filthy rich. I don't know if she was born rich, but she certainly wasn't born COO of Facebook. (Or VP at Google, or a Harvard MBA.) That happened later. When she was small, she went to public school, like a lot of us, and studied hard. That's something lots of women can relate to.
It's understandable that many women now feel she's out of touch with your average chick on the rise, but this isn't a critique we make of wealthy men who write success how-tos. Some also tout Sandberg's "war on moms", despite Sandberg repeatedly expressing respect for mothers. As Goldberg nicely puts it, "Her message isn’t that all women need to be corporate executives or high-powered lawyers or political leaders. It’s that we’d be better off if more corporate executives, high-powered lawyers, and political leaders were women."
Why did the book, or the idea of the book, piss so many girls off? I'm gonna cite Goldberg (and Sandberg) one more time before getting to my point:Women are conditioned to compare themselves with one another. When we’re not wholly at peace with our own choices—and who is?—those comparisons sting. “There is always an opportunity cost, and I don’t know any woman who feels comfortable with all her decisions,” Sandberg writes. “As a result, we inadvertently hold that discomfort against those who remind us of the path not taken. Guilt and insecurity make us second-guess ourselves and, in turn, resent one another.”
All this got me thinking of girl-on-girl violence: its insidiousness, its ugliness, and the way it hurts women: as children, as teens, as adults.
In college I learned about female genital mutilation (FGM) -- from a woman, who was French, and who taught it through an optic that a male American sociology teacher wouldn't have. This is what was most telling about that lesson: studies and journals reviewing the act of female circumcision find that it is the women who most often perpetuate the tradition today.
I'm not taking the blame off men, who obviously got the ball rolling on this bad-boy. But give it a generation or two, and they don't have to do a thing. When you're a young girl in a culture that embraces FGM, the pressure you'll feel is from the women, who tell you that your honour is tied to this act. A woman is often also the one who orchestrates the circumcision.
It's the same with slut-shaming in high school: the trauma associated with being called a "slut" usually finds its roots in other girls. I was a "slut" in high school: girls gave me that name, it had nothing to do with promiscuity, and there was nothing I could do about it. I'll venture to say that the adult female equivalent of those chicks who sullied your reputation because they didn't like how you dressed is today's "war on moms" instigator. She's not the only species, but this is the one that rears its ugly head in the Sandberg story.
Working mothers sometimes, and guiltily, lament that the toughest thing about going to PTA meetings are the stare-downs from the "stay-at-homers". They get this enormous sense that they aren't really doing their jobs as "real" mothers because they haven't made that same 24/7 commitment. I'm sure that stay-at-home moms also feel pressure, intentional or not, from women who seem to be able to "do everything", even though we all know this is never the case: nobody can do everything. There is no choice that's easier to make than any other, particularly when it comes to how you're negotiating your household.
All this shit about Sandberg has been needlessly tied to "feminism" and how she's somehow hurting The Cause, but I'm going to argue that anytime a woman hates on a life choice some other woman made, however different the path, that is what hurts feminism.
Like Sandberg I have trouble calling myself a "feminist" because the word is loaded. A lot of people look at me stupid and say feminism is just about believing that women are equal beings, and that's just dandy. I'm all for equal beings. But I also know that identifying as a "feminist" carries a lot of baggage that I'd rather not be associated with: abusing women you don't consider to be "feminist" is one of the biggest. But it's really just the same old demon: garden-variety girl-on-girl violence. The act is so prevalent that some women pride themselves on "having no girl friends" or being "unable" to get along with women -- they think it makes them look less passive-aggressive and more pragmatic. That is a shame, but it's also not their fault: women can be vicious to other women.
At Berkeley, some women behaved like I was carrying the patriarchy on my shoulders because I shaved my legs and wore high heels (I had a job at an office, which I usually ran off to after school). They whispered about me in class and gave me mean looks when I walked into a room. That was pressure I didn't need to feel; it's not like I was doing it to please some guy back home on some tigerskin rug by the hearth (and if I was, who cares?). I like to shave my legs, and I like it more than not shaving my legs. We can go into why I feel that way and the history of hair removal and constricting footwear and how it's all very patriarchal, but this post is not about that either.
In this life, you pick your battles, and you decide who you're comfortable being based on an unending number of negotiations with yourself and with the society at hand. There are no easy decisions. So why fight each other over the ones we did or didn't make?
Being a woman, and making another one feel terrible about some choice you would never have made, is not a constructive or empowering act -- the feelings that should fuel feminism. It's demeaning and shaming -- the emotional WMDs that keep patriarchy ticking. It's a vicious, horrible thing we've been taught to do to keep other women in line, and it improves the lot of exactly no one, including the perpetrators, who feel just as shitty as the perpetrated do.
So ladies, lay off Sandberg. If you don't like her book and don't feel it applies to you, then you're in luck: you don't have to read it, change who you are, or wage some misguided war to protect the honour of Women Like You. It doesn't have to be any of your damn business. And if you read the book and didn't like it, write about the contents of the book. Don't write about Sandberg. We don't need to invent another cafeteria slut. - Mar 01, 13
I’m OK with having failed at this part of the journey. If Groupon was Battletoads, it would be like I made it all the way to the Terra Tubes without dying on my first ever play through. I am so lucky to have had the opportunity to take the company this far with all of you.
-- CEO Andrew Mason of Groupon gets fired.Also, I love that he starts it with "After four and a half intense and wonderful years as CEO of Groupon, I've decided that I'd like to spend more time with my family. Just kidding - I was fired today." A little legerity in a rough situation never hurt anyone. - Feb 27, 13
- Feb 21, 13
...you deserve what you get: bought friends* with zero investment in you.
Seen on.
---
*Probably just robots, actually, mixed with a couple of mercenary guys that nobody can make any sense of. - Feb 19, 13How many of these do you actually need more context for?
Today I had a conversation with my boyfriend about Pinterest. We were discussing it in the context of the idea that the US is the only place in the world where companies consistently blossom into million -- or even billion -- dollar entities without making a dime worth its weight. This isn't something that really happens in Europe. Part of it is culture but a lot of is also comes down to lack of a unified market of US proportions and lack of an ever-replenishing investment ecosystem.
This isn't to say it's altogether great to throw money at companies that don't make any back. Most such investments end up duds (consider all the hyper-funded Twitter spinoffs), but many -- Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Flipboard -- flourish until they're fixed utilities in the culture -- and then they have to learn to make money. But learning to make money once you're flush and loaded with employees and resources is very different from learning to make money when you're living on ramen and coding in the dark.
When a crazy-sounding valuation claim gets made, people naturally start thinking about the company's roadblocks to market stability. The Man pointed out that one annoying problem Pinterest has is dying links. Pinterest has effectively made it so that the image -- a single piece of supplementary content pulled out of its natural context -- becomes more powerful than its source site. Pinterest sends piles of clickbacks to the parent sites that host its images, which increasingly benefits e-retailers -- but in the end, click-throughs happen way less often than shares of the image they're hosting. Indeed, the image can go on being shared long after the site's gone dead, even if it was only meant to be a teaser.
Of course this is problemic in the sense that it makes Pinterest host to what are essentially dead links -- pretty ones, but nonetheless non-functioning. That can be really disappointing when you've Pinned a recipe, and, once ready to prepare it, click through to the site only to discover that the page is busted. Something should be done about this -- maybe a little red flag in the corners of images that can show you with a quick skim which host sites are no longer functioning. But in the end people don't really care about most of the host sites that kindly provided all that eye candy.
All this speaks to a phenomenon that's way more interesting. I don't think Pinterest is worth $2.5 billion, but I will say this: along with Tumblr -- which did for written content what Pinterest does for images -- Pinterest effectively proves that content can live on and bring people value independently of its host.
Once you've published an article and the image that accompanies it is Pinned, the image suddenly carries a shareable value that supersedes your written work -- and your site -- entirely, even if it continues to send you traffic and readership. In the universe of Pinterest, the image no longer needs you: it can live on, getting discovered again and again, while the rest of you can be taken or left. - Feb 19, 13
Find my above-mentioned Super Bowl recap here. (Sorry, I know it annoys you to click through one more time, but I really want Google's spiders to love AdVerveBlog as much as I do. So there.)
I feel guilty about posting it so late, especially because so many ad pundits -- who stayed up all night and published way earlier -- shared my same views but with a lot more detail. (Token mentionables: TheSkimm's roundup and basically everything Adfreak's doing.) But it's kind of a bitch to do the live #AdBowl from abroad: it's a 6-hour time difference and for obvious reasons I can't actually see the commercials on TV -- which was my favourite thing about doing this in the first place. My main shtick now is sitting around online and furiously hitting "refresh" as other people Tweet and liveblog the event from the comfort of their chicken wing-infested living rooms. So I sat this one out, watched The Hobbit with a giant plate of brownies, and revisited all the ads after the fact.
Last night I played with the idea of going Hardcore Purist and just skipping the whole damn thing. Actually, I'd been thinking about it for weeks. In the end, I couldn't. The Super Bowl is the one time in the year when rowdy, drunk family members are as into the ads as I am, and I miss that rare sense of community that wed us, like the pigskin itself.
When you're an expat you take what you can get from afar and sometimes you just have to sit stuff out. But that doesn't make me forget how much I love being in on this, and how badly I want the ads to be good.
Aaaand I'm not really sure what I'm trying to justify so I'm gonna go ahead and stop writing. Catch you guys later. - Feb 19, 13
By designating the Super Bowl as the Super Bowl of advertising, Madison Avenue has created something utterly unique: A national media event where people beg the room to quiet down so they can hear branded messages brought to them by multinational corporations.
At $4 million, that's not a rip-off. It's a steal.- Derek Thompson, "Super Bowl Ads Are Still Super Cheap: $4 Million for 30 Seconds Is a Bargain", The AtlanticHowever you justify this cost, and there are many ways to justify it, I still think it's irritating and irresponsible to insist a price as dramatically inflated as that of the Super Bowl is bargain-bin cheap. It's irresponsible in the same way adults used to tell us college is cheap when you consider the reward, even though the United States suffers the world's most inflated and unjustifiable university costs, and living rooms across Manhattan are littered with babysitters bearing law degrees.
I love college and the Super Bowl; there are immense benefits to both if we invest in them wisely and thoughtfully. But to call them cheap, to suggest we should be raring to throw our cash onto the table and partake willy-nilly in some kind of once-in-a-lifetime bull's harvest? Let's not get drunk on our goddamn Kool-Aid. This assertion -- that they're bargains -- makes the expense sound less like a calculated risk, which merits strategic reflection, than an aggressive jeer against those too stingy, too poor or too stupid to leap facefirst into boiling water.But whatever. Justified or not, for $4M a :30 pop I better have sponsored sparkles in my eyes by the time tonight's game is over. Which is pretty likely, if only because of this: - Jan 24, 13
Microsoft's produced an Internet Explorer ad that ties an audience of hipsterfied "individuals" to the decade that unifies them: the '90s. Yeah, you may have novelty shoes now, but you still played Oregon Trail, didn't you?
It's the one MSFT ad in a decade that makes you smile -- and not ironically. It may even make you long for the period when times were simpler and Microsoft was, indeed, the shit (the whisper between the lines). If a fond reminder of neon green DOS commands had been tossed in here somewhere, it wouldn't have been out-of-place.
The ad wraps with an invitation to try the new Internet Explorer -- a browser that's grown up, like you. And while the finale music is triumphant and warm, we're brought back to the Current State of Affairs with almost alarming rapidity.
Yeah, we've grown up. We can't try the new IE, because Microsoft's cut it away from the generation that opened its doors and wallets to Mac ... although we still have to reverse-optimise online products for clients that still use IE6, which doesn't endear us to the brand either. Our Word docs still crash and the usability of Surface tablets make us cringe. Our everyday loves and losses revolve around Android and App Store apps. And if we even bother to remember a browser that marks this period, it'll probably be Chrome or Firefox, because they're part of the brigade that constructed the ruling user experience alongside us, instead of forcing us to play by constricting, bug-ridden yardsticks.
Looks like the only thing we have left in common today, old friend, is a general dissatisfaction with what the other's grown into. No hard feelings; that happens. The only problem is, looking fondly back on old times may be fun for a night, but it won't save a relationship. That's another thing we learned growing up.
Via and via and originally posted here. - Jan 04, 13When I lived in the US I thought I knew what it was to be American. I was comfortable with it; there were things I disdained and things I generally liked, things I rebuked -- like having to drive everywhere -- and things I knew I couldn’t live without -- like how easy it is to get curly fries, anywhere, at any time of day or night.
I once read that the Lost Generation, our fabled and beloved American writers of the ‘20s, were able to write so well about America -- not because they were in Paris, but because their time outside taught them to see home with new eyes. I suppose that was one draw for leaving. I had a vague suspicion that would happen to me, but didn’t really see how it could. I thought, like an adolescent, that I knew who I was and how the world worked.
But I left anyway. January 12th will mark my fourth year in Paris. Some years flew by less quickly than others, and I often feared I’d lose my ties to the US: to friends, work opportunities, my culture and my family. But technology has sprung up around us to bind ties I thought I’d lose.
I changed a great deal. There are things about Paris, and about the French, that I had to embrace in order to do that. I sometimes worried I’d lose myself, then learned that if you open yourself to a place, and to being changed by it, you can’t lose yourself: you are simply transformed, richer in nuance and in depth than if you had fought yourself stagnant. You are more yourself than ever.
I know for certain that in the four years since I arrived in Paris I became a woman, and a very different one from the one I would have become in California or New York. It isn’t just a question of environment; it is also about what the culture passes along to you: how the people, the movies, and the media teach you to become an adult in this society. There were shaky moments: I sometimes wondered, while choosing a scarf or when foregoing rice in the interest of bread, whether I was nullifying some aspect of me that I needed to protect. There were misses: I still don’t get French comedians. And no matter how many movies or YouTube videos I watch, I’ll never fully grasp the nostalgic pop culture or other reverberations of recent past that colour the language, humour and identity of the Parisians of my generation.
And of course there were successes: I was incorporated into families and made friends. People started expecting me places. I was, as the French are so fond of saying, integrated. I learned, again, how to dress myself: what suits me best in the culture, how to integrate what I like with what makes sense here, and where to find that mix. (This is surprisingly one of the toughest nuts to crack when you move somewhere new for a long period of time.) I learned, all over again, how to buy shampoo, take care of my body, eat and sleep. The products are different here; the rhythm is, too. Having to stumble through all this again made me feel like a lost adolescent in the Personal Care aisle. I puzzled over what to take for a headache or a cough, what deodorants were best, and what to put in my hair. Because in this new climate, with its harder water and different kinds of food, everything I thought I knew about my body changed.
I changed inside, too. I noticed different things, began to think in different ways. Language isn’t just about being heard; it’s a framework for thought, with its own rhythm and history. In another language you are forced to think in a different way: the sentence constructions and rules of grammar are different, forcing your brain to perceive things twice: the way an Anglophone would, then the way a Francophone would. The logic behind each approach is different, sometimes diametrically opposed (a good example is how both cultures believe in the separation of church and state, but approach the problem in ways that are opposite in the extreme). Then, as you grow comfortable with manifesting words in your new tongue, you go back to perceiving things just once … and what becomes hard is remembering how you saw them in your native way.
I sometimes forget words, or how to turn a small, niggling phrase in English. Culture author Mark Tungate once told me he goes out of his way to read books in English for this reason. “We do it to protect our craft,” he emphasised. “If we lose our mastery of it, we lose our livelihood.” That’s something I never would have learned at home.
But I think most telling is what I’ve learned about being American. The French relationship to Americans is complicated, distinctly love/hate, and I’ve concluded it’s because we’re much too similar. As a much wiser person once said, “Americans have to win and the French hate to lose.”
Many of our cultural differences resonate in my workdays: the adoption of new technology is more rapid in the US; the French take their time, and I know we can’t always afford that luxury when opportunity arises. What the French are only coming to realise is that markets can no longer remain local, taking the time to grow in their bubbles, particularly online. You’re competing with everyone, catering to everyone, the moment you open your doors. It’s too easy to say Americans understand this intuitively; the truth is, we don’t have to. We speak the world’s business language and have one of the largest, most influential markets in existence: what flies in the US will likely fly globally, simply because we’re fortunate enough to have a culture that’s built to export. We also have a generous investment ecosystem that keeps ideas of merit in business for years before they turn a profit. This simply doesn’t exist in Europe.
As I struggled to keep sight of myself, even as I transformed, the French are struggling to maintain identity in a world that now threatens to leave them behind. Even its prime industries are suffering: luxury, fashion and wine are no longer an exclusively French export, and seldom now do we need a French name on a product in any of those three categories to feel sure about its quality. Simplicity, efficiency, and the importance of tight yet ever-evolving UX design are intuitive to a connected American; it is less so in a country that values deep reflection over immediacy, protectionism over autonomous action and tradition over an uncertain future.
French journalist Pascal Lechevallier of ZDNet.fr recently gave me a simplified description of the difference between Americans and the French. “In America you talk with ease about technology because it’s part of your education; in France we talk with ease about wine because it is part of our education. You can be French and talk about technology, and you can be American and talk about wine … but you will never be fluent.”
I don’t know yet if that’s true; I think it’s too early to be sure. I think the primary takeaway is that what we find is self-evident really comes down to the education our culture imparted to us. But I remain optimistic that, however painful this transition is, and however long it takes, France will change. It must, even if it makes terrible mistakes first. Here I demonstrate two distinctly American qualities that I love and deeply value: optimism and openness to failure.
Failure is instructive. It isn’t in my nature to face failure with relish, just as it isn’t in my nature to be gregarious and extroverted. These are things I learned were important, despite myself, because I grew up in the Bay Area. I don’t particularly care about the last two; France gave me a gift in showing me it isn’t wrong to be reserved, inside myself and slow to warm to others. (I often felt it was in the States.) But I do recognise that some qualities, however natural, are best tempered: I make an effort to be open to failure, because I have had to fail so much to get here. Early on, failure felt like condemnation; it is only recently that I’ve learned it’s just another wave in a wide ocean, and the trick is less to take waves personally than it is to learn to read them.
In Paris I’ve met creatives who believe in the industry and want to move their clients forward and embrace new technology, even though many large European clients still wave social media away. They call it trendy. Or, too often, they’ll give social media a cursory nod -- start a Facebook page, say -- but remind their agencies not to get too “crazy”: they don’t want to deal with users, they don’t want to change their products.
I’ve met startup founders here that know the European VC space is conservative and tight-fisted, that the market isn’t open to change right away, and that the French government is generally hostile to the entrepreneurial spirit -- maybe, as Gerard Depardieu and Maurice Levy believe, hostile to success in general.
The dreamers are nonetheless here, ready to take risks and compress the fear that comes with fighting a tide so much larger than any I fought, having grown up near Silicon Valley -- where societal condemnation comes not from being ambitious but from lacking the ambition to create something for yourself. That’s pressure I recognise. But it doesn’t compare to having to step outside your comfort zone and try dragging your country, kicking and screaming, into the new world order. Their jobs aren’t easy, and few can blame them when they throw their hands up and leave France.
I’m often asked, “Why are you here when you could go back to where change happens so easily?”
It’s true I didn’t make life easy for myself by moving to France, and it certainly wasn’t the career move of the century (although it’s changing every day, and for the better). Things are easier, smoother and faster in the US, particularly if you’re young, hungry and talented. And I often miss the competence and certainty I felt at home, the optimism in the air, the positivity that radiates from Americans because, in the end, "complainers don’t win".
But I stay because of the things that make me American. I’ve mentioned optimism, and having to face the fear of failure head-on. We’re also good at sharing, unafraid of losing what we put out into the open: our culture, even our language, is open-source. We want to impart our learnings, and we believe that the ecosystems we live and work in are better for it.
We try to stay positive, even against terrible opposition. As a small example, I’m often teased for calling a concert, a movie or a bloody web mockup “fantastic” or “awesome”.
“Sorry,” my friends -- sometimes even my clients! -- will say to unacquainted companions. “She’s American.” In France you critique first and ask questions later. It’s easier to say something is not that great than it is to be wrong -- or worse, in bad taste.
We seek friends in strangers. We tell the stories of our lives openly, trying earnestly to expand our positive connections in the world. I’m often told I ask too many personal questions or share too much. But I wouldn’t exchange discretion for the life’s wisdom I’ve accrued on plane rides, in cabs, from waiters or old women at the bus stop. They have given me life experience I didn’t have to sweat for -- an immeasurable gift -- and I am always trying to pay that back.
We try new things. Maybe a little too readily. Christophe Asselin, a native Frenchman who now leads ad:tech London, laughingly told me that the difference between the US and Europe lies in their attitudes toward the new. “Americans are always so quick to adopt. They rush into things, they make all the mistakes. We watch, we wait.” We may make all the mistakes, but that’s gold: those are where the best practices lie. You can make lots of money remaining just behind the cutting edge, but we crave the cutting edge itself. Like infants experiencing a world of new senses, we simply want to try.
We like solutions. One of the toughest things I had to do in France was adjust to how everyone complains all the time. It is literally the world’s most pessimistic country. They complain about the weather, about the upholstery, about the service … they complain to make conversation. “If you’re not complaining,” a colleague once told me, “you’re not alive.”
It wore me out in the first year, and with time I figured out why: Americans are taught, first not to complain, and secondly to find solutions. My brain was constantly at work, proposing solutions to problems that had none, because nobody wanted any. Once I understood this, it was easier to bear the barrage of complaints and to take them in good humour. But even today, when someone approaches me with a complex problem, I still relish in the work of gathering the variables, looking at all sides of it, trying to find the key.
Finally, we mean well. A favourite critique of Americans is that we barge into situations, disputes, societies, whole countries that aren’t our own, then start throwing money around and trying to “fix” things without first gathering sufficient information. There are often terrible consequences to this; I’ll be the first to make that concession. I have always been a fan of “information as artillery”. But I also know we do it out of some fundamental conviction that we can help lift a burden, or out of hope that we can provide an unexpected, never-before-considered solution. Even if I would change the approach, I wouldn’t change the spirit of the gesture: we like to be helpful.
If I remain here it isn’t because I love my home country less -- although, as in the case of the Lost Generation, I do see it with more critical eyes, which I nonetheless associate with love. I’m here because I feel there’s still work to do connecting our two cultures, and because I still want to do it. It’s the challenge I accepted, and I’ll either succeed or fail. I’m here because I believe that my American perspective is useful to clients making baby steps in social engagement (we made the mistakes already!), and because I believe France will meet the changing world halfway. It has no choice. But it does need people who want to help carry the load.
I’m here because I’m American, and I want to give France what it gave me: openness to change, and the sense that if we surrender ourselves to the process, we’ll come out fuller, not less rich. If that sounds naive or arrogant, I’m okay with that: those, too, are American qualities. - Dec 13, 12
Some incredibly vivid dystopic vision for you. Film director Romain Demongeot and electronic music artists De Andria & Ghisal give us "Love 2062", a picture of what love may look like when civilisation as we know it comes to a shattering end. But it's also a picture of what addiction could become when embedded technology plays a starring role in sparing us from a desolate reality. Even for a few hours. Think heroin, opium, The Matrix and Inception crammed into a neat little shot.
Production work by Heroes. - Feb 19, 13
Darewin, an agency I work with, just released this case study for French short-form series bref. Get this: that's my voice!
The case study (in English) covers how the agency was tasked to maintain the show's cult status after it stopped airing. What'd it do? It created a mobile app that put the hero's phone right in your hands. With it, you could relive bref. through his eyes ... and even call his friends. (Not recordings of his friends. The actual friends.)
More drippy fangirliness: I've discussed bref. before (see all the special effects used in the show), and word's out that they're making an English version called So. Soon, you too will be able to experience its awesomeness. So, consider this a sneak peek. - Dec 07, 12
I mean, if you really look at it, we have four iPods. We have two main iPhones. We have two iPads, and we have a few Macs. That’s it. And we argue and debate like crazy about what we’re going to do, because we know that we can only do a few things great. That means not doing a bunch of things that would be really good and really fun.
- "Tim Cook's Freshman Year: The Apple CEO Speaks", BusinessWeek. - Dec 07, 12Reblogged from kiplinger:
This is solid advice. But one thing I learned in France is that many of the elements that abet or discourage this kind of discipline are cultural. The US is an unapologetic debt-driven society: financial education isn't something we teach youth, solutions to social problems tend to be consumption-driven, and basic things like higher education, renting a car, and achieving crucial societal milestones are nearly impossible to attain without credit.As our CEO Knight Kiplinger likes to say, “the biggest barrier to becoming rich is living like you’re rich before you are.”
And let's not forget our revolving credit system, which encourages people to accrue debt that you don't (and eventually can't) pay off right away in order to improve your FICO score -- the number critical to cultivating your financial reputation. A FICO score could stand between you and an apartment, or even a cell phone. Curiously, your FICO isn't improved by demonstrating an ability to manage money well. It only rises if you manage debt well. We have effectively made debt a cultural necessity.
It's important to learn how to spend less money than you make. It is crucial to building wealth. But when a society values accruing debt more than it values spending within your means, the game's rigged. - Feb 19, 13While skimming my internetz today I noticed two really cool music promotions. The first was on The Pirate Bay (Yeah, I'm a user. Get over it):
Now that it's easier to torrent 9 things a day than it is to wait for a bloody movie to stream (then again, French telecoms throttle openly and without shame), The Pirate Bay's become my go-to desperation ship for finding entertainment when I don't even really know what I want. I don't know who Mr & Mrs is, but I think this EP-discovery thing they're doing on TPB is way cool: it doesn't just avail them hundreds of thousands of bored-yet-curious free listeners, it's a clear signal to the music-listening community: "We know your attitudes about music consumption have changed. We're with you there." And as concerts are a dime a dozen in Paris and relatively cheap, I can see this easily converting into me seeing them live at the next Rock en Seine or something ... if, in the end, I like their music.
The second piece of rad appeared on The Vulture, where I like reading TV show reviews:This will hardly look like news for fans of Ryan Murphy, who's done an awesome job promoting music and bands of choice wth Glee. (Remember the all-Britney and all-Madonna episodes?) But hell, I can think of worse things in life than turning a full episode of Gossip Girl into a living, breathing music video for Frank Ocean, whose Super Rich Kids couldn't possibly find a better content marriage.It's fun times in music and media collaboration. Keep your ears open to what's coming: you may be finding you're discovering artists in unexpected (and awesome!) ways. - Sep 25, 12
In a move regarded as unusual by the media, the French research group refused to provide copies of the journal paper to reporters in advance of its publication, unless they signed non-disclosure agreements. The NDAs would have prevented the journalists from approaching third-party researchers for comment.
- "Group Promoting Rat Study of Engineered Corn Forced Coverage Rush", The New York Times, Andrew C. Revkin.
I'm not a fan of GMOs, but I don't believe in pursuing lesser evils for a greater good, either. This kind of behaviour harms the credibility of journalists as well as scientists for a public whose interests are already so fractured that they're quick to find reasons to write things off as bullshit. - Sep 25, 12
A century ago, entrepreneurs sought to pass themselves off as parasites: they adopted the style and manner of the titled, rentier class. Today the parasites claim to be entrepreneurs.
- "Mitt Romney and the myth of self-created millionaires", The Guardian, George Monbiot.
I love this article for pointing to the mythologies that flourish in a culture, and how those same mythologies -- however steeped in truth, or not -- are used fervently to defend a society whose values have completely 180'ed.
The stories we tell ourselves don't just help us get through the day; they justify our political positions as well as our worldviews. It's one of the reasons why the latter can be so hard to change.
I also want to clarify by saying I do believe in self-created millionnaires, although I don't think they consider themselves self-creations: for every Mitt, there are too few Warren Buffetts, Bill Gates and Richard Bransons. But these people don't preach the same story Mitt's espoused in his candidacy; we ought to ask ourselves why. - Sep 25, 12It is late, I just got home and I am tired. But I just went through my agenda, and I am surprised and impressed by how much I have managed to actually do — not in the sense that I’ve surpassed benchmarks, which of course is nice too, but in the sense that all that stuff was in my book and not only is it now in the past, I’ve survived it. Today I can attest that I didn’t drown.
It makes looking at the weeks to come a lot easier. - Sep 05, 12
I don't see Estée Lauder quoted very often, but the words resonate deeply with me.
I was raised to pursue what I wanted with conviction and commitment. Dreaming was only meant to be a springboard. But gathering the momentum to push off from it isn't easy.
When I decided to quit a cushy marketing job and become a freelance journalist, a lot of people I trusted critiqued my choice. Near tears, I called my dad. He said, "There will be times when everyone treats you as if you're crazy, and as a reasonable person you'll wonder if they are right. When this happens, look at your results. If you're accomplishing what you intended, you're not the crazy one."
What he meant was, up to this point had I gotten what I expected? Were the right kinds of people paying attention, and gravitating to me? This became a compass.
I haven't stopped following it since. It's grueling work that demands everything from you, but it is also satisfying. Things I've learned along the way:- There is never a reason to throw your hands up and say "It's not fair." Life doesn't know our rules; you just get over it and keep getting up. This is character.
- The right people do notice. They watch you from a distance and lend help if you ask. They don't just become friends; they become useful constellations in the dark.
- Pursuing your path doesn't have to mean stepping on or demeaning other people. If you enrich and help those you come across, and surround yourself by the competent, the hungry and the loyal, the journey goes from being lonely to being incredibly rich. With few exceptions I've always felt taken care of and listened to in an industry that isn't known for its nurturing qualities.
- Being honest, with yourself and with others, pays the biggest long-term dividends. It is the hardest thing to do, and you have to decide to be that person every time you come across a point of ambiguity. This never gets easier, but it's also a compass -- one that shouldn't be disregarded.
- Cover your ass. My boss at Sunglass Hut taught me this and it's another useful thing to remember. Never leave things to chance: save meticulously, be clear in your language, prepare for alternate outcomes.
It may take years before you've shaken off what you think you want and discovered what is really worth your trouble. I thought for the longest time that I needed to be a millionnaire by age 25; I know now that what I really need is a good quality of life, to live in a place that makes me feel whole, to do challenging things that force me to renew myself regularly, and to populate my life with people who are good, in all senses of the word.
Then there are the little things: that half-hour in the métro that I can read, time away from the 'net and work, a new pair of beautiful shoes, Cleaning Day, a glass of wine alone in the sunshine, time to write, falling asleep on Romain's shoulder, and that moment when I get home and our moody cat -- who hates being touched -- rolls over in righteous wait for his belly rub. These things mean so much more to me now than "millionnaire at 25," and I would never have found them if I'd stayed where I was supposed to and done what was expected.
The road is harder, but the trade-off has been very good. - Sep 03, 12No worries, wee monk, you'll get there.
I have a client who's gone away to meditate for a month in one of those countryside meditation places. To make conversation, I not-jokingly said, "I tried meditating last week, but I'm not sure if I did it right because I think I fell asleep."
He gave me a smile of uncondescending sympathy and said, "The problem is, today, we're just tired all the time. When you go away on a meditation retreat you basically spend the first week falling asleep. Then you get to the point where you're actually rested. And that's when you can really start working on stuff."
I liked this and have been thinking about it ever since. It's silly to say, but it never occurs to me that everyone else is just as tired as I am, that this is an epidemic, and that falling asleep while trying to meditate isn't some expression of your inability to attain inner attunedness, it's an expression of how goddamn dragged-across-the-cobblestones we feel all the livelong day.
Isn't that reassuring? And doesn't that make you want to get to the place where you're rested, if only to see what you're like once you arrive? - Aug 26, 12
Just a snapshot of the brands that popped up in my newsfeed yesterday afternoon. They practically hit me one after the other. My responses to them:- I read the Obama one pretty closely, as I found the photo compelling and relatable -- two things Obama happens to be good at in the social space.
- I usually peep Good but didn't this time; I'm kinda over the existential humans vs chimpanzees ruminating, and the infographic had that ugly, hard-to-read background colour.
- Method I read because I'm a hardcore fangirl. Usually the imagery is more interesting but I did go through all the comments out of curiosity. I identified with the people who were like "My Target doesn't carry all that" and noticed Method didn't really reply, which vaguely embarrassed me because HEY, FANGIRL.
- YSL -- I read the text because the photo was cute and wanted to know the story behind it. And then I got kind of weirded out by this whole "the most Amazonian of Parisians" description. Did I find her Amazonian? Not sure.
- The champagne ad: I looked at it because the colours were pretty but didn't feel it particularly spoke to me. This guy is maybe two shares away from me de-newsfeeding him, actually.
- LOVED the Game of Thrones share. Even though this group's English is horrible they often find shareable GoT stuff that I end up sharing with other people. And what girl doesn't love Daenarys? I ask you, what girl? If you find one, I don't want to be friends with her because ew, she probably likes Sansa.
- Aug 02, 12
Like one of Kafka's machines, every time we slice someone, it slices us in the same place but not quite as deep and so quickly you hardly feel it. This may just be the nature of the journalism mechanism, but I worry most of us don't even know when we're bleeding.
- The Atlantic's Alexis Madrigal on Jonah Lehrer's 15 minutes, and what we made them mean.
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- Marketing and Advertising | Paris Area, France, FR
