Friday, February 27, 2009

dear me, where'd you go?

Do you ever go back and read through old journal entries? A friend of mine, Johanna Beyenbach, just visited and reminded me of the first email I had ever written her. She said that it sounded so friendly and familiar, that she thought we had already met. I suppose I guilted her into writing me back. : ) Well, I went back and read through the email that I wrote her, along with a few others. And she was right, they were very friendly! I had been reading her column in Media Magazine for months and so when I wrote her, I felt like I already knew her. The thing is, I think I need to figure out how to inject that friendly spirit into all of my emails. It's strange, but I feel like that light-hearted person in me has died a little in the last 1.5 years of grad school. I guess I need to inject myself back into me before I can into emails.

Here's that email:

Thursday, February 26, 2009

how do you apply your knowledge

In Peter Coughter's Account Leadership class today we had an honorable guest, Johanna Beyenbach from Naked Communications. Johanna, an Adcenter 06 graduate, spoke to us about getting a job. The conversation bounced around the room and one question in particular made me think. Alina asked "My 12 year old cousin has just as much cultural knowledge as I do and it has taken me longer to get here. Is the knowledge that we have really that valuable to agencies, or is pretty much everyone versed in culture." (That's not an exact quote, but pretty close).
Johanna responded by saying that it depends upon how you apply your cultural knowledge.

Sunday, February 22, 2009

your media player never sounded so good

Nice example of remix culture.This guy took the Windows Media Player sounds and made them into a beat. He totally understands the art of self-promotion given the fact that half the lyrics talk about his blog. Just got to chat with Bud Cadell, Mike Arauz and Faris Yakob about remixing this weekend. Will post more about that soon.

Thursday, February 12, 2009

sketchin' yo

Hall & Partners, a research firm, came and spoke to my strategy class. They were great, very inspiring with their take on research. One of the things that they hit on was this video from TED by Tim Brown, the CEO of Ideo. Brown proves through having the audience draw their neighbor in 30 seconds that we fear the judgement of our peers. At the end of the 30 seconds, the crowd was laughing from embarrassment and apologizing for their renditions. Brown says that if you do this experiment with children you will get a completely different respoonse. Kids will show their drawing to whomever will look. As kids grow older and hit puberty, they begin to fear that judgement. He says that you need that sense of security as an adult working in a creative business. We need to feel comfortable when showing our work to others.

This discussion was very relevant to me as that night I attended another Dr. Sketchy's drawing event. The theme was "the prom your mother warned you about." I decided to go ahead and post a couple of my drawings.


Next month's theme is "Betty Page tribute."

Monday, February 9, 2009

forecasting fashion

2008 fashion garnered it's inspiration from television series 'Mad Men.' (Think Michael Kors and his collection of skinny ties.) I forecast that this summer's fashion will get it's influence from the 1960s psychedelic style music that's gaining attention. Take a listen to MGMT and Animal Collective on Youtube and see what they're wearing.

Sunday, February 8, 2009

openly evil

I've notice companies positioning themselves as evil. (The opposite of Google if you will.) The Hulu commercial and it's tagline: "An evil plot to destroy the world. Enjoy." shows Hulu embracing their evilness in enabling people to watch more TV. Which as our mothers all warned us, will turn our brains into mush. They could also use this positioning to talk about how they are a major competitor to TV because they are stealing viewers from the original airing of TV shows on TV. This could have a major impact on ad sales.
Brilliantly funny commercial:


I also found television without pity, whose tagline is: "spark the snark, spoil the networks." Their logo is a tv turned devil character.


I like the idea of embracing your brand truth (perhaps you are inherently evil) and being upfront about it. Honesty is the best policy after all.

open up your throat

Animal Collective - "Brother Sport"

I would love to see these guys on tour with MGMT. Just think about all the tye-die possibilities at that one show. The 1960s would be proud.
Here's another on of theirs called "My Girls."