spotted owl

Big Personalities

Last week's New Yorker had a great piece on Rahm Emanuel who I'm endlessly fascinated with. Admit it - he's so much more interesting than Obama. The larger than life personality, the laser-like focus, the unapologetic profanity - the id is always more fun to watch than the super-ego.

I think I knew this at one point, but I was intrigued to read that Rahm's brother - Ari Emanuel - was the basis for Ari Gold's character on Entourage. Same personality traits listed above, different industry.

Which made me wonder - who is advertising's big personality these days? In the earlier part of the decade, it had to be Donny Deutsch of CNBC fame. Now I'd probably nominate Alex Bogusky; that guy is everywhere these days. Agency of the year stuff aside,  he's written a diet book, he's heading up a major bike sharing movement and he just caused a mild social media uproar. He'll be speaking at SXSW interactive later this week, surely to a packed crowd.

No doubt there are lots of big personalities in politics, entertainment, advertising, etc. What makes the above three so appealing (as opposed to Rush, Harvey and Donny) is a shared sense of almost childlike exuberance. Their energy feels fresh, contagious even. I wonder who else belongs in this category right now... Any thoughts?

Jamba Juice

Thought this was interesting - Jamba Juice is now selling various diet/health books including Fast Food Nation featured prominently in front of the register.

Does this make us feel better about our smoothies?

Headvertising

Much like the poorly-named bumvertising and the nicely parodied moonvertising after that, headvertising (or cranial billboards as this recent article puts it) is unlikely to give other forms of advertising a run for their money.

 

I think most of us can agree that this is a good thing. While our choice of clothing, shoes, etc. all say a little something about us, the idea of using ourselves as paid ad space feels wrong. Instead of the Tide NASCAR, picture the Tide Human. No good. Yet I couldn't help but love this guy:

My creative director James passed him on the streets a few months ago and snapped the picture. He's walking down the sidewalk here in Austin... wearing a Kudos box over his head. He's smartly cut out eye-holes, though they seem somewhat ill-placed. I think I like this because there is an extremely low chance that Kudos paid him to do this. Not only does the box look worn down, but I'm pretty sure Kudos isn't even around anymore. The website has a product locator feature that couldn't find any store that carried Kudos within a 100 mile radius of my house. This means that this guy just felt like wearing a Kudos box on his head that day. Strangely awesome.

Cities & Towns

Last week I read a great piece written by Richard Florida for The Atlantic about how the recession will re-shape America's cities (hint: NYC, Boston and Austin look good, more bad news for the Sun Belt and the Rust Belt).

After you're done scanning for your city's fate there, check out this cool graphing tool from the NYTimes. It allows you to look up the housing price trends in your city vs. the national average. You can see that Boston is close to the national average and only suffering modest declines whereas Phoenix spiked way up and then way down. Still wondering when rock bottom hits.

Energy, Healthcare, Education

Loved Obama's speech tonight, haven't felt like this since post-election glow.

 

While no big surprises, his delivery never ceases to amaze. The three pillars of the speech - energy, healthcare & education - were all perfectly encased in both measured caution and contagious optimism.

Below are a few things that I've come across over the past few days/hours that have stayed with me:

Energy: Hard not to be excited about this one - wind, solar, green --> jobs. Thomas Friedman wrote a great op-ed piece about funding new technology (eco and otherwise) and proposed this motto: "Start ups, not bailouts: nurture the next Google, don't nurse the old G.M.'s." Our auto troubles may dominate the news, but they're nowhere near as intriguing as what's to come in alternative energy. This commercial (via @ericwebber) from years ago still makes me smile:

Healthcare: Horrific stat of the night: "The crushing costs of healthcare causes a bankruptcy every 30 seconds." Wow.

Education: Another nice op-ed piece, this one from Nicholas Kristof about education as our greatest national shame. Good info on just how much teachers matter, above almost everything else (@maggiewendell already knows this). Education Secretary Arne Duncan describes the stimulus as a “staggering opportunity,” the kind that comes once in a lifetime.

And lastly, a quote from Stanford economist Paul Romer who famously said: "A crisis is a terrible thing to waste." It's going to be an interesting year.

Quotable

Great quote from Jeremy Bullmore followed by nice analysis from Gareth Kay:

"Customers build brands as birds build nests. From the scraps and straws they chance upon." (JB)

Of course this, by itself, directly challenges the notion of the singular brand idea or identity - we're all likely to have different perceptions as we chance upon different stuff and it makes the idea of most brand models redundant and rather ridiculous. (GK)

So it seems that the best we can do is to offer the kinds of things that might get picked up and stored along with all of the other materials already collected. And to remember that every collection is different despite efforts otherwise.

Jobs Here

Despite (or maybe because of) all of the doom and gloom, people are still drinking beer. And eating burgers. And going fishing. This means that our brands are growing --> our agency is growing --> we're hiring.

Here's what we're after:

- Planner: Needs to be super creative type + mega quant geek - looking for media channel savvy, crazy smart, uber-passionate folk. 4-7 year range.

- Group Account Director:  9-12 year range, top creative shop experience, leader, straight-talker, fast-thinker, grounded, scrappy, original, passionate, collaborative - interest in beer, fishing & outdoor sports a plus.

- Director of New Business: 8-12 years exp - agency experience a must. New business, account service or PR background nice to have.

- Traffic Manager: Experience in traffic or PM preferred. Need to have worked within a creative agency with a firm understanding of the creative process.

- Interactive Designer: 4-6 years. Must be good.

- Flash Developer: 4-6 years. Also must be good.

Oh - and here's a little about us: we're a small, private, national branding agency located in Austin, Texas, founded by two ex-GSD&M alums in 1996. Site's being re-designed, but you can check out some of our work at www.mc-j.com

If you're interested, send your resume to debbie@mc-j.com -  & add the position in the subject line for easier sorting. Feel free to post any ?'s below.

Twitter Love

Lots of people hate twitter. At best, they'll describe it as one long facebook status update; at worst, it's a catalog of what people had for breakfast. I get why people don't like twitter - it's weird. It's not something you can really describe unless you're on it (for awhile). I think the twitter template - the question 'what are you doing?' - is part of the problem. It should read 'what are you interested in right now?' Maybe it's an article you just read, a tv show, an event, an idea you had, an idea someone else had. It's one giant conversation of interesting. Okay <mostly> interesting.

 

Aside from pulse of the culture stuff (from inauguration day chatter to random Tuesday musings), it's a great way to connect with people from all over. Some examples:

- I'm headed to Sydney in March. I've never been to Sydney. But @servantofchaos lives there and he's generously provided hotel tips, restaurant recos and even a google map of places to check out (see above). Not only that, but he's going to try to coordinate a coffee morning with a bunch of other Sydney planners/creative folk while I'm there. Awesome.

- I was working on a brief and hit a wall. Needed some outside guidance, so I posted a few ideas out there. Fans of the brand were quick to weigh in. Special thanks to @spikejones.

- This might be my favorite. Today I connected with a planner from Sweden (@theplanninglab). He followed my twitter link here, read this post and noticed that we have the same alarm clock. Then he wrote about it here. Cool blog, random fun.

So there you have it. Twitter helping me with travel, work, alarm clock appreciation. I'm a fan.

Under Pressure

Today I read two completely different pieces about R/GA. One was a glowing article about innovation, collaboration and creative brilliance at R/GA, Adweek's Digital Shop of the Year. The other was a blog post about paranoia, secrecy and ultimatums at... R/GA, Adweek's Digital Shop of the Year.

Like Crispin, Adweek's other winner, R/GA just had lay-offs. Yet some inside the agency are instead calling it 'cleaning house,'  chalking it up to the immense pressure to out-do themselves (weaker employees get the quick ax).  Yikes. The sheen of 'agency of the year' has to wear off quickly when you watch your cube-mate load all of their belongings in a cardboard box.

Oddly, many of the industry's most awarded agencies seem to have the worst reputations. Words like sweatshop and factory are typical descriptors, while one friend summed it up like this "Everyone on the outside was trying to get in while everyone on the inside was trying to get out."

In addition to the awards list (and don't get me wrong - I love that stuff), it would be great if there was a  list about employee happiness. Agencies that have a reputation for treating their employees well, compensating them fairly, doing the right thing for clients and listening to their people. You know, important stuff. Not sure how said info would be collected, but it's a nice thought. Any thoughts/ideas/experiences out there? Would love to hear.

Baffled Mad Men

This made me laugh:

Thanks to @bastholm, @lenkendall & @keidson