March 2012
5 posts
February 2012
2 posts
Awesome activation idea
In order to curate the vacation photos Toronto visitors take and put online, we unleashed 21, 8-foot snowmen designed by top contemporary artists and placed strategically at key tourist spots in the city. When you take a photo with the snowmen, a famous Toronto scene is featured as the backdrop. And to encourage the photos would be shared, Tourism Toronto is donating $2 to Starlight Children’s...
There are good people left in advertising
Often times when an agency loses a big piece of business (or two), they lay off perfectly awesome talent. Take Goodby, Silverstein and Partners as a recent example. But instead of leaving them out to wander around hunting for a new job, an old Goodby employee, JD Beebe, came to the rescue and started the site ”Grab some Goodby.” Here prospective employers and recruiters can browse for...
January 2012
5 posts
What the world tweeted about in 2011
2011 was a pretty crazy year for Twitter, and probably more for those who tweet. So here is a nice infographic round up of what the world tweeted in 2011, if twitter were the news, which, it pretty much has become the unofficial and quite often the official, source of!
Created by Frugal Dad, the infographic shows the biggest event of the year…
When social starts to get really exciting for...
For me, this is one of the ways social starts to get really exciting for brands, and it’s not with a cool Facebook app or innovative social play, just smart thinking combined with the drive to make it happen. So, IKEA created a seriously good PR stunt, the Facebook Fan Sleepover…
After finding a Facebook group with almost 100,000 people called “I Wanna Have A Sleepover In Ikea“… IKEA...
Agency people, Does this sound familiar
This is officially the best Tumblr of 2011 - because every agency person has heard at least 10 of these stomach-turning sentences flow out of an account person’s ass - I mean mouth. Even if you’re an account person guilty of such blasphemy, you have to laugh!
How to address your customers concerns
Delta Air Lines sent a hardcase with six outward-facing video cameras as checked baggage aboard a flight from Atlanta to New York City to show the behind-the-scenes journey of checked baggage.
Now imagine we did this at OR Tambo International Airport, what would we see?
resolutions pretty enough to fulfill
No matter how good our intentions are on January 1st, by the end of the month (or week in some cases) our New Year’s resolutions have gone down the pooper. But maybe, just maybe, if we had something on us at all times to remind us, say on our mobile phone, something that looks beautiful, we would stick to them a little longer. That was the thought Chris Streger had when he...
November 2011
13 posts
Engagement: The Facebook X Factor
Facebook continues to dominate social networking sites. With more than 800 million users, 50% of them checking in daily, there are no other contenders at this time for the number one spot. That doesn’t guarantee their hold on the ‘King of Social Media’ crown long term but for now their reign is established and secure.
Most small businesses can grow their network of potential clients, expand their...
Lessons in Creative Vision
Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin It! Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.”
In the summer of 1984, Sheridan College student Jon Minnis set out to complete an ambitious project, armed with only PANTONE markers and paper. After four months of writing and polishing a clever script, he spent another three meticulously storyboarding and animating it into an elegant, minimalist...
Route 17, South Africa as captured by Google
With apps like Hipstamatic and Instagram, everyone likes to fancy themselves photographers these days. And now the Google street view car is getting in on the action, thanks to real photographer Aaron Hobson. Aaron has gone through tons of Google street view images and curated a selection of images that could pass as art, painting a beautiful and slightly haunting image of the world. It is...
Why Telecom Operators Deliberately Slow or Stop...
Wondered why your favorite Web page gets hung up or downloading of a large file inexplicably stalls? An expert reveals that the blame often lies with the telecom operator, which selectively slows broadband speeds to keep traffic flowing on its network, using a sorting technique called throttling.
What’s the Big Idea?
To detect whether broadband services are being throttled by a...
http://www.chrisbrogan.com/morethanqr/ →
Mobile Marketing Isn’t a QR Code!
“Life is about the people you meet and the things...
This cinematic take on the now famous Holstee Manifesto, one of these 5 favorite manifestos for the creative life, is an exquisite piece of visual poetry, bound to give you goosebumps and leave you itching to get up and do — or make — something great. Enjoy:
Why we love NYC
This absolutely stunning short-film called A Year in New York, created by Andrew Clancy with a Cannon 7D and S95, will make you remember why people love NYC so much.
grow a virtual mustache
It’s that time of the year again, when many a man has an excuse to let his facial hair go. That’s right, it’s Movember. Are you the type that’s too lazy to partake, embarrassed that your hair doesn’t grow in just right, or you’re a girl? Now you can use the PIcamo iPhone app to select one of 30 realistic looking mo’s, snap a pic, and share it. The...
The day after the Pitch
If you’ve ever worked in an agency then you’ve been guilty of this as least one time in your career —> the over-promise in a pitch. Maybe you said you’ve done something you never really did. Or you can do something you’re pretty sure is impossible. Or in the case of this video created by Balmer Partnership, committed your Sr. level staff’s time with no...
So how do you achieve Happiness?
Sell everything and move to Bhutan.Bhutan is the only country in the world that quantifies its nation’s well-being not by Gross National Product, the narrow and soulless measure of our economic monoculture, but by Gross National Happiness. Now doesntt that sound like a better way of doing things?
In any case In 2007, artist Jonathan Harris (♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥) traveled to Bhutan to explore the Gross...
Twitter does'nt work
So we got your attention read on and see why Twitter can be amazing and is more than just glorified SMS.
Yesterday Twitter launched Twitter Stories, a platform to showcase the stories behind selected tweets. The first series shows how a tweet helped save a bookstore from going out of business, an athlete that took a bunch of followers out to dinner and a fisherman that uses Twitter to sell...
Translating Viral YouTube Videos Into Sales
Want to go viral? Forget traditional PR in favor of a social media-savvy firm that can create an irreverent video hit that translates into sales. Here is 2 case studies that prove the point: Orabrush, a Provo, Utah, company that makes a tongue cleaner designed to eliminate bad breath and EZ Grill, a manufacturer of disposable charcoal grills in Bellevue, Washington READ ON:
You are not so smart!
Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, and 46 Other Ways You’re Deluding Yourself
October 2011
15 posts
infographic: the truth about agency peeps
This infographic on the anatomy of an agency seriously rules and will make you LOL a little in your pants. Pretty damn accurate too…
Climbing on the bandwagon
A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. They don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions, without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better designs we will have.” ~ Wired, February, 1996
A first-hand tour of the heart and mind of one of our era’s greatest visionaries,...
Great design is serious
Visual Storytelling: New Language for the...
Visual Storytelling: Inspiring a New Visual Language, from the fine folks at Gestalten, gathers the most compelling work by a new generation of designers, illustrators, graphic editors, and data journalists tackling the grand sensemaking challenge of our time by pushing forward the evolving visual vocabulary of storytelling.
Carl Kleiner’s ‘Homemade Is...
5 years of sharing
Ever wonder what site people share content on the most? Client ever ask when the best time is to put content up to be shared? Wonder why the hell anyone uses share buttons when they can copy and paste links? This helpful little infographic will answer all those questions running through your social media obsessed little head based on hard data from AddThis. Handy!
Is Big Brother Reading Your Emails?
What’s the Latest Development?
Secret orders forcing Google and Sonic to release a WikiLeaks volunteer’s email reveal the scale of US government snooping. Most people are not aware of the ease with which governments—free, open and so-called democratic—can access and peruse our private communications.
What’s the Big Idea?
The privacy law surrounding our emails is woefully...
Everything is a Remix: The Matrix
You liked the Matrix? was it original?
Everything Is A Remix: THE MATRIX from robgwilson.com on Vimeo.
Inside our era’s greatest minds, or what Nelson...
You don’t stop doing things because you get old. You get old because you stop doing things.” ~ Rosamunde Pilcher, writer
WISDOM Trailer from Andrew Zuckerman Studio on Vimeo.
Is that a fish in your Ear?
Is That a Fish in Your Ear?: Translation and the Meaning of Everything dances across linguistic fascination, cultural history, and pure wit to deliver a unique meditation on mankind’s ever-evolving tango with global communication.
Animation – Is That A Fish In Your Ear? – David Bellos from Penguin Books on Vimeo.
My son does advertising
Ever try to explain to your parents what it is you do for a living as they look at you all cross eyed? Yeah, so imagine if they had a blog where they put your work on display and critiqued it for the world to see. Mortifying, right? Well apparently Maximillian Urbanke of Young & Rubicam and Manuel Hock of DDB have the chutzpah because they let their Dad and Mom (respectively) do just...
when punk rock goes soft , The other F Word!
This epic documentary touring the film festival circuit, called The Other F Word, takes you into the lives of some of the most hardcore punk rockers you idolized and emulated as a kid from Black Flag, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Rancid, Circle Jerks and more and shows you how their lives completely changed when they became dads. Sad, inspiring, funny and uplifting all at the same time.
The Fragility of Curiosity
Children are born curious about the world and their playtime reflects the empirical way they investigate nature. But their curiosity is a fragile thing and stolid teaching can uproot it. READ MORE
Arthur C. Clarke Predicts the Future in 1964, Gets...
One day, we may have brain surgeons in Edinburgh operating on patients in New Zealand. When that time comes, the whole world would’ve shrunk to a point and the traditional role of the city as a meeting place for men would’ve ceased to make any sense. In fact, men will no longer commute — they will communicate. They won’t have to travel for business anymore, they’ll only travel for...
Never design a calendar again
It’s that time of year when client’s start ordering their calendars for 2012, designers usually run for the hills and the juniors in the studio gets the job, here is some great inspiration to do the job only once and never again:
The Open Daybook by LA-based writer and artist David P. Earle and friends at Mark Batty — a wonderful interactive perpetual calendar with artwork by 365 of...
What starving artists have to do with toads,...
Now this is a cookbook I can relate too:
For the past 18 months, brother-and-sister duo Nate Padavick and Salli Swindell have been delighting us with their beautifully illustrated visual recipes from around the world. They Draw and Cook: 107 Recipes Illustrated by Artists from Around the World collects the best 107 of these lovely and delicious treats, joining the ranks of our favorite quirky...
September 2011
27 posts
Specialization is Overrated: Why You’ll Benefit...
Being slightly competent at many things will get you further than being specialized in one thing. read more »
Planet Goes Into Ecological Debt
Yesterday marked the day when Earth went into ecological debt, having already used a year’s worth of productivity and resources. It has been dubbed ‘Earth Overshoot Day’.
Read More
Staying Connected From Beyond the Grave
The Internet may provide a kind of immortality: Numerous websites now offer professional services to make it easier for the bereaved to create an online presence for a departed relative.
Read More
Improve your life with a click
Life gets busy and hectic, and sometimes it’s hard to take a step back and think about what’s important to you, and what you want out of life. Now there’s an online game that helps you do just that. Mindbloom is a new game that helps people “grow the life” they want. By spending just a few minutes a day playing the game, you grow and nurture a tree that symbolizes your life, with leaves...
dark side of the internet
Whether you’re a Pink Floyd fan or not, this is pretty cool and actually one of the bright sides of the internet. If you were born too late to go to a Pink Floyd concert have no fear – you can now listen to one of their live shows from 1974 in its entirety on their YouTube channel, with psychodelic graphics, videos, and all. But every hour, the video changes to make each viewing different,...
http://www.inquisitr.com/145413/google-android-has-... →
All the growth is in android, Rim may not even be on the map by dec, just in time for my upgrade .
Ugly technology bothering beautiful people
So, Fashion week mania has finally ended in New York City. This year’s hottest trend? QR codes. Wait, what? QR codes were everywhere this year. Have an iPhone, and want to learn more about a model. Yup, there’s an app for that. It allowed you to scan the model’s Skanz bracelet and view their information. Even Barbie got in on the action. Pink Barbie-themed buses driving...
Pink Ponies: The World’s Best Case Study Video
Another case study? Well, kinda… But this one is different, it’s a great, wait… perfect satirical take on how the creative world sells itself, and how it can literally sell anything, to anyone!
I remember watching this and laughing out loud back in January when the video had about 500 views… 250,000 views later and I’ve seen a swagger of tweets about it this week, so I thought I should...
Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”: A...
In 1988, Bobby McFerrin wrote one of the most beloved anthems to happiness of all time. On September 24 that year, “Don’t Worry Be Happy” became the first a cappella song to reach #1 on the Billboard Top 100 Chart. But more than a mere feel-good tune, the iconic song is brimming with neuroscience and psychology insights on happiness that McFerrin — whose fascinating musings on music and the...
What Makes Hitchcock’s Films Great: An Animated...
For me, cinema is not a slice of life but a piece of cake.” ~ Alfred Hitchcock
Hitch from Pascal Monaco on Vimeo.