Recently in Creativity Category

Would you expect to develop a MacOS application using a platform from Microsoft? With Silverlight 3 developers are able to create applications that run outside the browser on the MacOS. While the idea might sound crazy, and certainly is landscape changing - it's smart for Microsoft. As more applications move to the Cloud, and applications consume Cloud services, Microsoft can continue its role as a big player in the emerging Cloud computing space, in developer tools, and in the platforms used for delivering content.

I saw a great example of this with KEXP developing a media player that works on-line and off-line, with auto-detection of network capabilities. The player is stand-alone (works outside the browser) and I saw it running on MacOS and WIndows. If you are a MacOS developer you can get the Eclipse Tools for Silverlight at www.eclipse4sl.org/mac.

Sometimes you see uses of technology that you've never considered - from vendors you would never expect. That happened today with a totally unconventional use of Silverlight for use with document management and repurposing content - print content.

I thought that Adobe had document management and cross-platform sharing wrapped-up with Acrobat and PDF. After all, PDF is an ISO standard, and Acrobat is on its 9th version. I've written a number of books on Acrobat and managed the largest PDF user's conference for some time - so I'm partial to it... but a short while ago I saw something that is potentially game-changing for publications looking to monetize legacy content. And with magazines and newspapers under pressure - who doesn't want to monetize their digital assets? So I nearly fell out of my chair today when I saw covertocover.com showing past issues of Rolling Stone that include full text search and easy navigation between issues and pages - and it was all leveraging Silverlight. This is a great, unconventional use of the Deep Zoom technology that Silverlight supports - and it solves an immediate business need that publishers are facing - how to monetize legacy content.

Microsoft has made some pretty significant announcement here in Las Vegas today that will impact the way you communicate on-line, develop Web and interactive content - and event how you think about what is on-line and what is a desktop application...

Silverlight 3 was announced here and has some technical features that are useful for developers -things like GPU acceleration and support for additional CODECs such as H.264, MPG 4, and AAC but the real mind-blowing things revolutionize the user experience:

·         Live streaming with full DVR-like controls - pause / slow motion / rewind for live streams. This puts Silverlight live streaming miles ahead of anything else. NBC announced they are renewing their use of Silverlight for all streaming of the next Olympics (Vancouver) using Silverlight.

·         HD streaming - you'll see this at the next Olympics as they'll be streaming all content in HD.

·         Out-of-browser experiences on Mac and Windows - not just a browser plug-in

·         Off-line support: Silverlight 3.0 applications can run as stand-alone applications. So they can consume services while connected, and then switch to an "off-line" mode when not connected.

·         Support for multi-touch - like the "pinch" - think Minority Report or iPhone

I'll have more updates throughout the event... as I'm at a Microsoft-focused event, most of my posts will focus on their technology this week...

Last week I discussed the Kindle as just the start of electronic distribution. The folks at Amazon have now released an iPhone application, allowing you to view and access eBooks. While this is nothing surprising - the cool capability is something they are calling whispersynch. You can start reading a book or story using one device, and continue it using another. According to a Wall Street Journal story, it supports up to six devices. While I don't think I need six devices to read a book - the ability move between iPhone and Kindle alone is a great advancement.

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Ms. Pistachio was the first to alert me, via Twitter, natch, that Skittles had gone all Social Media on us. Sure as shootin', the current (March 2, 2009) Skittles.com is a mash-up of social media sites where the name of the colorful and intoxicatingly concentrated jelly-bean-oidal confection appears.

Of course, Skittles, with the aid of Agency.com, are following in the footsteps of Modernista!, who took their own website in this direction last year. Still, the fact that a consumer brand has emulated a trendy design shop has got everybody talking, including the ever articulate (and strikingly handsome) David Armano, who rightly predicts, I believe, that we'll see more of this, not less and goes on to link the Skittle move to the emergence of "sponsored conversations."

But what is this "this" that we're going to be seeing more of? I think it's something we could call "aleatoric" design which takes advantage of the fact that web pages, in the end, exist as a set of instructions to be executed by a browser, not a fixed arrangement of text and image (as in the print world). Since these instructions can be linked to dynamic sites themselves (Twitter, YouTube, Wikipedia, etc.), "design now becomes the quasi-symphonic arrangement of fluid elements that resist control or even predictability.

Given this tendency, wouldn't it be better for web designers to have a background in performance, choreography, or musical composition than graphic arts? Isn't it time we acknowledged that interactive design is NOT graphic design (or that the latter is an increasingly small and incidental component of the former)?

I've commented on this before, but the Rebranding Bandwagon just refuses to slow its roll. It seems like every day more and more major consumer product brands are slapping on a happy face to combat the mid-depression blues.

Past approaches of "efficient" and "effective" have gone by the wayside, replaced instead with marketing strategies that are "soft," "playful," and "cheery" - the attempt being, of course, to lighten the doom and gloom the American consumer feels every time they run out of toothpaste or have to feed the meter (or the kid).

It's actually getting pretty ridiculous. Pepsi cans will now be smiling, grinning, smirking, or giving stock advice depending on what kind you get. And I've heard the new 2009 Harley Davidson Softail is coming in "Recession Yellow" and sporting a horn that plays "Don't Worry, Be Happy."

I realize that brands, even established ones, need an occasional "refresh" to stand out on ever more crowded supermarket shelves. I also understand that the current economic situation is a living reality that brands feel like they have to respond to. Still the recent upsurge of rebranding efforts is starting to seem, in look and feel, depressingly trendy to me.

Image courtesy of Gaetan Lee.

This post contributed by Joe Rinaldi, Aquent Agent in Philadelphia.

From the New York Times to network news, Facebook "Notes" (25 Things, 15 albums, A-Zed iTunes) are a hot topic. A recent favorite, the "Album Cover Generator," has people not just navel gazing, but creating original content, kind of.

Here's how it works: 3 separate links provide 3 randomly generated assets. Wikipedia provides your band with a name, Quotationspage.com provides your album title and Flickr gives you the first step toward your cover art. Then, combine all the components in Photoshop to create your album cover. Lastly, you tag some peeps in your Note and you pass it along...

This begs the question: Who started this meme, Adobe or Flickr? Whoever started it, more and more folks (really talented folks in some cases) are doing it. In my little network alone 3 Aquent contacts, and one contact I wish was an Aquent contact, have taken time out of their busy days to build their album cover - and the results are impressive. But why are they doing it?

Kel Smith, Director of Interactive at Euro RSCG Life Catapult did it "at the end of a very long workday, as a way to recharge the neurons and engage in dialog with old friends. Like most Facebook-related activities, it's a combination of omphaloskepsis and reminiscence."

Chuck White, Director of Design and User Experience at Comcast, says, "It's a cool idea, I knew it would be quick and easy, and I wanted to see what some other people would come back with. As far as taking time out of the day, it was a good way to step away from a batch of stressful projects to re-focus because I knew it would only take ten minutes anyway. I'm actually thinking it would be a cool, quick test to assign when interviewing visual designers to see how they would compose a page and to check out their typography skills, etc."

I know when I filled out my '25 Things' I cranked it out in about 15 minutes while watching Top Chef. When I created my album cover I contentedly sat in front of Photoshop (how many free plugs is that so far?) for an hour after the kids went to bed and put together a cover that pales by comparison to what the designers I tagged put together.

Does it pleasantly recall a time when we had art school deadlines and not budget deadlines? Is it a way to feed our self fascination? Whatever the motivation, it's a really fun way to engage with the people in our field and see some truly talented folks flex their creative muscles. I've seen a tremendous shift in the landscape over the last 18 months as applications like Facebook, Twitter, and Plaxo enable me to interact with colleagues in a more personal way. We talk about parenting, TV, the economy and sports around a massive virtual water cooler. Now it appears we've adjourned the conversation to the studio for a quick crit.

I heard Richard Florida on the radio this morning. You may remember him as the author of The Rise of the Creative Class, which traced "the fundamental theme that runs through a host of seemingly unrelated changes in American society: the growing role of creativity in our economy."

Anyway, he was talking about America's post-crash geography and mentioned that, while recessions have been traditionally bad for the working class, the creative class is still doing alright. When I checked the stats to which he was referring, I found that "alright" really means "less bad."

Turns out, as in the past, this recession is extra hard on the working class. Jobs in production are down 12.9% since last year, and jobs in "construction & extraction" are down 14.2%. By comparison, jobs in arts, design, entertainment, sports, and media, as well as jobs in architecture and engineering, are down a mere 5.4%. So, "down," but not "as down."

Where is growth happening? In the sectors Florida calls "eds and meds," that is, higher education and healthcare. For example, jobs in "healthcare support" have increased by 10.4% year over year.

My question is: Does this mean that marketing, communication, design work related to healthcare is also or will be on the rise? What are you finding?

Image Courtesy of Buster McLeod.

Talent Spotlight
Jack Goldenberg is a creative copywriter represented by agent Randi Martin in Aquent's New Jersey office who, since cracking into the industry over 30 years ago, has served as the creative muscle behind such influential product launches as the McDonald's Happy Meal, Cabbage Patch Kids, Pop Rocks candy, and most recently, the signature Barack Obama watch line. Today, Jack is a freelance copywriter who recently finished a two-year gig writing advertising for Bristol Myers Squibb.

I asked Jack a few questions about how he got his start in the creative industry, the stories behind some of the work he is most proud of, and some advice for those of you hoping to follow a similar path.

First of all, I had an African American Cabbage Patch Kid growing up I named Fred. I'm about as white as they come and grew up in Maine...very strange. But I guess I could say he was my first best friend...so thanks for reaching the masses on that one.

You knew a black Cabbage Patch Kid named Fred? I think I knew him. Was he different than all the other Cabbage Patch Kids? Wait a minute, maybe I'm thinking of snowflakes...

Now you've worked on some pretty amazing product launches from the Happy Meal to the aforementioned (and awesome) Cabbage Patch Kids to the Obama Watches. As a staunch Happy Meal supporter myself, can you tell me the story of how this product launch came to be?

The launch of McDonald's first Happy Meal was a long, long time ago. How long? It was back when cell phones had a huge cord and we had to walk 20 miles in the snow just to pick up our e-mail. But I digress.

The Happy Meal name came from a company in St. Louis and the idea for it supposedly came from St. Louis adman Dick Brams in 1977 (also known as the Dark Ages).

The problem was that the Happy Meal wasn't that successful, at first, to warrant making it a national product. I was Creative Director at the Frankel Company - a brilliant company that has been promoting McDonald's for over 30 years.

Since the local sales of Happy Meals were not that strong, Ray Kroc, McDonald's founder, wanted to put the Happy Meal in a bag instead of a box because the money McDonald's would save if they sold millions of Happy Meals was astronomical (I'm no math whiz, but we're talking well over $40.00 here).

I argued with Ray Kroc that they had to keep the Happy Meal in a box, not a bag because a Happy Meal was "an in-home reminder of the need to visit McDonald's." A kid would see the Happy Meal boxes he collected in his room every day and tell his parents, "Mom, Dad, We've just gotta go back to McDonald's. I need three more 'Star Trek, Star Wars or Spongebob' Happy Meals to complete my collection!"

In other words, the Happy Meal was designed to be viral, kid to parent, long before YouTube made its way onto computers and cell phones. Of course, we didn't know about the term "viral," to us it was just "word of mouth."

I then tried to convince McDonald's to use movie merchandising on the first national Happy Meal instead of the generic outer space or circus themes they thought would work. When they didn't believe me, I brought in Dick Wolf, then a a movie producer and currently of Law and Order fame, and Rusty Citron, a former talent agent and currently Founder and President of the Actors Hall of Fame, to speak to Frankel account executives and McDonald's promotion people about how a movie merchandising theme would make the Happy Meal collectible.

The deal was sealed when Coke got the rights to the first Star Trek movie and sub-licensed them to McDonald's.

I don't want to get political here, but I do want a new watch, so can you tell me more about the Obama Watches?

Obama Watches is the most recent project I've worked on. In December 2007, I wore a single Obama watch to a friend's party as a one-man viral campaign supporting Barack Obama. The next day, five friends called or e-mailed me (why they didn't Tweet me, I'll never know!) to ask where they could buy "one of those Obama watches. "

Now, we have 13 different Obama watches, sales in 47 states and 8 foreign countries and three of our Obama watches are in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institution. I personally gave 5 watches to then-candidate Obama at the request of the Democratic National Committee.

We're going to make a 14th final Obama watch. While it will be a little less serious, it is sure to make dog lovers happy. I don't want to give away what the subject will be, but I will say that you'll be able to buy it at this site - www.firstpuppyoftheunitedstates.com - as soon as it goes live.

A couple weeks ago, Mr. Randall Rothenberg published a manifesto on interactive advertising creativity, which I missed at the time but discovered thanks to a post by Alan Wolk on whether or not creativity still matters.

Mr. Rothenberg's lengthy (by web standards - it took me minutes to read rather than seconds) manifesto is a well-written, informed, and impassioned defense of inspired creativity as the heart and soul of advertising, as that which not only gives it value but, more importantly makes it meaningful to the lives of real human beings. Against the rising tide of commoditization, he says, "We must stop acting as if we're selling schmattes, and start acting like the makers of magic that the best of us are -- and always have been."

Aside from pointing out that Rothenberg explicitly confirms my assertion that interactive design is a team sport - "There are several new skill sets creative agencies today must possess to attract, engage, and influence consumers -- Flash video development, software design, information architecture, animation, CRM, iPhone app design, and ActionScript development among them -- and no one individual will have expertise in all" - I would like to highlight one other critical point he makes: Great advertising is not aimed primarily at consumers; it's true "target audience" are the employees of the company that it promotes:

"This is perhaps the most important reason advertising creativity matters. It inspires the marketer. It encourages the sales force. It provides them, and all the other constituencies in and around the company and the brand, the faith that they will be able to sell the product in to the retailer, close the sales on the dealer's lot, win new commissions, and better their own lives. Great advertising is their rallying cry, the flag they march under. The mouseclick must be matched by their heartbeat."

Forget about the customer for a second. Does your creative work actually inspire your colleagues?