Welcome to Pondering Creative

This morning, as I was checking e-mail while eating breakfast and driving to work, it occurred to me that life isn’t as simple as it used to be. It’s not just me. My 13-year-old son frequently assures me that he has everything under control while listening to Green Day, watching The Family Guy, eating pistachio nuts and doing algebra.

It’s not just him, either; it’s a response to the 21^st century … a new stage of cultural evolution. My partner Jason Opat would have been flatly categorized as A.D.D. a few years ago, but after you spend a little time with him, you realize that he is the consummate iteration of professionalism in today’s business environment. All the hyper-speed concepts flitting around his brain are connecting with the real world in very real ways. He’s one of the most successful people I know, and he does it by being nonlinear in his thinking: bounce to this thought, bounce to that thought, bounce way out there to another thought, all the while moving ideas forward and getting results.

I used to enjoy focusing really hard on one project for hours at a time, but I realized today, while teleconferencing, proofing a direct mail piece, texting a client and cleaning my nails, that I’ve lost the ability to obsess on a single project for a long period of time. Is that bad? Dunno. It’s working, I guess, so maybe it’s just different.

At any rate, the end of the work day is near, as write this post, so soon I’ll be at home enjoying some leisure time on the patio with my family while firing up the chimenea, checking weather on the iPhone, tossing a Frisbee and feeding the dog.

Today’s FREE BONUS CONTENT!
The most successful people are those who are good at plan B.
–James Yorke

I’ve done a ton of technical advertising over the years, industrial, aircraft, software, you name it. I enjoy engineering-based products because nowhere does the art of creative persuasion call for greater talent than in the task of translating a technical feature into an attention-getting concept.

But nowhere is the value of high-concept advertising more difficult to convey than to an engineering-based client. Engineers, technicians and other data-driven people are usually so enamored of the technical facts surrounding their products that it’s difficult for them to step outside their own knowledge-sets and imagine what it’s like not to know what they know. Their intimate knowledge of the product is often their worst enemy from a marketing standpoint because they can’t imagine a target audience not being instantly fascinated by its technical elegance.

The truth is that, no matter how perfect a product or service is for a given target audience, you still have to pull them out of the hypnotic reverie called “real life,” in order to tell your story.

The formula is the same every time: 1) get attention, 2) identify a need, 3) fill the need and 4) ask for the order. The natural tendency of technical-minded people is to jump to step 3 because the manner in which their product can fill the need is where their brains live, day-in and day-out.

It’s our job as marketing professionals to help them understand the technical process of advertising. Just as a computer motherboard can’t be overhauled until you’ve disconnected the power and removed the access panel, so the human mind can’t be influenced until you’ve opened it with a provocative thought (the headline and visual) that demands further exploration (reading the copy). Only then can you “fill the need” in a way that will be mentally allowed by the target.

Today’s FREE BONUS CONTENT!
Opportunity is missed by most because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.
–Thomas Alva Edison

The diabolical discipline we call marketing is a dark and beautiful science. It was inevitable, with the increasing—and irritating—ability of target audiences to ignore our advertising messages, that we should find a way to unscrew the tops of their heads, have a little look-see inside and discover what makes them tick. The newest tool in our arsenal is a technology that will purportedly allow us to bypass focus groups, surveys and rating systems and directly observe activity in the brains of test subjects.

Bwah-ha-ha-ha!

It’s like that guy, Sylar, on Heroes, but less bloody. Okay, we don’t actually get to unscrew the tops of their heads, but we do get to use electrodes, like in a Frankenstein movie.

One new company, the brain-child (pun intended) of researcher Dr. Bob Knight, is called NeuroFocus, and its product are so promising that the Nielson Co. has invested in them. Apparently TV viewers aren’t as excited as they once were about filling out rating cards, not even for a whole five dollars, so the audience-measurement giant is looking for new ways to figure out what people like.

For marketing purposes, the technology promises measurability of audiences’ attention, emotional engagement and information retention. It’s being tested against split-market campaigns that have already proven out in the real world, to see if it really works, and … well, according to NeuroFocus, it really works.

So, okay, with mind reading out of the way, what’s next? Mind control would be cool. Surely NeuroFocus can make a few tweaks to the Sylar machine and come up with something that makes people buy products whether they like them or not. Now that’s what we diabolical marketing professionals really need.

I kid you.

Or do I?

Today’s FREE BONUS CONTENT!
Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

NBC recently tested viewer recall of TV ads when played in fast-forward mode—DVR-style. They biometrically tracked eye movements, heart rate and sweat (further proof that advertising can be a nasty business) to find out what factors captured viewers’ attention.

I was surprised to learn that test subjects actually retained information from certain spots, even when viewed at up six times normal speed. Specifics of the study suggested that ad producers may want to pay more attention to:

- keeping the brand logo in the middle of the screen

- limiting the number of scene changes

- telling a visual story that stands alone without audio

- the use of familiar characters

- frequency of media placement

One moral of the story is that the good ol’ fashioned boob tube is neither entirely dead nor entirely useless as an advertising medium, even with DVR technology.

The Wall Street Journal’s Stephanie Kang wrote an excellent article that tells more of the story. You can find it here: http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB120398730105292237.html?mod=djm_HAWSJSB_Welcome

Today’s FREE BONUS CONTENT!
To fly, we have to have resistance.
–Maya Lin

I’m working on a campaign to sell banking products to a Gen-Y target audience, and it’s an education for a guy like me who was raised in the 1960s and 1970s. When I was a kid, the nation was still inventing itself according to a baby-boomer ideal of American life. From an early age, I took all my self-image cues from advertising. I was successfully programmed to want Slinky, (the Fun and Wonderful Toy), PF Flyers (so I could have the same adventures as Jonny Quest) and Campbell’s Soup (Mm! Mm! Good!) I confess that this morning when I saw Elsie the Cow’s face painted on the side of a truck, I had an urge to buy some Borden’s milk. In “my day,” advertisers told us how we should feel about ourselves, and we obediently fell into line.

My son, now 13 years old—at the tail end of the Gen-Y classification—has an instinctive distrust of everything he hears in advertising. He gives you a clear sense of who he is, from day to day, but as soon as you try to take advantage of this knowledge, he changes. Try to tell him what he should do or how he should feel, and it’s bye-bye audience interest. His mind is too subtle to be tricked, and his cynical wit is sharp enough to slice tomatoes.

On the banking campaign, my creative partners and I are being careful not to tell the target audience what to do. Instead of saying, “Here’s how you can be cool by using our products,” we’re saying, “Here’s how our products can be cool by fitting into your life.”

Is Gen-Y unique? An anomaly? Nah, they’re the vanguard—the early adopters—of this sophisticated attitude. As surely as easy-listening orchestras eventually start playing old rock songs, the rest of us will follow the example of the young.

Today’s FREE BONUS CONTENT!
Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live.
–Dorothy Thompson

The longer I watch advertising evolve, the more convinced I become that “old standard” methods are losing their power over target audiences. As the state of our art improves, so does the ability of the human mind to ignore what we create.

So how do we respond? We make TV spots funnier. We make print and Internet ads more focused and quintessential. In all cases, we continue to incorporate the basic advertising formula: get attention, identify a need, fill the need and ask for the order.

Still, more and more, when I test myself at the end of a TV spot by asking, “Do I know what they were selling?” the answer is no.

It’s time to evolve again.

One answer is to create media in which the marketing message is integral to the entertainment content—viral video that goes further than simply pasting a URL across the bottom of the screen.

I’ve recently joined in a business venture called IMG Pictures. Among other communication products, we’ll create video content that doesn’t overtly sell anything. It will be actual entertainment, but with a marketing agenda woven into it. It will stimulate awareness of a brand, product or idea without smacking the audience over the head. Cerebral product placement.

Don’t get me wrong; the “old standard” methods still have roles to play in the media mix. But to truly penetrate a target audience’s buying consciousness, the line between entertainment and marketing needs to be indistinguishable. Part selling, part storytelling.

Maybe we could call it “advertainment.” Just kidding.

Today’s FREE BONUS CONTENT!
If you can’t be kind, at least be vague.

Several years ago, the agency I worked for was hired by a rent-to-own franchisee that shall remain nameless. In our initial meeting with the CEO, we learned that he regularly trained his salespeople to become “financial managers” for their customers, most of whom had extremely low incomes. The sales strategy was to talk them into bringing their bills and paychecks to the store every payday, so the salesperson could “help” them manage their budgets. In truth, it was an upsell strategy that allowed the salespeople to see exactly how much more low-quality, overpriced rent-to-own crap they could strap onto their victims before letting them out of the store.

Here’s how the slimeball CEO explained it to us: “These people are too stupid to manage their own finances. Every two weeks, when they get paid, their paychecks are so small that they have to figure out how to get ten pounds of potatoes out of a five-pound sack. Our job is to get as many of those potatoes as we can, before they have a chance to give them to someone else.”

This was a defining moment for all of us at the agency. Some of us were horrified at the depths to which we were about to sink. Others cheerfully joined the client in his rationale, agreeing that some people aren’t smart enough to manage their own money. Guffaw. Nudge-nudge.

And I suppose it’s true. But it’s one thing to detect a weakness in your fellow human beings and quite another thing to systematically prey upon it.

I’ve turned down rent-to-own clients since then. I’ve turned down ambulance-chasing-attorney clients. I’ve turned down environmentally reprehensible petroleum-industry clients and clients that disguise entrepreneurship as religion.

In every instance, there was another advertising professional waiting in line to take my place.

I frequently hear the agency rationale that, “If we don’t take their money, somebody else will.”

Also true. And maybe there will always be slimeballs waiting in line to help other slimeballs, and the world will never, ever get any better.

Then again, if some of us are willing to take responsibility for the influential media we produce, maybe … gradually … others will follow.

Today’s FREE BONUS CONTENT!
We get our morals from books. I didn’t get mine from books, but I know that morals do come from books—theoretically at least.
–Mark Twain

When I was an agency dweller, I hid behind my cubicle wall, acting pretty much any way I wanted to, wearing clothes that made anti-fashion statements, flinging rude comments and spending inordinate amounts of time playing with toys. As long as my creative work was stellar—and on-time—this was allowed.

My situation wasn’t unique among designers and copywriters. Walk around the creative department of any agency worth its salt, and what do you see? Yo-yos, skateboards, wind-up toys, antique toys … morbid toys. One of my favorite places to visit is the cubicle of Steve Hobson, staff genius at Sullivan, Higdon and Sink, whose cubicular domain is guarded by a perimeter of disembodied doll heads. Go, Steve.

Why do we act like bad children? What’s wrong with us?

Nothing. We’re paid to be different rather than homogeneous, striking rather than plain. We’re valuable to clients because our personalities scream and our egos demand attention. Who else could invent concepts that stop target audiences in their tracks?

Now that I run my own business, I’m in the client spotlight more than I used to be, so there’s a real temptation to act “normal.” But even as I play grown-up, I try to preserve my panache, engaging in small rebellions:

I wear jeans to meetings where no one else is wearing jeans.

I let my cynical humor out of its cage and allow it to prowl ruthlessly through innocent conversations.

I verbalize thoughts that are off-topic, off-color and frequently wrong.

I refuse to wear a necktie outside my own funeral.

I continue to live by the code of the creative: “I will be bold. I will be controversial. I will even be unpopular, but I will never be plain.”

Today’s FREE BONUS CONTENT!
Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds.
–Albert Einstein

There are two kinds of news releases. One, although commonly called a news release, is actually an article. These are sent to trade journals and other content-hungry magazines who plan to flow your text into their publications with minimal editing. If you’re writing this kind of “news release,” don’t use the suggestions below. Instead, write a good article. (We’ll cover that in a later blog entry.)

The other—more common—type of news release is sent to journalists who will author the actual article. Here are a few tips for piquing their interest:

1. Your topic has to be newsworthy. Find the news story within your marketing story, an angle that will hook journalists. Their job is not to sell your product or company, but to sell issues of their publications. If there’s no actual news story in what you have to say, don’t waste your time creating a news release.

2. Find the hook. To be newsworthy, your release should be relevant in a context larger than your organization. A story about how you’ve hired 20 new employees is nice for you, but it’s more newsworthy when placed in the context of high unemployment rates in your area. Human interest hooks are also effective; people love reading about people.

3. Put the most important information at the beginning. The first paragraph should give a complete overview of “who, what, when, where and why.” The second paragraph should expand on the first. The following paragraphs should fill in peripheral information in descending order of importance.

4. Keep paragraphs short and scannable.

5. Use quotations to humanize the release and improve its readability. Place every quotation in its own paragraph, even if it’s only one sentence long.

6. Use minimal adjectives and no flowery language. Journalists want the facts. They’ll do the job of turning the story into prose, should they decide to pick it up.

Here’s a good format to use for news releases.

Today’s FREE BONUS CONTENT!
So, these two cannibals are eating a clown. And one cannibal says to the other cannibal, “Does this taste funny to you?”

In part 1 and part 2 of this series, we examined visual and sound elements in videography and filmmaking. Now let’s take a look at the basics of editing.

Common transitions
Cut: An instant transition from one frame to the next, this is the most frequently used edit.

Dissolve: This gradual transition from one image to the next softens the shot-to-shot journey and is often used to suggest the passage of time.

Fade: A gradual transition from video to a solid or graphic background. When you fade to black, then fade into another shot, it’s called “dipping to black.”

You can also combine techniques. A good example is what I call the “flashbulb,” in which you cut to white, then do a three-frame dissolve to the next image. Another is to blur one shot and dissolve as you find focus coming into the next shot. Or do the same thing with a fast pan of the camera on both sides of a dissolve or cut. Start watching your favorite commercial and long-form work, frame-by-frame, and you’ll see that tricks like these are commonly used to elicit specific feelings and pump up visual interest. You’ll also notice that it’s often okay—even desirable—to use short cuts. Really short cuts. One of my most enjoyable edit sessions took place a few years ago when I worked with an inexperienced editor who turned fully around in his chair and indignantly asked me, “You mean to tell me, you think you’re gonna cram 20 shots into a 30-second TV spot?”

Yeah, that’s what I meant.

Hollywood conventions
Let’s go deeper. Even with all our 21^st century tools and shortened attention spans, most of the editing standards used in feature films today are still based on the work of Vsevolod Pudovkin, a Russian silent movie director who’s long since moved on to that big studio in the sky. The conventions he established haven’t changed because they’re grounded in the fundamental ways that humans perceive visual information. Here are the basics, as written by Pudovkin himself in 1926:

1. Contrast— Suppose it be our task to tell of the miserable situation of a starving man; the story will impress the more vividly if associated with mention of the senseless gluttony of a well-to-do man.

On just such a simple contrast relation is based the corresponding editing method. On the screen the impression of this contrast is yet increased, for it is possible not only to relate the starving sequence to the gluttony sequence, but also to relate separate scenes and even separate shots of scenes to one another, thus, as it were, forcing the spectator to compare the two actions all the time, one strengthening the other. The editing of contrast is one of the most effective, but also one of the commonest and most standardised, of methods, and so care should be taken not to overdo it.

2. Parallelism — This method resembles contrast, but is considerably wider. Its substance can be explained more clearly by an example. In a scenario as yet unproduced a section occurs as follows: a working man, one of the leaders of a strike, is condemned to death; the execution is fixed for 5 a.m. The sequence is edited thus: a factory-owner, employer of the condemned man, is leaving a restaurant drunk, he looks at his wrist-watch: 4 o’clock. The accused is shown — he is being made ready to be led out. Again the manufacturer, he rings a door-bell to ask the time: 4:30. The prison wagon drives along the street under heavy guard. The maid who opens the door — the wife of the condemned — is subjected to a sudden senseless assault. The drunken factory-owner snores on a bed, his leg with trouser-end upturned, his hand hanging down with wrist-watch visible, the hands of the watch crawl slowly to 5 o’clock. The workman is being hanged. In this instance two thematically unconnected incidents develop in parallel by means of the watch that tells of the approaching execution. The watch on the wrist of the callous brute, as it were connects him with the chief protagonist of the approaching tragic denouement, thus ever present in the consciousness of the spectator. This is undoubtedly an interesting method, capable of considerable development.

3. Symbolism — In the final scenes of the film Strike the shooting down of workmen is punctuated by shots of the slaughter of a bull in the stockyard. The scenarist, as it were, desires to say: just as a butcher fells a bull with the swing of a pole-axe, so cruelly and in cold blood, were shot down the workers. This method is especially interesting because, by means of editing, it introduces an abstract concept into the consciousness of the spectator without use of a title.

4. Simultaneity — In American films the final section is constructed from the simultaneous rapid development of two actions, in which the outcome of one depends on the outcome of the other. The end of the present-day section of Intolerance is thus constructed. The whole aim of this method is to create in the spectator a maximum tension of excitement by the constant forcing of a question, such as, in this case: Will they be in time? — will they be in time?

The method is a purely emotional one, and nowadays overdone almost to the point of boredom, but it cannot be denied that of all the methods of constructing the end hitherto devised it is the most effective.

5. Leit-motif (reiteration of theme) — Often it is interesting for the scenarist especially to emphasise the basic theme of the scenario, for this purpose exists the method of reiteration. Its nature can easily be demonstrated by an example. In an anti-religious scenario that aimed at exposing the cruelty and hypocrisy of the Church in employ of the Tsarist regime, the same shot was several times repeated: a church-bell slowly ringing and, superimposed on it, the title: “The sound of bells sends into the world a message of patience and love.” This piece appeared whenever the scenarist desired to emphasise the stupidity of patience, or the hypocrisy of the love thus preached.

Scenarist. Never thought of myself as “scenarist” before reading Pudovkin, but okay.

Here are a couple of other discussions on editing basics:
http://www.videomaker.com/article/1215/
http://www.personal.kent.edu/~lhanson/grammar.htm

See all you scenarists next week.

Today’s FREE BONUS CONTENT!
There are three kinds of people: those who know how to count and those who don’t.

In part 1 of this series, we talked about the visual elements of videographic storytelling. In this installment, we’ll talk about some audio tricks that add polish to the finished product.

Hire a sound technician for the shoot
If your budget will tolerate it, hire an audio engineer to record sound on separate digital equipment (outside the cameras) during production. In addition to improving the audio quality, you’ll benefit from having a person solely dedicated to the audio portion of the shoot, listening for background noise, keeping the incoming signal pure and clean.

Music beds
Who writes all that smarmy music for corporate videos? And how do they keep from putting themselves to sleep during the recording sessions? There are so many excellent pieces of stock music out there—and so many creative ways to apply them to videographic products—that there’s no reason to end up with a sleepy soundtrack.

Picture a video scene where a chemist is working in a hospital research lab, as an example. Imagine the following three music beds under it. (The first one is the same smarmy piece that’s linked ab0ve, but the other two have the potential to take the scene to a whole new place, in entirely different ways.)

http://sounddogs.com/previews/3151/mp3/528161_SOUNDDOGS_Sk.mp3
http://sounddogs.com/previews/3791/mp3/377565_SOUNDDOGS_Ov.mp3
http://sounddogs.com/previews/3988/mp3/541609_SOUNDDOGS_Mo.mp3

An unorthodox look at your music bed can do amazing things for the mood of a video. Spend a little longer in the music library. Be more creative with your search terms. Listen to music samples during the conceptual phase of the creative process, and it may even change the way you script the project.

Voice-over
It’s always tempting to stay inside the box when you pick voice talent, to go with the guy who sounds like all the radio spots you’ve ever heard or all the corporate videos you’ve ever heard. Don’t. Look for alternative voice textures and fresh delivery styles.

If you haven’t worked with the voice talent before, request an audition in which they read a portion of your script. Offer suggestions during the audition to see how directable they are. Good voice talent should be able to give you precisely the read you’re looking for. Great voice talent should be able to take you beyond what you had originally imagined.

Pacing
Make sure the rhythm of the voice-over complements the rhythm of the music bed. It shouldn’t sound like a rap song, but these two components should have a harmonic relationship.

Audio sweetening
When you’ve finished the video edit, take the individual audio tracks from your edit master to a reputable sound studio and ask them to sweeten the audio. This will consist of processes like EQ adjustment, compression, normalization and a few other digital effects that you don’t need to understand, but you do need to spend money on. The result will be a warm, full-bodied, well-mixed audio track with levels properly adjusted for all broadcast and presentation purposes. It can cost as little as a couple hundred dollars for a short project, and the result will be a noticeable difference in the overall quality of your video.

Today’s FREE BONUS CONTENT!
I want to die like my grandfather: peacefully in my sleep; not screaming and terrified like the people in his car.

I used to make fun of consultants.

Like this:
Definition of a consultant - someone who borrows your watch, tells you the time, then keeps the watch.

Or this:
Definition of a consultant - someone who knows 50 ways to make love but doesn’t know any women.

Or this:
Q: Why do we call them consultants?
A: Because first they con you, then they insult you.

But the reality is that the marketer’s role is more consultative than ever, whether we like it or not. The numbers prove it: media employment is down 11.8 percent since 2000 and market consulting is up 66.7 percent in the same time period*. Why? Maybe it’s because clients no longer want to be handed a set bill of goods; they want someone to help them think.

Used to be, you could call yourself an ad agency, and clients understood how to fit your services into their marketing mix. It was a natural part of doing business, and nobody questioned it.

Now clients can spend their entire marketing budgets on services that completely circumvent the traditional agency model. Search engine marketing, social network marketing, videographic web content generation, database-driven web analysis, super crunching, high-tech point-of-purchase solutions … good God. It’s scary out there in the 21st century, and the best thing we can do for our clients is to help them make sense of it all.

It means keeping up with the technology of marketing, so that you understand the meaning of new solutions when they come along–and before they’re outdated.

It means not trying to be the do-all agency anymore, but instead, finding the niches where you can offer genuine value, then steering your clients to outside, cost-effective solutions for other pieces of the puzzle.

It means giving good advice, helping them navigate a profitable course and becoming an ally rather than just a vendor.

I know, I sound like a consultant.

Today’s FREE BONUS CONTENT!
If it’s true that we’re here to help others, then what, exactly, are the others here for?

*Advertising Age, January 14, 2008

What sets good production apart from bad production? Yeah, budget, for sure. But even on a shoestring, there’s a lot you can do to make your commercials and long-form projects look good, no matter what kind of equipment or crew you employ. Learn to analyze your work according to a few basic film elements, and much of the story you’re trying to convey will be told before a word is spoken. Here’s a basic visual vocabulary:

Light
This is where most low-budget filmmakers and videographers can really benefit from some basic training. Good lighting can accomplish a number of things:

- focus viewer attention

- separate subject from background

- clarify three-dimensional shape and depth

- clarify texture

- establish mood

Doing something with light is usually better than doing nothing. You’ll be amazed how far you can go with a basic three point lighting setup. When you’re working outdoors, you can introduce an extra level of control by using scrims.

Color
Color is a subject worth many books and a lifetime of study, but here are a couple of cinematic applications:

- coding of characters and visual elements to tie them together and “program” viewers for predictable emotional responses

- contrasting of opposites, like safety and danger

Composition
Squint your eyes at the camera monitor and break down the lines, colors, lights and darks into basic shapes. Treat the video frame as a painter treats a canvas. Study art as well as film. Composition can:

- direct the viewer’s eye to what’s important in the frame

- dictate the viewer’s emotional response to what lies outside of the frame

- force comparisons through symmetry or a deliberate lack of symmetry

- establish intimacy, authority, menace, adulation … you name it

Shape
Different shapes elicit different emotional responses:

- The circle

o soft

o safe

o organic, natural

- The square

o artificial

o rigid

o industrial

o controlled, structured

- The triangle

o aggressive

o tense

- The line

o inevitable

o restrictive

There are exceptions to all these interpretations, of course. The important thing is to recognize and categorize these visual elements when you seen them in the frame, so you can understand what’s contributing to or detracting from the effect you’re trying to achieve. Start watching TV and movies with the sound turned off. With the distractions of storyline removed, you’ll be surprised what you notice.

Here are some good books, if you’re interested in learning more:

Cinematic Storytelling
Film Directing Fundamentals
Film Lighting

Today’s FREE BONUS CONTENT!
The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.
–Henry Miller

Am I exaggerating when I say that Microsoft’s advent into the world of advertising is a bit apocalyptic? CEO Steve Ballmer recently announced that his company plans to generate 25 percent of its revenue from advertising within a few years—and the majority of it in the fairly near future. In May, Microsoft made a $6 billion acquisition of aQuantive, an online advertising specialist. In September, they paid $240 million for a stake in Facebook. On December 19, Microsoft and Viacom announced a long-term digital content and advertising partnership.

Don’t worry; it’s not like Microsoft will run the whole world. Google is merging with DoubleClick, and Yahoo has acquired Right Media, just to make sure the global advertising pie is cut into at least three pieces.

As if Google doesn’t already have enough revenue flooding in, they’re also getting into the newspaper media placement business. Yeah, the printed kind. They’re not the only ones pulling the rug out from under traditional media directors at advertising agencies; among others, a company called Mediabids is also selling print placement via Internet.

And wait a minute: is the Miami Herald (among other players in the journalism and advertising arenas) really outsourcing some of its copy editing and ad production to India? I thought we at least had some kind of monopoly on English-language communications.

Yeah, maybe “apocalyptic” is an exaggeration. But to many traditional ad agencies, it’s frightening to see this massive shift away from “the way we’ve always done things.”

AT&T assures us that good-ol’-fashioned advertising is still holding its own. A study commissioned by the telecommunications giant reports that most small businesses still see the Yellow Pages as highly effective, though Internet is on the rise (duh). Of the 1,000 small businesses they surveyed:

• 20 percent expect to spend more on Internet Yellow Pages.
• 38 percent expect to spend more on Internet banner ads.
• 43 percent said they spent more on keyword-search traffic this year compared with last year, and 34 percent expect to keep increasing that spending next year.

But print advertising placement will remain strong, as well (according to the survey):

• 72 percent expect to spend the same amount on print Yellow Pages advertising next year, and 11 percent will spend more.
• 19 percent also expect to spend more next year on newspaper and magazine ads—the second-most mentioned medium in the survey.

Those are interesting numbers. There sure must be a lot of extra advertising money laying around, if print placement is going to grow, even as other media categories skyrocket …

Gartner, Inc. predicts $11 billion of revenue from mobile advertising in 2011 (compared to under $1 billion in 2007).

In spite of a touchy economy, Emarketer predicts that online advertising will grow 29 percent in 2008. Even in skinny times, decision makers believe in the web because it offers more measurable results than most traditional media.

Emarketer expects social network advertising to grow by more than 60 percent this year. The social networks will have to be careful not to anger their members, as Facebook did, but one way or another, it’ll happen.

Where do we turn?
As creatives in the industry, how should we respond to these trends? Hard to say, but I can see some new doors opening, even as old ones close. I come from a writing background, so I hate to admit that people are reading fewer words and watching more videos, but it’s true. I’ve already seen my product mix shift away from brochures and print ads—and even somewhat from website writing. I’m doing more visual media scripts than ever before.

Is it sad? Maybe. But those of us who do still enjoy reading can see the writing on the wall. So we make adjustments and learn new skills. And the new way of doing things is actually fun, if you roll with it. With video running full-steam ahead in virtually every new media category, I particularly enjoy the endless possibilities offered by combinations of video and animation. Used to be, only the highest budgets allowed me to write anything that popped into my head. Now, if I can imagine it, a designer can create it. O brave new world.

Today’s FREE BONUS CONTENT!
“Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”
–Dorothy

Keeping track of a dozen or so shots for a 30-second TV spot is pretty easy to do in your head, even if you shoot out of sequence. Long form video is a different matter; when you need to get 50 t0 100 shots in the can, you have to be able to:

1. Organize your shots by location and setup logistics (so your crew only has to go to each location once and do each setup once).

2. Keep track of what goes onto the raw footage tapes (or drives).

3. Quickly locate your best takes during the editing process.

First and foremost, make sure the script is finalized, approved and stamped with the client’s golden seal before you begin preproduction. This is the main reference point for the other two documents you’ll create: the shot sheet and the shooting roster.

Creating the shot sheet
Put your script into a table format in Word, Excel or whatever program you can easily use to manipulate cell order. Resave it under the file name “Shot Sheet.” Create a new table column where you can number the shots. Like this:

Shot Sheet

In this document, the shot numbers run chronologically with the script; the first shot the audience will see in the finished video is number one, the second shot they will see is number two, etc.

The shooting roster
Resave the shot sheet under the file name “Shooting Roster.” This document will allow you to shoot the video by location rather than script chronology. Create a fourth column in your table and type in the location for each shot.

Locations might include:

- Mechanical assembly area

- Office

- CNC area

- etc.

Like this:

Shooting Roster

Now reorder the table by location rather than shot number. Like this:

Shooting Roster

That’s your basic shooting roster; an out-of-sequence shot sheet. Granted, it doesn’t look much different with the four shot samples shown above, but when you add in several more locations and another 40 shots, it’s a major step toward economizing your production schedule. You can further refine shot order by setup type and other logistical considerations.

Script tracking during production
Now that you have a way to get all your shots in the can in a logical (and cost-effective) order, you need a system that will allow you to locate them during edit and put them back into chronological order.

Easy. Every time you shoot a take, mark the beginning time code (including tape number or hard drive file location) on your shot sheet (not your shooting roster) in the appropriate cell. Highlight the time code of the best take (usually the last one). When you have a shot in the can, cross it off the shooting roster. This makes it easy to flip back through shooting roster pages and make sure you haven’t missed anything before you leave a location.

During edit, use your shot sheet to locate the time code of the best take of each shot. If a take doesn’t look as good as you thought it did during production, you can easily peruse other takes—the time codes are right there on the shot sheet.

Voila! Boom, baby! Now you can shoot efficiently, make sure you shoot everything you need and find it easily during edit. Look out, Hollywood.

Today’s FREE BONUS CONTENT!
To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily. To not dare is to lose oneself.
–Soren Kierkegaard

Slogan, tagline, positioning statement … whatever name you use, it’s an important part of a brand. Some experts define a tagline as a statement that condenses the essence of a company’s marketing message in a meaningful way. I think we can add a few thoughts to that.

A tagline should …

… serve as a rallying point that tells everyone, inside and outside the company, how to feel about the brand.

The keyword here is “feel,” meaning the tagline should evoke an emotional response. Logic alone generally doesn’t create the mnemonic “peg” inherent to great taglines.

… be short. Really short.

There are exceptions to this, but not many.

… clearly define a market position that no other company can claim.

In the words of Jack Trout, “differentiate or die.” If your tagline makes a claim that other companies like yours can make equally well, it will promote your industry rather than your company. Figure out what no one else can say, and say it.

… be comprehensible and relevant to all potential target audiences, regardless of age, nationality, etc.

Yeah, the previous rule said to be specific, but your tagline also has to stay general enough in tone and cultural context that all your demographic groups can relate to it.

… mesh with the look and feel of the logo.

These two brand components will usually live side-by-side, so they should work together to create a whole greater than the sum of the parts.

… be self contained, when seen in context with the company name.

This can work in different ways for different companies. If the company’s name is GPX, Inc., the tagline has a lot of ground to make up because, in addition to defining a market position, it has to describe what the company does. If the company’s name is descriptive, like Neighborhood Medical Clinics, the tagline can pick up the message at that point and move the brand to a whole new level of emotional definition. Either way, the name/tagline combination should have a sense of inherent meaning that defines the brand without the need for further explanation.

… not contain the words “quality,” “commitment,” “unique,” “innovation,” “great service,” or any other overused terms that have long since had the life beaten out of them.

Every company principal feels “deeply dedicated” and “profoundly committed;” that’s a given—or should be—and to come out and say it makes a company look small, unimaginative and utterly indistinguishable from about a million other companies.

A tagline may also …

… sound familiar, even if you’ve never exactly heard it before.

If a tagline sounds like a phrase people are already familiar with, it opens a gateway into the audience’s mind. Here’s a good system for tackling this approach:

1. Paraphrase the core message your tagline has to convey. Doesn’t have to be short or pretty; just accurate.

2. Write out an expanded list of words and phrases that hover around this paraphrase.

3. Buy a Flip Dictionary and look up all the words on your list. Create an expanded list from these entries.

4. Buy an encyclopedic book of idioms—common sayings—and look up the words on your expanded list. Cross reference the idioms you find with ideas that are metaphorical to the brand paraphrase you’re working with. Brainstorm. Play with variations of these idioms, or if you find one that really fits, consider using it as-is. Examples: “When you got it, flaunt it.” “Have it your way.”

… sound like a statement of empirical or philosophical truth.

This approach can slip nicely under the radar. If a tagline contains an inherently inarguable statement, people are less inclined to distance themselves from it. Examples: “There are some things money can’t buy, for everything else there’s MasterCard.” “When it rains it pours.”

… compliment and empower the target audience.

When a tagline taps into the cultural consciousness of its audience, it becomes a way of being rather than just a way of buying. Examples: “Because I’m worth it.” “Think different.” “Just do it.” “Miles away from ordinary.”

There, I’ve spilled most of my secrets. Anyone else care to give up your tricks for tagline creation?

Today’s FREE BONUS CONTENT!
Art is not about thinking something up. It is the opposite—getting something down.
–Julia Cameron

In a previous article, we discussed the structure of kick-ass creative meetings. Here’s the nickel tour:

1. Invite both copywriters and designers.

2. Summarize the creative assignment, including the message delivery medium; the target audience; and the single, main product benefit.

3. Identify the basic statement your concept needs to make.

4. Encourage the verbalization of all ideas, no matter how silly.

In this article, we’ll explore some specific tips for crossing the finish line with a great concept. Not all of these will work for everyone, but whatever your style, there should be a few jewels you can use …

-       Have the meeting in the biggest room you can find.

-       Bring some great ads to the meeting to set your sights high. (The Graphis Advertising Annual is a good start.)

-       Fill a candy bowl and set it out. Sugar is good. Caffeine is good.

-       Budgetary restraints: forget them. First figure out what you would do if money were no object. Then back up from that point, if necessary. This is a creative brainstorming session, not an accountants’ convention.

-       Put a dry erase board or a big pad of paper in the room. Every participant should also have a pencil and a note pad—better yet, tape butcher paper to the table and set out a bucket of crayons. (Concepts expressed via pictures, written language and spoken language move through three different parts of the brain, so this will trigger new combinations of ideas.)