Think Small

Failure of "Categories" at Cannes in a Trans Media World

"Agencies don't know where to enter their work anymore."

        - Philippe Meunier, creative chief, senior partner at Montreal's Sid Lee

DoTank

"An idea is nothing without execution."

Don't remember where that came from, me, or osmotically borrowed from someone smart.  However, I do know who said this:

"Ideas without execution are a hobby."

Creative people or people in creative industries talk a lot about what should be done or grip about how their ideas didn't get made. 

I really respect great ideas that get made greatly and the people who make them happen. So I've started a Do Tank, a repository of how great ideas got made.  Could be tales of how an idea was sold, the barriers overcome in production, or just a great case study.

Shoot a note to @DoTank to add your favorite tales of great ideas done great.

Now back to hiatus.  See you soon.

Good Ideas in Storytelling

We interrupt this hiatus to pass on word of a few things going on.

On June 25 our second addition of PSFK's Good Ideas Salon in Vancouver will take place.  Our theme is Good Ideas in Storytelling with a cracker of a panel.  Representing the world of marketing is real estate placemaker David Allison of Braun/Allison, formerly Sothebys International.  From the world of documentaries and digital storytelling is Leah Nelson of Giant Ant Media.  Last but not least is ex-adman and current author, artist, curator and work in progress Marshall McLuhan biographist Douglas Coupland.

Get your seats seats while you can.  Near capacity.

Mandated Face to Face Social Networking

Dispatch: Kanazawa

Japan One Vending Maching at a Time

West Coast Salmon Grilling

Gone Fishing

Hiatus and Newness

We are going on hiatus here at Think Small Media Conglomerate LLC Inc. International. 

While there has been so much incredible thinking, learning and sharing in the world of planning, marketing, media and so on over the past few years, the internet lately feels a lot like turning on your TV the second week of August - mostly reruns with little original content.  Frankly, it's getting tiresome to wade through the daily addition of more "experts" weighing in far far from the sidelines on my profession with new to them thoughts on how to avoid or embrace death of this, that or the other.  Which is unfortunate when so much good stuff is going on.

So rather than perpetuate the drudgery and further clogging the tubes of the internet with more punditry and rebuttals we're going on hiatus for a couple months to focus on other projects.   There is simply too much opportunity and appetite right now to do all the stuff we've been talking about for years.Don't get me wrong, there is a lot of great stuff out there about the interweb, it's just time to personally switch things up a little.

Additionally, I'll be getting married in a few weeks, traveling about Japan through May/June and in a few months plan resurface launching a retail concept I've been chewing on for a while.  I want to see if we can evolve the utilitarian online commerce experience to adopt the spontaneity, delight and narrative of a good magazine with the sensory delight of a real world shopping experience and make it a media company unto itself. Oh, and spend less than $100 to launch it.  Stay tuned for Vie & Monde later this year, featuring products for life.

Stay tuned for the odd image or travel update.  The stimulating PSFK Good Ideas Salon thing will continue. Interesting Vancouver will get going with a new twist in the summer in time for the big night around the end of October. My pithy nothingness will continue on the Twittershere and I'm always up for the face to face version over a coffee if you want.

Bye for now friends.

Is the creative process broken?

I hope so.

Did this thing a few weeks back with James Sherrett of AdHack who always inspires me.  He was kind enough to ask me in to launch his AdHack Live series..  He put me on a camera and asked a bunch of questions, to which I gave a bunch of answers. 

This is what came out.  Am surprised nobody has called BS on me yet, and I'm more surprised with the fact despite all my years in America, I really do still kind of say "a boot" when I mean about.

Interesting Portland, Indeed

A quick flight south and last weekend we found ourselves in Portland for Interesting Portland.  It was very interesting indeed.  Video from the event has been posted.  Great job to Emily and everyone who organized.

My favorite nugget was the quote: "It is but moment in time between being an outlaw and a legend" or something along those lines. 

For my talk, as someone accustomed exclusively to presenting in the comfort of boardrooms and "informal" corporate office spaces it was really interesting getting up on an actual stage.  Especially when speaking about something way outside my normal shtick, as you'll see in the video 

I've always been fascinated by huge industries and areas of thought built despite fundamental unknowns.  For instance, though I didn't use this specific example to avoid being too markety, how the quantitative research industry dominates and pervades all aspects of business, with an esteemed air of absolute knowledge and ability to forecast behavior, yet even with the most advance neuroscience we really have no true understanding of how the brain actually really works.

So I shared a few of my favorite unknowns, not to be a downer, but to inspire continued curiosity.  Thank you Portland for indulging me and not booing me off stage and out of town. 

Interesting Pdx

View more presentations from macfarbt.

Innovative Spaces

"The number of actual ideas in the building is inversely related to the number of quotations about ideas in reception."

        - Russell Davies

Monday's Should Feel Like Friday's

In a past life during the fast 90's my fiance worked with Lucas Kane at MountainZone.com, an action sports media company and the first to live stream many sporting events around the world including Everest summits and big wave surf championships. 

Lucas irrationally followed his love for photography and became an irrationally good one.  His blog features images he only shoots with his camera phone is a current fav.  In particular the weekly series Monday Should Feel Like Friday.  I like that.  I like it a lot.  Above is this week's edition.

Interesting Sign

Was done in Portland for the weekend and Interesting Portland.  Thoughts to come...

What I love about Portland and much of the Pacific Northwest of America is  sense of industrial function driven by the history of the area as a good honest resource region.  The buildings are tough, sturdy and hold an intense sense of place, built with materials unique to the region with limited outside aesthetic influence.  Even newer developments incorporate massive walls, huge hemlock beams and steel doors from the industrial predecessor building it replaced.  Generic minimalism, white granite counter tops and bamboo were scarce.

Would love to know if Impaired Clearance is the name of a company or instructional signage.  Though my favorite thing of the week was wood, plain old wood on walls.  This is from PIng.  There is something nice about patina that comes by itself honestly. 

Noticed: The Residence Eating PR

Futurecasting Experiencing Japan

Heading to Japan next month, haven't been this excited for a trip since the '05 British Open in St. Andrews to kick it with the gentile from the R&A.  Which was awesome.

From the outside what makes Japan fascinating is that is seems like this giant exposed ant farm of humanity.  All the various cultures that make up Japanese culture, new, old and just odd are out in the open.  For instance, can't wait to catch these guys featured in the recent-ish Peter and Bjorn video who perform in Yoyogi Park.

What I'm most excited to see in this country which  often represents the future of technology and consumerism is what's happening outside those areas.  Street culture in Japan seems to be so real, as there it is, on the street.  Not living within a blog or coordinated by some web tool sponsored by a brand and Google Adwords.  Same  with retail.  I expect amazing sensory experiences, big and small, with incredible service, spontaneity and delight.

Really fascinates me that in a country that has it all techologywise, their real world cultures are so active and on display 24hrs a day in real world physicality.  Presumably if you dissect it all the technology world drives the physical world, and vice versa, perpetually driving the one another to a higher state.

Then again, with the announcement on Friday of a 20% drop in real GDP over Q1, we might just be lucky if the lights are still on.

Getting It Done in Vancouver

After all this talk about doing things, went and checked out something done in a big way here in Vancouver. 

The new expansion of Vancouver Convention Center opened last night and held an open house today.  It is stunning, an amazing example of architecture, design and landscape melded into one phenomenal structure.  It is anything but a typical lifeless convention center.

One of the most remarkable features of the 1.2 million square foot facility is the 6 acre living roof.

More on it over at Fast Company.  Pretty proud my city incorporated a green roof on such a massive scale that further enhanced the stunning design.

Word of warning, if you happen to be speaking or holding an event better make sure the content is good enough to compete for attention from the gorgeous views of the water and mountains. 

In full disclosure and celebration of my integrated peers our design group did the branding, digital group the digital stuff and our social media group the social media stuff.  Good stuff.

Shush, and go do something

Had great time talking about the creative process with James Sherrett on Adhack Live yesterday as only an ad/creative nerd could.

Creative and process really don't go together when you are thinking about "ideas."   But you have to have a process, call it a plan or strategy if you want, in order to make advertising of any sort.  Anything creative actually within the scope of commerce, say innovating products, building a dam or making a new museum needs some sort of a plan to make it happen.  However,  there is no such thing as a perfect process.  It needs to be created bespoke for a particular client/project/team and sometimes along the way at that - in my opinion at least.

But who cares about process.  Honestly, those things sort themselves out. 

Right now there is so much talk about what brands should be doing.  They should be doing branded content, doing social media, building iPhone apps, having two way conversations with consumers, blah, blah, blah.  All within the guise brands, their agencies, and everyone in business is dumb.

Everyone one of those things have been in PowerPoint decks for years, decades even.  They are rather obvious thoughts even the most out of touch executive, agency, brand, etc. is aware of.  The hard part isn't thinking what should be done, the hard part is doing it.

The most important objective of a creative process isn't to find ideas, it is to protect ideas and bring them to market. Actually making them happen.

Though the process itself doesn't get things made.  The people driving the process do, or increasingly make up the process as you go especially as we increasingly do things that haven't been done before.  Who drives the process depends.  May be a planner, an account person or a creative.  Depends on your agency, the brand and the team.  In a way the greatest talent and expression of creativity is actually getting great things done.  Anyone can grab that role.

Serendipitously when these thoughts crossed my mind a bit of verbiage crossed my eyes from Russell Davies at the Stockholm Planing Lab, saying all this much better.  Go read it. 

Now, stop talking about what should be done, and do something.

G20!!! Fight, for your right...

The G20 event/protests taking place right now is a sign of the times, seems to be a continuing correlation between intensity of protest and economic climate when looking over the past decades. 

Interesting observation #1, bankers were advised before arriving not to look like bankers for fear of average people attacking them.  They were advised to wear jeans and "regular" clothes.  Interesting.

Interesting observation #2, how many actually know what they are protesting?  Or are they enjoying the act of protesting.  This post from the Guardian's live blog is priceless:

"The Press Association reports the detention of "a bald man, who had been taunting the police with cries of 'William Wallace' as he beat his chest.

"The police apparently took away his pint glass.

Interesting observation # 3, I was coincidentally in Prague 8 years ago during IMF meetings and corresponding protests.  Sitting on a street car were were surrounded by an unruly mob.  Looking up the street about 50 League of Anarchist were marching, surrounding the street car were about 200 photographers in media vests.  This money shot from earlier today, borrowed from the Guardian Blog, highlights the interesting dynamic between "protest" and "news gathering."

Events like this are very real expressions of how people feel about companies, and of course their brand.  Easy to say, it's not looking good.  Might be time to  double check they are actually living up to the pithy words on their brand onion/pyramid/tree.

Litte Red Riding Hood

Delightful.


Slagsmålsklubben - Sponsored by destiny from Tomas Nilsson on Vimeo.