The Idea Writers by @tiezzi

Great presentation at MIMA last night by Teressa Iezzi the editor of Advertising Ages Creativity magazine. She spoke on her experiences and what lead her to publish her new book "The Idea Writer: Copywriting in a New Media and Marketing Era."

As we all know in the past great advertising campaigns were typically built from television ideas and with great language driven by copywriters. However, today's copywriter must be multifaceted and create across many different platforms. I really loved her comparison that "copywriters are truly now inventors".

She spoke for a long time on how the Internet is not just a medium but rather it has been a behavior changing vehicle for brands.

The assumption that copywriters need to take today is that they need to create something that is useful, entertaining, beautiful or all of the above. It's all about connecting the brand that they are writing for with people. It's about freedom and that we can't hold back people from having a conversation with the brand.

I loved this platform of change that she spoke of: "We've gone from Big Ideas = Big Ad Campaigns" to "Big Ideas = Big business ideas that might not involve advertising at all".

And then she quoted Rei Inamoto "My equation is the idea = emotion x function. So I'm looking for partnerships between copywriters and UX designers." Yes it is a different world that we live in - the days of just art directors and copywriters creating things is in the past. It's onto the future with creative technologists, UX designers, and content curators and so on.

We all need to think of agencies as "developers" and what we can bring to help our clients solve their problems.

Guess what book I'm going to be buying this weekend?

Great Idea by Kodak

Kodak has done something extremely innovative on a very basic thing.

This morning I go the USA Today site to read a story about the Super Bowl ads. And I want to take it home to read over the weekend and I go to print it out.

And viola the screen shot to the left shows what popped up. A print screen with a Kodak brand printer on top - what smart placement. Something very simple yet very effective. I didn't even know that Kodak made printers but the next time I'm in the market for a printer I'll think about Kodak.

This is a great example of a brand finding an application that works to their benefit. Kodak makes printers and they are sponsoring printing on the USA Today site. Very, very smart and well done Kodak.

What I learned at #CATFOA on 1/31

This past Monday night the first Conversations about the future of advertising event (CATFOA) was held at the Fine Line Music Cafe in Minneapolis. Despite a snowy day a decent crowd awaited Ana Andjelic (@andjelicaaa) Planning Director at HUGE, Inc.

Ana's topic was "Do we need a new definition of creativity?" Ana is a native of Serbia and has received a PhD from Columbia University. She opened up by saying that the digital space is kind of like a kid's birthday party as you kind of never know what will really happen at the party.

"Creativity is the medium and not the channel." She mentioned the "neighborgoods" site as one that uses collaborative consumption. And "skyara" as a marketplace for experiences.

She closed with five guidelines/signposts for creativity:
1) There are NO shortcuts -
2) How do you frame the problem?
3) Choose your own adventure
4) Behaviors, not tools - the DonQ Rum brand as an example
5) Bricolage, not jigsaw - the chalkbot from Nike as a great example

A great quote that she used was "Be less wrong than yesterday" from Adam G. Message being learn from your mistakes and clearly that is critical as we try to move our clients businesses forward.

Her main theme was that briefing/planning has typically been focused on one person. She believes that "context maters more than a perception" and that we need to think broader from a planning perspective as we move forward.

Once again a great session at CATFOA and looking forward to the next event in February. Will you be there?
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Taking pictures at 18 below

On the way to work this morning I needed to stop and take a picture of a very cool transtop for our client virtuwell. Our team has created a petri dish that will grow in three different stages and we needed to capture stage two today before it changes.

So on the coldest day of 2011 at 7AM in the dark - and a chilling temp of -18F I was out taking pictures of some of our creative work over at the University of Minnesota this morning. And I like to do this for our clients and the PK team.

If you live in the Twin Cities and happen to go by some of our newest creative work for virtuwell by HealthPartners - let me know what you think. We are pretty proud of this work.

So what did you do this morning - the coldest morning of 2011 so far?

Cultivating a User-Centered Culture

Last night at the first MIMA session of 2011 it was Nancy Lyons and Meghan Wilker of Clockwork Active Media Systems talked about a user-centered culture.

Good discussion after a tough start with some technical glitches at the beginning - here were the main takeaways:

1) Define your values - this begins with leadership but involves everyone

2) Align hiring decisions with your values - job skills are table stakes

3) Communicate openly

4) Cultivate a sense of ownership - everybody owns the promises made

5) Find clients that align with your values -don't be afraid to say no

6) Listen - understand what they mean not just what they say

7) Treat the client as the expert - they are

8) Extend your values to your end product - be who you say are and it will be reflected

9) Don't allow "us vs. them" attitudes - be user-centric to the core

10) Communicate - you can't over communicate

It was interesting discussion with some basic premises on how to create a better culture in our organizations based on being focused on the end user. Sometimes we will lose sight of this end goal so this was a great reminder of how we need to think about our work.

Good start to 2011 for MIMA although the crowd was a little down. Must be the good winter keeping people in.

As I was driving away my main takeaway was the importance of building a culture built on trust. What can you do today to impact your company's culture? Think about it and just do it.

Do you answer all your messages?

OK this is a fair question - do you answer ALL the messages you get? Whether it's from someone you know or not? A voice mail message, an email, a tweet a Facebook post?

I try to and overall if I say so myself do a very good job.

However, I do find it irritating when people don't offer back the same professional or personal courtesy with a response? I mean it's not that hard to type back a response via email or Twitter or Facebook. But why do some people not respond?

Are they ignoring your message? Why for me I think that's the case. And both personally and professionally I think that's something that we should all work on to get better it. Ignoring a simple question really is not a truly professional response and especially from people who are communication professionals.

I speak for myself and I vow to answer all my messages in 2011 - how about you? And if not I'd love to hear why not.

Technology hits ordinary things

When you think of all the impact that the iPhone has had it is mind blowing. How the smart phone momentum has changed the way many of us live our lives professionally and personally.

I received a gift this Christmas that I never would have thought about for a smart phone user who has a touch screen key pad.

Here in the Upper Midwest it can get kind of chilly in the winter and to use my iPhone I have to take off my gloves. My wife has seen me do this many times. Having a great eye for details like that she got me some new 180s TecTouch gloves.

They have a couple of little metal pads on each thumb and forefinger of the glove. They are actually called "conductive fabric pods" and allow you to easily operate an iPhone without taking off your gloves. That's innovation for a pretty staid category.

Is this something that you would buy? I'll let you know how they work for me.