R&R Partners: Moving Minds » Creative

If you use Facebook, Twitter or other social mediums with any frequency, you’ve probably changed your avatar a few times, or at least know people who change it routinely.

But have you ever changed INTO your avatar? Or better yet, have you ever changed into an avatar from Avatar? In April, a company in L.A. gave people a chance to see what that would be like to do just that — to have their face morphed in real time. Pretty cool execution.

Why I Hate But Still Need to Love Award Shows

Arnie DiGeorge, Executive Creative Director — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 14:19:55 +0000

I don’t know why I am writing this right after having an award show win (four national ADDYs), but I am. I have no doubt it will curse us. So I am knocking on wood right now. To this point, the knocking-on-wood process has kept my planes from crashing, so it must be good for stuff like this too.

I hate award shows because of the mystery. The fact that I have been a judge in award shows and have seen what happens during the process makes it even worse. Judges will dismiss things that took months to produce in a matter of seconds. They say the work is derivative. They say it didn’t grab them. They say that it wasn’t polished. They want to award things with nice varnish over ideas because they know about different varnishes. They could see the strategy too much. The strategy was oozing from the work and obscuring anything that could possibly be of any value. It didn’t connect with them on an emotional level. It sucked.

Once a judge said to me that if it didn’t grab her, she immediately gave it a 0. Which means there weren’t any points for effort. I always give points for effort. I also know that giving points for effort will curse me someday. Knock on wood.

Here is what goes through my mind –

A spicy Thai salad can easily distract someone from judging excellent creative work. Admit it. Just the picture of one is almost luring you away from reading the rest of this post.

“Did they just take our money and the work never made it to the show? Did our DVD or Quicktime function properly? I know that they will try really hard to get it working, but that will frustrate the judges as well. A frustrated judge will not like our subtle genius. Is our work canceling our other work out? (That work can’t possibly be good because they also did that other awful work.) Did they see our work just before lunch when they were super hungry and thinking about a delicious Thai BBQ salad at spice level #7? I know it would be hard for me to concentrate while thinking about a delicious Thai salad at spice level #7. They all know each other. Are they just looking at each other’s work right there in the judging and slapping each other on the back and giving each other 100s? Why don’t I try and talk to more of them when I am at events? I can be social if I try really hard. They might like me. Of course that one magazine editor really doesn’t like me at all. Is she secretly running everything? Is it a conspiracy? Or is the work just derivative.”

Then I come back to my senses and realize that there is really good work out there and we do really good work ourselves. And judging isn’t an exact science. And maybe we should limit our entries. And that editor doesn’t hate me. She doesn’t necessarily like me either. She hasn’t taken out a restraining order and that is good.

But that’s what the mystery of award shows does to you. If I could watch and make sure the judges were looking at the work, I would feel better. I would also pick up some tips for next time. Maybe I would infuse some donut smell in the print pieces or subliminal pictures of kittens in the TV. Then, of course, I think, “Ad people don’t like kittens.”

And oh, I probably shouldn’t say anything about anyone else’s work on Twitter. Knock on wood.

We are competitive here. We want to win for our clients. We want to win for our agency. We want to win. And agencies that do well in award shows are doing great work. I have to like them.

We have done well this year. And I think one of the reasons is we don’t really just think advertising. Like any good agency, we think of work that will get attention by the way we run media, the PR factor and results. Vegas Bound, the program where we brought a small town in Texas to Vegas, has won a number of PR, media and interactive awards including the Gold Sabre and OMMA. We also won Mediaweek’s Media Plan of the Year for our Wynn client. And we’ve gotten a lot of recognition for our creative work as well, especially on our biggest client, LVCVA. So I am not unhappy. I just always feel like we should do much better.

I can’t tell you the perfect way to enter these award shows. I don’t know it. What I can tell you is that great work does win. And if you do great work, it won’t get past the judges. Unless, of course, they see it right before a really spicy Thai salad.

The power of print

Lindsey Patterson, Media Planner — Wed, 19 May 2010 15:17:28 +0000

Growing up, my brother and I used to visit my mom at work (she was also in the ad industry). She would point us to the industrial-sized laundry hamper-looking bins filled with magazines and we would dig and dig until we walked out with a four-inch stack each. We would read for hours as she worked and come to think of it now, those were some good times.

As a print lover, there is nothing better than sitting down with a magazine and getting lost in the pages. Whether curled up on the couch, lounging on the beach or in an office, there is something so satisfying about the temporary escape.

Print has gotten a bad rap lately with the explosion of technology, social media, etc. Critics have said that print will die with time, but nothing seems to be further from the truth when you look at the numbers. To get the word out about print’s true influence, some of the publishing powerhouses created a moving campaign called Magazines, The Power of Print. Backed by Hearst; Meredith; Time, Inc.; Condé Nast; and Wenner Media, this national campaign is running across a variety of print titles as well as online. Check out the website www.powerofmagazines.com to learn more, as well as to see their creative below.

Test your print knowledge: Can you identify the eight print titles used to create their logo? Give up? E-mail me at lindsey.patterson@rrpartners.com

Monday Inspiration

Arnie DiGeorge, Executive Creative Director — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 19:22:38 +0000

Monday Inspiration –
Here are some of the things we talk about at the weekly creative meeting. See you next week.

Google by the numbers. They seem to be doing well.

Chuck Liddell should put some clothes on and work out longer. He might win more fights.

This makes delivery look easy.

Incredible Target display in Times Square featuring Shaun White. I’m sorry I missed it when I was there.

I don’t know how I feel about massaging a card, but it’s a great way to get a point across.

More stuff about being a man from French Connection. He knows not of sequins, only of skinny clothes.

My new favorite ad. And I can attest that Old Spice does not smell like a lady. It’s definitely Man Stench:

Free wallpapers from one of my favorites, Mark Weaver.

A great site filled with wonderful stuff to think about.

Some great new infographics.

Something that mixes all those Mad Men secretaries with new iPhone technology.

Everyone is on Facebook now. I don’t feel special anymore.

I pity the fool who eats Mr. T for breakfast.

Two of the many sites for the movie The Crazies. It looks like fun. Here’s one and here’s another.

Window-shopping for real with your iPhone.

Don’t leave home without your glow.

Too many beavers and briefs mean not-so-super ad blitz

Sal DeFilippo, Web Content Developer — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 00:13:55 +0000

“Men in tighty whities are disgusting.” – Mary Ann Mele, R&R Partners President and Chief Strategic Officer

Google won by simply being themselves. The eTrade babies’ “milkaholic” ad was a winner. Punxsutawney Polamalu is not only difficult to spell – it was also fairly creepy, but effective. Coke, while easy to spell, was painfully irrelevant. The GoDaddy ads should just go away.

That’s the general consensus from a solid hour of R&R Partners’ Monday morning quarterbacking of the advertising blitz surrounding that roman numeral-suffixed game played the day before. Our panel of critics included people from all disciplines within the agency.

In case you used commercial breaks for something other than awaiting the unveiling of new advertisements, every spot is easily viewable online. Check out YouTube’s channel, where you can vote for your favorite, or Fox/MSN’s site, which organizes them by quarter.

Overall, our panel thought the 2010 ads were mediocre, with a few bright spots. Absent were the emotional tearjerkers and ads with brand engagement through the Internet. Plentiful were ads bashing white, out-of-shape men – and other concepts we felt like we’d seen many times before.

“I just don’t like the tired formulas,” Associate Creative Director Tony Marin said. “People getting hit, underwear jokes – all of that just makes me cringe.”

“It’s a reflection of the times, but everybody is very, very afraid of doing anything that isn’t pretty safe,” Executive Vice President/Creative Director Randy Snow added. “Even the stuff that was ‘edgy’ was pretty safe. As much as I loved the Google ad, it was just a product demo. There was really no risk in that ad. … It’s because of the economy. Nobody wants to take a shot with $3 million. They’d rather animate animals or pull Troy Polamalu out of a hole.”

That fear kept some normally ad-friendly brands, such as Fed Ex, out of the game entirely.

“They said it was because of cost and because of scrutiny. They laid off employees,” Executive Vice President Rob Dondero said. “And the official NFL beer, Coors, wasn’t even in it.”

Public Relations Group Account Director Clinton Pope asked about the propensity of allowing people to preview the ads prior to the game through YouTube, etc.

Executive Creative Director Arnie DiGeorge had firsthand knowledge. “I did that; I went on the night before and watched all the ones that I could actually see before the game and they all seemed to be bad ones, for the most part. I think those are the ones people are previewing – the ones that really don’t have confidence,” he said. “Your best choice is to have a teaser for the ad that isn’t the ad. But it still has to be great.”

That’s what it boils down to, of course – having a great ad. Some brands, like Doritos and Bud Light, chose quantity over quality, each using a bunch of completely unrelated spots hoping for one or two that “stuck.” Some chose to stick to one message.

“If you’ve got a good campaign and you’ve got multiple pieces of the same thing telling the story, that’s cool, and if you’ve got a brim of broad audiences and you’ve got one against different passion points, that’s cool, too,” Associate Media Director Jeremy Thompson said.

“I thought the Budweiser ads fell short. You go into it with people really expecting a lot from them, and I don’t think they got there,” LVCVA Group Account Director Kim Downing said. “I really liked the (Volkswagen) ‘slugbug’ ad. It was nostalgic; it showed the product. I just thought it was really good.”

Corporate Director of Digital Marketing Sean Corbett was enamored with the reaction from perhaps the world’s largest focus group – the instantaneous opinions offered up on Twitter.

“The minute a spot ran, you’d start seeing the opinions flow through the Twitter stream. It was really cool to watch. A lot of ad folks, obviously, every agency in the country, seemed to be online last night – and then general people catching on and talking about the ads was really cool,” he said.

WINNERS

Google’s spot, essentially a product demo, was lauded by the entire group. “It did everything it needed to do. It showed you how much Google is part of our life, it told a story. It was simple. It used their user interface. … It was a great spot,” DiGeorge said.

“It reminded me of why I choose to use it every day over Bing. They are about simplicity; they are about ease-of-use. It was a really great change-up from everything we had seen,” Corbett added.

“I think they accomplished in one ad what Bing has been trying to accomplish with tons of ads,” Marin said.

The T-Pain ad, even though it was basically a different vision of the “Wassup” ads of a few years so, still worked.
The eTrade babies, specifically the “milkaholic” spot, was solid.

“I liked the eTrade babies but I’d like to see them go in a different direction now. This should be the end of that type of campaign,” Pope said.

LOSERS

Coke’s efforts, which included a certainly-not-cheap use of “The Simpsons” and a few even less memorable spots, completely missed the mark. Nobody really cared for the sleepwalking guy, either.

“The fact that a bunch of people from an ad agency sat in a room just to talk about the commercials, and for an hour Coke never entered the discussion – for a brand that big to go that unnoticed says a lot,” said yours truly, Web Content Developer Sal DeFilippo.

The Who, and more so, the people who were stuck watching them.

“The Twitter backlash on The Who was vicious. One of the better comments was, “can somebody please hurry up and wrap up The Who show because they have to get home and watch Matlock.”

GoDaddy.com – most disappointing “by far,” according to Pope.
Taco Bell – the commercials that aired in advance leading up to a very dull “Green Eggs and Ham” spot featuring Charles Barkley. (Note: In fairness, not too many words rhyme with “gordita.”)

Friday Inspiration on Tuesday

Arnie DiGeorge, Executive Creative Director — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 17:51:51 +0000

Here are some of the things we talk about at the Friday creative meeting. Sadly, you get them on Tuesday.

The Coke happiness machine comes to life. Very much like an idea we gave to Zappos. Maybe they will do it someday. Click here to view

This shocked me for Yale. I thought they were smarter than this. Click here to view

Speaking of smart, maybe it’s overrated. Click here to view

Incredible packaging of the Star Wars Adidas. I might have to buy a pair for the shelf. Click here to view

The host of this show is the guy from our first Chinchilli Day spot. He keeps getting jobs with Chinchillas now. Weird. Click here to view

Creep for candy. Click here to view

Interesting movie involving nothing but logos and brand identities. Click here to view

A great idea I wish was mine. Books are back, sort of. Click here to view

Taking out the trash is the toughest part of Christmas Day. Click here to view

The films are the same but the posters are much better. Click here to view

We used to have a moustache contest at work. But we can’t compete with these guys. Click here to view

I love modern art. I also love modern art that makes fun of modern art. It’s a vicious cycle. Click here to view

As a good friend of mine says, for the rummys. Click here to view this one and click here to view the other one

When you are ready to throw it all away and become real again. I dare you. Click here to view

For an extra $20 you get to make a drug deal. Click here to view

Best use of outdoor by a scorned woman. Click here to view

And lastly, our new What Happens Here ad. Check it out. Click here to view

That’s all for this week. Keep your eyes out for the next inspiration but not on Friday. At least not this upcoming one.

The Bad and The Ugly of CES

Arnie DiGeorge, Executive Creative Director — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 04:11:02 +0000

LG Phone and Projector

You’ve all seen the commercial. It runs over and over again. It’s the only LG television commercial that’s running right now as far as I know. And the idea is really cool. I wanted to see this thing. So Tony and I head to the LG booth. We ask one of the people there to show us the Projector Phone. She says, “I’m not sure if we have that here or not. If it is here, it would be over there with the phones.” Tony and I go over there only to find that they have them connected to a wall with security wires. There is no way to get far enough from the wall to see how they work and no area to display the image on. A film crew was there for some German show and they wanted to see how it worked too. None of the LG people could find a projector phone that wasn’t connected to the wall. I can’t imagine the millions that were spent making and running that commercial. They should have had a whole room devoted to showing movies on the projector phone. This is a no-brainer. So LG, this was bad and an incredible missed opportunity.

Pump Speakers
I don’t like the color and I have absolutely nothing to wear with them. And, oh, they’re speakers. Now I’ve seen speakers that look like a bust of Beethoven, speakers that look like a dog and speakers that look like shoes. I have seen it all. Please remove my eyes. These shoes would be ugly on a woman.

Pump Batteries
This is the Yogen, www.yogenstore.com. It charges your iPhone by pulling the string over and over again. They call it the charger for life. They say it’s 100 percent green. It’s also great exercise. There’s only one problem. The minute you stop pulling the string there’s no more charge. Make these things so they can store a charge please. How hard is it to figure out that people don’t want to spend 30 minutes at a time pulling on this thing? Yogen, this is a good idea gone bad.

Wah Yung Enterprises

The Wah Yung booth at CES

Wah Yung makes audio equipment. The booth pictured here was showing headphones. I use the word “showing” because that’s what they were doing. They weren’t connected to anything. And it didn’t look like anyone was interested in connecting any of them for me to listen to. Wah Yung makes a ton of equipment. But as a brand, they’re nonexistent especially at CES. And they had that same kind of bland look going as most of the booths from China. I don’t know why they keep going to CES. In the end, their efforts are both bad and ugly.

The Emperor
This is a chair for guys who think they’re Captain Kirk but in a gaming or business sense. It’s a true command center where the screens come down and surround you at the push of a button like the Cone of Silence in Get Smart. What kind of guy are you if you sit in this chair all day long? When will your laser beam destroy the White House? Will you shoot James Bond immediately or strap him to a table, put some special Wah Yung headphones on him and turn up the volume slowly until his head blows up or he escapes and kills you? Either way it’s bad although slightly cool.

iPhone TV
This one really made me angry. It’s an attachment that’s supposed to turn your iPhone into a TV. I immediately wanted to know what stations I could get. So I asked someone. She said, “You can pick up the local stations.” I said, “Like analog stations?” I said this knowing full well that there are no more analog stations. We live in an exciting digital world. She said, “No, they are digital.” To which I became even more confused. Was I going to have to carry a satellite dish around or connect to a cable box? So I asked, “Can I see it work?” She said, “No, it hasn’t quite been totally figured out yet.” This is bad and a tease from the folks at https://www.cydle.com/

Cydle M7 Mobile Internet Device
It was frozen and no one could unfreeze it. They teased me yet again after the iPhone TV thing. That’s cold and bad.

The Cue
The Cue had a great set up and looked like a really interesting reader. It’s connected to its own digital magazine and bookshop and also features stuff like e-mail, weather report, calendar, news, etc., within the device. However, the device was so slow that I immediately asked about the processor. The Cue guy said, “This isn’t the processor it will ship with in March. That processor will be faster than this one.” Then I asked how much. He said something like $700. Hmmmmmmmmmmm. This is where my thoughts started to go all over the place. Can I trust him about the processor? Do I even have $700. I might have to buy a new bike. That sounds like a lot of money. Where are Tony and I going to eat after this? Will I be paying for Tony and me to eat? And when I eventually came back to the moment, The Cue had finally downloaded the first page. Bad.

China
If China is taking over the world, it will be a very bland world. A world of washed-out pastels. And all the fonts will be the same. I don’t think I’m going to like it. I’m a colorful character.

Real-Time Recorder
This was actually a pretty nifty device. For idiots like me who can’t figure out how to digitize a DVD on their computer, you can get this thing. It makes a digital copy directly to your iPhone or computer from the DVD player. There is one catch. It does this in real time. That’s kind of bad. But this actually works and you can buy it now.

Casio People
Here’s just a taste of the world of CES. There are numerous beautiful people telling you about the new and exciting world of consumer electronics. I’m not going to say they’re bad. You have to judge for yourself.

The Organizer
I really don’t understand this one. It’s a pack for kids or kid-like adults so that your toothpaste and brush and stuff all have a pocket. And it hangs around your neck like it does around this future boy or whatever he

Arnie is unsure about the TV Hat ... does he have tunnel vision?

is. This did catch my attention. And I did spend time with it. But my final conclusion was pretty simple. I don’t want there to be a nuclear war where we come out of the shelters as small ugly green people even if we do have nice organizer packs hanging around our necks.

Porn Debate
This sign is sitting toward the back of the show almost as if it was accidentally transferred from the Adult Video Convention, which was going on down the street. There was no porn debate going on at CES. I couldn’t figure out what it meant. There was no petition to sign. Ron Jeremy was nowhere to be found. Most porn is pretty ugly and so is Ron. So I’m going with ugly.

TV Hat
This is me wearing a hat with an iPhone tucked in the front and a magnifying glass inside. It’s so you can watch movies on your iPhone. It’s a TV hat. It’s an interesting idea but I wouldn’t go anywhere with this person and neither should you.

Mink Man
Again, you be the judge. At least it’s not full-length.