Follow the R&R Government Affairs Twitter feed today (@rrpartnersgov) as we tweet live from the grand opening of the Whittemore Peterson Institute, at the Center for Molecular Medicine, University of Nevada, Reno. The entire Nevada congressional delegation will be there. Fun begins at 2:30 p.m. PDT.
Posts categorized under ‘R&R News & Notes’
Fireworks, D.C. style
Fourth of July fireworks are a treat that all Americans share – no matter where you are in the nation. As a native Washingtonian though, I’m partial to the fireworks display over the National Mall. This year I had the unique opportunity to watch the festivities from the roof of the R&R Partners office in downtown DC. What a magnificent view (thanks R&R)! The sweep of American history in one glance — from the Potomac River to the United States Capitol. What a beautiful night to be able to share with my family! I hope everyone had an enjoyable and safe holiday weekend.
As mobile web usage grows, who’s keeping track?
More and more people are using their mobile phones to stay dialed in to the Internet.
Online media consumption is growing at a staggering rate with much of this growth coming from readily available mediums like mobile or devices like the iPad. Consumers are not only becoming more aware of the ease-ability of these devices, but also customization in this space; however, they have also grown readily aware of the people who are tracking this consumption.…
In the mobile space, we’re finding that more and more users are relying on their mobile Web over PC-based Internet. Sixty percent of mobile Web usage is now taking place at home, bringing the smartphone closer to the promise of being an “always on” device.
This usage leads to a larger amount of media consumption, as the Web becomes more readily available. In fact, half of all smartphone users are consuming this hefty amount at the same time they are consuming other media, whether that be while watching TV, listening to the radio and/or traveling.
But as users consume, the question becomes, can advertisers track? Whether it’s privacy rules on Facebook, what information you opt into or cookies on your Internet browser, the average Joe may not be aware that advertisers do use cookies to track what websites they are visiting, what they are buying and which creative they liked better.
However, Google is now giving users the option to select which list of interests the company associates with their computer, which will ultimately control what ads appear as the users browse. The new add-on is still currently in beta mode, but this option, along with new issues regarding behavioral targeting, may lead to difficulties for advertiser reporting on the new growth that awaits.
Don’t let a client’s strategy melt in your hands
I just spent the better part of an hour-long meeting fighting the urge to dive face first into the bowl of M&M’s. Those wonderfully flavored candy-coated chocolates are sweet, sweet music to my taste buds. To say I love them is an understatement.
But I resisted temptation and every possible rationalized scenario my mind (no doubt directed by my taste buds) threw at me to convince me that it was OK to eat a few. I, instead, opted for my turkey sandwich and steamed broccoli. Why? Because it was the right thing to do. I bust my hump every day in the gym and eat right to keep my body happy. And despite the mixed messages from my tongue, my body really does appreciate it and, hopefully, will reward me by not giving out on me in five years.
“Good for you Richard Simmons, but why should I care?”
Think about this the next time you’re at a crossroads with your client. Your team has a great idea that you know in your gut is the right thing to do for your client. Everything’s falling in to place beautifully. The strategy is dead on, media plan is tight and the creatives delivered in spades. You’re team worked really hard to get there. But now, your client wants to “tweak” things ever so slightly. You know you shouldn’t, but it’s hard to explain why that’s not the best way to go.
When your client wants to tweak things and you know they shouldn't -- help them resist the temptation and don't sugarcoat anything, either.
And that is how that bowl of M&Ms comes in.
“Dude, just do an additional five minutes on the elliptical and it’ll be like you didn’t even eat that handful of M&M’s.”
“Really, are five or six more even going to matter?”
Grabbing a few of those sweet little beauties would have been easier than the internal struggle to do the right thing and say no. It’s the same way with your client’s requests.
“Adding an extra sentence won’t really make that big of a deal.”
“What if it wasn’t a horse, but a unicorn?”
But as you continue to take the easy route and continue to give in, the next thing you know you’re left with a bloated, out-of-shape piece of communication. Barely doing its job, working way too hard and doing way too little.
My point is that it may be difficult to convince your client of the right thing to do. Of course giving in would be the easy and satisfying thing at that moment, but down the road when they client looks at the carnage that all those “M&M’s” caused, it may not be your body on life support, it may be your relationship. Have the conversations, as tough as they may be; they will certainly extend the life with your client.
Why I Hate But Still Need to Love Award Shows
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 Role of Charter Schools
Every year, Newsweek publishes a list of the country’s best high schools. This year’s list was accompanied by an analysis of the performance of charter schools when compared to their regular public-school counterparts. As so many others have tried to do, the piece attempts to gauge whether the national “charter experiment” is working.
Charter schools are public schools that have the freedom to try new things, from methods of teaching and instruction to the length of the school day and year. In Nevada, R&R Partners has worked with the Andre Agassi College Preparatory Academy charter school since its creation 10 years ago. Founded when Nevada’s charter school movement was in its relative infancy, Agassi Prep has been the poster child for the successes and challenges faced by charters. The school has also been a leader in helping to shape the state’s charter-school legislation to ensure that state laws don’t interfere with what we are all trying to accomplish – innovation and the overall improvement of all public schools.
The article refers to a study by Stanford University, which found that 37 percent of charter schools produce worse academic results than their public counterparts, and only 17 percent outperform them. In a vacuum, these results may be cause for concern. However, the author also points to the possible reason for these results: while some states have laws that make it easy to create a charter school, they fall short with respect to closing down those that shouldn’t be in business. Any charter school administrator worth his or her salt would agree that certain standards should be met in order for a school’s charter to be renewed.
It is difficult, though, if not impossible to assess the success or failure of the “charter movement” based on studies such as this one. Every charter school has its own ways of operating. Each has its own unique teachers, administrators, lesson plans, curricula and different state laws with which to comply. The very flexibility these schools are given is what makes them an incubator for other public schools – we should learn from them what works and what doesn’t, and improve all public-school education according to these lessons.
A roundup of the Oval Office speech
So President Obama delivered his first Oval Office address to the nation last night. To be clear, my critique of the speech is based on the production – not the policy or politics. With that caveat in place, let me say that I thought the president did a good job overall.
The lighting looked great last night in my opinion. Too often I’ve seen really bad lighting for Obama interviews in the Oval – but not last night. As a producer I was looking for reflection in the window behind the president and to see how well the lighting outside the Oval looked. Good on both counts. No teleprompter script reflected in the window. Good depth and detail outside the Oval Office window.
The gold curtains behind President Obama were dressed properly and the array of family photos behind the Resolute desk looked just right to my eye. The final bit of the iconic set design — the presidential flag and the American flag — both looked spot on to me.
Now, there’s no accounting for camera work on these things and the network pool camera will invariably push in tighter than the White House camera. But last night, on my TV at home — I was watching ABC News — I felt like the camera man pushed in too far. All I could see was flags and window behind the president — and that just didn’t read Oval Office to me.
But that wasn’t the biggest problem. No, my biggest problem with what I saw last night was what I couldn’t see — the president’s hands. And boy was he using them!
For their part, ABC News covered the lower third of their picture with graphics nearly the whole time. Granted, this is a common practice — but last night ABC (and probably others I didn’t see) really blew it. President Obama was speaking with his hands in a very expressive manner. The decision to not show this to the audience was a BIG mistake. ABC compounded the error by not making a clean version of the speech easily available on their website directly following the broadcast.
The White House camera – and yes there is more than one camera in the room for things like this — offered a vastly superior view of the address. A wider shot that included some of the Resolute desk and all of the gesturing that came from President Obama. I am so glad I went back and watched this alternate feed of the address – it allowed me to better appreciate what the scene really looked like.
As I said at the top, i think the president did a good job. He delivered the speech well and was very expressive. The “filter,” as network news is sometimes called, was where the production fell down.
Live TV — no redos.
Camp Vegas TV
Brand new TV for Las Vegas. Welcome to Camp Vegas for grownups. This campaign is designed to drive visits to Las Vegas during the traditionally slower summer travel season. With so much investment by Las Vegas hotels in pools and summer daylife events this campaign provides a platform to show all of the incredible summer fun Vegas has to offer.
R&R Kids Raise Over $500 for Three Square
The hard working and creative kids of R&R staff raised over $500 for Three Square while learning about marketing, billing, and selling during Bring Your Child to Work day 2010. Great job R&R kids.
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