By TO411Daily Columnist
Linda Chandler

They’re so high maintenance, we hire consultants just to help us deal with them. We thoroughly resent their audacious expectation for work/life balance. How long have they been working, 5 minutes? Their famous “sense of entitlement” literally drives us to smoke (again) – and all that self-esteem and optimism we (boomer parents) instilled in them because our parents didn’t – OMG! It stuck! An article in the Harvard Business Review entitled “Mentoring Millennials”* confirms our experience that this generation really does want “a constant stream of feedback.” And that they are in an unrealistic hurry for success and the respect that comes with it. But can you blame them? Just last Saturday the world was coming to an end!

The kids are all right. Harvard Business School Professor, Bill George has encouraging facts about our millennial colleagues. He says these “Young adults study harder and more often, engage in more community service, participate in a greater numbers of extracurricular activities, and hold a more optimistic outlook on the future than any other generation in modern history.”*

Which is a gift when you consider how little genuine opportunity is coming their way. Jane Bongers, Coordinator of the Advertising/Copywriting Program at Humber College says, “We impress on graduates that there is a big difference between an internship, a job and a career. Careers take time; they’re a strategic process. Our grads are well prepared to move into the process of building a career and all the while survive the rigours of the advertising industry.”* Which can sometimes add up to one unpaid internship after another. This could be conceived as tough going.

Five interns who make it sound easy: Jordan Gabriel and Julia Lynch are copywriters and Jordan Dunlap, an art director, all interning at Lowe Roche. They got their internships Portfolio Night at the same agency. Daniel Gerichter is a copywriter interning at Grip Ltd., and Jacob Greer is interning as a copywriter at TAXI. Three out of five interns graduated from Humber College. One from George Brown and another from Mohawk College in Hamilton. The Brief asked them lots of question via e-mail and was delighted to get immediate, thoughtful, and irreverent responses.

The Brief: Why did you choose advertising?

Julia Lynch: I didn’t chose advertising. Advertising somehow convinced me to become a copywriter, and then for some reason I bought new Nikes.

Jordan Dunlap: I’ve always been the type of person that likes to have my work up in a public space. I love being able to drive by something on the street and say, “Hey, I did that!” Before advertising, I was painting murals, making artsy videos, and always trying to create something new. Originally, I wanted to become a graphic designer, but I see myself as an idea person as well as an artist. Advertising was the thing that combined all the things I love into one awesome industry.

The Brief: What surprises you most about working in the “real world?”

Jacob Greer: It’s really a fun time to be working in advertising. Consumers are gaining so much power and everything is going digital and mobile. People in general are so much more ad savvy it really raises the bar for good creative and pushes the industry to do new things. Brands are becoming so accessible to the average person and to be able to flourish a brand these days needs to have a strong identity. A good brand story and good creative is so much more important now than even just a few years ago and it is really exciting that I get to help create it.

The Brief: Do you feel like this (advertising) is your passion?

Julia Lynch: It has replaced my social life, my family life and my cat. Well, not my cat, that’s ridiculous.

The Brief: Where do you think the industry is heading?

Daniel Gerichter: I think the industry is better than it ever was at tapping into people’s passion, hopes and dreams. I think it’ll only get better as it goes forward. Also, in the future, I think the hipsters are going to make a concerted effort (in the interest of being ironic) to bring back HAM radio. Once that happens, the floodgates will open for a whole new advertising medium. You just watch.

The Brief: Hey Daniel, seriously speaking, would you say you’re 100% digital, social media, interactive?

Daniel Gerichter: Nah. I’d say I’m 75% social media et al, 20% traditional; and 5% soy.

The Brief: How would you define your generation?

Julia Lynch: I’d define my generation the way that my idol, Dr. Phil McGraw, would. We are the “Me First” generation. Or something. I don’t really watch Dr. Phil; I think he’s an ass. But I would say we need instant gratification, and that’s something that hugely impacts advertising every day. Websites, microsites, QR codes, AR codes, mass texting, online contests, corporate Facebook pages, viral videos… the list of awesome things that advertisers can use and experiment with grows almost daily. And that’s fun for us, and, hopefully, fun for consumers.

The Brief: Any advice for newbies?

Jordan Gabriel: The one thing I would advise people who are crafting a student book is this: be prepared to be on brief and on brand.

The Brief: You guys sound like you’re learning a lot and you’re happy.

Jordan Gabriel: I knew the pace would be tough, but that’s what I was hoping for.

The Brief: There’s no business like the right business.

The Brief wishes to thank all the “kids” who generously answered my e-mails. And to remind us ‘boomers’ that any new generation is a pain in the ass. So were we. 

SOURCES

• Harvard Business Review, Mentoring Millennials by Jeanne C Meister and Karie Willyerd

• Bill George, Harvard Business School Professor, http://www.billgeorge.org/page/engaging-the-millennials

• Jane Bongers, Humber College School of Media Studies, Program Coordinator, Advertising Copywriting jane.bongers@humber.ca

• Lowe Roche Portfolio Night

• Grip Limited

• TAXI

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By TO411Daily Columnist
Linda Chandler

Take Magic Johnson and Larry Bird. Two basketball icons who played for The Lakers and The Celtics back in the ’80s. They were arch-rivals playing for legendary teams. If Magic was the embodiment of west coast flamboyance, heroics and people pleasing, Bird was the east coast opposite – reserved, private, all work and no (apparent) play. Two strong brands. Two originals. Like the Mac and PC, anthropomorphically speaking.

Thanks to 66 commercials, we can all attest to the clear benefits of one legendary brand challenging another. The Mac vs. PC – “Get a Mac” campaign sparred so effectively, brand on brand, that when PC decided on a home court advantage their PC vs. Mac campaign was organic. Both brands are the result of original thinking. From innovation to execution, nobody else in the world can be a Mac or PC.

Imitation is the highest form of thievery. It’s an insidious form of Intellectual Property theft. The word we all dreaded in university comes to mind; Plagiarism. When one takes (ideas, writings, etc.) from another and pass them off as one’s own. Or a copycat who imitates an approximate of an original. Sometimes this aberration is the result (we’ve all heard rumour of this) of a client or agency coveting another brand’s success so much they actually think that doing the same thing will bring them the same results. Can’t you hear the conversation? “Why don’t you do something like… OLD SPICE? Yeah… that’s it! Give us a… ‘version’ of Old Spice.” And you feel like you can’t say IT’S BEEN DONE ALREADY YOU BIG FAT FART. BY OLD SPICE! or you’ll lose your client or your job. The truth is that when you steal other people’s ideas, what you really lose is your soul.

Rip-offs can only be one-offs. A big idea can go on forever.
I’m thinking of Equifax’s Edwin the Equifax Cop Accountant commercial as a pure and simple rip-off of Old Spice. View it now and come back immediately. See what I mean? Now watch these next imitations from United Moving. and from Dairy Queen who robbed Old Spice twice.

As they say in the DQ spot, “It’s reediculous!” While Equifax, United Moving and Dairy Queen got commercials on the air, they did nothing, absolutely zilch to expand the conversation between their customers and their brands. The Brief knows this because copying someone else’s original is a nowhere strategy. Whereas, Old Spice, the original, made Isaiah Mustafa and his “Man Your Man Could Smell Like” ads an unparalleled viral success on YouTube. The agency Weiden + Kennedy took the campaign and social networked it on Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites with personal video messages. The team of 35 created 187 video responses some within minutes of getting messages from consumers. “According to Visible Measures, an independent company that tracks viral videos, the videos had received 16.3 million views… Matt Fiorentino, senior marketing analyst for Visible Measures, calls the campaign “Unprecedented.” *

And that’s what you get with a greatbigoriginal idea and every star in the galaxy aligning itself for your success.

If you’re going to imitate Old Spice do it like Grover.

SOURCES:

• How Old Spice campaign changed social media thestar.com by Nicole Baute July 17, 2010

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David Ogilvy is the past. Bill Bernbach, Jay Chiat, George Lois, and Mary Wells are too. The iconic swoosh? Past. 1984? Humph, TV! So past! 60-second radio? Past. Believing the past has something to enrich us? Way past! 

Technology and using it to reach the consumer where they happen to be and with what device they happen to be using has unsettled our advertising and marketing “agencies” rendering them obsessive about getting on top of how to occupy this new age and to appear to be as cool as Steve McQueen. Oops! That was so past. THAT WAS SO PAST!

Nowhere does the past seem more onerous and disposable than in last year’s tongue-in-cheek rebranding of GJP. In case you’ve forgotten the origins of BLAMMO WORLDWIDE, the past and future went down this way:

http://www.youtube.com/embed/fqRpsqLGQ8U

Alan Gee (who knew he was so funny?) and his creatives decided to rebrand themselves with a fire sale on YouTube. Gee did a send-off of a local commercial (ironic choice to launch a worldwide iteration?) with the ubiquitous Russell Oliver’s Toronto jewelry and loan ads. During this real liquidation sale Gee offers up GJP phones, rulers, cookie platters, executives, the walls – even his stylish British accent. It’s a riot. But it leaves a bitter aftertaste when Gee gives away all its awards. Past. Gold Lions from 2008. So past.

From the ashes of GJP emerged BLAMMO WORLDWIDE. The new name, Gee said, was a recognition of the explosive way in which the industry changes. “Many agencies are struggling with that change, but clients are eager for it. We want to take the best of what we had-insightful strategy, fantastic execution and inspired creative-but now look at it in completely unexpected ways. Blammo is about doing the unexpected.” Blammo sold its entire contents to symbolically erase the past…” As much as I love the awards, that was yesterday,” Gee said. “We’re all about tomorrow. You can’t live in the past.” *

As Matthew Creamer wrote in Advertising Age about the industry’s rejection of the passe word “agency” “…It’s clear there’s a hell of a lot of people who don’t want to be confused, under any circumstances, with an ostensibly respectable category of business that, for more than a century, has bestowed fantastic wealth upon a few, and a respectable living, low handicaps and battle-hardened livers upon many more. Sure, cancer is not being cured at Grey. But, at the same time, it hasn’t started any wars or crashed the economy. Still, the aversion is strong enough to cause people spanning the globe to commit great acts of violence against grammar and syntax and logic and semantic systems all to dodge the label. When one of the industry’s oldest shops, Campbell-Ewald, celebrated its 100th anniversary in February, it revamped its website, adding this descriptor to it: “We’re not an agency. We’re hundreds of diverse minds rattling as one.”

The Brief feels compassion for reinvention. It’s a very human business issue for the industry. The client perceives that if their agency is unable to engage the consumer holistically, they’re yesterday. The BLAMMO WORLDWIDE’s have to position themselves in such a way that leaves no doubt that they can – let’s drum up an anachronism here - ’Just Do It’. The answer is a resounding Obama “YES WE CAN!” All of it. As BLAMMO writes in their website, “We specialize in the unexpected – unexpected connection points, unexpected thinking, unexpected creative ideas.” And john st is “be unignorable”. Both ‘slogans’ set in lower case.

With the past now buried in the past, Gee says “Blammo is also a blank slate as far as Canadian agency brands go, which Gee hopes will serve as an example of the agency’s branding prowess as it grows over the coming years.” *

But, but, but… can’t we hold onto some things from the past? Award annuals, for example. Like the dictionary and the thesaurus there’s stuff to learn inside. And your agency awards. They remind young people looking for mentorship that they’re in good company.

Tell me if this JACK IN THE BOX spot circa 1980, the brainchild of Howie Cohen and Bob Pasquilina and shot by Howard Zieff, didn’t inform GJP’s fire sale just a teeny, tiny bit. The fast-food hamburger chain’s re-invention campaign was an event marketing, mulit-media, blow-out idea worth recalling.

Then… THE JACK IN THE BOX RE-REINVENTION Jack was reintroduced specifically to signal a new direction the company was taking to refocus and regroup after the E. coli disaster. In the original 1994 spot, Jack (“through the miracle of plastic surgery,” he says as he confidently strides into the office building) reclaims his rightful role as CEO, and, apparently as revenge for being blown up in 1980, approaches the closed doors of the Jack in the Box boardroom (a fictionalized version, shown while the aforementioned minimalist theme music from the 1980s Jack in the Box commercials plays), activates a detonation device, and the boardroom explodes in a shower of smoke, wood and paper.

The Brief hopes you have a terrific week and stay strong. Please write in with comments, suggestions for articles, complaints about picking up dog poop and recipes for jello.

SOURCES:

• MARKETING MAGAZINE, AGENCY NEWS GJP REBRANDS AS BLAMMO WORLDWIDE, Jeromy Lloyd, November 18, 2010

• ADVERTISING AGE, When Did ‘Agency’ Become the Thing Nobody Wanted to Be?’ Ad Age

• http://www.marketingmag.ca/news/agency-news/gjp-rebrands-as-blammo-worldwide-6047

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_in_the_Box

By TO411Daily Columnist
Linda Chandler

In case you’ve been living through your avatar from The Seriously-Violent-but-Happy Galaxy, these no-end-in-sight tough economic times make finding freelance work a full-time job unto itself. Even those freelancers with established client relationships know their clients are a text message away from a cheaper deal. Like a new logo design from New Delhi for $25.00. The competition is fierce because anyone can compete. Work can be negotiated anywhere in real time. And what’s unacceptable remuneration for someone who has worked for over 7+ years or so in Canada may be this month’s rent in Katmandu.

Veteran freelance art director/logo designer/graphic artist, Ronnie Lebow wrote on his blog about these times as a freelancer - a piece called “We have become cheap whores.” Lebow says, “Name me one single industry where somebody can simply buy some software, hang up a sign, and call themselves a professional without any prior training or work experience? I see it in our industry every single day. And to many businesses and their owners in today’s economy, we are a dime a dozen.”

Necessity is a mother. Fortunately for freelancers, a naturally creative bunch, necessity is the mother of invention. So freelancers have evolved new and innovative models to work and even sometimes, to make money.

The Bauhub. You’d want to be part of this club, if they wanted you as a member: The name, inspired by Bauhaus School, German for “Built House,” signifies form, functionality and technology in one place. A new place for experienced freelancers, (7 years minimum,) to get work to with clients on their own terms, to find collaboration with other members, (94 and growing worldwide) and for the passionate-at-heart – to be part of a collective whose mission is to bring a standard of excellence to the industry. Heady stuff. 

The Brief spoke to The Bauhub’s President, Scott Morrison, who explains that to join The Bauhub you must be recommended by an existing member and go through a vetting process. “As a member of The Bauhub you can choose to work with other Bauhub members, which gives a freelancer a pool of experienced talent to expand their own services; in turn, clients can choose to work individually with members or customize a team with the guidance of The Bauhub.” As far as The Brief’s concerned, this model sounds ideal for the entrepreneur with a full-time freelance career who wants to grow it. http://www.thebauhub.com. But come back!

Giant Hydra. For the young who love to freelance for the fun of the game. Giant Hydra is a mass collaboration model created by Ignacio Oreamuno, founder of the ad industry’s vital community: ihaveanidea.org. Oreamuno explains the name and concept of Giant Hydra: “The Hydra* had multiple heads, but was a single being. With Giant Hydra, projects are run by HydraHeads, or talented freelancers. They work on specific projects; they don’t compete, they collaborate. All working together to accomplish a specific goal, brief or task.” What comes to mind is that a freelancer for Giant Hydra has to want to play creatively with no desire for ownership, either IP or real estate. 

The Brief asked Daniel Del Toro of Sao Paulo, an art director with 3+ years experience whether mass collaboration works. Del Toro says, “I think we’ll see more groups like Giant Hydra. Having creative diversity at your disposal is a great benefit. The younger creatives seem to be more attracted.” Jaime Schwarz, a New York copywriter with six years experience, half as a freelancer adds, “As long as you are OK contributing at all hours and working well with others only with text… The big thing you have to give up is ownership of an idea.”

That was young and this is then. The older freelancer, 50+ (of course, nobody admits to 60+!) are freelancers too. On the threads, the older freelancers wonder what to wear to work. How to act. How to morph into now. And this despite how current they might be. They wonder how to integrate 25+ years experience, hundreds of awards and diverse client experiences – with clients young enough to be grandchildren much less children.

When you read the threads on Linkedin and other social networks you hear tentative voices. Reminiscent of T.S. Eliot’s poem about aging, The Love Song of J. Alftred Prufrock:

  And indeed there will be time

  To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”

  Time to turn back and descend the stair,

  With a bald spot in the middle of my hair- 

  [They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”]

  My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,

  My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin-

  [They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”]

  Do I dare 

  Disturb the universe?

There is still an economic crisis. It played and continues to play havoc with the advertising industry. Imagine now that you’re a self-employed creative. A professional freelancer. Hats off to you and your courage to hang in. 

As always, thanks to my sources

Ronnie Lebow

Scott Morrison

Giant Hydra

Daniel Del Toro

Jaime Schwarz

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock – T.S. Eliot 1917

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By TO411Daily Columnist
Linda Chandler

Like its founder, Ignacio Oreamuno’s Giant Hydra, the on-line mass creative collaborative is 176 trombones – young, thrilling, wild. It’s energized by creatives (HydraHeads) who are not in it for the big bucks or giant egos, but for the fun of playing out the brief with agencies such as Ogilvy, TAXI, Leo Burnett, TBWA and the creative directors they’d likely not work for under different circumstances. Mass collaboration works in large part because as Tony Chapman, Founder and CEO of Capital C says, ”The benefit is quantity… and a highly efficient price point.” Period. And that makes mass collaboration chump change for some people but perhaps, fun, like a hyper-velocity, social networked digital game. Think ‘IdeaVille.’! 

Giant Hydra is not an advertising agency; it’s a resource for them. However, *Victors & Spoils, is an ad agency (pioneered by former principals of CP+B. in Boulder, Colorado,) actually founded on the principles of crowdsourcing. Victors & Spoils explain their model this way: “Crowdsourcing (mass collaboration) is the act of digitally delegating a task to a group of people that passionately participate in developing a solution. * 

Giant Hydra’s Oreamuno explains the benefits of Giant Hydra this way: “Ad agencies will now be able to tap into a collective and collaborative pool of concept developers that will provide ideas and executions in quantity and quality that could not be matched by traditional in-house teams.” Oreamuno says the model enables “…a TV idea created by someone in Stockholm to be developed into a social media campaign by someone in Buenos Aires and into a viral web (idea) by someone in Seattle… the possibilities are endless.”

Giant Hydra calls these ideas “seeds” and every HydraHead on the project can grab a seed and run with it. “They don’t compete, they collaborate, all working together to accomplish a specific goal or task,” says Oreamuno. The Brief thinks – Chairman Mao where art thou? 

Who knew the process of creativity, once so dependent on that inexplicable alchemy between AD and CW is so passe? Andrew Simon, Chief Creative Officer of Blammo Worldwide (GJP’s reincarnation,) unctions over Giant Hydra and warns of the fundamental change in the industry that cannot be ignored. The Brief asked Simon to expound on armageddon. He said, “The walls, they are a tumblin’ down. As an industry we have to be open to new possibilities and more collaboration. New organizational structures. New ways of pairing talent, and for that matter, finding different kinds of talent. Today we need broad-based thinkers who are comfortable creating ideas in all mediums. And we need to put aside the bias that traditionally trained ad people are the best at coming up with solutions. Put aside the politics and let the best idea(s) win.” Did you hear that Miami Ad School? Perhaps the guys across the street at Java Junction have the real solution. Hey, they have an iPad!

The Brief asked Andrew Simon whether he believed Giant Hydra exists because these are hard times and people are hungry for opportunity. He said, “Just like Victor & Spoils, Giant Hydra exists because we all need to find new ways to come up with the most compelling ideas.” So we’re hungry for ideas. Masses and more of them.

The Brief is thinking that what’s truly new is that agencies are complicit in confusing the client. The client is understandably desperate (in these times) to hold onto share and build the brand, the agency is co-dependent and throwing everything they can think of into the gumbo. Maybe this will work? So many ideas. So many platforms. So much ado about nothing when you consider how mean-spirited the “good idea” muse behaves despite the mass assistance.

Robert Chandler, Creative Director, owner of General Levitation, who was CD at L.A.’s Chiat/Day, BBDO, and Ogilvy, qualifies to throw his opinion into the mix because he was also creative director on Apple, Microsoft, and IBM. He’s the original digital dude. Chandler says about the state of current advertising: “It looks like the worst throwaways of Slacker Nation. More crude excretion humor than a Judd Apatow movie. There’s one spot running now where a guy is getting a proctology exam as he talks to us about whatever the hell he’s selling.”

The Brief asks Chandler why, with all the creative resources, the work sucks? He says, “The downside, is the downside of how we are now working generally:
you’ve got a lot of people sitting alone in their pods, working virtually. They do their bit and email it in or upload it on an FTP. There is a minimum of human interaction. No true human collaboration,” Chandler concludes. “It’s better to have a lot of great people working under one roof. (Together) there is all sorts of unspoken communication and spreading of ideas that we don’t fully understand.”

The Brief believes this: despite quantity, mass collaboration is a lot like sexting. It does the job, but it won’t give you an orgasm.

Next week The Brief will report on the state of freelancing, with mass collaboration and otherwise. Hint: hold onto your job (if you can) and postpone having the baby.

Click this link and sing along with David Bowie to changes.

The Brief would like to acknowledge its sources

• Ignacio Oreamuno

• gianthydra.com

• Tony Chapman

• Andrew Simon

• Victors & Spoils

• http://www.facebook.com/l/db7e1/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lernaean_Hydra

• http://www.dirjournal.com/shopping-jornal/the-10-best-fan-made-commercials/

• Robert Chandler

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