Futuristic signs directors

I'm a fan of DiG! and have been hearing great things about We Live in Public. So when Brian told me Denver's Futuristic Films had signed the films' director, Ondi Timoner, for commercial representation, I got excited. Futuristic confirmed that Timoner has been with them for about four months, and added that they'd also signed Nick Goossen and Jamin Winans. Maybe I am the last person in Denver to hear this news. But it still makes me happy. Now what can I write that I'd absolutely have to have Ondi Timoner for?

Create ads that are brave and wonderful

Here are two print campaigns I love. Canadian Club Whiskey from Energy BBDO. And Havaianas ads like this one from AlmapBBDO. On the surface they couldn't be more different. The former campaign is insightful and cool. While the latter is all unmetered joy. But they share one important trait. Courage. I am not sure how Energy BBDO convinced Canadian Club that the key to reaching a new generation was to create an homage to an old one. And I'm not sure how AlmapBBDO sold Havaianas on the idea that cynicism and edge are inferior to happiness and beauty. But they did. Our world, and our industry, is better for it.

The Internet is creepy if you are Big Sports Celebrity. Or anyone.

Six kids. Seven parents. Dora The Explorer: Live. But this isn't a story about live theater and happy times. It's a story about celebrity and the Internet.

Sitting behind me is Big Sports Celebrity with a child on his lap. But is it really him? It's been several years since Big Sports Celebrity got traded to Opposing Sports Franchise. No time to figure it out. The lights go down. Kids start yelling. Big Sports Celebrity gets forgotten.

At intermission, I use my Blackberry to look up Big Sports Celebrity on Wikipedia. It takes me less than 30 seconds to learn that he has a child. Surprisingly, the entry also includes the child's name and birthday. I tell one of the other dads and he nods. He has already done a Google image search on his iPhone to find a current photo. Yep, it's Big Sports Celebrity alright.

I've written that using a smartphone encourages you to treat information not as something you find, but as something that flows around you. I never thought twice about searching Big Sports Celebrity. But then I looked around me at all the happy kids and realized that if you're famous, the Internet does more than overshare your personal information with the world. It shares the names and ages of your children. And that's creepy.

The most ironic part? We didn't approach Big Sports Celebrity for an autograph because we wanted to respect his privacy. Sheesh.

The difficulty of building a fresh book

I'm not the only one with questions about how to assemble a quick, cool hybrid digital and print book. Here's a quote from one of my friends, who asked to remain nameless, paraphrased because I didn't have a tape recorder handy:

Agencies keep claiming they want to see books with digital and integrated storytelling. But when I put that stuff in my book, they flip right past it. You shouldn't ask for it if you're not going to take the time to understand it.

ADCD presents Chase Jarvis

The guy "feels like a crow on most days." And ADCD is having him speak Friday night. Too cool.

More and more conversations over pancakes or sandwiches

Al, Brian, Brian, Chris, Melissa and Michelle took me up on my offer. Anyone else?

Experiences are your creative equity

Is creativity anything more than taking a given and matching it with something unexpected? Watch this:



It's another example of a Z that can't easily be traced back to a known A. Of thinking that inspires joy, not just because of the content, but because of its unpredictability. I love it. And I was thinking about it when I read Noah Brier's comments on some interesting findings:

"What do artists, poets, and novelists have in common?" Ramachandran asked me. "The propensity to link seemingly unrelated things."

Michael Gruen writes this:

This is also not to say humans are incapable of complex thought, quantum leaps, or extraordinary thinking - I’m only suggesting that those leaps and complexities are based on systems that we know or that we happened upon: our imaginations are limited to our experiences and the patterns we innately understand on circumstance of being human.

Which means that creativity depends - almost to the exclusion of all else - on finding a lot of cool, random, beautiful stuff to put in your brain, so that when someone hands you a problem, you have a deep well to draw from. You take their A and add a Z that no one but you could've possibly seen coming.