oyl in tokyo

I think the temptation with all the new interactive bells and whistles out there these days, is to bring everything you’ve heard about into each campaign. There is this pull to prove you know the entire lay of the landscape, instead of focusing on the one or two ways that would effectively communicate your idea.

Maybe learning how to be tasteful with the digital space is akin to a beginning photoshopper who is compelled to use every filter in the program. Rainbow gradient? that makes my idea look important! Ohhh, and then I can make it look like it was rendered in oil pastel! Eureka!

I’m thinking more bite sized, strategic thinking on digital might be in order. Take your idea, and extend it in the best way you can think of. You don’t need to have five microsites, ten widgets and three interactive music videos. We get it, you understand the space. Now use your knowledge in tasteful, but potent moderation.

I’m just about to spend an all-nighter at the agency, so I thought it was a good time to do some blogging.

There are so many creative ideas, the concepts for killer films, amazing websites, that come out of these frenzies of creative teams. Having gone through a number of conceptings, presentings, and subsequent client ‘not in these times’, I just have to take a few moments to reflect. What does it all mean?

How do we get more of this stuff out there? What becomes of the incredibly sophisticated conceptual, visual and digital thinking that never gets the green light? Nothing. Every now and then, a past idea comes up in conversation, but always in a ‘wasn’t that funny how much we believed in that?’ kind of way. It feels like there should be some additional time and energy devoted to producing some of these fallen gems. Of course many of them could only exist with the kind of partnerships that a client budget could allow.

You’d think in this era of uncertain economic times, where downturns and downsizing is the trend, that a shift toward more radical and adventurous thinking would be adopted. The model clearly is broke, how can we fix it? Why not pour some of these inspiring ideas into it. Granted they are less logical for a pure marketing brain to follow in a tidy Powerpoint presentation.

I’d say these times need inspiration, not logic that leads to overthinking. Let’s not stress product silos over something human, with heart. Seems to me that’s what people are craving right now. Maybe your ‘product’ isn’t strictly something material. Maybe there is something about an idea, an experience, a way of treating people that you are actually selling. And perhaps, by attaching something human, with a charming story to your brand, you will be able to ride a halo of inspiration into reaching the goals you are shooting for.

Be approachable. Have something interesting to offer. Stand for something human. What is your voice? As a brand? As a human? Stand for something that advances thought, leads to progress. Stand for the potential for realizing new ideas.

I’m done. Now back to my all-nighter in the name of keeping this latest batch of ideas on the wall, and off of the cluttered floor of the cutting room.

There are few things more creatively intimidating than trying to figure out how to fill the first page of a blank sketchbook.

It represents a starting over, and renewal of your creative process. It seems the first bit of content should be symbolic of the creative revolution the book will later pay testament to.

The first words of any new blank books should be reserved for earth shattering words and imagery that will inspire a generation and be fit for canonization as the voice of an era. The words should be power words that move and inspire across a wide cross section of people. They should not be the errant ramblings of a drifter or the unrestrained doodles of a mere hobbiest. The first entry in a new book needs to be sharp, and pointed with a visionary purpose with something to prove and a soul to validate.

You must swim in a sea of language and be able to pull out phrases with the lethal emotional potency of a school of great white sharks. These words should not be hollow musings, but the truth bearing soulful thought streams that speak from a place of resonance, with the ability to interpret the collective consciousness of these times into a single coherent message, fit for general consumption, but coming from a place of heightened awareness, activated by a unique life philosophy.

The first markings in a new book must be worthy of being etched in stone and appropriate to later be housed in either bound volumes wrapped in luxurious leather, or copy and pasted amongst the masses of mobile technocrats through the most recent and popular forms of screen distribution.

For it is only with this ambition, that your words will fall not on deaf ears or souls stuck on mute. Only the unfrozen, passionate and fully engaged minds will prove audience enough for the potent extolling and imagining of your new book’s first page.

Now go forth, and leave your mark on human history in the way that you are fired up about. Dirty that page with the specifics of your particular genius and let us all stand aghast in the personal revelations you choose to make public.

Look forward to seeing your work.

It was nice to step away from the city grid and fully unplug.

To get away from marketing jargon and deadlines. To take some time and really think about what it’s all about. To re-evaluate myself.

It got me thinking about the nature of making things.

I’ve always made things. Videos. Stories. Songs. Bad high school poetry. Hundreds of basketball cards from 1991-1994. It’s been a life filled with projects and never ending, self imposed to do lists.

The self-imposed part has switched over two times. First during school, when art became work, and subjected to a grading process. Talk about putting out the fire. And now, making things, as a profession, I enjoy doing it, but don’t enjoy the rules. With the budgets, resources and connections, top level companies could be making some incredible, incredible things. All of the pieces are in place to tell lasting, fantastic and inspiring stories.

Those odds go down when you put too much emphasis on a logo, or a product. (Which at times in of course necessary for operations to continue) But I still think there is room to glorify the storytelling over those concerns. That’s my hope at least. It happens in spurts and some cool stuff goes out. But too often, the best things, the best projects, the ones that would make people take notice, or laugh, or think, are the first ones to hit the floor. I want to do a better job of saving those fallen ideas, archiving them someday and creating a massive database of ‘back pocket’ ideas to pull out on a rainy day. So far, they have been so time consuming to think through and develop, that by the time they reach the chopping block, I have no willpower to document them for a later time. Maybe it’s time to start saving some of these.

Anyway, I digress. I feel the pull to get back to self-imposed creation. I was able to keep it going during school, amidst multi-hour drawing assignments and arduous color-study mapping assignments. I still made vids, shirts, and found the time to tell my personal stories.

Time is always a burden. This agency job demands a weekly all nighter (sometimes more) But I do believe, that if you want something to happen bad enough, and are psyched about some kind of a vision for how things could be, you will find time. You can beg, borrow and steal little moments between meetings to set things up for later. Jot down the mini brainstorms that happen on your walk to lunch. Sketch a key frame. Write up the idea for later. 

I’m starting to amass a queue of projects to start in on. I’m hoping also, that writing down this plan, for my blog and it’s 3 loyal readers (hi Mom!) that it will put an extra pressure on myself to deliver.

That’s my theory and I’m sticking to it.

Stay tuned….