That Interweb

Handy Google Search Tips: 19 Simple Tricks You Need To Know #gsdm

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/30/google-search-tips-tricks_n_665048.html#s121115

I use a few of these tips quite a bit. Especially the site search function. Very handy.

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Thinking outside the box will get you killed. #gsdm

The following is my opinion and doesn’t necessarily reflect the opinion of my agency, my partner, my clients or anyone else I know or have ever worked with. It’s just one of my working theories on producing great creative.

  Most people don’t like “out of the box.” They may say they want it. They may demand to see it. But in the end, they rarely buy it. In fact, they usually kill, kill, kill the most out-of-the-box things. This does not make them bad people or stupid or shortsighted or anything at all. This makes them human.

  We all have our boxes and we love them. They’re warm, comfy and safe. Outside the box is strange and scary. Think about it, you have things you’re perfectly comfortable doing, but if someone pushed you beyond your safe area you’d reject the idea. I love the thrill of roller coasters, but there’s no way in hell anyone will ever get me to bungee jump or skydive. The thrill may be better, bigger, cooler, grander, whatever. Still, ain’t no way in hell I’m jumping off a bridge with a rubber band around my ankles.

  So why do we expect our clients to be any different? After all, they’re people, too. More than that, they’re brands and institutions with a lot riding on their decisions. Their boxes protect them from doing stupid things like jumping out of airplanes or changing their secret formula (usually).

  Having said all this, let me make one thing very, very clear, I am in no way advocating mediocrity or mundane creative. I am firmly committed to creating, producing, and pushing outstanding ideas. My point is that we need to respect the box and use the box to our advantage.

  Use the box?

  Yes, use the box. Our job as creatives is to find out the size of the box, and learn everything we can about it. How, when and why was it built? What keeps the box where it is? Who owns and controls the box? Then, once we know all that, we can use that knowledge to guide us as we fill the box. I mean really fill it. Find every corner, every seam, every little nook and cranny, and put as much stuff (ideas) in that box as you can. Everything in the box is in the comfort zone. Some stuff will be right in the center while some will be out in the corners, but it will all be in the box.

  Once the box is full, we start pushing on the sides. We have to push as hard as we can and make that damn box bigger. The bigger the box, the more it can hold and the further out the corners get. Eventually, things that used to fall outside the box suddenly begin to fit. Ideas that previously made the client blanch are now considered real possibilities. They’ll still have their no-go zones, but their comfort zone will be larger, giving us more flexibility and freedom to do more creative work.

  Who knows, maybe you can get the box big enough that the occasional out-of- the-box idea won’t die a fiery death on take-off. It might actually make it to round two reviews.

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How to open a wine bottle with a shoe. Curious, amazing and useful! #gsdm

My brother sent me this and I just had to share. Science is so amazing.

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YouTube video rocks it Dadstyle. #gsdm #youtube #dadlife

Welcome to my world, boyeeee.

Seriously, I’m tired of being the heavy one on this blog. Any more of me and we’ll have to change the name to “Seriousity”. Today I flip the script and do something that I find fun and curious. Enjoy.

PS  Amazing how YouTube, the second largest search engine in the world, has become one of the best ways for us to share smiles with friends. Doh! I just can’t help myself. Bad Stephen. Bad.

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eArchive: Iberia Airlines expands with leg room.

You know that family picture sitting next to your TV screen? Maybe it’s on a shelf above your TV or even resting right on the TV itself if you haven’t switched to a flat screen (Luddite!). What? You don’t know that picture? Of course you don’t because you haven’t paid any attention to it since the day you placed it there. It sits there lonely and unnoticed as you stare past it watching desperate house wives solve medical mysteries and gather DNA evidence from two and a half men.
 
See, you don’t notice the crap around your TV because you’re there to WATCH TV!, not notice the crap around it. Banner ads, unfortunately, are the crap around your TV. That’s why banner ads need to do something to get noticed.

Agency AlmapBBDO – Sao Paulo
Client Iberia
Art Director Victor Aragao
Writer Caroline Freire
Creative Directors Fabio Costa, Eduardo Foresti
Programmers Paulo Pacheco, Claudio Bellanga
View the ad here.
 
This 2002 One Show Interactive Gold winner from Iberia Airlines does an amazing job of getting noticed. Not only that, it’s a fraking clever idea that makes excellent use of rich media capabilities.
 
The banner starts as a simple 300x250 with the copy all crammed between two rows of seats. Then the banner expands out into the page content. Normally, this would piss people off but I’m betting the cleverness of the ad makes more people smile than frown. You see, as the banner expands, the space between the rows grows as well. At the same time, the copy gets more “leg room” and is able to stretch out into one, long, clean line. Brilliant. Plus, it’s a great product demo without a product (see the last eArchive).
 
Whenever I do a banner, I keep one thing in mind, “How am I going to get people to notice it.” because people go to websites to consume content, not see banners. So if I want my banner to get noticed, I better give the user a reason to pull themselves from their content. After all, unless my family pictures go all Harry Potter on me, there’s no way I’m pulling my eyes away from So You Think You Can Dance.

TV Gets Funny Again: From HuffPo 'Beavis And Butt-head' Coming Back To MTV

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/14/beavis-and-butthead-comin_n_645715.html

It will be interesting to see if today’s generation that’s grown up on “gross out” humor will find B&E even remotely amusing. After all, they are the grandfathers of “Dude, Where’s My Car” and “The Hangover”. I worry the boys will feel a bit tame by today’s standards. But I’m setting my DVR no matter what. Heh, heh, I said, “But.”

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Social media starts with being social, as in face-to-face social.

I am a geek. Now, my close friends just said, "Duh" and those of you who have been following me probably just said, "No kidding" but for new folks I want you to know where I'm coming from. I am a "Build-my-own-computer, World-of-Warcraft-playing, sci-fi-movie-quoting, comic-book-reading geek." I get more UV rays from my 22" HD computer monitor than that big ball of swirling fusion in the sky.

Now, I love Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Gowalla, Foursquare, LinkedIn et al. and I think they're fabulous social tools but there's no way they can replace the cocktail-in-hand, room-full-of-noise experience of live interaction. Heretical, I know but it's true. But, these online socials can enhance and continue the experience and maybe even lead to the next one.

Here's where my geek and social riff come together. I was at the Micro Center in Plano, TX this past weekend. I LOVE THIS STORE! It's better than Fry's by a light-year. It's a geek wonderland with everything you could possibly need computerwise. More importantly, it's staffed with the smartest, nicest people I've ever interacted with at a retail store. The experience I had can never be recreated by any social media tool, period.

But what do you think I did after having a great experience at the store? I wrote a Facebook post about it. The sales staff's expert social skills spurred this geek to activate one of my online social tools. I would never have done that on their behalf without first having an excellent one-on-one interaction. Because they were so nice and helpful, I'll join their Facebook page and follow them on Twitter. I'm not a better customer because of their social media tools, I'm a better customer because they're a kick-ass store with a kick-ass staff. I am, however, a better advocate for them because they've given me the tools to be one. And, through they're actions they've convinced me to open up my inbox to allow them to directly communicate with me.

I'm all for social media and believe it's a powerful and important weapon in every brands arsenal. But, at the end of the day, social media isn't worth a hill of beans if you don't get the real life social aspect right first. And that's all I have to say about that.

PS  Flying the geek flag high.

This is Palidan. He’s my level 80 Paladin tank. Check out those massive shoulders!


This is geek central. Built the rig myself. Running 2 8800GTX video cards in SLI, Asus Striker Extreme MB, Intel Core 2 Duo at 3.0GHz, 64G SSD with a 750G storage drive and a 1000W power supply. Notice the second screen above the main screen. It’s actually bolted to the shelf upside down so I can tilt it down and watch movies while I game. Snarf!

Behold the Power of The Internet + Music #gsdm #music #playforchange

<embed allowfullscreen="true" src="http://www.playingforchange.com/player/widget.swf?episode=7" wmode="transparent" height="360" width="460">

My dad forwarded me a link to this site earlier today. It's the first time he's forwarded anything worth forwarding. I believe there should be a strict set of rules regarding the use of the forward button and breaking those rules should result in the loss of all email privileges.

Anywho, besides loving the song, I love the fact that the Playing For Change project could not have happened without the Internet. In fact, PFC is a great metaphor for the Internet itself. Using a network of musicians, a little ingenuity, and a passion for music that already exists in the public at large, these guys have created a social network of musicians that can create an album without actually being in the same room, let alone the same country. Damn, I wish I didn't drop the clarinet in seventh grade.

Here’s one of my favorite songs. You can find a ton more on their site.
<embed src="http://playingforchange.com/player/widget.swf?episode=2" width="460" height="360" allowfullscreen="true" wmode="transparent">

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eArchive: The WD40 banner that changed the world (At least for me).

Let me take you back to my mind circa 2001.

“Those poor bastards. They must be really crappy creatives to be stuck doing banner ads and websites all day. Glad I'm not in their shoes. Oh well, back to writing this TV spot. Maybe this will be the one that wins gold. That is if I first beat out the other six teams pitching ideas. Damn I'm lucky to be doing real advertising.”

I was an Internet snob. I believed those that couldn't hack it in "the real advertising world" did DM and interactive. What a fool I was. In 2003 I found myself at Digitas doing DM and I found it completely exhilarating. It was like creative and math all rolled up into one. The creative challenges were immense and being held accountable for a direct, measurable response was oddly rewarding. To see that what I wrote, and more importantly how I wrote it, could increase or decrease response was amazing.

Skip a few years ahead and the newness had warn off. While the math of DM was still fun, the creative constraints were beginning to chafe. By this time I'd started doing some banner and site work but I still thought of it as ghetto. Then one day I saw a banner that changed my life. Here it is:

http://www.oneclub.org/os/search/?year=2006&id=4704
Client WD40
Agency Proximity Singapore/Singapore
Art Director Kun
Creative Director John Pye
Writer Juilana Koh
View the ad in action here.

It got me hook, line and sinker. I was so intent on seeing if they really put a naked woman in an ad that I never noticed the can of WD40 off to the side. When it showed up to loosen the banner I was shocked, delighted, and shamed. My piss poor attitude of banner advertising had been shattered by a simple yet brilliant execution that was both creative and original. I distinctly remember thinking to myself at that moment, "I wish I did that." No higher praise is their in the world of creatives.

As I sat at my desk coming to grips with years of pigheadedness and missed opportunities I realized I'd been building towards this moment for quite some time. I'd become completely bored with Superbowl spots. I was tired of fighting for TV scraps. And the only things that ever really sparked my creative fancy/envy were the links friends sent (subservient chicken, shave everywhere, monkey mail, etc.). How had I not seen it before? I was an "Interactive Creative" stuck in a traditional's body.

I spent the next several years absorbing as much knowledge and experience as I could about all things digital. And when I did projects I always thought back to that WD40 banner and tried to beat it. So simple. So smart. Such a great product example without using real product!

Though it only won bronze in the 2006 One Show Interactive annual, it will always be my gold standard and remembered as the one that started me on this crazy ride.

How to geek out with video games on the cheap and become an interactive badass.

A short time ago, I blogged about how playing video games can make you an interactive badass. The problem with this approach is that video games cost on average $49.99 and up. What's a strapped creative to do? Well there's this thing called Steam and it's awesome. Now, Steam has been around for a while and I've heard of it but never used it until this weekend. Life changing.

Here's the deal. Steam allows you to download games right to your computer without having to go to a store. If your computer dies, no problem, just go to your online library and download it again. Visiting a friend and want to play your games on their PC? Download and go. Amazing. The price of games varies. New games are still at their premium price of $49.99 but older games are cheap, cheap, cheap. Plus there are sales on all the time.

Here are the games I mentioned in my previous post and Steam's price for them:
Borderlands: $10.19
Crysis: $29.99
World of Warcraft: Not available
F.E.A.R.: $9.99

That's over $200 worth of games brand new for fifty bucks. Awesome.

Check it out. Especially if you're laid up after surgery and need to kill some time.

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