Ranting
I love Mike Hughes
Anyone who has followed advertising for any period of time will instantly recognize the name Mike Hughes as one of the leaders of the Martin Agency in Richmond Virginia. Since joining the agency in 1978 as a copywriter Mike went on to becomes Creative Director and under his leadership Martin grew from a regional ad agency to a national powerhouse with clients like GEICO transcending advertising to become pop-culture icons.
Over the course of my career I had heard stories from industry friends about Mike and they always sounded a bit too good to be true. After one meeting him I found out they were all more than likely completely true.
I first met him a number of years ago when I was summoned to Richmond to interview for their newly formed interactive creative director position. I arrived at the agency, checked in at the front desk and based on past interviews I sat down to wait for some mid-level assistant to come and escort me to conference room for the days festivities. Instead I was greeted by the man himself and we adjourned to the coffee shop next door to the agency and we spent the next two hours talking. It consisted of 10 minutes flipping through my portfolio and 2 hours of one of the best design and advertising conversations I can remember. So even though we couldn’t get a workable deal together on that job it was evident why he has been so successful and why everyone speaks so well of him.
So as someone I greatly admire, am proud to be able to call an industry friend and an extremely worthy adversary on more than a few pieces of new business, I am very happy to congratulate Mike on his induction into the One Club Hall of Fame this week. If you want to share some love of your own check out WeAllLoveMike.com where you can leave it in this interactive yearbook style site.
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Dear Adobe, want Flash on the iPhone & iPad? Here’s the plan…
In the little over three weeks since the announcement of the iPad and my subsequent article on Apple snubbing Adobe Flash I have had a parade of emails and conversations with friends and colleagues about the subject. Honestly it has quickly grown tiresome to rehash the same points again and again. This feud between Apple and Adobe has all the maturity and poise of two small children pouting over a spilled glass of milk, holding their breath till they turn blue and pointing the blame at the other one. So in my limited wisdom I have hatched a four step plan to end all this bickering and discussion – Adobe listen up and take notes.
1. Go to nearest Apple Store with Adobe corporate American Express and buy and iPhone and iPad.
2. Pull your best development teams from creating new real time effects or in-application Papervision 3D clones that will do nothing but continue to inflate Flash Player and we will only use for one project so we can say we know how to use them.
3. Have development team create a mobile version of Flash Player that will run on the iPhone and iPad without destroying the battery life or being a complete resource hog.
4. Hold very publicized press conference showing how well new Flash Player works on said iPhone and iPad. End press conference with “And we are waiting to hear from Apple with timing for when they are going to adopt this new player that addresses all of their issues.”
Like all good plans it is simple and takes control of the conversation by putting Apple on their heels for a change. This one is free but next time you are on your own…
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Why did Belgian ad agencies go on strike this week?
Nineteen advertising agencies including JWT, Ogilvy, BBDO and Saatchi in Belgium launched a virtual strike this week to try and change the number of agencies asked to pitch any piece of new business. This has been an increasing problem worldwide and it was most publicly exposed in the Zappos pitch last year that ballooned to over 100 agencies. For that pitch the agency Ignited used Google Analytics to calculated that Zappos viewed only five pages of its 25-page submission with an average page-view time of 14 seconds. This type of behavior should never happen and in the 1990’s the UAB and ACC developed a charter to define the rules for agency pitches and it was signed by all the big agencies. The virtual strike is being done to try and draw attention back to that document and get it back to being the rules of the road. The strike is being executed as a letter that is broken up into 19 pieces and displayed across the websites of the 19 different agencies. You can see the whole thing by starting here. I love seeing the industry come together to make a statement like this and I hope it has an effect.
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Is Apple’s snubbing Flash all about money or a sign of things to come?
Before the Apple press conference was over yesterday this image of a broken plug-in icon where Flash content should have been displayed was flying around the internet showing and the debate over why Apple refuses to put Flash technology on the iPhone, iPod Touch and now the iPad was reignited again. So what’s the real story behind all of this?
We have all heard the company line from Apple that they have not included Flash because they want to keep the platform stable and that is threatened by Flash because it is a resource hog and a security risk – which are both true. The problem is that it’s a convenient truth because the reality is that Apple could work with Adobe to fix the problem but it’s in their best best business interest to keep Flash off their platforms. Flash represents a risk to their substantial revenue generated from people buying TV shows, movies, apps and games through iTunes. It would threaten their development community as the appetite for those paid apps and games would shrink. So while everyone points to Apple as the creative thought leader the reality is that they are just like any big business where a threat to their bottom line is takes priority over everything.
No one paying attention yesterday even started to believe Steve Jobs when he said things like “The iPad is the best browsing experience you will ever have.. better than a laptop” after seeing that broken plug-in icon. You can’t make a statement like that when you are going to exclude 70% of online games, 75% of video on the web and millions of other sites from that browsing experience. You can’t make that statement after you just made fun of Netbooks for being useless but they support Flash content.
All of that being said this isn’t a love letter to Adobe and a complete condemnation of Apple. They have have forced a conversation a lot of designers and developers have had for a while now that Flash is in trouble. It has really languished since Adobe purchased it most of the changes coming in the form of useless filters and changes to the coding language but real strides to move the platform forward. The Web experience is moving more and more onto mobile devices and HTML 5 looking to take a good sides bite out stranglehold on the ability to create rich experience. Flash is struggling for the answer to how it will be part of this new future. Last year Adobe launched the Open Screen Project with more than 50 partners to get Flash and Adobe technology working across all platforms and devices. It sounded good but they haven’t shown any breakthroughs and it leaves me feeling that it was more of a PR stunt to show how everyone is working with them but Apple.
For me the bottom line is that their are faults and flaws on both sides of the isle.
For Apple we will agree that Flash is a flawed technology but millions of people create or consume Flash sites every day and that makes it a standard online technology we want on a device like the iPad. In the past we have been willing to somewhat forgive the exlcusion of Flash on the iPhone and iPod Touch because on those devices they are used to having a mobile device browsing experience where they get lighter versions of sites and paired back content. But with the iPad experience you are moving from that small mobile device screen and mindset to a laptop like experience and that changes all the expectations of what the device will do. The compromise of no Flash content is no longer acceptable and you can’t hide behind the company line anymore. For many people, including me, it’s a deal breaker that’s going to keep a $729 iPad off your bottom line because you’re protecting $1.99 apps. To me that’s just bad math.
For Adobe you need to evolve your platform and respond to the challenge because Apple is imposing their will on you and they have changed the game with the iPhone. When I consult with any business that gets retail traffic I tell them to stay away from Flash because with the number of searches being done from an iPhone you don’t want to risk business customers not accessing your content but being able to get your competitors non-Flash content and winning out. As designers you have to give us a solution we can work with or we will be forced to walk away from you because we have chose the success of our customers over nostalgia and platform penetration numbers.
For the rest of us another author said it better than I can when he wrote about this subject “We know some things are bad – quarterpounders, cigarettes, Jack Daniels and Flash animations – but we choose to consume them because the rewards frequently outweigh the risks.” Like with all products we vote with our wallets and we have a choice. Buy the device and accept the fact that Apple is restricting your choice and content or don’t and show them that we will like companies who take a creative leadership role just not at the cost of reshaping the online world solely for their bottom line.
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Is the recession just what creatives needed?
About a little while ago I sat down with Richard Christiansen the Creative Director and Founder of Chandelier Creative and Commonwealth Utilities at their purple piano, latex sofa and life size horse lamp adorned studio to talk about their latest work. About 15 minutes in to the conversation he said something that has rattled around in my head ever since which was “the recession is the greatest thing that ever could have happened to us”. It’s one of those statements that catches you a bit off guard and you struggle to get enough time to process the comment in the flow of the conversation. I prefer the direct route so I just dug in to get an explanation.
For Chandelier it has broken down the class system and egos of designers, photographers and artists who wouldn’t return their calls a year ago. I started to think more and more about the statement and it is true for me too. For my professional life I have seen more of the agencies I work with are more willing to collaborate and invest in our relationship and in my personal work I have found photographers who work for The New York Times are now returning my calls and working with me on my projects. I look at this as a silver lining and needed reality check among all the bad news of the past few years. I know that I am very, very lucky to have those opportunities and the toll the recession has taken on my team and the industry is something no one would celebrate. I am curious to hear your thoughts on this and if you have seen the same thing in your work or your home market.
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To everyone this Thanksgiving…
In keeping with the spirit of Thanksgiving I wanted to say a sincere thank you to everyone that reads, comments and re-posts what it is I have to say every year. When I started this almost 5 years ago I wasn’t sure if anyone would care about what I had to say and it has been a fantastic experience that has gone beyond anything I could have hoped for. I know that is all because of you so thank you and I hope you all have a happy and safe holiday!
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R(eally)/G(iant) A(ssholes)
Take one disgruntled employee, add social technology and you get ReallyGiantAssholes.com (R(eally)/G(iant) A(ssholes)) which is directed at the agency R/GA. The site is written by an ex-R/GA employee who recounts his slow and meandering departure from the agency. The story is all over he place as it starts out with his problems with co-workers and then moves on to his being accused and fired for looking at porn all day.
This trend of ex-employees creating anti-employer sites is thanks to technology but I have never seen one that I thought was worth the effort. If I had been accused of looking at porn all day I would have been out of my mind, demanded the list of sites, times of day they were viewed, length of site visits and I would have posted all of that in my story as proof I was being set-up. In this case the author choses to stay anonymous which I don’t get because you want to tell us all your story about how you were wronged but not tell us who you are? You want to clear your name then gibe us some proof, your name or anything solid that would keep this from becoming a throw away oddity for bloggers like me.
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The battle between Data vs. Design
I read an interesting article in the New York Times yesterday called ‘Data, Not Design, Is King in the Age of Google‘ about the recent career of Douglas Bowman. The debate in the article is if a company will lose it’s innovative edge if it listens to its customers and the data their behaviors generate too closely in creating new designs and functionality. After reading the article I wanted to add my 2 cents to the debate over data vs. design.
My position is that the data documents the road behind you and that 20/20 hindsight can teach you a lot about what works, what people respond to and what just isn’t doing it for them. That being said when you it comes time to move forward and create something that innovates I think you have to use the data as a base to ground the new work in something they will respond to but then rise above it to grow those previous behaviors into something new and better.
As a creative director or designer in the interactive creative process you have to be a evangelist and filter.You will be challenged at several points in the process to steer your client through the temptations of the previous user data when you pitch your concept, or the focus group results after you have visual designs, or the user testing data when you have your prototype because that is the safer and more comfortable path.
You have to be an evangelist because when you boil it down as a creative a large part of what you are selling is confidence in you, your team and most of all your idea. Not all clients can see the final results of how the idea will turn out as easily as you can so you need to put in the work to maintain that confidence throughout the project.
Next, you have to be a filter to go through the data, focus groups results and user testing behaviors to be able to sort out what are results that need to be acted on versus something that the new concept will address or a behavior that can re-shaped for the better. I also think that it is essential to define what will be considered a successful outcome before each of these exercises so the results are put in context. For example if you are testing an new experiential site and you know only 15% of your audience engages in that type of content then you need to set the expectation for user testing that 7 out of the 10 participants may not like that new functionality but the resulting 30% engagement is a 100% improvement over the audiences current behavior. Since you studied the previous data you can serve as a filter to set that expectation so your client will not see a 70% failure rate and kill the concept and design direction instead of seeing that it is doing it’s job.
So in the end I think that if you just follow the data without the benefit of your knowledge and filtering then you will have your consumers and even your clients defining the direction of your work and I don’t think you can consistently find great ideas and innovative interactive experiences that way.
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Politics and the Internet – Where America can let it’s anonymous inner racist bigot shine through.
Today I find hope that America may finally have been roused from it’s mental coma into paying attention to what is going on in this country. However, I find myself unable to let the day passes into the history books without a personal commentary on the role of new media and hate have played in this election.
I have written before about how the use of new media has been taken to a whole new level in this years presidential campaign and I think using that technology in new and intelligent ways has had an effect on keeping people engaged and motivated to take action today. I think it has also played a disgusting role in showing just how far the human race still has to go to achieve basic human decency. If you limited the scope of this to just Facebook you will see on applications like “Pieces of Flair” which was created to spoof the restaurant in the move Office Space and it is filled with buttons calling Obama a terrorist and showing him as a monkey because he is black. You see postings and imagery comparing McCain to the Nazi’s and I am sure there is even more there but I got to fed up to keep looking.
I can’t begin to kid myself into thinking that this type of thinking isn’t there everyday in more people than we would all like to admit in this country. This election and the increased role of the internet and the tools it has to offer has given people permission to express their true selves on a scale that I have never seen before. They are emboldened to let express their true racist, bigoted, hate filled feelings and thinking because they have a platforms, easy to access tools and they are safely hidden by the anonymity of the internet. I think it’s that last part that really makes the difference because they can now say things they would probably NEVER say to another human being without the strong desire to experience the level service at the local trauma ward.
I understand not agreeing with someone’s point of view and I understand being passionate about your beliefs. I will never understand how that gives you the right to think that because someone thinks differently than you do then you all bets are off and you can say they aren’t human because of the color of their skin or compare them to a movement that killed millions of innocent people. Because for me that goes across the line to a small minded hate filled place that isn’t going to make anything better for anyone. My hope is for the children of those people that maybe the Internet will expose them to the fact that there is a big world out there filled with different people, beliefs, and races who that that you don’t get bigger by tearing people around you down.
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