When You’re Wrong, You’re Wrong

A few days ago, I read the Digiday article about Oreo’s social media agency, 360i, putting 13 people on the credits for that tweet in an awards entry.

…and I posted, via Buffer:

How Many Agency People Does It Take to Send a Tweet? 13 in the case of Oreo bit.ly/ZsdLFi—
Ed Lee (@edlee) May 06, 2013

Then I read what Faris had to say

sharing credit with team is bad? why? RT @talldrinkh2o: How Many Agency People Does It Take to Send a Tweet? digiday.com/agencies/how-m…—
Faris (@faris) May 03, 2013

…and I instantly regretted being such a smart ass. Whoops.

The truth is, while getting on the credits isn’t a big deal for me personally, I get incredibly annoyed when I see my team left off the credits for any project they worked on. So I’m glad that 360i put as many people as they could on the credits – especially the community managers. They probably should’ve put more on there.

I’m starting to think of social media creative as more like print ads where you have to have one singular thought or message expressed with a compelling line of copy and an arresting, complementary image – I even have the half-formed Pinterest board to prove it – so why not put as many people on the credits for a social media post as you would for a print ad? Is one better or worse than the other? Take more or less time? Demand more or less creativity?

Congratulations to all 13 who made it, and to all those who did not.

 

Secret Anti-Abuse Ad That Only Kids Can See

Saw this on Gizmodo, via Facebook, and thought it was an incredibly smart solution to a tough problem – how can you empower an abused child to call for help if their abuser is standing next to them. Hopefully it can have a real impact beyond being a creative idea and case study (as more than a few Gizmodo commenters have said).

</cynicism>

The secret behind the ad’s wizardry is a lenticular top layer, which shows different images at varying angles. So when an adult—or anyone taller than four feet, five inches—looks at it they only see the image of a sad child and the message: “sometimes, child abuse is only visible to the child suffering it.” But when a child looks at the ad, they see bruises on the boy’s face and a different message: “if somebody hurts you, phone us and we’ll help you” alongside the foundation’s phone number. The ad is designed to empower kids, particularly if their abuser happens to be standing right next to them.

When your colleagues and industry lavish praise and accolades on your work

You should be like:

Thanks, but no big deal.

Via The White House on Tumblr

Radar DDB 10am One Thing: Feedie

The following is this week’s 10am One Thing which I wrote for the DDBlog

65% of Americans eat out once a week, taking millions of photos of their meals. What if, instead of sharing pictures of their food, diners could share meals with the 65% of South African children living below the poverty line? It was this mission that led The Lunchbox Fund to launch its Feedie app with the support of Tribal New York.

Feedie is a photosharing app that is optimised for sharing food pictures, thanks to filters such as “toasty”, “leafy” or “seared”. When a photo is shared on social networks like Twitter or Facebook, it is branded for The Lunchbox Fund and, more importantly, the restaurant it was taken in. For each share of a meal from its tables, the restaurant donates one meal to The Lunchbox Fund so that South African children can have the energy to work towards an education and pulling themselves, and their families, above the poverty line.

The initiative launched in New York this week and has garnered the support of prominent foodies, celebrities and restaurants. We hope to see this in Canada, and around the world, very soon!

Find out more and for our New York based readers, download this at We The Feedies.

—

The One Thing is a result of the daily 10am meetings held in the DDB Canada offices, where our digital teams meet to discuss new online trends, tools and technologies. 

For an archive of the 10am links, visit our Pinterest board.

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What is the Creative Process Behind a Music Video?

One of my first office jobs was as an admin assistant in a booking agent’s office. The office of four cast the production side of ads, music videos, West End shows, TV shows and movies. I think that was the order that talent moved up the career ladder.

I on the other hand issued faxes full of typos and almost killed the MD when I bought her aspirin instead of paracetamol. I was there for about 3 months of my GAP year and helped cast the crew for a few (6?) music videos.

I mention this because I really had no idea what I was doing but every now and then I watch a music video on YouTube and wish I knew what sort of creative process the musicians, their agent, their manager, the director and the label went through to get to the final product.

It was much easier in the early to mid-noughties when the Eric Prydz “Call on Me” video came out and the trend was to focus music videos around attractive dancing ladies. But every now and then you get something like this by David Guetta, one of the world’s biggest names in house music:

Its a great song and wonderful use of one of my favourite club tracks (Alice Deejay’s “Better off alone”) but at what point did they think “let’s get some twerking* girls in here among the Mexican cowboys” or “what if we had some beauty pageant contestants licking ice creams? Oh, and we had better give one of them a uni-brow”

Apparently the video is a bit of an homage to a slew of high-art influences, which vaguely explains the crazy-toed boots, but I would love to know what goes through people’s heads the rest of the time. There’s no real story here, at least not in the Modjo “Lady” sense of a story. It’s like someone dropped acid and transcribed their thoughts to someone else who was on magic mushrooms.

Which is fine as well, I’d just like to know how they get there.

Update – here is a making of video with some more context and texture around who the dancers in the video are. Very interesting.

—

*Laura had to explain to me what the style of dance was called or there would be a far less politically correct term in there…

This is just a comment on the creative narrative and doesn’t take into account how offensive the Mexican community has found this video.

Hot Dog Day At DDB Canada

When I joined DDB, more than 3 years ago, one of the things that struck me was a sense of togetherness  of camaraderie and of shared purpose. This culture has been developed over many years, first as Palmer Jarvis and now as DDB, and it has been developed, as all cultures do, around a certain mythology and lore. This is the first such “shared story” that I heard about DDB when I joined and it speaks to just why the agency has been so successful for its clients over the years. I’ve heard, and told, many versions of this over the last three years but as this was just posted on our blog, I guess it is the official version, or canon.

To many, a hot dog is merely a nitrate-filled frankfurter housed in an oblong-shaped bun.  But for us at DDB Canada, its significance runs much deeper.

Back in the early days of our agency, a hardware retailer was sharing with Frank Palmer, about his frustrations with his existing agency partner.  The man lamented the fact that his agency had gotten cavalier in the relationship and, at a recent grand opening, ignored a crucial detail – in this case having hot dogs available on-site for customers.  Frank didn’t hesitate in his response, “Well, we do hot dogs!”  Soon afterwards, we were awarded the business.

In essence, what Frank was saying on that day was that at DDB, we use our creative prowess to do whatever it takes to make our clients successful. The fact is that we hold our client partnerships sacred.  As Frank likes to say, “We’re in the relationship business.  The work we do is a by-product of trust.”  And that’s precisely why, nutritional guidelines be damned, we serve all our employees hot dogs on the last Friday of every month as a reminder of our collective mission.

From the DDB Canada Blog: Hot Dog Friday

Image from DDB Edmonton

 

The Internet Keeps on Giving

In this case, words. Here are the top 10 words or phrases that originated from the web:

• Avatar
• Hashtag
• The “Scunthorpe” Problem – otherwise known as “why is this in my spam folder?”
• Trolling
• Memes
• Spam
• LOLs
• Meh
• Cupertinos – an early version of an “auto-correct error”
• Geek

From The Grauniad.