Hatch has been designing and printing concert posters in the heart of Nashville for over 130 years, and their hand-set letterpress style is every bit as much of an icon in my mind as the artists they’ve promoted. So, naturally, when Ram asked us to develop the Facebook promotion for their 2012 Road to the Ram Jam, and handed us a styleguide from Hatch, the nerdy designer in me just about fell right off the furniture (obscure letterpress pun VERY much intended…)

Final 2012 Road to the Ram Jam Facebook Sweepstakes

Example pages from Hatch's Styleguide

Even though I’ve worked in interactive design for quite some time, I still have a huge penchant for all things hand-made. In keeping with the spirit of letterpress printing, I gave myself a simple ground rule with this promotion: Stay true to the print aesthetic. That meant—as much as possible—designing everything digitally as if it had to be physically set and locked up on press. Using scans of various vintage woodblock typefaces, cutting and individually setting every letter in every headline, reproducing the physical limitations in kerning and variations in ink coverage, reproducing the multi-color overprinting effect, off-registration, etc. etc. etc. Seriously…getting giddy all over again just thinking about it! I had a blast developing workflow processes to make working in a hand-made aesthetic manageable and flexible (BIG shoutout to PS shortcuts and automation…).

One of many(!) wood type references

Detail of Sweepstakes Creative

Thanks again to Ram Trucks and Hatch for letting us (me) geek out on such a fun style!

After encountering a ton of Moleskine sketchbooks online, I decided to centralize my doodles on a Moleskin book that my sister gave me a while back. I finished my first page over the course of two weeks (see below). 20 minutes here, 5 minutes there. I started it with absolutely no objective, no specific vision, no preconceived notion of what to draw next, just a commitment to filling out a page. The greatest thing happened; my doodles became a drawing. I felt artistic again. I felt creative. I felt inspired.

As a brand marketer, I realized that I had made a contribution (albeit small and derivative) to one of the greatest user built brands in the world. But it didn’t matter. I was a part of something bigger, a community of artists that inspired me. And that felt great so I felt grateful.

See some of the work I found below.

Mattias Adolfsson
Pretty obvious this guy inspired my drawing, huh?

http://mattiasadolfsson.com/

Examples from other artists:

Pop-Up

Collage

Engraved Cover

In 2009, our agency was knee-deep in creating a brand architecture to guide the rapidly expanding Just Dance product line. We developed a key art framework that could either be executed in angled typography or in an art direction appropriate to the product extension. Or as I like to put it, we discovered the holy grail of art direction: a legitimate excuse to phone any creative vendor.

For the Just Dance Kids product extension key art, our agency selected Brazilian illustrator Guilherme Marconi. We aligned with Marconi on the “Kids” artwork because industry research confirms that children love psychedelic unicorn collages (source: The Internet 2009, Lisa Frank). While qualitative research led our client elsewhere (source: Parents who make purchases), the collaboration produced a memorable application of the Just Dance brand architecture and several creative pieces including a children’s coloring sheet, poster series and unicorn drawings.

5 Best Sessions at SXSW

1. 1. Show & Smell: Marketing Experiences Beyond Visual
• Presenters: Kurt Karlenzig (The Marketing Store), Warren Kronberger (The Marketing Store), David Polinchock (AT&T AdWorks Lab)
• The Marketing Store teamed up with AT&T to talk about the upcoming technologies for marketing that aren’t visual. They brought the latest gadgets using sound, smell and even taste to help sell your brand.
2. 2. Bootcamp for a UX Team of None
   • Presenters: Russ Unger (UserGlue), Krista Sanders (Google), Brynn Evans (Google), Fred Beecher (Evantage Consulting)
   • More of a workshop than a presentation this group of UX geniuses guided us through a few tricks to research User Experience. Extremely helpful, I’ve already used a few of their methods.
3. 3. High On Line: Applying Psychology to Web Design
   • Presenter: Jason Hreha
   • Jason talked about what causes behavior.
     1. Ability: How much of time, money, effort, experience does the user have?
     2. Motivation: What value does it provide to the user?
     3. Trigger: How good are your calls-to-action?
4. 4. A Conversation With Joss Whedon
   • Presenter: Joss Whedon (Cabin In The Woods, Avengers, Firefly, Buffy the Vampire Slayer), Adam Vary (Entertainment Weekly)
   • Joss is equal parts nerd and creative genius. It was a pleasure to hear the inner workings of his career.
5. 5. Ambient Location and the Future of the Interface
   • Presenter: Amber Case (Geoloqui)
   • All the talk at SXSW was about location and Amber didn’t vary. She talked about the possibilities of location-based services and the future of humans and computers.

5 Best Most Talked About Apps at SXSW

1.  1. Highlight
   Equally the creepiest and the coolest apps at SXSW. Billed as a fun simple way to learn more about people around you, using Facebook it pulls your activity in the app and if someone else has the app and is near you it will tell you everything you have in common with them.
2.  2. Ban.jo
   This app alerts you when your friends are near. Useful when you are at a convention. Battery drain is a big issue though.
3.  3. Evernote
   Remember everything; a must have when taking notes at sessions.
4.  4. Group Me
   Group Messaging at it finest, a very useful app for a company that sends a few people to SXSW.
5.  5. Foursquare
   The granddaddy of location apps. I found it interesting the most talked about apps at SXSW were all location based. Even though some people were using other apps like Path (an extremely well designed app) everyone was still checking in with Foursquare.

5 Best Tips for SXSW

1. 1. Bring a Mophie
   • Battery drain is inevitable with the spotty coverage at the conference center. And with the amount of time you are on your phone a backup battery is a must.
2. 2. Book a Hotel Early, Book a Hotel Close
   • As soon as registration opens, register and book a hotel immediately. Attendance grew from under 15,000 in 2010 to 19,000 in 2011 and early number are coming in at 25,000 for 2012. For the first time they are projecting there will be more registrants of SXSW Interactive than SXSW FILM.
3. 3. Take Advantage of Every Chance to Sit
   • Dogs are barking, the first complaint everyone has is how tired their feet are. SXSW Interactive at one time fit in the Austin Conference Center. It now is spread over 15 locations.
4. 4. Your Time Is Valuable Don’t Waste It On A Bad Session
   • There are so many sessions if yours isn’t doing it for you jump to a different one, but be careful sessions fill up fast.
5. 5. Follow Rumors From Twitter
   • If you are looking for the latest party or the best session watch what is trending on Twitter. Thanks to Twitter I was able to see @Billy Corgan’s announcement of the new Smashing Pumpkins album as well as the “Secret” wine tasting party of Gary Vaynerchuk.

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PEMMICAN BEEF JERKY REBRAND

Pemmican Brand Book
Gold: Sales Promotion | Bronze: Logo

To view the rest of the Pemmican rebrand, click HERE.

JUST DANCE 3 GLOBAL TRAILER

Silver: Internet Commercial

JUST DANCE 3 BROADCAST

Silver: National TV Consumer Products

To view more of the campaign, Click HERE.

DISNEY CRUSIE LINES

Flash Interactive Board Game – To play click HERE.
Gold: Micro or Mini Site | Silver: Site Consumer Products | Bronze: Illustration

Mobile Experience
Gold: Mobile Website

POP SECRET
Pop Camera Action Social Media Campaign and Promotion
Gold: Online Campaign | Gold: Micro or Mini Site

SUBWAY/UNCHARTED 3
Digital Promotion
Gold: Micro or Mini Site

GAME SHOW VIDEO GAMES

Branded Content Social Media Campaign
Silver: Online Campaign

Family Feud YouTube Game
Bronze: Online Game
Click HERE to play the game.

Who Wants to be a Millionaire YouTube Game
Bronze: Online Game
Click HERE to play the game.

HOYA VISION
Hoya Lens Selector
Gold: Website Consumer Services

BEST BUY

Gold: Micro or Mini Site

Money shouldn’t matter in the first 10 years of your career.
In the first few years of my career, I turned down a Junior Art Director role at a renown Minneapolis agency because the offer was about 7k less than I was making. I could’ve survived on the offer; it would’ve been uncomfortable but I would probably have produced some ‘great’ work. As a result, I spent the next 3 years looking for a comparable job. When I expressed my regret to my Dad, he gave me some great advice. He said, “view the next few years as a post graduate education with a salary. Get great at something and the money will come.” So, I began freelancing, often for free, for the best creative directors I had access to. Finally I built a book that got me an Art Director interview with an agency I wanted to work for. I could tell the CD was hesitant so I offered to work for free for a month. They hired me three days later. During the next five years I produced the best work of my career, and sure enough, the money came.

Context is the most important factor in producing ‘great’ work.
I used to think a ‘great’ idea (or design) was unstoppable. But the truth is, very few ‘great’ ideas get produced. Context is often to blame. An idea, no matter how ‘great,’ has to overcome a ton of contextual obstacles. First, the idea must be approved by a Creative Director who knows how to pitch it, then blessed by an Account Director who knows how confirm the pitch. In turn, it must by bought by a client with the courage, budget, influence, and infrastructure to implement it. In the event that an idea makes it through testing, approvals and execution without being butchered, the idea must be embraced by consumers, a group of people that go out of their way to avoid most of what we do. Just for shits and giggles, let’s say that consumers embrace the idea; it must then be celebrated by award show judges before our creative peers shower us with praise and deem the work ‘great.’ Sadly, award show judges, clients, and consumers have almost nothing in common (a subject for another time). That’s why it’s so important to work for a talented boss at a capable agenciy that attracts wise clients with budgets. Work hard to optimize your personal context. If I’d understood the importance of these contextual elements, I would’ve taken that job in Minneapolis.

A ‘great’ portfolio is less about original ideas, it’s more about combining and applying existing ideas.
In order to produce a ‘great’ idea, you need to come up with a bunch of ideas. That’s really hard to do if you limit your own exploration to ideas that have never been done before (hint: you would die trying). If I had accepted this guiding principle I would’ve been more productive. I would’ve seen the ideas I was surrounded by as starting points instead of dead-ends. Once I realized this truth, I began producing more ideas, selling more ideas, and winning more awards. As a Creative Director, I now require Art Directors and Designers to do the same. When designing, I ask them to produce inspiration boards (see below): collages that blatantly combine design from other agencies to inspire their efforts. We even share these boards with clients. These boards do a few things: 1. They allow for a lot of expoloration because creating collages requires relatively little effort. 2. They align all parties visual expectations before design even begins. 3. They set the proverbial bar high because they contain a bunch of great work. You can see how our final design for red strike combined elements from its inspiration board.

If you’re interested in reading more about the process of creating ‘great’ work, from a designer’s perspective, click on the link below.
Initiation: Redesign the Pemmican Beef Jerky Brand

Hope you can learn from my lessons.

If you work in marketing you should watch these videos. If you work for Nomadic, you must watch these videos (seriously – I will probably drop a pop quiz). The whole video will take about 20 minutes to watch. So, if you just want a preview, make sure to watch Chapter 6 at the beginning of video 2.

Video 1: Chapters 1 – 5

Video 2: Chapters 6-10

Thank you, Coke.

But this entry isn’t about the campaign – it’s about one our many creative partners: Possible Productions. Possible, an LA motion design and post-production studio, handled all of our graphics and finishing. We chose Possible because they were recommended by our Director, Nathan Cox. They produce a ton of tour graphics so we knew they’d approach the project with attention to the music.

Below is a video of their work for DeadMau5. The editorial choreography of the graphics are mind-blowing. While they were without question a great partner on Just Dance 3, we didn’t utilize their greatest strengths. We encourage you to look them up and learn more about them. They are a constant source of inspiration for us and we highly recommend them.

This is a behind the scenes

This is a video of their Cannes winning show for target

Pop Secret had tasked us with creating an engaging digital promotion that incorporated their Kernels and reinforced Pop Secret’s association with movies. So in cooperation with PrizeLogic, a digital promotions company, we created Pop! Camera! Action!, an interactive sweepstakes and instant win game. For the game users would create their own mini movie starring the Kernels.

Users could choose from the following three settings designed to inspire dialogue. Writing the three-part script was completely up to them.

A restaurant – first dates, always funny

The old west – classic movie setting

And a hospital – perfect for overdramatic, soap opera-type dialogue

Through a third-party text-to-speech program the lines the user typed in were translated into speech and played back along with sound design and animation. In other words, we could play around and make the kernels say funny and/or inappropriate things. Which we did. A lot. When the site was first up and running internally we all spent time making and sending obnoxious movies to each other to just make the other person laugh. After all, we had to “test” it to make sure it worked. Even people not working on it started to send each other movies. And it just so happened that during this time someone badly burned some popcorn in the microwave. Naturally we had to make fun of that person with a movie and send it to everyone.

We discovered that making the Kernels complain and rant seemed to work well in the quick back and forth exchange. Or maybe we just liked using them as an excuse to let our own complaints and rants out. One of the best work meetings I have ever had was the day we all met in the conference room to play our movies for each other to determine what we would show the client because it was pretty much just us laughing for an hour straight. It’s amazing what you can learn about someone when they have permission to say whatever they want.

I wrote a script around the idea that all women want is a ton of babies since I often get asked if I want kids.

Tim wrote a few that may have given us a glimpse into his marriage. (Hell, I think we all wrote a few of those.)

And Greg wrote one that was just one long poop joke. Not what I expected from someone who usually has more of a dry wit.

Just for fun, here are a couple more favorites from that meeting.

After we stopped laughing our asses off, we whittled the list down to the videos we wanted to show the client. Several of the above actually made the list—not the kind of stuff you usually show in a client meeting! When we presented the site and the videos, we had to do so over the phone; which meant we couldn’t see our clients’ responses. We waited with anticipation as they played the first video. As soon as we heard laughter we all breathed a collective sigh of relief. Not only did the client think making the Kernels say obnoxious things was funny (thank god) but we knew we had created something that would be amusing to more people than just us.

Apparently this site made lots of people laugh. Due to its social nature, and the way we marketed it on blogs and Twitter, Pop! Camera! Action! was awarded “Best Use of Social Marketing in a Promotion Campaign” in Promo’s 2011 Pro Awards. And while we’re proud of that, perhaps the biggest rewards was that in the end over 84,000 videos were created. I just wonder how many of those were ours?

Want to make a video of your own? Go to www.popcameraaction.com

So where do we start? Well we knew that the past series, Band of Brothers, was a very real and gritty depiction of WWII. We knew with the same people along for the ride, The Pacific, would be no different. We wanted this promotion to keep all those elements and check by playing down the promotional elements and bring focus on to what those soldiers had to go through and essentially give thanks. So let’s dive straight in to brainstorming ideas.

Concept 1:
Episodic Path Using Google Maps

This concept was based on better connecting the actual events and the time line of the series. We’d use google maps to trace out the path of each episode – plotting points of key events in the series as well as additional key moments, during the war. Users could comment on certain locations, telling the world which parts of the series made the greatest impact on their viewing experience.

Feedback: The mapping system was intriguing but lost some of the emotional impact we we’re all trying to keep connected with the real life events.

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Concept 2:
Episodic Timeline with User Submitted Soldiers

Staying with the episodic direction, this concept moved into creating a virtual memorial wall adjacent to the timeline of the show. Each week a path would move from different locations throughout the pacific region highlighting important events, battles, and deaths during the show. Living on the same timeline users would be able to learn more about the actual soldiers in the war that could pull real historical content from ancestry.com.

Feedback: The virtual memorial seemed to be the best fit for the mini-series. It was an easy and effective way for anyone to give their thanks and learn more about the horrible time in our nation’s past.

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Concept 3:
Integration with SHOAH Foundation

The site would allow users to link soldier together by platoon, enlistment/deployment locations, and other historical content brought in by ancestry.com.

Feedback: Although the idea was down a smart path, the time frame we had to execute would cause for a large scale back on features, which we did not want to happen.

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Moving Onward
So now that the initial concepts were pitched, HBO and Nomadic agreed that the virtual memorial was best suited to complement the series. We all said great, and I started down the path of redefining what this wall should be. The initial pitch was based around an episodic time line with user placed location-based pins. Unfortunately, after researching deeper and through ancestry.com we found out not very many people would know exactly where their known soldier died, but most likely only that they fought in the pacific. This would certainly pose a problem if we wanted to create an informational memorial wall online.

Back to the drawing board
The concept of the memorial was certainly the best direction but we had to create a way to bring down the level of user submission dependence. We changed the wall into a U.S. map where anyone could give thanks and not just the ones who knew a soldier during the war. Users now would be able to give a short thanks and appreciation towards all vets and if they knew a soldier we would link their thanks directly to that soldier. The U.S. map would update in real time as the thanks appeared in the user’s location. Tying the map back to the series, we put pinpoints where the series soldiers’ home towns where users would get more information on each character.

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The final Design:

Style Guide

 

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Everyone Fall Back!
Now that the site design was finished and moving into development, both HBO Promotional team and Nomadic were feeling the site was going to be a great success. We were ready to give viewers of the show and others a centralized location to give thanks to the brave vets that fought for use in WWII. But right before we moved into QA and testing we received a startling call from HBO. The promotion site was to be no more.

It was quite the shock to us internally since we had already spent around 6 weeks researching and designing a great site that served a notable purpose. And with only 3 weeks to the site’s launch we were almost through development. Apparently the reasoning behind the call of was one of the executive producers, Gary Goetzman, felt the mini-series did not need or should have a promotional site attached to it. Goetzman’s feeling was that a promotion site could be looked at as disrespectful to the soldiers. There should not be a site promoting the series using a trip to Pearl Harbor and other instant win prize to entice visitors and viewers.

Although the blow was harsh and direct, we could understand his reasoning on the matter. Not everything needs a dangling carrot. Sometimes the promotion game has its issues, but not everyone can say a major film and tv producer of an 8 time Emmy winning mini-series killed their project without notice. At least I can…