So I thought it was a normal Thursday morning, until I was confronted with the fact that my blog post was weeks overdue.

So I turned to my team for help.

“What should I write about?”, I asked, “just give me a topic and I’ll write about it.”

“You’re only as good as your latest Photoshop filter”, said Charissa, “there you go, get to writing.”

I started thinking to myself, yeah right, as if I know anything to write about Photoshop, that Adobe guy is way smarter than I am. I gave it some time to sink in and started to realize maybe she had just given me a great topic. There seemed to be some inner meaning behind her advice. It was like an inside joke without the joke.

You’re only as good as your latest Photoshop filter, what exactly does that mean? Well, here’s what I think she meant:

You’re only as good as your creativity takes you. If your creativity stops at a Photoshop filter, well, you’ve succeeded in utilizing and learning the tools of the trade. Keep trying. Real creativity goes beyond the obvious tools right in front of you, it requires a significant amount of belief. Belief in yourself that you can not only utilize the tools at hand, but introduce a fresh and unique way to integrate those tools into your concept(s) and approach. That belief then takes you to finding ideal combinations of those tools introducing new techniques into your skill set.

This belief now starts taking you down an avenue of unlimited possibilities. It’s not until you find yourself going this direction that your designs really start to have their own voice and personality. Of course finding this dark, hidden avenue takes a number of years, but when you find it, the work you’ll start producing will blow you away. Now imagine executing your designs with a rock solid creative development team and you just might start considering a change of religion. To Adobeianity to be exact.

So what I really think she was trying to say is, don’t let a Photoshop filter drive your belief in yourself. Those are just tools and pieces of the bigger picture. It’s how you use those tools and then move beyond those tools that really define who you are as a creative.

Thank you Mr. Adobe, it’s now up to the rest of us to advance beyond your latest filters.

With some friends of mine recently returning from Vegas, it got me thinking of bright, eye-catching, cool, elaborate and over-the-top means to get a message across.

In the world of interactive, sometimes the use of widgets, Flash, or other “bright, flashing things” can interfere with the more important messages or tactics that a site is attempting to execute on. It reminds me of the traditional marketing/advertising star burst. In that case, what was (or god help us still currently is) intended or used as support or enhancement to the message simply became a distraction. That same sort of issue is now translating itself to the interactive space.

To be clear, Flash, widgets and the like aren’t necessarily a bad thing (unlike their traditional counterpart, star bursts). In fact, a majority of the time they can be a very well-used and effective tool. However, as more people and companies learn the ropes of the interactive space I just hope that we’ll avoid the use of Flash, for the sake of using Flash, but rather use it in a useful and supporting manner to progress the larger objectives and goals of the brand or company.

The problem is, too much Flash may help a site look cool and be eye-catching, but when it comes time to actually USE the site or get information what is that technology platform doing to the user’s interaction? How is the Flash interrupting a smart, clean and strategic navigation structure or information architecture? How is too much Flash causing longer load times and a slower site? How is a site made of entirely Flash hurting our online visibility in search engines? How are you hurting yourself with a primarily Flash site, when a part of your audience doesn’t have the latest versions of Flash or even have it all?

Without the intent of bashing anyone or any particular site, I’ve included some examples where they might consider those types of questions to provide a more usable product for their customers:

-www.rmgconnect.com
-www.innerstrengthstudio.com
-www.tampax.com (this isn’t flash, but I just can’t believe they have sideways navigation…did I miss something?)
-Just about any car company website

So, I just saw an advertisement the other day for an idea that has been around awhile, apparently. Regardless, Wal-Mart is breaking into a pretty exclusive target audience for clothing retail. I honestly never thought a child (newborn through seven-year-olds) could ever have an opinion or be persuaded to care what they’re wearing or how they look (outside the direction of their parents). On the tail of the Abercrombies and Hollisters of the world starting to drill into the middle school age kids minds that what they wear says who they are, which seemed destructive enough in the easily persuadable mind of such adolescents, I thought that would definitely be the line in the sand never to be crossed. However, without breaking stride, another retailer (Wal-Mart) has proven me wrong.

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(click the image to start the presentation. Quicktime is required. You can download Quicktime here)

The attached presentation was given to Miami Ad School on February 25, 2008 and to the Campaigns classes at the University of Minnesota on February 26, 2008. It was a great opportunity for us to talk with the future of the Advertising industry and enjoyed the passionate conversations with the students. Thank you to those students and Eva for hosting us.

Also, thank you to Professor Pounds and the students at the University of Minnesota for their hospitality. It was outstanding to see and hear such a wide array of interests, aspirations, backgrounds and talents. If we were unable to answer any questions due to time please drop us a note.

Best,
Chris & Joe

(click the image to start the presentation. Quicktime is required. You can download Quicktime here)

This presentation was given to the Human Factors class at the University of Minnesota on February 18, 2008. We would like to thank the students and Professor Huff for having us in the class. If there were any other questions or comments regarding the presentation we encourage you to communicate with our team through this blog.

Regards,
Lisa, Chris & Joe

(click the image to start the presentation. Quicktime is required. You can download Quicktime here)

The following Quicktime was the PowerPoint presentation given to the Interactive Advertising class at the University of Minnesota on February 14th. If any students from the class had any questions for us that we were unable to get to because of time, we encourage you to ask them here and we’d be more than happy to engage in a dialogue regarding your question. Thank you Professor Huh and the students for having us in your class, we enjoyed it very much.

Regards,
Chris and Joe

Account Services or Creative Services, black or white, peanut butter or jelly, heaven’s forbid mix any of the two or you’ll get a whole lot of gray (and some brownish, purpleish sort of color). This is often how the world has spun. Well, it’s time to stop that world and spin it the other way. I came to Azul 7 destined to be a creative person, a writer with a passion to be heard, a journeyman with only one destination planned; the next ‘creative genius.’ Now, I can only stop in awe to that fact that I’m warming to this whole Account Services “stuff.” I’m not quite passing the buck on ever becoming some sort of writer, (even if that only consists of love letters and poems to Brett Favre, yes that’s right) but I’ll tell you things could not have blended so perfectly together if I tried. This whole idea I was engrained with about Account and Creative being so far removed that, “you’d better pick what you want now or you’ll never find yourself on the other side,” doesn’t seem to have any validity for me anymore.

:: continue reading this ocean post ::

Not only are we becoming increasingly lazy, we’re translating that into our literacy.  It’s mind boggling to me that I can’t go to CNN.com and “read” about a news story, my only option for that story is to watch a video.  Don’t get me wrong, I love videos as much as the next guy, especially America’s Funniest Home Videos, Bob Saget anyone?, but come on.  The line has to be drawn somewhere or before we know it they’ll introduce CNNTube, a spin-off of YouTube where news will come in no form other than videos.  Well I’ll be…if that’s not a million dollar idea right there then you can call me Tubecrazy.

Following in the footsteps of Doritos’ consumer-created ads, tomato specialist Heinz, is trying to ‘muster(ard)’ ads from their ‘pickled’ fans as well. It’s an intriguing tactic to get the consumer involved, but you want to talk about putting a ’squeeze’ on a creative team and making them extremely ’salty’…maybe it’s time creatives start ‘peppering’ their work by eating ketchup and Dorito sandwiches to prove their dedicated. (Yes, they exist, my Freshman year in college I lived across the hall from an avid ketchup-Dorito sandwich guy, heck he could have won both contests in one fail swoop.) Well, at least someone will be ‘relishing’ in $57,000.

It’s time to put that 7th grade dream to the test.  Want to make your case for the Presidency?  Thanks to Mark Burnett, the reality TV guru and stalkyourneighbor.com or rather MySpace, you and everyone you know can develop a Presidential platform via MySpace profiles.  Take it with a grain of salt, but having a million dollars after winning ‘Independent’ to fund a personal campaign or to donate to a political cause, it seems worth briefly noting at the water cooler.

Looks like Jeff Berman of MySpace agrees, “Any time you’ve got two media titans like Mark Burnett and MySpace teaming up, it’s interesting, but when you’re talking about a project that has the potential to re-Democratize American politics, the potential is extraordinary, I predict you’ll see actual presidential candidates taking notes from candidates on ‘Independent.’” (Oh boy, this should be good!)

It has never been more apparent that reality TV, our passion for interactive TV/internet and online video posting are fueling our growing desire to ‘pick an ending’.  The best singer/performer, the best celebrity/professional dance tandem, our President.  Has a nice ring doesn’t it?  What’s next?  A REAL fantasy draft? Now there’s an idea…