Bob Rinderle / Business & Beyond

Animated Dance

Intriguing video from Ryan Woodward. I've thought for a while it would be cool to create an animated ballet using Flash or HTML5 or some appropriate technology.  Just need the right partners.

 

I'm Green With Jealousy

And I'm lovin' it.

 

Social Media Engagement Opps

Nice snapshot of social media engagement opportunities.
 

Dirty Bubbles Create A Lather

Method perfectly triangulates the message in this new video from Droga 5: they promote their brand (the video is spreading fast); they call attention to their cause (supporting the Household Products Labeling Act), and they turn a competitor's product benefit (scrubbing bubbles) into a perceived negative (shower residue). 

See the classic Dow 1978 Scrubbing Bubbles commercial.

Marketing 2009 v. 1980s

This cool graphic has been making the rounds lately.  I found it on Shiv Singh's Going Social Now blog, but he credits the source to a BBDO Barcelona blog.

Stop Measuring Hours and Angst

Hard Work's Overrated, Maybe Detrimental.

That's the title of a great article by Caterina Fake in FastCompany about knowing what to work on and the importance of patterning (rather than relentlessly throwing hours against a project to see what sticks). 

Unfortunately, it is still too common for the C-suite to measure quantity over quality (anyone talk to you about billable hours, FTEs, and timesheets lately?). 

I guess hours and angst are still easier to understand than creativity and innovation. 

The Creator Economy

A fascinating view of America’s economic evolution since the industrial revolution, abridged from Paul Saffo’s “Get ready for a new economic era.”  It is long for a blog post, but worth the read.

 

1900: The Rise Of The Producer Economy

The producer economy harnessed manufacturing to meet the material needs of a newly prosperous working class and emergent middle class.  This economy introduced the great brands of the 20th century and created a dizzying array of conveniences from dishwashers and phonographs to cameras and cars. The producer economy, however, became a casualty of its own success, when production outpaced demand.

 

1950: The Consumer Economy Begins

The consumer economy began when supply was abundant and corporations shifted resources to finding new ways to sell products. The consumer replaced the worker as the economy’s central actor, resulting in dramatic power shifts. Within companies power migrated from manufacturing to sales and marketing as corporations sought to generate ever-greater demand for what they produced.

 

Television was crucial in this transition. TV created category-dominating superbrands such as Tide, and it helped to create entirely new products that could never have been sold without TV. Swayed by the messages of mass media, consumers discovered that, suddenly, their lives were incomplete without products they had never even known existed—things such as Saran Wrap, tail fins, TV dinners, transistor radios, and, of course, the hula hoop. Mass media turned consumer economy products into totems of aspiration. Consumers no longer waited until an appliance broke to buy a replacement; they upgraded because the color was no longer fashionable.

 

The consumer economy reversed attitudes towards debt, from a producer-era vice to a consumer-era virtue. US household debt rose from $20 billion in 1950 to $2.8 trillion in 2008. Debt was the key to the consumer economy’s growth in the same way that manufacturing efficiency drove the producer economy.

 

The more people had, the more they wanted; forces that drove the consumer economy’s success now began to lead to its end, which came with the financial meltdown of 2008.  The collective debt had become so large that even the US consumer was incapable of spending the world out of its financial hole. Just as the producer economy was brought to a close by overproduction, the consumer economy was dragged to its end by overconsumption.

 

2008: The Creator Economy Beckons

Now we are entering a third age in which the central economic actor is someone who both produces and consumes in the same act. I like the term “creator,” as this new kind of actor is doing something more fundamental than the mere sum of their simultaneous production and consumption. Creators are ordinary people whose everyday actions create value.

 

Just as the mass media were essential to the rise of the consumer economy, today’s emergent personal media platforms are making the creator society possible. The quintessential example is Google search – with creative value flowing in both directions at the same instant.  Other examples of creator transactions abound—think of YouTube and Wikipedia. Interactivity is the common thread, which makes sense because interactivity is what defines the creator economy.

 

The rise of interactivity is no more exotic than the 1950s notion of ordinary consumers being able to purchase items that had been luxuries just a few decades earlier. Now, everyone will create as they go about their daily lives. These transactions may not be art or deathless prose, but they create value. Thus, just as the time clock symbolized the producer economy and the credit card the consumer economy, the computer mouse is the symbol of the emerging creator economy.

 

Not everything in the creator economy will require interaction, any more than manufacturing disappeared during the consumer economy. But the most successful companies will be the ones that harness creator instincts, and the biggest winners will be the companies who harness the smallest creative acts.

 

The Hucksters

The Hucksters is a fabulous film from 1947 about the ad biz starring Clark Gable, Deborah Kerr and Ava Gardner.  I saw it the other night for the first time in decades, and was floored by how relevant it still is to the issues facing the industry today.  And the movie is 62 years old!  

Consider the following scene where the lead character, Victor Norman, dictates a memo to his boss:

"To Mr. Kimberly: Dear Kim, for four years I haven't been listening to the radio much.... Kim, in that time, it's gotten worse, if possible.  More irritating, more commercials per minute, more spelling out of words, as if no one in the audience has gotten past the first grade....  I want to go on record as saying that radio has to turn over a new leaf. We've pushed and badgered the listeners, we've sung to them and screamed at them, we've insulted them, cheated them and angered them, turned their homes into a combination grocery store, crap game and midway. Kim, someday, 50 million people are going to just reach out and turn off their radios, snap, just like that - and that's the end of the gravy, for you, and me, and (our clients). Sign it love and kisses, Vic."

Expression Of Joy

BMW's Expression Of Joy campaign extends their Art Car series and promotes the 2009 Z4.  I love it.  Even though the campaign has been around for a few months, I was reminded of it today by a two-page spread in this month's Fortune.

The campaign is nicely integrated and uses multi-media well, ranging from BMW's YouTube channel, to well-designed magazine ads, to the site itself (ExpressionOfJoy.com). 

I am a sucker for "behind-the-scenes" peaks into the creative process, and this site provides a multi-layered experience to the making of artist Robin Rhode's painting.  Unlike previous efforts in the Art Car series, where BMWs served as the canvas, Rhodes elected to use the Z4 as a paintbrush this time.  The result is wonderful. 

Innovation Causes Problems

I used the following quote a few years back and happily rediscovered it today. 

 

"What Jobs has accepted - the truth he's willing to face and others cower from - is that new things don't want to be born.  Innovation causes problems and it's much easier to simply avoid it."

 – “How Apple Does It,” Time, October 24, 2005