Simple Is Hard

I've been thinking about simplicity lately. Over the weekend I watched Objectified, which is a fantastic movie and I recommend it to anyone with the slightest interest in design. I’m not a designer but I think many design principles apply to writing, especially a designer’s quest to simplify. What makes a good design work and what makes a good ad work is essentially the same thing. Simplicity. The less moving parts the better.

[Objectified movie trailer.]

Yesterday, I came across a presentation by Luke Sullivan the author of Hey Whipple, Squeeze This—an amazing book that I’ve read half a dozen times at least. The topic of his presentation, you guessed it, simplicity. I’ve included the video below. It’s a bit long but there are some great insights buried in there. Here’s one nugget I excavated yesterday.

Luke Sullivan gave an example of a car print ad. The ad shows the headline, an image of the car, some body copy, then a tagline and the logo. Pretty standard ad. Then he starts stripping elements away. First it’s the body copy because a good headline can do most of the heavy lifting. Then he takes the headline because sometimes an image can do all the necessary talking. Then the tagline gets canned. He has some strong opinions about taglines something like “If it’s not “Just Do It”, don’t.” So all that’s left now is the image and the logo. Finally he strips the logo because the logo can be incorporated into the image. So all you’re left with is an image, one simple thing that does all the work. The idea is to take away everything that isn’t necessary. You have to find the balance between superfluous and cryptic. And that’s hard.

I have a habit of over-writing. So I’ve rededicated myself to simplicity. I’ve decided to be brutal with my assignments. Anything that doesn’t have a good reason to go in gets kicked out. No questions asked. It’s been an interesting exercise.

Luke Sullivan from Mediastash.tv on Vimeo.

Cool Billboards. Not so Cool Web Site

These billboards have caught my eye. They are clever concepts. At first I thought it was a local public service campaign. But after further investigation I discovered the billboards are part of a national campaign for the Ad Council from Y&R New York raising awareness about reckless driving among teens. A good subject to talk about. There are a few things about the campaign that need work though. With the billboards for example, I couldn’t read the URL in the bottom left corner. While driving home one evening I focused in on the billboard determined to read the tiny URL. I got it, and nearly slammed into the car in front of me. That would have been ironic.

Unfortunately the Web site wasn’t worth the near-miss on the highway. Speakuporelse.com is easy enough to navigate. The problem is, however, there just isn’t much to keep anyone around for very long. The tone of the campaign is totally lost in the Web site copy. All you get is a very parental lecture about tire pressure and proper steering techniques. Considering the audience, I’m pretty sure that kind of approach will get a big FAIL from teens. The “viral” videos are especially disappointing. They try too hard to be zany and off the wall.

It’s too bad really. The outdoor executions are good, despite the small URL. I wish Y&R New York could have carried the tone from the outdoor work through the rest of the campaign.

Miracle Whip: Don't Be so Lame

Nothing says cool like mayonnaise. I saw this spot for Miracle Whip a few weeks ago and was completely entertained with how ridiculous it is. It’s clearly targeting the hipster set and trying to break through as the “cool” product to use. But come on, it’s coagulated fat with other mystery chemicals you spread on your club sandwich. If I ever find myself at a rooftop party with hipsters passing around a bottle of Miracle Whip, I’ll jump off. No questions asked. The concept is so asinine it hurts. Does Miracle Whip cause moments of impaired judgment? That would explain how this got approved.

This is a good example of an ad trying way too hard. The Levi’s Go Forth ads came close to trying too hard. Miracle Whip blasts passed that barrier and puts as much distance between itself and taste as it can. No pun intended.

I’m a proud member of the Colbert Nation. So you can imagine my delight when Colbert gave this Miracle Whip ad its deserved whipping. He even created his own ad defending mayo. Enjoy the video.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
The Mayo-lution Will Not Be Televised
http://www.colbertnation.com/
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Michael Moore

Sometimes Being Cool Is Enough

A new week is upon us. The fruits of our creative labors from last week have been sown and reaped and the fields of creativity lay barren before us. This weekend I came across two older campaigns. They have been around a little while now but I still enjoy them. So here they are. Enjoy.

Toyota Prius:

These commercials have been around for a minute or two. But I still enjoy them a great deal. The concept for the campaign is really interesting in its simplicity: “The world is made of people.” And they shot the commercials as a literal interpretation of that. The Prius, in my opinion, is the ugliest car to come down the production line since the Pontiac Aztec, but these commercials are beautiful. I love the waterfall especially. The way they make the whitecaps out of somersaulting people is ingenious. The video is a making of version with the actual spot playing after.



Levi's Go Forth:

I wasn’t sure what to think of these spots when I first saw them. They were a little too out there for me at first. I couldn’t make the connection between Walt Whitman and jeans. The jury is still out on that issue. But putting all that aside, these commercials are a visual treat. They do a good job of emoting and causing an experience. They ride the edge of trying too hard to be “arty” but I still think they’re well made visual experiences. How affective they are as advertisements may be a separate issue.

The Balloon Boy Invasion

Yesterday was a big day in social media. Thanks to a little boy and his parent’s weather balloon. I was amazed at how this story basically took over social (and traditional) media for the entire day. Here’s how I found out about it while sitting at my desk. I checked my Twitter page and noticed #Balloonboy as a trending topic. After clicking on that I learned there was a 6 year old boy floating away in a weather balloon that used to be tethered to his parent’s house. Then I went back to my Twitter page and looked at the trending topics again. Six out of ten trending topics were related to the balloon boy from Colorado. Impressive.

From Twitter I jumped onto Google News and found the live video feed from CNN. Then onto Facebook where my wall was full of balloon boy-centric comments. So the story continued to unfold. I followed the progress of the story from my Twitter feed—with pictures from the ground even. Then I saw this t-shirt pop up.

And this artwork. And even Kanye couldn't go without commenting on balloon boy. Now mind you this was on the very day the event was unfolding. Before Falcon (balloon boy) was found safely hiding in his parent’s attic.

When I got home for the evening I checked my local news—balloon boy was the leading story. I continued to watch as Jay Leno made the event a central part of his monologue. Conan later chimed in with similar jokes about balloon boy. Even Jimmy Fallon mentioned the kid.

What amazed me most about this was how fast the story melted into the pop-culture zeitgeist. This boy was made famous in a matter of hours. And he had already appeared on network television! (His family was part of Wife Swap for TLC just a few weeks ago.)

Social media is powerful stuff. There is an interesting case study locked somewhere within the balloon boy invasion of social media. Especially when you consider he had participated in traditional media (network television) and new media (everywhere you looked on the Internet) with drastically different results.

Creative Inspiration

The main function of The RIP FILE is to show things that inspire me at the moment. Be it advertising (mostly advertising) or whatever. I found three very inspirational items last week and I’m just now getting to posting about it. It’s been a busy week.

Dyson bladeless fan:


Dyson of the cyclone vacuum fame has done it again. This guy is super interesting and creative. The story goes Dyson was working on a hand dryer and noticed that the high speed air leaving the dryer was sucking in surrounding air thus amplifying the volume of air leaving the dryer, which was useless for a hand dryer. But the phenomenon inspired Dyson to create this. It’s a fan with no blades and it’s supposed to be super efficient. Don’t ask me how it works cause my brain will melt. You can check out this article on Wired.com. They do a good job of explaining it. Those guys are smart and stuff.

The bladeless fan is such a great example of a guy following his creative impulse. A lot of people would have just treated the air sucking phenomenon as an unwanted side effect. But Dyson was willing to explore what this new discovery could do. Good example of following your creative instincts.

Multi-touch mouse:
I thought the Mighty Mouse was a big leap in desktop interaction. These guys have bested the conventional mouse by 10 (literally). All the touch screen stuff coming out lately is cool. I have a touch screen phone (not an iPhone unfortunately) and I like interacting with my technology this way. I even played with the HP touch screen desktop awhile back and it was interesting. But I kept asking myself “How can this be more than just a cool trick?”

These guys took the touch screen concept and used it to re-imagine the way we interact with information on a computer screen. It’s more than just the next evolution of the mouse; it’s a whole new way of organizing and interacting with information on your computer.

I hope this makes it to the consumer market someday. It’s a really cool idea, and a good example of redefining the status quo. If anything stifles creativity it’s sameness.

10/GUI from C. Miller on Vimeo.

Adam Savage obsessions:
Mythbusters is one of my favorite shows. The geekiness of that show is extremely entertaining and satisfying. So I found Adam Savage (one of the hosts) on Twitter and started following him. Turns out, the dude is crazy interesting and creative. I started researching him further and came up will all kinds of cool things that Adam has been involved in. My research led me to a site called Fora.tv (which has become one of my favorite sites) and found this presentation given by none other than Adam Savage. I’ve watched it several times. It’s a bit long but so worth the time. I highly recommend watching it.

Adam Savage’s willingness to test his creativity and push the envelop of authenticity is what inspires me most about the presentation. He doesn’t want to settle for close enough—it’s perfection or failure. That’s a dedicated dude. What I took away from the presentation was a desire to push ideas as far as they will go. Then strap on some retro-boosters and push it farther. That’s a lesson in creativity we can all benefit from.


[If the video doesn't launch check it out here.

Social Media will Save Us All

Twitter has lied to us. Well maybe not directly, but the idea of Twitter has given us a false hope. Some people in the ad world would have us believe that social media will save us all. I just don’t see that happening. Brand managers want to believe that the world is taking to their Twitter and Facebook accounts to discuss how awesome their dish soap is. I haven’t seen dish soap as a trending topic and it hasn’t shown up on my wall either.

So what good social media anyway? A lot of very smart people are trying to figure out how social media fits into a media plan, or how it can add value to an existing campaign. Unfortunately the answers that have developed so far have been thinly disguised spam, or overtly pitch heavy posts. I venture the opinion that social media shouldn’t be treated like a cure-all ointment for marketing.

There have been successful uses of social media recently. Best Buy’s use of Twitter as a global help desk is a great example. That is an innovative idea and a useful application of social media. However, I do wonder what happens when a person’s computer crashes and he tries to Tweet Best Buy about it.

Brands have been lured by social media’s shinyness. They see subscription numbers and assume those numbers belong to potential customers. But that’s like putting a debit card kiosk in the middle of a crowd and expecting everyone to use it. Social media still needs content. Content that people actually want.

So social media isn’t the savior of the world. It’s the hero of the backyard bar-b-queue. For some clients it fits logically and comfortably in their existing brand. Companies that attempt to move their brand to be more “social” are making a huge mistake. Because if social media is anything it’s change. Next year Facebook could be the next Myspace, Twitter the next WinAmp. Nothing stays the same. Everything changes. And that’s the hook we hang our hats on.