I don't care that it's impossibly obvious

And I'm impossibly late and all the hip people knew about this band in 1990-whatever and now that the single is all over 93.3 they've totally moved on to that other band that dresses like Bonnie Lou but then wears those rad sneakers and oh aren't they hilarious or ironic or something.

I don't care. This is just so good. It's so, so good. And it gets better everytime I hear it.

Disruption as a car crash

The other day, I was the only witness to a car crash. Car A veered this way, Car B spun that way. I pulled over and tried to help. The cops got there and asked me what happened.

I drew a blank.

Everything after the crash, I remember with perfect clarity. But I couldn't tell you what car was where at the actual moment of contact.

I'm sure the cops thought I was a jackass. But it wasn't that I wasn't paying attention. I was. My eyes were scanning from the road to my mirrors to my gauges. My ears were open for a knock in my engine or a siren behind me. It wasn't until something disrupted this pattern that I moved my focus from the general to the specific.

Karsh\Hagan is in the TBWA\ network, which means we spend a lot of time talking about "disruption." People typically use language like this:

Disruption is a tool for change and an agent of growth: a working methodology and a life view philosophy.

The word is difficult, uncomfortable but "Disruption" is not destructive. It is creation. Disruption is a means of creating something dynamic to replace something that has become static.

OK. But since my non-witnessing, I've been thinking of disruptive ideas as crashes for the mind. It doesn't matter how good or bad an idea is if it doesn't also disrupt everyday input patterns enough to compel focus.

There are a million ways to accomplish this trick. In some places, great design or an engaging headline may be enough. In others, a new technology or an improved utility might be necessary.

But disruption comes first. Without it, you've got nothing.

Cross-posted on the agency blog.

These are the Intertubes I adore

The NDAC and ADCD share members on Facebook. Andy gets the idea to aggregate the event listings for all the area ad and design groups. More people. Coming together. Faster. To do more.

Youth rules in advertising

A few days ago, I had to sit in front of a group of Johnson & Wales students and say something about what it's like to be a creative. For an hour, it was process this and flexibility that. Make sure to choose the right director or you're completely screwed.

Whatever.

If I could have that hour back, I'd say this:

You haven't the slightest idea how powerful you are. The ad game worships youth. You bring energy and passion. You can afford to make less and work more. You're creating the very trends that agencies are scrambling to understand and exploit.

Armano quoted Campbell saying, "ad agencies are fundamentally broken and ripe for innovation." And you already have all the tools you need to make that innovation happen. Now go hang a shingle outside the nearest shack and use your advantages, instead of sitting in a room listening to me blah about how to cast radio.

Will YouTube ruin moviemaking?

Do I get thrown out of the horror geek guild if I admit that I found Blair Witch boring? Jerks get lost, someone's standing in a corner, the end. At what point was I supposed to be scared?

And where was the witch?

Blair Witch tried to pull the same stunt Jaws did. Disorientation plus apprehension equals jitters. But at the end of Jaws, I was rewarded when I saw saw the object of my terror made flesh and bone. Blair Witch wussed out.

"You're supposed to use your imagination," my friends explained. But by that logic, why make a movie at all? Why not just tell people there's something lurking under their beds and leave it at that?

If you go to the trouble to make a monster movie, you owe your audience at least one good, long look at the monster. Bless you, M. Night Shyamalan.

At least Blair Witch was trying to be original. Two new movies - Cloverfield and Diary of the Dead - sound as if they were modeled after UGC. They're monster movies, as they'd be posted to YouTube. Their style is the exact opposite of stalker vision. Instead of seeing what the killer sees, you see what the victim sees.

In theory this intimacy should be scary, but in reality it's almost always annoying. Because in real life, you'd never get to see the monster. It either eats you when you least expect it, or while you're running the opposite direction.

Cloverfield has received positive reviews and Diary of the Dead is the work of a film legend. They may turn out to be individually brilliant. But in general Hollywood shouldn't try to emulate the style of amateur Internet content creators. Hollywood's advantage is that it has the financial resources and SFX knowhow to actually show us the monster. It ought to exploit that edge.

Image from the The Village and Fair Use rationale found on wikipedia.

Tuesday NDAC and ADCD updates

• The New Denver Ad Club is having a Super Bowl party. See the attached flyer or newdenveradclub.com for details. XYZ Graphics is sponsoring.

• Fifteen people joined the New Denver Ad Club's official (mostly because I say so) Facebook group today. We're up to 55 members.

• The ADCD One Show event is coming up. I posted info here.

There are no new ideas

All the King's Men and The Devil Wears Prada are such similar films, I can't believe I bothered to watch them both. In each, a young, frustrated journalist [1, 2] accepts a job as an assistant to an eccentric, controversial, dictatorial executive [1, 2] with a contracted catchphrase ["Nail 'em up," "That's all"]. Both assistants ultimately compromise their morals to help their bosses thwart coups [1, 2]. Each executive is played by an Oscar-winner [1, 2]. And each film is based on a novel [1, 2] that is widely considered to be a thinly veiled portrait of an actual public figure [1, 2].

Sigh. There are no new ideas.

[Ed. - Is this post supposed to be serious? Or is it just an exercise in intellectual gymnastics? I'm not sure. It seems that nonstop media has collapsed my sense of irony.]

iRovr getting traction

The iPhone-based social networking application iRovr earned a spot in the 2007 Denver 50. Now it's inching towards the tipping point nationally. Love seeing a Denver agency thinking like this.

What business are you in?

AgencySpy points to Ty Montague on the future of the ad business, courtesy of AdCentered. Nothing too incredibly earth shattering, but Montague's use of the word storytelling (as opposed to, say, content) caught my ear.

I'm not the Denver Egotist. But maybe you are.

Over the last two months, The Denver Egotist has become the most-read must-read in the city. Killer essay on the value of creativity. Great interview of Steve Whittier. Passionate conversation about the agency of the year. Nice guest post from James Pelz. A spot in the Denver 50. And a great hat-tip to Pitchfork, which reminded me just how much I love the Bats for Lashes video for "What's a Girl to Do."

Like Andy, I have a few problems with The Denver Egotist. The bloggers there blur the line between pseudonymous and anonymous. And their application of Fair Use is shaky.

But whatever its faults, The Denver Egotist has given Denver creatives a place to meet, to discuss, to get pissed, and to get psyched. Some mornings, it and AdWeek's breaking news are the only marketing feeds I check.

Now the Egotist needs help:

Top three essays as selected by The Denver Egotist will be posted on our site, and the top essay author will be selected by our readers and crowned The New Denver Egotist – joining our editorial staff and commencing duties immediately. All authors will be kept anonymous, as dictated by the way things work around here.

Send them an essay, if you're so inclined. Because anybody who reminded me to go watch the Bats for Lashes video again can't be all bad.

It's not or. It's and.

Twenty-eight of the ideas in the Denver 50 used the Internet either as medium or delivery mechanism. Only one of those ideas came from a digital-only agency.

What does that tell you? Maybe that many traditional agencies understand and operate in the online space as well as, or perhaps better than, some digital agencies.

Consider posts at AdPulp and AdWeek:

Digital agencies are improving their skills to help clients strategically, but still fall short in their ability to lead broader marketing and brand strategy, according to a new report by Forrester Research. That inability means Web agencies in the near term will continue to be relegated to the role of implementer, while a client's traditional shop takes the lead, said Brian Haven, a Forrester analyst.

Right. For a traditional agency to get into the interactive space, it only needs to clear two hurdles. The first is expanding its skill set, which is as easy as hiring the right people. The second is accepting that advertising can be story just as easily as it can be spectacle. (See my related post "Agency segmentation: A slideshow" for more on this shift.)

But for a digital agency to encroach on traditional space, it needs to pick up strategic, media and conceptual skills. Plus it needs to become an expert in print, broadcast, guerilla, out-of-home and direct.

Modern marketing isn't about or. It's about and. Lead agencies must be able to concept fresh ideas in all media. Everyone else will be relegated to development roles.

Karsh\Hagan, NDAC cosponsor ADCD One Show event

The Art Directors Club of Denver is bringing the One Club to town to present the winners of the One Show. And Karsh\Hagan and the New Denver Ad Club have both signed on as cosponsors. RSVP here.

NDAC and ADCD updates, please!

• Please buy a copy of The 50. Because I have about 300 of them sitting in my office. And they're just 10 bucks.

• Please join The Denver 50, which is the NDAC's semi-official Facebook group.

• Please join the ADCD to welcome the One Club to town.

Aggregation nation

I realize that what I'm about to write is trendier than a Barack Obama t-shirt. But I'm going to write it anyway.

Serial online publishers need a great way to aggregate their content into a single news stream.

The Biz of Coding agrees:

Managing scattered online Social Life on multiple Social Networking sites, I sense, will become a Killer App Category 2008.

So does Mashable

[A]s I try out more social networks and lifestreaming utilities, I’ve spread my personal brand all over the Internet. I’ve got podcasts, domains, writings, tumblogs, linkblogs and RSS feeds scattered all over the internet bearing my name. I need to find one or two good utilities and a slick looking format with which to consolidate it all in a useful, user-friendly manner.

There are several startups in the space. And SocialThing!, which is being developed by friends of friends, sounds similar.

Plaxo Pulse is similar, too. I have a couple gripes about it. One is that when you load your address book into it, it automatically invites everyone you know, instead of letting you select who you'd like to connect to. The result is that you're connected via pulse.plaxo.com to a whole bunch of business contacts who don't actually create any content of their own.

Someone's going to get this ironed out eventually. I just know it.

Cross-posted on karshconnect.

You're not your blog

If Josh Spear can be tired of the Internet, perhaps you'll allow me this, which is for Fight Club fans only:

You're not your blog. You're not how many friends you have on Facebook. You're not the browser you use. You're not the contents of your YouTube channel. You're not your Twitter background image. You're the same decaying organic matter as everything else.

No excuses

This is first ad I have seen in years that gave me chills. You can read more about it here.