Links, conversation and American Crew

I plan to get back to my normal blogging schedule soon, which basically means extraordinarily irregular posts about Scandinavian myths, genre movies and cultural phenomena. But first I want to link to and thank all the sites that have picked up our recent campaign for American Crew Hair Recovery.

The Denver Egotist's post sparked the most conversation. David Burn at AdPulp really took the time to sort through the work and write about what he liked and what he didn't. It was awesome to see our stuff on major national sites like Creativity, Shoot and AdRants. And on May 4, our website was Communications Arts' Webpick of the Day.

UPDATE: On June 15 the site was added to the public shortlist at The FWA. And as noted by The Denver Egotist, the print campaign was in Communication Arts' Exhibit on July 6.

Advertising stuff of the year, according to me

National ad blog of 2008: I keep thinking about deleting AdPulp from my feeds. And then I notice that I bookmark it constantly.

Denver ad blog of 2008: The Egotist wins this one in a walk. They're so far ahead of everyone else that the only thing I can do is nitpick at the things I wish were different. (I wish the blog's multiple anonymous authors had different pseudonyms, so I could tell them apart. I wish the comments were threaded instead of flat. I wish there was a troll-rating system.)

National agency site of 2008: The Barbarian Group. So rich. So cool. So smart. So useful. So, so elegant.

Denver agency site of 2008: I don't know. The cool ones are hard to navigate. The elegant ones don't capture my imagination.

Local agency blog of 2008: Pure's Pure Thinking. They post frequent and interesting content. At times, they're they only agency that seems to be trying.

Blog I wish I wrote of 2008: Barbarian Group head of planning and strategy Noah Brier writes a blog much better than my own. It's sort of about advertising, sort of about the Internet, and mostly about whatever he wants.

Cool ad-like idea of 2008: See a cnn.com headline you like? One click and it's a t-shirt (not to mention a walking ad for CNN). This genius brought to you by - you guessed it - the Barbarian Group.

Cool spot of 2008: "Fate" is a statement about life's glory and inevitability. Nike, David Fincher and Wieden + Kennedy put a lump in my throat that I don't think will ever go away.

AdPulp looks at the 2007 Denver 50 book

AdPulp writes:

I rarely look at award show books these days, but this one pulled me in. First off, there's no Best of Show, just 50 big ideas, one after the next. And there are no categories, which I appreciate. A big idea is a big idea. Who cares what media it's expressed in?

Read the rest here.

Denver in AgencySpy, AdPulp, Tellys and AdRants

Whatever feelings you may have about The Denver Egotist, you gotta love them selling our town in national blogs like AdPulp and AgencySpy. Nicely done, Egotist. If I knew who you were, I'd buy you a Double Cheeseburger. But I don't. Your loss.

And while I'm back-slapping, congrats to Citizen on their 10 Tellys. And Cactus for making AdRants.

The tubes are a utility

Some folks don't quite understand online social networks:

I'm still one of those people who looks a person in the eye when I'm talking... Frankly, what I've learned over the years is that a couple of true friends can help you get through anything. It won't be easy jumping into this new world of make-believe.

The other day I sat in a focus group made up of college-bound high school students. They all had Facebook pages. But not a single one of them thought of the Internet as a "world of make believe." Their online social networks were merely tools they used to enrich real-life relationships.

Speaking of Facebook, here are three amazing things that happened to me there.

• An art director in Sweden found me on Facebook and sent me a message, asking me to recommend broadcast producers in Denver. I did.

• I learned that a woman in my office cut her hair when she updated her Facebook status with the words, "Still getting used to my new bangs." I then walked the 50 yards to her desk to see her new style.

• My Facebook friend noticed that my other Facebook friend was the stranger whose mail she had been receiving for six months. They connected and he finally got his lost mail.

I could tell similar stories about Twitter and LinkedIn. But the moral is the same. The end of value of the Internet is that it helps real connections to take place in marvelous and unexpected ways.