What to read when you're not reading the One Show Annual

Tom Morello once said that his musical inspiration was a horse. Not sure what that means. My inspiration is Wonderpets. But I digress.

Seeking influences from outside your industry is a good thing. It prevents reflexivity and tunnel vision. It's not that you shouldn't be reading The Denver Egotist and AdFreak. You should. And here are a few other publications that might influence your work in ways you can't predict:

infosthetics.com: In modern communication, Information design is as creative and important as graphic design or art direction. This blog highlights some of the coolest and most creative ways to visualize the data points that make up our world.

Various style blogs: Working on American Crew, most of us at Karsh\Hagan try to keep up with fashion. The Sartorialist, Streetpeeper, Selectism and Street Etiquette are a few blogs that have developed a following. Trendsetters reveal themselves through their clothing, and seeing their styles gives us insight on how to speak their language.

wired.com/underwire: According to Gareth, more Americans played a video game in the last six month than went to the movies. The Underwire is Wired's blog about both games and movies, plus everything else that influences geek-pop culture.

creativesocialblog.com: Increasingly, and especially in digital, the power of an idea isn't defined by how many consumers might see it, but by how many consumers pass it around, mash it up, and make it their own. Creative Social is a survey of that type of work.

wallpaper.com: Architecture one of the loudest and most lasting expressions of culture. This blog puts it in the context of design and fashion, linking humanity with the spaces we build ourselves.

[Ed. - Matt Ingwalson wrote this post for Karsh Connect and cross-posted it to his blog.

TD50 column at AdWeek

A couple months ago Steve Conroy asked me to pen an op-ed about the Denver 50 that he could pitch to AdWeek. I did. Time passed. I forgot about the whole thing. Then last Thursday, I got a call from Libby Estell informing me that AdWeek was going to run my piece online:

But while agencies try to move forward, awards shows seem stuck. Particularly at the local level, they tend to reward executions and vendors, instead of breakthrough ideas.

When we launched the new Denver Ad Club in 2006, we decided that we could make a powerful statement by reinventing the awards show.

The rest is at AdWeek.com.

UPDATE: Pure, Andy and the Egotist give link love. (Thanks, guys.) And I just heard Amatucci's cover photos for the 2007 show book won a Gold National ADDY.

Dumber every day

"Is Google Making Us Stupid?" is awfully interesting. Sort of along the lines of a post I wrote last year named "Am me getting myself dumber now?" But it's a really long article and I didn't quite finish it. Just too much stuff vying for attention. Like this Mercedes spot about all the stuff vying for attention, via AdFreak:

The other reason creatives stay up late

You'd like to think the late nights ad folk are famous for are just a by-product of our undying passion for the work. But that's only half the story. Alongside desire, there's fear, as Bart Cleveland explains:

The advertising industry is a great white shark, always feasting, yet never satisfied. You had better get better if you want a career that lasts for more than a few years...

The cause of the problem for many seniors in this business is that too many have avoided committing themselves to growing in responsibility or ability.

The ability that many senior-level people lack these days is Web skills. And there's been no shortage of people predicting doom.

Yesterday, it was our own Denver Egotist:

Being in such high demand, are these developers simply moving to more established landscapes, or is Denver simply a microcosm of a national drought?

On the national level, there was Brian Morrissey, quoted here via Scott Goodson:

Clients are placing more emphasis on mastering social media but find their agencies ill equipped to help them succeed in that space, according to a new survey.

And there was Benjamin Palmer worrying that ad agencies aren't up to the Web 2.0 challenge:

Everyone talks about how the industry is changing, nontraditional media, fragmented audiences, blah blah blah. It's true, it's progress, and it's fantastic. It is also obviously scaring the crap out of traditional ad shops.

I see this meme over and over. And I'm never quite sure who these "traditional ad shops" are. Maybe it's because I've never worked at a Madison Avenue monolith; I imagine they'd be harder to evangelize. Both of the agencies I've had the pleasure to work for in the past four years embraced Web 2.0. And when I write "embraced," I mean, "threw our arms around it and kissed it like Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams making out in The Notebook."

At TT&D, we built the first social network for iPhone users, launched a UGC contest for WOW! and asked Colorado to build us a state activity map for Colorado Farm Bureau Insurance. At Karsh\Hagan, we're enabling student-generated content for Regis University, launching McDonald's film on YouTube, and we've got a few new projects upcoming, one of which will be here on May 15.

I know these aren't quite Barbarian Group-level technology applications. I'm not trying to go toe to toe with Palmer creatively. But the "agencies genetically can't get the Intertubes" meme sounds like something invented by interactive shops. And I'm not buying it. Because as Palmer himself writes:

[I]t's not that hard to adapt, if you really want to.

In fact, ad agencies have a better 2.0 mindset than some interactive agencies. (Although many have been slow to realize their advantage.) As Ian Schafer wrote:

[I]f the agency doesn’t have a full media/creative/public relations offering, they probably won’t be able to have the right (and unbiased) experience and best practices to succeed in social media.

The answer isn't as simple as building a better Internet offering. It's about integration. Every day, I see the best Denver agencies staying up late, developing the ability to create great work across integrated media.

It makes me get all weepy. Just like that scene in The Notebook.