The Come Across Artist Series: New work for the Royal Gorge Bridge & Park

Here are three videos from a new series we created for the Royal Gorge Bridge & Park with singer-songwriter Covenhoven, fashion designer Mona Lucero, and artist Will Lee-Ashley. The films were shot and edited by the team at Boyte Creative.

If you want the behind-the-scenes scoop, I did a full writeup on the VJ site. You can also check out the Royal Gorge Bridge and Park's Come Across page. Covenhoven's song is for sale now on his website. And Mona's dress and Will's art will be on display at the Bridge all summer long.

Learn to Skate USA: Help Them See

Hot on the heels of Snowmass, here's another new campaign I worked on with Jen and our team at VJ. (Yeah, it's been kinda crazy here for the last month or so.)

The mission was to help US Figure Skating launch Learn To Skate USA, including their new site, collateral, and 30- and 60-second spots. Along the way we got to team up with Boyte Creative and Rocky Mountain Recorders to bring the vision to life.

The spot I'm sharing below is very special to me, and I'm so, so excited and grateful that it's finally real.



Update: And here's the 0:60 brand video that goes with it. Pretty much the same team. This was all existing footage, so we tried to push the script, edit and music to really create something we could be proud of.

#99uLocal #Denver #IMMDataCreate

Just a few months ago I was sitting in the audience at 99u. In a week, I'll be speaking at it, as part of the first 99u Local worldwide event. I'm all sorts of nervous. And excited. And grateful to Jen for selecting my presentation, the writeup of which goes like so:

The Internet gives marketers access to an infinite amount of data. But used incorrectly, all those numbers lead to false conclusions, off-target creative, and the wrong sorts of consumer actions. In this talk, Matt will outline the common mistakes we make when we tap into Big Data. And he'll share a strategic process for getting from an unwieldy set of numbers to a tight brief that will set your creative team - and client - up for success.

It's a great talk. But at this moment, I'm just nervous. Fortunately I'll be sandwiched in between some pretty inspiring speakers. And I have another week to nail my schtick. Sign up here.

I am constantly amazed by the generosity, talent and work ethic of the people I meet

The NDAC is launching a portfolio program. Next. It's targeted at young guns. Copywriters and art directors who want to improve their book and their network. Jennifer Hohn and I volunteered to brand the program. We went through concepts. Laughed a lot. Wrote some scripts. When Brian asked me if I could guarantee that I could get the stuff produced, I said yes. But I was totally lying. I mean, who was going to make our ideas come to life?

I should have had more faith.

Soon Jim Elkin of Roshambo Films was producing and directing our videos for the club's YouTube page. (The first will be posted Monday.) Radical was getting us three great actors and Idolum was donating editing time. (And incidentally, Tom also offered to help out.)

David Mejias was shooting the poster campaign, with XYZ doing the retouching and Tewell Warren printing.

Justin McCammon and Taylor Beseda got all digital on the idea, with elements like the @nextcreatives smackdowns, nextcreatives.com, and a collaboration with Burns on a soon-to-be-released Facebook app.

And Gregg Bergan, Norm Shearer, Mike Sukle and Jonathan Schoenberg offered to donate their time to mold the next generation of Denver creatives.

Every single person I just mentioned has a crazy-stressful job and a loving family and who knows what else might be going on in their lives. But every single one of them believes that Next will help the career of a young creative who is just burning to be great. Every single one of them wants to make Denver a better market. Every single one of them deserves a giant round of applause. This is a good business we're in. And it's filled with good people. Believe it.