Dear Me, on my first day in advertising

A video we put together for The Denver Egotist:

What I learned this year 2011 #3: Matt Ingwalson

For the three people that read my blog and not The Denver Egotist, here is "What I Learned This Year 2011 #3: Matt Ingwalson" in its entirety:

In January, I learned that energy is 99% of my job.

In February, I learned that if a business wants to be indecisive, it better also be rich.

In March, I learned that scrappy wins. That you can shoot great TV for less than you think. And that you should couple the print and video shoots if you can. Twice this year, I found my way into situations where a film director also happened to be an amazing photographer. Both times, magic occurred.

In April, I learned that 50 people can jump around hugging each other without it ever getting awkward.

In May, I learned how hard it is to add staff. You think it'd be all sunshine and flowers. But there are tons of worthy people out there. And every new employee has the potential to jack up your team's chemistry.

In June, I learned that music may be the most important element in a spot. And that failing to sell a great track can be just as devastating as failing to sell a great script.

In July, I learned to love creative testing.

In August, I learned that energy is 99% of my job. Again.

In September, I learned how to almost die on a Jeep trail. I also learned how it feels to stand at the top of a high mountain pass in the middle a big production crew on a sunrise photoshoot and suddenly be struck by a single thought. "My dad would be so proud of me right now."

In October, I learned that it is vaguely unsettling to achieve your goals. My whole professional life, I wanted to be a creative director at Karsh Hagan. And then I got that job. And I had to look in the mirror and say, "Now what?"

In November, I learned that it is almost impossible to change a preconceived notion.

In December, I learned that advertising is nothing like history. We are judged not on the results of the previous year, but on our potential for the next one. 2011 was good to Karsh Hagan. And to me. But it can and must be fucked off. It's over. What's next?

Our answers to your job questions

I co-wrote this article for The Denver Egotist. It includes nuggets such as:

In the longterm, is it better to work internally for a brand or work for an agency?

This depends a bit on the type of job you want. In general, agencies need flexible people, and great work for five brands shows a wider skill set than extensive work for just one.

How do I apply for a specific job when I don't know what, specifically, I want to do within an agency?

You don't. Do internships until you know. When you apply for a job, you need to believe in your heart that you want that job more than any other job in the world. (Or at least act like you do.)

Check it out.

You don't need a flashlight if you're a lighthouse

Social media analysts like to buzz about how important it is to join the conversation. To search it for verbatims. To monitor and measure and react to it. All that is not unimportant. But I don't think it's the main thing, either.

Our job is not to control consumers' conversations, but to capture their imaginations. And the best way to do that isn't by spinning in the comments or linking on the forums. It is to create content worthy of being passed around.

I had a personal experience with viral content recently. On Aug. 24, 2010 I published this post named "Patton Must Have Worked in Advertising." It was subsequently picked up by The Denver Egotist. Then by The Orlando Egotist, The Des Moines Egotist, The San Francisco Egotist, The St. Louis Egotist and Design Taxi. It was named post of the month on Only Dead Fish. Quoted on waxmuseum. And linked on Twitter here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And then my eyes glazed over and I broke Google.

I'm not saying my little essay was the equal of Arcade Fire's devastating multiscreen music video. (Linked at PSFK, The Denver Egotist and Contagious Magazine. Go watch it now.) I'm just sharing it because it is a personal story. And the lesson I have learned is this. "Join the conversation if you must. Create it if you can."

To the shores of Tripoli

My Aug. 24 post "Patton Must Have Worked in Advertising" was picked up by The Denver Egotist, where it sparked a good amount of conversation. From there, it went on to The Orlando Egotist, The Des Moines Egotist, The San Francisco Egotist and The St. Louis Egotist. Then it was published in Design Taxi, along with some photography from Christopher Clor.

UPDATE: I was just informed that someone named Jeff nominated "Patton Must Have Worked in Advertising" for post of the month at Only Dead Fish. If you're so inclined, please go vote for it now.

UPDATE: "Patton Must Have Worked in Advertising" wins. What do you know?

[Ed. note - Title reference, just in case.]

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.

Is experience a good thing?

The Egotist is running a series of posts from jobseekers. In one, a designer named Kammerer included his 21 years of experience without citing any brands he'd worked on or awards he'd won. I posted a comment that read, in part:

Is citing how many years of experience you have really a plus? At a certain point, people look at your resume and say, “If you have that many years of experience, you should have won a certain number of awards, made creative director, worked at some great shops, and so on.” Your experience starts to work against you.

For instance, Anomaly ECD and 2007 Denver 50 judge Mike Byrne starts his bio this way:

Mike Byrne is a former Creative Director at Wieden+Kennedy Portland, where he served as the co-creative chief for the agency's cornerstone Nike account from 2000 - 2006. During his tenure, W+K Portland amassed more awards than any other agency in the United States including two 'Agency of the Year' honors.

I'm not trying to call anyone out, especially not the designer in question. I'm just wondering how many years of experience you can have before people start to raise their eyebrows and wonder why you haven't been promoted.

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.

2007 TD50 retrospective online

The Egotist has posted a retrospective of some of last year's winning work, along with these words:

You’re going to have a very difficult time being considered a credible force in Colorado until you get work into the New Denver Ad Club’s annual Denver 50 show. And you’re never actually going to get in unless you enter. [Ed. - Links added]. The choice is yours.

Three Facebook groups for Denver creatives

The ad club, the art director's club and the Egotist have Facebook groups. Join them all to get news and conversation about the Denver market.

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 Egotist is getting old.

Party on, Egotist.

The Egotist gives away something other than advice

Sure they trashed the Karsh site. But they asked for a link and this is a pretty darn nifty promo:

The Denver premiere of the film Beautiful Losers is a week away and The Egotist has teamed up with online magazine, The Filmlot, for a special ticket giveaway. That’s right, you and that special someone can cozy up and enjoy an evening of creative inspiration along with the chance to meet a legend in the urban/street art movement.

All you need to do is submit a piece of your personal or non-commercial artwork to us via email.

I'm a guest on Scott Goodson's lunchtime chat

A week or so ago Scott Goodson, the founder and CEO of StrawberryFrog, asked me to do one of his lunchtime chats. I asked him to repeat the question. Goodson's guests are almost always global advertising powerhouses and I wasn't sure if I really fit in. But he confirmed that he wanted the interview, so I went for it. How many times do you get a chance like that?

The intro identifies me as the "founder of the Colorado 50," which isn't quite the whole story. Many people from the New Denver Ad Club worked on the show, like Gregg, Bob and Brian. As I wrote in the chat, "I helped develop a new award show named The Denver 50."

Obviously I talked about Karsh\Hagan, and I mentioned the Cactus OwnYourC campaign, which is a cool example of the work being done in Denver.

You can read the whole interview on scottgoodson.typepad.com.

UPDATE: The interview has been cross-posted at Marketing & Strategy Innovation Blog.

UPDATE: Marketing & Strategy Innovation Blog has been nominated for a Webby. Vote for it.

UPDATE: The Denver Egotist also discusses the interview.

Denver's best blog is, um, what's a blog?

5280 is looking for Denver's best blogger, among other things. Who you vote for probably says a lot about your definition of the word blog.

Is Colorado Confidential a blog, or an online news organization? Is SquareState a blog or a community of online diarists? Is there a difference? How do you compare a team blog that covers an industry (like The Denver Egotist) with any one of a hundred achingly personal blogs written by artists and mommies and, hey, look out for LOLcats! How would you compare an issues blog like Coyote Gulch with a link+snark or tumblr blog? Does Twitter count as a blog? (After all, it's "a website where entries are commonly displayed in reverse chronological order.") Does national pull come into play, and if it does, how do you not vote for Talk Left?

The point is that all-in best blog contests are a bit like all-in best band contests. (Or, for that matter, The Denver 50.) They're only as strong as the people who judge them.

[Hat-tip to The Denver Egotist, who asks for your vote.]

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.

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.

Tuesday morning concurrence

• TD50 is one month away. Get your tickets. And join our Facebook group.
• Scott Goodson thinks that copywriters are more important than ever. I concur.
• Andy Bosselman is psyched for the Denver International Film Festival. I concur.
• The Denver Egotist is high on Texture. And I concur.