New site for Royal Gorge Bridge and Park

In the very popular category of "stuff we are making at VJ," here's a link to the brand new site we launched for Royal Gorge Bridge and Park. So proud of the team for getting this live.

#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.

3.5 thoughts from #99conf

I've been planning to write up a long and enormously insightful post based on my experiences at 99u earlier this month. But time is getting away from me. So in lieu of that, here are a few thoughts and stories from my notebook. Basically a teaser for something much better that may never happen.

1. My super power is experimentation. This surprised the hell out of me. So many people I respect - clients, creative teams, account people - have told me my enthusiasm for advertising is why they trust me with their brand. And yes, energy was high on the list. But in the end, the SYPartners superpower test revealed that the biggest benefit I bring to a team is the willingness to throw ideas on the wall without worrying if each one is a guaranteed success.

2. The single most creative thing you can do is change the question. I have heard this thought before. But it was good to hear it repeated by people like Shane Snow. If you keep asking the same questions, you just get incremental improvements on old processes and tired ideas. But if you change the question at the outset, you’ll get lateral jumps into whole new approaches.

3. Anil Dash said the key to promoting diversity is to share your origin story. Not sure how mine will help. But here goes. I was working in a startup agency as its sole copywriter, PR person and sometime-account guy. And at the age of 22, I had no compass for knowing what good work was. My dad, who ran marketing at a big company, introduced me to the president of his agency, Dave Reece. Now, I’m the client’s kid, remember? Reece had every reason to butter me up. But instead he did the nicest thing anyone could have done. He told me my portfolio sucked and I had to swallow my pride and either go back to school or find some creative mentors I could trust. I followed his advice and headed off to Creative Circus. A couple years later, I graduated and came back to thank Reece. But he didn’t respond. And shortly afterwards I found out why. He’d gotten a brain tumor. He died soon afterwards, at the age of 46. Dave impacted a lot of people in Denver, and he’ll never know just how much my thirty-minute talk with him changed the direction of my life.

Bonus thought: Rohan Gunatillake can solve his “annoying voice” problem by getting Kelly McGonigal to read the audio on his mindfulness app. Trust me on this one, folks. I’ve done a lot of radio. It’s going to work.

Thoughts on Food For Thought. Obviously circular in nature.

This is how every panel discussion should start:
With a room full of very serious marketing professionals singing you an awkward and off-key rendition of "Happy Birthday" and giving you a bottle of Rogue Voodoo Doughnut Pretzel Raspberry and Chocolate Ale. Yep, that happened. The Ad Club's Food For Thought panel discussion on concepting for new media coincided with my birthday. And the crowd wasn't going to let me forget it. And secretly, I appreciated it.

This is who you should have on every creative panel:
Dan Ligon from Made. Steve Babcock from Evolution Bureau. And Jen Hohn from Vladimir Jones. All creative directors with long histories of melting people's faces with brilliant work. And then there's me, sitting up there alongside them wondering when someone was going to point out what a huge fraud I am. They say you should strive to be the dumbest person in the room. Yeah. OK. Not a problem.

This is who should moderate every panel discussion you ever have:
Jay Roth. The nicest, most talented, most passionate copywriting pro in Denver. He wrangled the aforementioned assemblage of talent. Filled the room. And kept the conversation on track.

This is what someone asked at the end, which would have actually been a better place for us to start than the whole birthday song thing:
"This was supposed to be a talk about creative concepting. But you four spent the whole time talking about how you need social media people to help spread your digital ideas. Well, at the last Food for Thought panel, there were a bunch of social pros complaining how they can't get the creatives to concept for social. Why don't you jerks get on the same page?"

This is the answer:
We say the same thing, but we speak different languages. And a similar vision can easily be squashed by cultural barriers. One of the things that marks a modern agency is seamless and generous horsetrading between ideas for owned, earned and paid media.

This is what you would have learned if you would have come:
Big ideas are not the panacea they used to be. The web world thrives on little ideas that are emotional, beautiful, spontaneous and relevant. (Yes, Gareth Kay has been saying something similar for years.) This means developing a brand platform is more important than having a campaign idea. Then you must, must, must have talented writers and designers who positively inhabit your brand voice and who are free to respond to cultural trends almost (or seemingly) in real time.

This is what the panel didn't do much of:
Disagree. We actually had to struggle to find places for debate. We also didn't drop too many buzzwords, although I may have riffed about slow storytelling for a minute.

This is the word that I took away with me:
Why?

And this is why:
Because of something Steve said. If you want to engage people in digital media, you need a purpose beyond just making money. So why are you online? To entertain? To educate? To support a movement? To sponsor art or curate greatness? If you know why you're online, people are going to follow you, share your stuff, and love your brand. If you don't, you might as well just throw your money away.

The problem with the internet

Creative people get bored. White pages repel them. Silence is a vacuum. See a brick wall, get a spray can. Now technology has created an infinite amount of empty spaces. We could make films and books and music and drawings and photos (god all these photos!) forever and not even scratch the limitless amount of blankness out there waiting to be filled.

I'll hit the post button. And immediately be greeted by another white page. It's enough to drive a person crazy.

Random thought about director-level hiring

I have heard some iteration of this sentiment from three agency leaders in the past year:

I have been trying to find the right interactive director for my agency. I keep hiring these brilliant, inspirational thought leaders and they always flop. Great speakers, but they just can't get projects done. The next hire I make, I am am going to ask to see applicants' code. And if they can't show me actual code they have written, I am showing them the door.

This makes sense to me. After all, I have never met a creative director who didn't start his career in the trenches, creating work as a copywriter or art director. Why should any director-level position be different?

But then again, maybe it doesn't make sense at all. Not all great workers are suited to be managers. (I know genius creatives with stellar portfolios who never became creative directors.) And not every great manager was a screaming success as a worker. (For instance, John Fox never played a down in the NFL.)

I don't have an answer. I'm not even sure I am asking a question. It's just what's rolling around in my head. Who wants to buy me CD: Y0?

The new karshhagan.com launches

I was always a little odded-out when people told me they liked the old karsh.com. It was missing most of the work we've done in the past two years. And it provided only a snapshot of the 60-something people that make our agency what it is.

On Friday we launched the new karshhagan.com. Besides a much broader array of work, it has a spiderweb navigation system that lets you browse the site by exploring our connections to campaigns, clients and each other. Check it out. Rachael has a more in-depth look at the site on the Karsh Hagan blog.

I think I hate the Internet

I hate sploggers. I have a Google news alerts on all of Karsh\Hagan's clients. And all of them, especially "American Crew," are triggered a dozen times a day by sploggers. This vomiting up of noncontent should be punishable by law.

I hate teases. People who Tweet things like, "This made my day! LINK" or "Check this out! LINK" Can't you even bother to tell me whether the link leads to a photo or song or give me some little hint?

I hate faux modesty. Status updates like, "I can't believe my blog post is getting so many great, smart comments! LINK" Give me a break. Your transparent attempt to draw traffic to your blog by feigning humility is silly. If you have a great post up, just post the title and let me decide for myself.

I hate complimenting up. I hate insulting up, too, of course. But at least the time-honored practice of drawing your betters into pissing matches requires nimbleness, persistence and balls. The newly popular method of flattering your betters so you can bask in their reflected glory really makes my skin crawl. "I can't believe I'm about to meet INSERT NAME HERE!" Or "Love your most recent post INSERT NAME HERE!" Or "In the offices of INSERT NAME HERE and so psyched to be meeting all their awesome and talented people!" Stop it, stop it, stop it. Nobody buys your lame attempt to ride someone else's coattails.

Oh my god, I think I hate the Internet. When did this happen? What the hell is going on?

A tweet may not be the truth...

I thought a comment I left on AdFeak merited it's own post here. AdFreak was writing about a planner who'd been fired and publicly pilloried by StrawberryFrog, in part because he posted "casual, flippant tweets" while he was on leave from the agency due to allegedly imaginary family emergencies:

While I can't comment on this situation, I can say there have been times I have consciously kept my tweets and blog posts upbeat, even though my life was anything but. Our digital selves are not necessarily accurate, blow-by-blow accounts of our days. They're more like highlights that have been edited for a diverse audience of people who may not want or need to know about the rougher patches of our lives.

Sometimes tweets are a bit like kisses. They may not be the truth, but they are what we wish were true.

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."

Karsh\Hagan launches American Crew Trichology Hair Recovery

Hairloss.americancrew.com and youtube.com/askamericancrew are up and running. Karsh\Hagan created the sites and the 103 videos on them for our client, American Crew. The videos were shot by Roshambo Films and the site was developed by The 1st Movement.

The print campaign that drives men to the site is currently running in GQ and other national magazines. And non-traditional out-of-home is under construction in New York and other big cities. In the meantime, I'm going to post six of my favorite videos. Two new ones will go up on this blog every morning. Enjoy.

Hearing the tiny bird sing while you're being assaulted by dozens of screeching eagles

I thought this comment I put on Noah Brier's blog merited its own post here:

Over the summer, someone asked me how I can keep track of all the digital information - music, RSS feeds, Tweets, iChat, and whatever file I am working on - at once.

I said, "Take a second to think about everything you are experiencing right now. You're listening to me, about three other conversations going on around us, the air conditioning. You're seeing me, my desk, the carpet, the wall, the wall art, out the window, the trees. You're feeling the air around you, the clothes on your body, the floor beneath your feet. You're smelling the dust from the vents and the coffee in this cup. If you tried to explain all that to someone who was deaf and blind, they'd probably say the same thing. 'How my god, how do you process it all?' And the answer is, 'You just adapt. You learn how to decipher what's important and what's not and how to focus and refocus on things throughout the day.'"

I'm not normally that eloquent, so I assume I'd either thought of or heard that explanation before. But I can't remember when or where

I heard a great Buddhist story once. The student asks the master how he managed to hear a tiny bird singing softly at the window and the master replied, "The real question is, 'How is it that you did not?'"

The interesting thing is that my comment directly contradicts a post I wrote in 2007:

Some [social digital tools] have proven valuable. Others have increased my mania. But now it appears I may just be making myself stupid... Navigating the maze of strategies, media and applications can be awfully distracting. Especially to a creative mind that verges on the manic without any help from hyperlinks.

Welcome to my homepage. Now get going.

I can't think of a single personal or brand website that I visit on a regular basis. (Maybe The New York Times.) Instead I grab feeds that interest me (Like ColoradoPols, Noah Brier, Reach for the Wall, Selectism, Pitchfork and Sometimes Daily). I integrate interesting people into my news stream (Such as Alan Wolk, Barack Obama, Andrew Hyde, Universal Sports and Redhead Writing.) I subscribe to video channels on YouTube and look through my friend's photos on Facebook.

Like Jaffe said:

Today, consumers' digital homes are their Facebook profiles, their blogs, their custom-created communities. That's where they "live" in the digital world and that's where we need to hope they invite us to come and hang out from time to time, not the other way around.

My favorite personal websites right now are single-page designs that encourage visitors to connect on social platforms. Sites that are portals into larger stories. Sites that encourage you to leave them. (Such as Adelle Charles, Bud Caddell and Zach Klein.) My home page, Ingwalson.com, works the same way.

Brands could think of their websites as hubs, with links to content, connections and on- or off-site storefronts. Help people get where they're going. And don't bog down the pace of their lives.

One of these days I am going to visit London

What would The Strokes sound like with Ian Curtis behind the mic? Not as cool as you'd think. Nevermind. Editors' campaign for their new album mashes up Google Street View and music to create an amazingly engaging digital experience. Check it out.

[Ed. - h/t Contagious]

The Internet is creepy if you are Big Sports Celebrity. Or anyone.

Six kids. Seven parents. Dora The Explorer: Live. But this isn't a story about live theater and happy times. It's a story about celebrity and the Internet.

Sitting behind me is Big Sports Celebrity with a child on his lap. But is it really him? It's been several years since Big Sports Celebrity got traded to Opposing Sports Franchise. No time to figure it out. The lights go down. Kids start yelling. Big Sports Celebrity gets forgotten.

At intermission, I use my Blackberry to look up Big Sports Celebrity on Wikipedia. It takes me less than 30 seconds to learn that he has a child. Surprisingly, the entry also includes the child's name and birthday. I tell one of the other dads and he nods. He has already done a Google image search on his iPhone to find a current photo. Yep, it's Big Sports Celebrity alright.

I've written that using a smartphone encourages you to treat information not as something you find, but as something that flows around you. I never thought twice about searching Big Sports Celebrity. But then I looked around me at all the happy kids and realized that if you're famous, the Internet does more than overshare your personal information with the world. It shares the names and ages of your children. And that's creepy.

The most ironic part? We didn't approach Big Sports Celebrity for an autograph because we wanted to respect his privacy. Sheesh.

Week Without a Browser write-up on the Karsh blog

On Karsh\Hagan Connect, I write about my week without a browser:

Blame it on the Karsh\Hagan creative brief. It continually reminds me that people today lack patience. When they want information, entertainment and products, they want them now.

In 2009, half of all new connections to the internet will come from a phone. Karsh\Hagan has launched mobile podcasting for one client. And a mobile advertising campaign for another. But to fully understand the possibilities and pitfalls of the location-based, hip-pocket media of the future, I wanted to immerse myself in it. So I deleted my browsers and pledged that for at least a week, I’d access the web entirely through my email application, RSS reader, and mobile device.

Read it all here. There are guest appearances by Kenneth Branagh and the Karsh\Hagan accounting department.

My week without a browser that became three weeks without a browser finally yields an insight

My ongoing experiment finally turned up a useful observation. My goal was to use only my Blackberry, email app, and RSS reader to access online content. I assumed the experience would teach me something about mobile marketing. But while I did feel an increased a connection to brands that offered mobile sites, like Google and 9NEWS, the most interesting change was the way I managed my life. My desktop email and calendar applications became meaningless when I could manage those functions in real time from my mobile device. So by purposefully eliminating Firefox, I accidentally eliminated Entourage. I'm not sure if it's fair to extrapolate my experience to the general population, but think about this: If more people start using their mobile device as their primary means of retrieving email, email marketing that contains lots of links, offers and products will become pretty annoying. Short emails with a simple coupon for one targeted offer would be a whole lot better.

Week without a browser extended due to id10t error

When I decided to try to live for a week without a desktop browser, I expected a learning curve. What sites could I access with my mobile device? What blogs could I follow through my RSS reader? But I didn't anticipate the learning curve that came with the device itself. It took me a couple days to realize my secondhand Blackberry didn't come with a media card. And they don't make it easy for Mac users to update their system software. So I am extending the experience for another week. Maybe by next Friday I'll have something interesting to say about the mobile web. Or not.

Me without a browser

It's too easy to say that mobile is the future of digital. It's harder to live it yourself. But immersion is the best way to learn anything. I have a hand me down Blackberry, with Twitterberry and GPS. And I'm going to use it for the next five days for everything I would usually use a browser for. Including typing this post. Web 2.0, meet what's next.

Marketing that which does not need to be marketed

I have always wanted to do one of those dense, integrated campaigns that seduces consumers with mystery. I tried once, but the effort was just a stopgap measure performed on my own time and creatively it was a huge flop. The marketing supporting the film of Watchmen is just the sort of thing I wish I could have pulled off. Microsites, games, coffee and much more. But I wonder why one needs to do viral marketing for this film at all. The director of 300 helms the film version of the greatest graphic novel of all time? That's going to get attention from every theater, website, movie critic and entertainment show in the world. And my guess is that the sort of people who use their iPhones to play online multiplayer games are already going to see this film anyway. Maybe they should have spent their budget on TV?