The Encounter Collection via Process

My team had the chance to shoot with Process recently. We'd seen this film on their reel and were just blown away. I am posting it here because art like this deserves as wide an audience as possible.


The Encounter Collection from Process Creative on Vimeo.

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.

What I learned at SXSW

I should write about some crazy tech thing in this space. Talking shoes, perhaps? Maybe I'm supposed to explain the business models of the next decade. But no one has them figured out. Perhaps I should mention all the innovators I finally had a chance to shake hands with? Meh. You don't care.

Everything I saw was amazing. And everything I saw will be obsolete within a year.

Except this.

First, keep your eyes up and smile: Put your phone in your pocket. The real person next to you is doing something interesting. And you are interesting, too. (Even if you don't know it.) You have everything to gain by introducing yourself, shaking hands, being nice. And you have so, so, so much to lose if you don't. SXSW reminded me to say hello to people. Joyously. Without a motive. Or even a plan.

Then, ask a new question: Asking how to get better at something is asking for frustration, number crunching, and incremental improvement. The most powerful questions flip the paradigm. Ask for 10% greater value, and you'll get tiny changes to existing processes. But if you ask for 100x greater value, you'll get a whole new model. Changing the question is the single best opportunity you have to spark creativity.

That's not all I took from SXSW, of course. I learned new ways to construct storylines, a scientific explanation for laughter, why platforms need to precede content, and so much more. But strategies and tactics will not change our lives. Meeting and creating with each other will.

The most important lesson I've learned at Karsh Hagan. So far.

"You need a new job every three years."

I don't know where I first heard that advice. But it's true. Careers are like sharks. You swim or you sink. You need a new client, a new promotion, a new responsibility, a new agency, a new something every three years. Or you're drowning and you don't even know it.

I joined Karsh Hagan five years ago. The agency offered me the chance to do something I've never done before. Take on new challenges and responsibilities without job hopping. And my time here has been all hopscotch and kisses.

Not.

These years have been a whirlwind. Often exhilarating. Frequently exhausting. Sometimes tragic. And they've taught me something that everyone needs to know.

Character is not revealed through victory. Or at an office party. Or over coffee.

You learn what people are made of when you're climbing into a production van together at 4:00 a.m. on three hours of sleep because you have to chase the sunrise.

And when you're sweating at the agency at midnight pulling a deck together for a presentation that's happening in nine hours. Tick tock.

And when you realize that if you don't win a pitch, a friend is going to lose his job. So you find a way to make it happen.

You learn what people are made of when you're all standing in the same room staring up at the ceiling or out the window, trying figure out how you can bear to go on after someone you all loved dies.

Celebration is nice. And important. But it doesn't teach you much. I've learned to welcome the foxhole. To be inspired by it. To let it bring out my best. To trust my team. To find ways to win.

And you should learn that too.

[Also posted on the Karsh Hagan blog and the Egotist.]

Why I like award shows

I have a post on the Karsh Hagan blog recapping the ADCD show. Check it out, if you're so inclined.

Colorado winter: Come to Life

The Making of the 2012 Colorado Tourism Campaign

New work for Colorado

Just one of the pieces of film from our 2012 summer campaign for Colorado. See stories about the work in The Denver Post, Westword, 9 News, Channel 7, and The Denver Egotist. And for the full story of the production, check out the Karsh Hagan blog.

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.

The Karsh Hagan historical reel

The Holiday Bear Project for The Brown Palace

The hardest job in advertising

"The hardest job in advertising isn't creating the work. It's buying it." I think Mark Fenske said that, although I wouldn't bet my life on it. And it's true. A marketing director has hopes and dreams for a brand. It can be hard to learn to love an agency's interpretation of those dreams.

That being said, we want to thank our clients at American Crew and Pinnacol Assurance for letting us do work audacious enough to be recognized by the New Denver Ad Club at the show last night. The 50 awards the 50 biggest, brashest, most game-changing ideas to come out of the market. We came up with four of them, including the American Crew 100 Honest Answers campaign, the American Crew Hair Color campaign, the American Crew invertible stylebook, and the Pinnacol Assurance Good Makes Good campaign.

If being a marketing director is the hardest job in advertising, surely hosting an award show is close behind. We appreciate Jeff and all the volunteers for giving their time and energy to the event.

Onward,
Matt Ingwalson

[Ed. - Crossposted from Karsh Connect.]

Five Ways Your Ad Agency Will Work In 2011

On the morning of November 17 I got a brief that asked me to write a post titled "Five Ways Your Ad Agency Will Work In 2011" for the Karsh\Hagan blog. And that afternoon, I saw this in Fast Company:

Over the past few years, because of a combination of Internet disintermediation, recession, and corporate blindness, the [advertising] assembly line has been obliterated -- economically, organizationally, and culturally. In the ad business, the relatively good life of 2007 is as remote as the whiskey highs of 1962.

Ouch.

I wasn't surprised by Fast Company's doom and gloom. The article was just a retread of all the Big Scary Death of Advertising stories we've been reading for a few years now. But being boring doesn't make you wrong. The world of 2011 looks nothing like the one in which many of us learned our craft.

In a 2008 interview I did with Scott Goodson on FutureLab, I said the greatest challenge for the marcomm industry was this:

Defining for new clients how we will approach their business problems.

I still think that's true. But while the pitch process remains a bit of a jumble, the agency business model has changed. In 2011, your ad agency will be faster and more innovative than ever before. Here are five reasons why.

1. Collaboration: Today, culture is made with mash-ups. It's about Kid Cudi mixing Christian Bale with LCD Soundsystem. About ideas that build on each other. That's how agencies will be working in 2011. Small teams of people coming together to add fresh thinking to existing work.

2. Content: Social media is great. But brands shouldn't jump into other folks' conversations uninvited. They should start by creating content worthy of conversation. And then listen, engage and refine.
–
3. Play: Ty Montague. Kevin Roddy. Alex Bogusky. Those are three of the biggest names in advertising and in 2010 they all quit their fabulous network jobs to explore the great unknown. Experimentation, play and the freedom to fail. Those are the seeds of creativity and the path to the biggest ideas.

4. Flexibility: To a man with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. And to an agency with a bunch of specialists with billable hours to fill, every problem looks like it requires the attention of a bunch of specialists with billable hours to fill. To combat this agencies will hire people who have flexible skill sets and similar visions.

5. Platforms: There are fun individual executions. There are powerful integrated campaigns. And then there are flexible, infinite platforms. For instance, Karsh\Hagan's 100 Honest Answers campaign for American Crew has run its course. But the Ask American Crew platform we built underneath it will always be there if they want to use it again. Your agency should be thinking about the long, long run.

If the brief I'd gotten had asked for a sixth opportunity, I would add happiness to this list, and define it as "a blissful childlike state resulting from the act of creation." Because I think ad agencies are much less tied to the 30-second spot than the media would have you believe. There is so much cool stuff yet to be made. And as long as we're making it, we'll be so, so happy. Suck on that, Fast Company.

[Ed. - This post was written by Karsh\Hagan's Matt Ingwalson and cross-posted on his blog and Karsh Connect. It's also posted on The Denver Egotist.]

Five things I think I think about books

1. Account people should carry books: Account people have a big role in strategizing, selling and even creating work. Yet agencies hire them based on their resumes. How stupid is that? If I was responsible for hiring account people - and I'm not - I would demand to see their books.

2. Copywriters need to show copy: When I graduated from the Creative Circus, my book was full of visual solutions. And creative directors asked me for examples of copy. And I thought, "Pft. Whatever. Old dude doesn't get it." Now I'm on the other side of the desk. And I have to ask to see copy. And I know the kids think I am hopelessly hopeless. But that's the way it goes. Yes, concept is king. But I don't know too many agencies in Denver who can afford to hire writers that can't write.

3. Books are really hard to put together: Not the first time I've said this. The coolest stuff out there is integrated and experiential. And it's really hard to communicate that in a fast, fun book. I have no good solution. But I share the pain.

4. Sometimes books don't tell you as much as you think they do: A friend of mine, a creative director at a well-known agency in Seattle, told me that there are two types of genius writers. The geniuses who come up with the first ad in a campaign and the geniuses who come up with the 50th. (Actually, he didn't phrase it that way. I brushed the quote up because I can't f'ing help myself.) Both skills are equally valuable. But they're different. It's hard to tell from a book who did what.

5. Books favor the occasionally great, not the consistently good: Your book may have five campaigns in it. I know people who have five A+ campaigns and pretty much everything else they've ever touched sucks. And I know people with B books, but everything they ever do is a B. Who do you hire?

[Ed. - I'm illustrating this post with a Facebook photo of me looking at portfolios at NDAC Connect. Crossposted on my blog and on Karsh Connect.]

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.

Two favorite AC Hair Recovery videos: Female content edition

Can hair loss affect confidence?



What do girls say about men with hair loss?

Two favorite AC Hair Recovery videos: Stylist content edition

Does alcohol cause hair loss?




Do balding men still frequent professional salons?

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.

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.

New stuff for American Crew

Karsh & Hagan's new book for American Crew, Where There's Man There's Crew, was just published. Dave was the art director. Holly, Justin and I all got writer credits. The book was shot by David Raccuglia in Los Angeles, Chicago and Denver.

The new American Crew website is just about done, too, but most of the new content and design is for-stylists-only. Karsh & Hagan and FL-2 worked together to create it.