Think Small

I love this.

Not just because a year ago I gave a creative team a Choose Your Own Adventure book (abominable snowman naturally) as a creative thought starter (amongst others.)  Have been a few choose your own adventure interactive stores that past year or so.  But this is by far the best, feels like a game in addition to a narrative - wait, aren't those generally the same.

It is technology doing what the brands does but better.  Not technology for the sake of technology or bad production values as a chose "technique" or on the cheap.  Very nice Hotwheels.  Very nice.

Public perception is rarely something you can tangibly feel change.  It lives in the dense decks of tracking reports and up or down ticks of a couple points in PowerPoint charts.

Vancouver's public perception of the 2010 Olympics was beyond brutal heading into the games.  Even considering it is normal for support to bottom the year before an Olympics, Vancouver, possibly the most cynical place on earth seemed ready to explode at times into public riots.

Arriving in Vancouver hours before the opening ceremonies I walked past some of the saddest people I had ever seen.  People who for years bragged about getting out of town for the Olympics.  There they were sitting, waiting for their flight to a sun destination that Friday, in a slump where they couldn't be more miserable or regretful.

Vancouver, birthplace of Greenpeace, has always had a radical anti establishment movement. For years the Olympic Resistance Network disrupted the Games anyway possible with a lot of sympathy from the general public.  I emerged from our sleek new Canada Line station at Granville and Georgia right as an organized No 2010 march passed.  Instead of sympathy passers by mocked their lack of tangible arguments other than be against everything, be for nothing.  In an era of tangible change enabled through social tools showing up as a group to yell seems a little antiquated.

Over the first week of the games my city and country, a self aware and modest bunch, embraced the cliches of their country and increasingly wore more red and white, spoke up in support of our athletes and celebrated their competitors.

Nightly, hundreds of thousands peacefully flooded the downtown streets with no agenda other than to be part of and walk with Canada's humanity. 

Protest against the games turned to protest against the protesters once they turned violent.

The ambivalent towards the games sparked vocal demands of wanting to get closer to the Games when the cauldron was overly secure behind fences in preparation of widespread negative public attack that never materialized.  The fence was moved close to the flame, twice, cut away and flanked by an elevated viewing platform.

Protest against the police presence turned to respect and questions of where you from sir - always responded by an pleasant and excited answer.  Checking out the uniforms of officers coast to coast became a sport unto itself.

Concerns of damaged businesses in Whistler were quelled by a village so packed is was at times impossible to pass through squares.

Complaints against the cost of the Olympics, the most frugal in modern times, turned to questions of "can we do this every year."  Some of the venues are a little barren of livelry, did we spend enough?

Criticism of a "two week party" turned to statements of "damn that was fun, can we do it again?"

Sympathy for the media evaporated every contrived attempt they made to call these the Glitch Games or question decisions that allowed outdoor sports to be affected by weather - a common occurrence informed journalist are not surprised by. Cold hard facts time and time again undermined superficial editorialization by the press - especially the whiny English media.  Whether media will regain their credibility remains to be seen.

Public officials who lamented the crippling of transportation routes during the games now seek inquiries into how can we continue the social benefits of viaducts and roads blocked to automobiles.

The games end tonight hopefully with a Canada hockey gold and what undoubtedly will be an amazing closing ceremonies. 

The greatest memory I take away from the Games is the tremendous shift in public perception in such a short amount of time.  As a member of the original bid committee that won the games and one at the alpine venue during the games  I am extraordinarily proud to see how my city and country embraced the games.

Nobody needs a research report of a poll to know these games have been an extraordinary success.  The greatest legacy will not be venues but a nation a fair bit more proud and sure of itself.

The textures and materials of our new home are memorizing. Living in a building that pre-dates the existence of the city I come from means common building materials and techniques are tremendously old but new to me. These are some of my favorites textures.







Chevron patterned wood floors.

 







Embossed wallpaper - wouldn't be my choice but since it's installed I've come to like it. 







Ceiling corner details.

 



One of two chandelier mounts.







Fireplace marble.

 







Wood paneled walls think with paint.

 







Brass nob.

 







Window shutters coated with the city's finest grime.



 







Galvanized steel flashing on ground of patio stoops.

 







Iron railing.

 







Old pipe right, new pipe left.

 

After six week in our new home enjoying settling into a city and going through the ritual of landing in a new work place I returned home for the Olympics. The Olympics in Vancouver are very important to me and I will write why and thoughts later.

It wasn't all play as I was recruited to serve as an assistant Slip Chief on the women"s alpine ski racing venue.  The role entailed directing 7 teams of ten strong skiers who as a group are responsible for the snow condition in the field of play and maintenance throughout a ski race.

I arrived from chilly Paris in balmy Vancouver to great rains and a race track in terrible condition.  Day after day new rain and snow erased the prior day's work on the track as races were delayed.  While ski racing is an outdoor sport so delays are common given the significance of the Olympics and pride the local work crew has in the hill it was frustrated the world couldn't see us at our best.

However, four days ago the weather finally turned in our favor, but Tuesday Morning at 3am we arrived at the base of the venue with a daunting day ahead to remove a sloppy 20cm layer of fresh wet snow overnight off an ice hard track underneath. 

Our crew worked hard to removed the new snow, even as it bound while removing in anticipation temperature drops happening early afternoon.  At that time we had to be off the track so the snow could dry and set rock hard for a good race the next day.

A downhill takes an army to pull of and in Europe armies are the ones who provide the sweat labour.  In Canada it is volunteers - folks from all walks of life from lawyers, doctors and investment bankers to carpenters, waiters and blue collar trades people.  Everyone works together. 

It is fascinating outside the office roles and professional apparel how folks fall into their rolls on teams.  Great leaders in their professions often are the best to take lead while performing a rather simplistic task of hard labor.  Others, like to fall into their own program and the group adapts to get out of their way while everyone else gets the job doen.

Group organization and dynamics have consumed my mind the past week.  Since starting a new job, leaving the auto pilot of a long term position in an agency and moving not only to a different agency but also a completely different work culture - the simple task of organizing people and getting things done has frankly proven challenging.  At times demoralizingly so.  Not because people in the new culture don't want to work or aren't good enough - they work hard and are very good - but because the rhythm of communication and rituals around little elements such as the meaning of a closed door, how urgent matters are addressed how feedback is collected and how questions are received, all take on very different meanings. 

It has been good to come home not only to watch my homeland, Canada, mature its brand and sense of identity over a couple handfuls of days - but also to regain some confidence by working in a culture I intuitively know while reflecting and researching how to better work in a new culture where intuition will take a while to return.

One of the last projects I was a part of in Vancouver was a campaign called The Weak Shop for a dairy marketing board.  Basically to inform teens of the sustained energy benefits of milk over surgery alternatives we created a product line of inventions for those not drinking enough milk and therefore feeling a little weak in need of some help to get through everyday tasks.

All these products were taken through to a prototype stage with an industrial designer and the first few have been manufactured or available for download.  Oh, and we did some ads promoting these things as any product line would do.

But my favorite part, and the most difficult, was opening up a real live retail store.  Digital, film, overseas manufacturing and software production were combined far easier than opening up a retail shop. Above is a beauty shot of our purposely not overly polished shop late the evening before opening.  We categorized the retail store as part of our earned media element – which actually was almost all the budget as we paid for very little media.  Essentially we made things - physical and digital - that earned engagement.  Each could stand on its own yet worked together.  Earned media to us consisted of PR, social media and anyone we enticed enough to walk through the door of our store.  

It is interesting seeing the shift at the moment back to physical things as part of an digitally enabled ecosystem of a campaign/brand.  This campaign specifically was targeted at teenagers.  We had embedded ourselves in high schools and homes to get an honest sense of how teens are using media. There was a lot of information available on the subject but we wanted a deeply tangible and applicable understanding.

 Not surprisingly, teens in the market of our research were all over this internet thing.  Duh.  But we really noticed a complete lack of “medium of choice” as markety types like to say.  They index high against nearly all media channels. They just go where something interesting is, and that can come from anywhere.  At times from multiple places simultaneously. 

We also noticed, reflreshingly, teens spend a tremendous amount of time talking to each other and hanging out figuring out what they “gonna do.”  Yes, despite the endless deluge of industry articles with “death of xyz” headlines teens actually hang out, talk to each other and awkwardly try to fit in while figuring out what they want to be when they grow up.  In particular at school where despite phones in everyone’s pockets they spend 98% of their time looking each other in the eye (at least those with a bit of confidence) and talk.  Laugh, kid, joke and share things they did, do or saw.

The store was amazing.  It was like real time campaign and ethnography all in one.  This post by designer Ben on Portland’s pop up program got me thinking again about retail.  Not just as a sales channel but the ultimate marketing channel.  In North America farmers markets are popping up in every neighbourhood – one can presume to satisfy the need for good food but also the physicality of feeling part of an event with real people milling about. It is amazing the power of an interesting and welcoming shop to draw folk in just to mill about and be curious.

When retail pop up type things seem to work best is when the feel like an honest expression of the brand.  Not a money grab or cookie cutter execution by some street team specialist hired out of an archaic budget line for “below the line” activations.

However, the real idea that enabled anything was the creation of a product line true to the brand and its business problem.  Which is why I love the VB Drinking Chips.

Increasingly as the quality and functionality of broadcast, web and mobile all merge together they increasingly become what they are - just various forms of media.  They are all swimming in the same pool.  All are incredibly powerful but also all kind of the same.  Getting out of the media world and into the physical world when done well seemingly is the killer achievement.  But like most things when done best, it probably seamlessly uses the physical and media (replace media with ‘digital’ if you like) worlds. 

Or at least that seemed to make sense while we did it.  And if you are wondering, yes, business results have been good.  Very good.

Where has the news in the news gone?  A question that comes to mind more and more with every tragedy.  It was a bit sad this past week watching the events of Haiti unfold in the news. Obviously for the tragedy befallen on a tragic country forgotten except for every coup, press event by an exiled president or natural catastrophe, but also tragic in the way the event was covered.

Receiving updates on a third rate 24 hr global news station piped over hotel cable vision contained little actual reportage. Most minutes on the 30 minute news loop were dedicated to discussing the fact that Twitter and Facebook were the only source of information in a country whose communication infrastructure ceased to exist which is an odd paradox unto itself. 

As is normal when one moves from one continent to another observation of cultural differences is standard operating procedure.  But the similarity between how news is being delivered around the world is concerning. News casters the world around are so concerned with communicating "they get it" when it comes to new social tools they are forgetting the broadcast the news.  Honestly, are any news casts better because John from Springfield tweeted in a banal question question.  Watching Rick Sanchez on CNN is possibly the least informative hour of news filled with pleas for questions, directing viewers to his blog and the odd interview.

There is obviously something wonderful about the democratization of news and freedom of flow of information.  It is an accessible layer of information our world is benefiting from in wonderful ways.  There is no doubt about that.  But the duty of our fourth estate should be held to a higher standard than repeating on air a tweet of unknown province as fact.  It all feels rather cheap while neglecting the tenets of great journalism. 

This isn't to say news outlets shouldn't be thinking of the context in which their product is consumed.  Communicators in any medium who excel ceaselessly analyze how their product is consumed.  This is particularly true in advertising. Though the news now feels like that genre of advertising which makes fun of the process of advertising (you know, the one where the concept exists in some form of a focus group situation or boardroom.)

Obviously news outlets should be plugged into every possible source, but that needn't be the story.  There are too many important things in the world that require some context, provenance and solid reportage to worry about what Brett in Paris thinks about an event in a place I've never been to.

One area that absolutely continues quietly fascinate at the moment is retail.  Feels like a real focus on how retail products and retailers interact with consumers is a real area of opportunity.  Not so much in store design, which obviously is important and ever evolving, but in creative extensions.

Many retails use street activations or “experiential” brand extensions (ie. Give people samples of their product handed out in people in pants, polos and a hat in the brand’s coloutrs,)  and pop up retail was all the thing for a while.  But it is fascinating when you see something like the Subway ground zero shop where much like the belaboured digital/online space all kinds of things are mashing up.  This shop is an experiential PR revenue positive media creation with social responsibility community outreach activation. 

Easy to imagine much derided things like promotions and loyalty programs benefiting from the mashing of mash ups with physical pop and single serve consumable foods meeting on the go promotions or loyalty rewards.

Or things will stay the same and only the small sliver or obsession prize pigs will cut out UPC codes and register online for some Coke points.

Photo via core77.com

The view out the window from a temporary home.

Moment of zen before departing and navigating on foot the commute to work.  The daily maze so far has ensnared me any time deviating from the sure fire known route.  Deviations that lead to great discoveries.

So far, so good.

I'm moving to Paris.

I'm not moving away from anything, it has been pretty great here in Vancouver, in particular at DDB.  Plus the whole being born here and growing up thing.  Some day we will return older, world weary and hopefully a little wiser.

I'm moving to shake things up and try something I've never done before.  A big part of that is life itself with my wife Lynanne.  We've loved our 6.5 years together in this Western slab of North America (only the last 7 months of that technically married) but want to see how we roll outside our comfort zones.

I start work January 4 at DDB Paris.  I'm staying in the family.  Doing the dame hybrid of account and strategic work I've enjoyed doing.  I'm really pleased to carry on with DDB.  I've had the chance to peek into some other amazing agencies.  The most amazing in fact.  We don't always get credit for it but the top DDB shops are just as amazing - though it's easy to overlook as they've been doing it for a while.

I've been handed a pretty awesome piece of business that wants to do stuff more awesome than they currently do.  Apparently that's why they wanted me, they liked the awesome stuff I've been lucky to be a part of.

Everyone leaves saying how great people they work with are.  The people I worked with at DDB Canada truly are great, not because I think so, but because of the work our teams put out that other people think so.  In particular the hung over judges at all the award shows around the world that still recognize the ideas in the brands they have never heard of that we work on here in Vancouver.

If you are in Vancouver we'll be at the Red Card on Seymour, new joint beside Uva Wine Bar, next Thursday December 17 from about 7pm onwards.  (The Alibi Room was booked.)  Come say hi/bye if you care to.  If you live in Paris, London, Amsterdam or Geneva drop me a note and we'll grab a drink next year when I'm in town.