7.9.09:: Everyone has their rock star fantasy. Maybe it’s big hair atop pink spandex, headlining at the Empty Bottle or growing a handlebar mustache. Least to say, many of us have since given up on that. But that doesn’t mean a kid has to loose the hope that singing in the shower will amount to something.

I recently joined Rock for Kids junior board, a not-for-profit organization that provides  year-round music education to underprivileged children in Chicago. They offer courses for kids in choir, rock band and even hip-hop. Plus, each year they host two events- a mix tape mixer and a rock memorabilia auction. The organization has even been supported by some of music’s greats including Andrew Bird.

You might ask what this has to do with you? Nothing, that’s the point. Think back to how important music has been in your life. Sometimes it’s an inspiring song on a long drive or that meaningful lyric that gave you a shoulder to lean on, or even that lead singer who inspired you to stand up at a karaoke bar. All these experiences provide positive support in a child’s life. And, hey, it’s better than XBox.

If you want to get involved, sign up for the email list here to keep track of all the happenings.
Or, if you’re one of those money giving folks, you can donate here.

Now back to our regularly scheduled creative musings.

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6.24.09- If you’ve been following this blog, you’ve probably noted my fascination with e-paper. Well, a group of students at Art Center shared my interest and created a site and a series of videos that demonstrate how a new newspaper might work at Beyond the Fold.

As you might guess, the first question people might ask is: Why waste your time thinking about this before we can do this? Well, aside from the aesthetic halo this brings, I think the it offers us some practical advice. Since the days of DaVinci and the helicopter, we have always come up with more human and organic solutions when there are no technological restrictions. Why? Because it is our daily experiences that we try to improve. We are not slaves to machines or guidelines.

The same goes for solving any brand problem. We must think what is ideal before we think what is real.  Start with: “In world filled with only possibilities, what and how do I want people to interact with my company?” After you have this, bring in the code, the legal copy and the sizes, but never forget your ideal solution (or least how it feels). After all, any reality can be beaten with enough imagination. 

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6.8.09 :: I know what you’re thinking– we so very desperately needed another smartphone. The iPhone has the market cornered with excellent usability and the most 3G users, Google’s G1 is popular among the open source community and Blackberry’s got a handle on enterprise level solutions. So, if you’re the late entry, the only thing you can do is to claim you can do it all, better.

Not surprisingly, this is what is implied in Palm Pre’s new spot , “Flow” from agency Modernista!

Rarely, can a product or brand survive on this ‘we are everything to everyone’ strategy. In fact, Bob Garfield, an ad critic from Ad Age, agreed and called the Pre’s launch spot non- revolutionary and an iPhone “copycat”.

As for me, I remain positive. I had a small chance to play with the new phone this weekend, and while it’s by no means revolutionary, it has some features that are forward thinking and might catch on  (i.e. Visual application dashboard, compact design, a nice user experience and great software [gmail and pandora]).  My prediction is that the best practices of this phone will end up in the next generations of the G1 and iPhone, but as with the survival of all technology, it will be left in the people’s hands.

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5.26.09 :: To be fair, I don’t expect my dad to jump in a ring with Jack Dorsey, anytime soon. Though we have had multiple Sunday dinner conversations about Twitter’s hype and ROI. In his own words,”People need to start realizing these are just tools, not ideas.” Given his 20+ years in the biz (and the fact that he’s my father) I think this deserves some consideration.

Good or bad, we live in an age where people use technology in order to solve human problems. If you feel out of touch with your college roommate, you can follow their Twitter and pick up the occasional twitpic. You might want to figure out a song you’re hearing in Sbux, so there’s an app for that. And, if you find yourself constantly replacing holey socks, you can sign up to get monthly installments delivered right to your door. However, as much as the technological imperative drives us to say it’s the software solving the problem, it’s the human insight that solves the problem. The technology just helps.

Human solutions should always come before technological ones. Every smart, ambitious web-preneur knows this. If we could somehow keep up with all 150 people in our social circle without the web, we would. Instead, we have Facebook. The key is to creating an experience that is seamlessly human. Enter user experience and design. Baba Shelley, at Hill | Holiday said recently in CommArts,

” Fashions of technology will always have a certain allure…but left unchecked as students of human behavior, technology won’t help us as much as we hope.”

Since technology has helped solved human problems so well, we have seen execution and the idea move closer together. Which has encouraged agencies to solicit tech input early in the creative process. (See “The Big Table” in the May/June CommArts). We’ve been lucky enough to have a small group, a technical director with a background in design and a collaborative creative team, so our process is more harmonious than most.

So, despite headlines that say you should connect with your brand fans through Twitter and Facebook, I would go back to the same old questions and human insights about these people. Chances are they will be able to help you. If not, I’m sure my dad can.

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We have recently seen a dramatic shift in the definition and responsibilities of friendship. According to Time Out Chicago, we are more likely to call people our friends without really defining them as real friends. Some sites like Facebook and Twitter have made friendship equivalent to replying to a status update.  And even Dentyne is telling us to how to treat our friends:

But, in an era where online social networking is the norm, how do we find the set of people who’s opinions we trust the most? And how does this effect what we buy?

Well, there is a fair amount of research on the subject of online word of mouth referrals amongst friends and it all centers around two things: 1.) A referral by a past customer is one of the most trusted pieces of online communication and 2.) The Dunbar Number. According to this concept, a human being can sustain relationships and communicate with about 150 people. Ironically, this is the average number of friends users have on Facebook. These 150 people make up a person’s referral circle, the people we receive information from (commercial or otherwise). Yet only 26% of these 150 will actually be called ‘real friends’ according to the aforementioned article in Time Out.

So, do we only trust these 39 people who we call our ‘real friends’? Well, a local artist/teacher, Maria Scapelli, might be able to shed some light on that with a project  called Peoplescape 365. Essentially, Scapelli set out on a mission to make one new friend a day for a year either online or offline. Her topline conclusions: 1.) she only kept about 10% as ‘real friends’ 2.) almost all of these people she met in person. So, based on these loose numbers, we might be able to say a person is only able to maintain about 30-40 real friendships and that these relationships are mainly forged by face-to-face contact.

Does that mean we don’t trust the remaining 110 people in our social circle when they say a Samsung TV is a great purchase or buy a book recommend by Legend457 online? No, of course not. But when it comes to making a brand something we love to a point of passionate irrationality (see Lovemarks), one might assume we have to talk to these 30-40 people (among other things). If we don’t, we are simply just providing purchasing descisions not life long loves.

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