That’s what I’m saying

Robert Rasmussen, the executive creative director at R/GA, just moved over to Bartle Bogle Hegarty (BBH these days) to be executive creative director of innovation. Long title. Bad hair. But the right direction.
Apparently Rasmussen is credited with the brilliant Beta-7 campaign for Sega’s ESPN
Football game from Wieden + Kennedy NY. (Beta-7 has to be considered [...]

Read Full Post »

Merit and Excellence

Ahhh, the Roseys.
We left the PAF Rosey Awards show last Thursday without the burden of hardware, but pleased that our ID Branding identity system won a Merit Award and that our design for 12 Bridges Gin won an Excellence Award. Satisfied? No. Pleased? Yes.
Our deepest bows of appreciation to Integrity Spirits for the opportunity to [...]

Read Full Post »

We’re not an interactive agency

I once was, but I got better.
As one of the founders of Paris France, an interactive agency in Portland, which existed between 1999 and 2003, I was privileged to work with some amazingly bright people, like Jeff Faulkner, Chuck Nobles, Erik Falat, and others, and to do some work I’m still quite proud of. It [...]

Read Full Post »

Creative Revolution No. 3

Or, We’re Not an Ad Agency, Part 2.
Brian Collins, the ex-ECD of Ogilvy’s Brand Integration Group (BIG), who has just launched his own agency, Collins, nailed the difference between design and advertising in a talk he gave during the the One Show week in New York last Spring. He showed images of Philadelphia’s [...]

Read Full Post »

Distilling The Brand; An Exercise in Sub-Branding

Would you believe me if I told you what you see in front of you is not some sort of blatant knockoff, but in fact a new, highly specialized McDonald’s store? What if I told you it was located in Japan? I thought so.
McDonald’s seems to have launched a new brand initiative in the land [...]

Read Full Post »

Silver Naked Angel

Or maybe it’s supposed to be Icarus. Either way, we’re happy to report we won a Silver statue in the package design category from the London International Awards for our Lovejoy Vodka four-bottle design system.
As we reported earlier, we had three finalists (our new logo and identity system, the Lovejoy Vodka series, and our design [...]

Read Full Post »

Change is a good excuse for change

Here’s some advice for brands:
When the cartoon anvil falls on you, crawl out from under it as something different.
And make no mistake about it. The anvil is coming.
In bizarrely bad economic times, people change their habits and patterns and expectations. It’s a perfect time to make changes as a brand. Like dumping bad branding habits [...]

Read Full Post »

Branding and Customer Service

“Branding includes everything a consumer experiences, even the way people answer your phones.”  How many times have we heard this over the past few years?  While I won’t get into the definition of branding (you can read more about our opinions on that here), I do want to touch on the “answering your phones” part.
 
Customer [...]

Read Full Post »

American or Americana? Is Brand America back?

Suddenly it may be cool to be an American, or at least what Yahoo is reporting. The decision Tuesday night has sparked re-interest in America worldwide after eight years of steady abandonment of brand America.
I started thinking about this a bit as we find some of our major American brands in a bit of a [...]

Read Full Post »

The Girls’ School Delivered

And delivered big time.
Mr. Ian “I am the most unobnoxious person in advertising” Cohen showed some incredibly inspiring stuff at the Portland Advertising Federation lunch talk today. He’s a founder of Wexley School for Girls, and their work included a recruiting campaign for Microsoft that made me feel like the world is a good [...]

Read Full Post »