a hundred avatars

Singing at Sonic

I don't know or care if this is done by the brand or just the singer, but it's great. via Reddit and Stevie Dove

 

Mashups: Ice Cube + Eames

Thoughts on Overcoming the Psychological Bias Against Creativity

The following post is an adaptation of an email to my colleagues at work based on a great article forwarded to us by our awesome colleague Mark Avnet, Dean of 360iU, former head of the Creative Technology track at VCU's Brandcenter and all-around guru (as well as musician)

Anyway...

This is the link Mark sent around from Forbes. Here's a shortened link for those of you reading this on Facebook: http://is.gd/DiQsef

Go read it.

Now that you have, you should know one thing before we start: male mosquitos don't bite.

And, the point that I made to my colleagues is that unfortunately for those of us who do what we do to create a new part of our somewhat moribund industry this:  most of the ideas that our clients and most business managers in general want to buy don't have a bite either.

Here's part of the reason why.

A lot of businesspeople (especially on the corporate level, not just marketing) are incentivized to MITIGATE risk, not CREATE risk (it's why they pay their lawyers more than they pay us). Yes they want revenue growth, but they want steady revenue even more. 

Risk creates reward (yay!) but it also creates uncertainty, and possibly failure (boo!). Those of us who are on the creative idea production end of the business do a lot to train ourselves to be more creative.

But what do we do to help our clients and partners through risk? We need to consider risk more when we evaluate our ideas and how clients are doing so. (Roger Martin has a lot to say about how to create a culture amenable to risk, and how risk is really necessary in his book The Design of Business)

 So how can we encourage decisions that will be, although good, risky?

Coke's model of 70-20-10 is one way to give risky ideas a place so we can test and learn (and is related to 'Little Bets'):

• 70% resources in a low risk, highly brand relevant environment,
• 20% resources in a high risk, highly brand relevant environment,
• 10% resources into highly risky relevant initiatives, being brand new ideas that celebrate failures and successes

So, in other words, I don't think you can fight the psychological bias against creativity.

What we can do, however, is give people enough reassurance that what we're doing isn't COMPLETELY risky. Just saying "just think of what you'll miss if you don't make a bet on this idea' OR 'because it's fu**ing kool" isn't enough.

 It's why we write POVs. By defining new trends or technology, we make them a little less risky.

It's why we show ideas and create comps. This is why we push our design skills as an agency. When we SHOW people an idea and involve them in it, it immediately becomes less risky. Especially when it looks great.

It's why strategy needs to tell a story, not just a collection of facts.  Stories help explain new ideas in a way that feels comfortable and relatively safe.

 We don't have to create a false sense of security, but putting new ideas in context and showing how they might work, how they might come to life creates an atmosphere of trust where creativity of any kind can take root and perhaps even flourish. 

Tesco South Korea: Great bridge from outdoor to digital to home

One of the most talked about ideas at Cannes 2011. Great link from outdoor to mobile to home. Whether or not it's great outdoor or digital or mobile, but it is a great stunt...

 

Envisioning the Next 25 Years of Technology

This chart from Fast Co Design is a lot of fun. Reminds me of Gibson's quote: "the future is here, it's just poorly distributed."

Stuff near the center is technology we have today. Big nodes are the types of technology. Move out from the center, and you move out to the future. via @mavnet

 

The Best Use of the Internet Ever?

Go check out Sour's new music "video" which is a great follow up to their previous, wonderful effort

How to reverse engineer a TED talk

Everything is reducible to a formula, apparently.

From Those Wonderful People Who Brought You Pearl Harbor

 Great review of Jerry della Femina's book in the Design Observer, given the reissue of the book thanks to Season 4 of Mad Men tonight.  I've been meaning to read this for years, never got around to it, despite running into Jerry a few times at cocktail parties through the years and comparing head shaving technique.

Anyway, here's my favorite bit from the review:

In that light, the end of the New York Times article that started it all ends with an especially arresting prediction. "The WASP's blew it," declares Della Femina. "They sat around and said, 'This is it, and we don't have to work for it.' My group will eventually blow it, too. We'll sit around in our funny clothes, and we'll get old and fat and start sliding. And then the next revolution is going to take place. The hot writer is going to be Pedro Jimenez, and the hot art director is going to be George Washington Smith. What a crazy scene that's going to be!" Reading this today, it took me a second to realize he was talking about agency creative departments dominated by Hispanics and African-Americans.

Not sure if agencies have too many Pedro Jimenez or George Washington Smiths, but as a Juan Epstein (?!?) at a digital shop, I do appreciate the spirit of creative destruction Jerry's always represented.

(btw, I'm not sure how my new colleagues at Dentsu feel about the title of Jerry's book.)

Why Networks Matter + How They Propagate

Nicholas Christakis again, this time at the RSA in the UK.

Really good stuff on how networks work. It comes down to the fundamental human need to not only experience (emotion, events, habits, etc) but to share. By expanding our network, we expand ourselves. Particularly interesting is the bit towards the end, where he talks about the correlation between successful Broadway plays and the type of network the people working on it came from.

Shows that either threw together a bunch of people who had never worked together or people who had only worked together tend to fail.  Shows that balance the relationships between people tended to succeed. Unsurprisingly, it's not only about happiness spreading (or obesity or altruism) but also that the types of networks we form create different sorts of lives for ourselves.

Packaging/Information/Content

two things in the last few days:

this packaging is cool because of what it shows:

 via PSFK

And this other stuff is interesting for how it creates community around packaging. Meta-meta tagging reality.

The line between the reality online and the reality in 3D is quickly blurring. Or maybe it's already gone. With total transparency, what's inside the packaging really has no where to hide. Packaging is a gateway to experience design, experience that differentiates far more than superficial advertising. 

Sure beats sticking a cow on the package.