Is it possible for an entire brand to talk to you like your best friend?
Google just did a remarkable thing with its campaign, “The Web is What You Make Of It.” You don’t get the feeling they’re “pulling off” or putting over anything on you. You get the feeling Google is the sum of the hearts and souls of its people. People you’d like to do business with.
How will you change my world? The suspense is killing me…
A pizza, a knife, and a little opera. A seemingly routine pizza delivery escalates into a tense game of cat-and-mouse. A quintessential New York tale. And the art of remarkable storytelling. Sometimes it’s not the idea that’s the killer app. It’s the execution. A short film by Gary Nadeau.
Pizza Verdi (short film) 2011 from gary nadeau on Vimeo.
I found myself smiling and just enjoying that “Woody was back.” In anticipation, I even bought candy at a “nostalgia” candy store (Turkish Taffy, Clark Bar, Bit-O-Honey).
I also took pleasure in finding that the audience was back, too. In a tiny theater in Montclair, NJ, there was a different kind of buzz that my wife and I agreed we haven’t felt in a movie theater for a long time. And it’s probably mostly because we weren’t drawn to see this at the typical mall-size, multiplex theater. It was as if we were attending a private, long-stalled Woody Allen reunion. (There was even a pre-show live audio introduction, giving us a brief Woody bio and inviting us to “enjoy tonight’s feature” as if we had been transported to a theater in our youths…or in the imaginations of our youths.)
People seemed relieved to find an outlet for laughing at a character in a movie bantering with Hemingway and Dali — after feeling kinda left behind and out of it for not laughing along with a hysterical audience watching a character in another summer hit taking a dump in her wedding dress in the middle of the street. I don’t think it’s that this audience is above gross-out humor; i just think this audience feels that taking a dump and vomiting don’t necessarily warrant elevating the yucks from dorm room status to a large-screen industry and the centerpiece of entertainment of our one free night out of the week. Particularly if we had planned to dine out afterward.
I can imagine Woody finding irony in the academic critiques about Midnight in Paris. As we may find irony in the character of Pedantic Paul being more Woody-like than Gil in his cynicism of the “Golden Age” syndrome. It’s not that Paul was right or wrong about the illusion of a different life being better….it’s the way he and Pauls like him instruct us that certain lessons of life needn’t be debated (“Don’t interrupt, listen to Paul” Inez said to Gil, in so many words, “You may learn something”). 
The thing I took away from it was that in Gil’s search for that illusory “better life” than the one he was living, he showed us we have a choice: we can pursue the answer academically, like Paul, the critic and academic, or pursue it through experience, as Gil, the writer and romantic did…..by walking in the city rather than zooming through it with shopping bags in the back of a cab…..by living it, rather than lecturing about it…..by getting the girl in the bookstore willing to get wet….rather than the girl that comes dry-cleaned with a don’t-follow-your-dreams, strings-attached “cheap is cheap” parent-approved philosophy of life.
I heard one person walking out of the movie theater argue playfully with his spouse that “the whole time travel fantasy thing was cliche and undermined the message” — but I think the time travel device was kind of the point: the movie, “Midnight in Paris” — and movies in general — are like the art and all the artists we met in the film — they are their own fictional, time-bending account of life through art that ask us to consider if “the present is dull” and if ” a life different from our own would be much better”?
— My take is that It’s ok to contemplate these questions and even take a summer course on it at NYU, reading and analyzing all those great works…but, isn’t it a helluva lot more fun to test it out in real life, past midnight?…to play(write) at it and fantasize a bit? To walk and talk it over in the rain? To live it up out loud?
Ha! Will be interesting to see if a certain other movie gets new life after being referenced by Gil to Bunuel…
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056732/
Every wonder where you’ll get your next inspiration from?
I got a lot of my inspiration from my dad and his dad, my Grampa Meyer. So, for an early father’s day — make that a father’s day week — I think I’ll tell ‘em both a story and take them for a ride 800,000 miles away. Enjoy, Dad and Grampa!
In 2004, a cold, hardened detective named Cassini discovered one of history’s largest and most emotional works of art — so massive and in a place so far away, it would remain forever where it was found. Good thing Cassini had a very good camera on hand.
CASSINI MISSION from Chris Abbas on Vimeo.
Music Track: 2 Ghosts I, Ghosts I – IV by Nine Inch Nails
The footage in this little film was captured by NASA with the Cassini Imaging Science System. Cassini completed its initial four-year mission to explore Saturn in June 2008. Its extended mission, called the Cassini Equinox Mission, was finished in September 2010. Today, Cassini is seeking to make exciting new discoveries in a mission called the Cassini Solstice Mission.
As designer and director, Chris Abbas pointed out on www.giantkillerpandas.com , Carl Sagan said it best: “Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.” I have a feeling my father and his dad already know how true this is.
How serious are you about getting the most out of your budget?
Very serious, of course. So, you’re naturally going to be serious about getting your message noticed.
But what if you could go beyond getting noticed. All the way to intensely involved. Now, we’re talking, right?
People tend to like things that are enjoyable, fun, voluntary. And sometimes when we’re trying to engage a prospect or client or change behavior, we can forget that they are people who essentially enjoy…playing. Seriously.
Your data has to be accurate, but does it have to be cool and…beautiful?
Data viz. Information design. It’s an interestingly shaped red sign that grabs your eye and emotional brain with the simple words “Stop.” And maybe saves your life. Hans Rosling, like Edward Tufte, believes you can save people — such as your clients — from taking for granted or worse, not noticing, your painstakingly accurate and complete information…
…and keep them beautifully engaged at every point of receiving your data.
The most confident brands take an idea to the next level. And let it rain.
Your brand has something to say, so the question is how remarkably will you say it? In the first seconds, I couldn’t do anything else but listen and watch. On the second listen, with my eyes closed, I swear I could hear the rain before it made a sound. Kinda like hearing the brand’s voice as my own. Rainmakers, listen up.
Management thinks it loses good people because they want to be paid more. But what people really want is to “be” more.
Are you using the right methods for motivating your employees to be their most productive selves? Check out this research by Daniel Pink, author of “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
Do you work to bring in revenue to your company or to satisfy the client?
If you work to bring in revenue, you’re doing what you’re supposed to do. So, the question is How. How are you working to bring in revenue? Are you doing the same thing every day that has proved to be successful? Can’t argue with that, right?
But what if you did it your “proven successful way” all week… and then took one hour a week with your team to Think Like Your Client. To stay a step ahead of your competitors by coming up with the Next Proven Way that leads the way.
Here’s some peanut butter to help you unscrew your right brain for your client and your company’s revenue goals.
You work for a peanut butter company. You and your team are in your weekly “Think Like Your Client” hour. You all decide to try to experience your product like your client, so you simply make peanut butter sandwiches for the whole hour.
At the end of the hour, you find yourselves scraping the bottom of the jar. And you say out loud, “If I were my client, I’d be kinda frustrated not being able to get that last half teaspoon-full of our peanut butter.” You do the math. Every month or so, and for some clients, every week, the unattainable peanut butter adds up. By the end of a year, your client is figuring he lost a full jar or more of peanut butter in those last half teaspoons. But you also figure, so what, that’s just the way it is, nobody gives you that last taste, so what’s the harm? No revenue lost, right?
Well, maybe it’s revenue found in an opportunity to help your client. So you come up with ideas, like a super wide mouth, a special “give-away” scooper knife, or…a container with completely round, slick walls and caps at each end!
Now, they just unscrew the bottom cap and get what they want: very, very happy.
This idea is being developed by Easy PB&J Jar; designer, Sherwood Forlee