just another blog pressed for words

The BP debacle is widely viewed as one of the last nails in the coffin of consumers’ faith in corporate good intentions.

Following the 2008 economic crash, consumers were eager for any evidence that companies cared. Recognizing this, businesses embraced cause marketing in droves. By the end of 2009, it seemed that virtually every ad in the country sported a pink ribbon or something similar.

With cause marketing came its sister, sustainability marketing. Leading the charge was BP, which trumpeted the tag line “Beyond Petroleum.”

What followed was a depressing chunk as a coffin-nail hit home.

The fact was: Consumers had never been convinced by companies’ environmental claims. This was underscored by the recent “Sense & Sustainability Study” from the PR firm Gibbs & Soell. In July, the firm polled 2,605 U.S. adults and 304 executives of Fortune 1000 companies. It found that:

-Only 16% of consumers and 29% of executives believe that most businesses are committed to “going green.”

-While 69% of executives say their companies have people responsible for sustainability, most of these people have merely added green efforts to their primary duties.

Translation: Consumers and executives agree that, while companies talk the talk, they have rarely walked the walk. Few businesses have devoted the high-level attention to sustainability that they claim – and as a result, most marketing in this regard is dismissed as greenwashing.

It no longer works to put lipstick on a pig. Consumers aren’t fooled. They recognize it instantly. And they ask: “Why didn’t you kill the pig?”

At Modernista!, we do in fact believe that a company must do what it can to benefit the human race, and the planet. But it can’t achieve this by slapping ribbons on ads. Rather, it needs to engage in meaningful, positive activity, and then provide hard facts about its work.

We’ve been looking beyond traditional cause marketing to identify ways for brands to walk the walk and PROVE that they’re doing so. We’re fond of one strategy in particular – a means of making a serious difference in the world, without necessarily breaking the bank. If you’d like to learn more, leave a comment here or e-mail me at mschulze@modernista.com.

For a bonafide tech-head, this New York Times article really pricked my soul: “Your Brain on Computers: Digital Devices Deprive Brain of Needed Downtime.”

I do need rest from the persistent command of machines and to be more responsive to people, nature, and real moments. With the proliferation of virtual experiences, I increasingly need more human interaction. When I take a few days off with family, I’m constantly engaged with at least two connected devices. If I’m in a meeting with one team of colleagues, I’m looking over work from other teams and projects.

Just as I’m not able to fully be with others, I’m not able to be with myself. If I’m sitting next to strangers in an airport or cafe, not only am I removed from them, I’m removed from my own thoughts and imaginative life.

I’ve always loved the rich creative space that downtime, waiting, and just being have given me, but the last decade has slowly eaten up those in-between moments that provide richer thought and feeling, more considered decisions, and fuel for discovery and inspiration. This has profound implications for those of us who require creativity in our work. Not just “creatives” but anyone (in production, strategy, media, client services, finances, and management) who requires creative problem solving – and we all do because the run-of-the-mill answers to challenging problems suck.

Modern devices are supposed to help us save time, provide mobility, and keep us connected. Instead they zap time and often leave us immobilized and disconnected. We serve machines, not the other way around.

Part of the problem is the idealization of “connectiveness.” The promise of omnipresence and omniscience through technology is at best an illusion and at worst a complete theft of the here and now. (The irony is that at the moment – four in the morning – I’m reading the New York Times article on my phone and writing this post on the same device.)

Do we need something to shield us from our own machines? Should we be encouraged to turn to e-mail, text, and Facebook not as a substitute for, but as a supplement to real interactions?

It would seem mad for a mobile-device company to start encouraging true downtime and real face time. But maybe, in the long run, that company would benefit from having healthier customers. Should Skype give airfare discounts to family members who Skype the most? Should iPhones have a built-in sleep app?

Machines should sleep so we can.

As they grapple with a recession that doesn’t want to end, it’s easy for U.S. businesses – including creative agencies – to grow despondent. But a recent bit of futurism from McKinsey offers comfort for those prepared to broaden their horizons. And other reports suggest a counterintuitive direction for small to mid-size agencies.

“A huge shift is under way in consumer markets,” note the authors of McKinsey’s What Happens Next? Five Crucibles of Innovation That Will Shape the Coming Decade. (See a summary here. ) Globally, “somewhere north of 70 million people are crossing the threshold to the middle class each year, virtually all in emerging economies. By the end of the decade, roughly 40% of the world’s population will have achieved middle-class status – up from less than 20% today.”

Take a look where a lot of that growth is happening. Another McKinsey report, titled Lions on the Move: The Progress and Potential of African Economies, projects that by 2020, consumer spending in Africa will reach $1.4 trillion. (About time this continent caught a break.) But unlike in China, say, the big holding-company agencies don’t yet have a huge presence in Africa. In fact, The Africa Report (in “Advertising on the Move: African News, Analysis and Opinion,”) notes that most African companies are still in growth mode and don’t have the budgets for big agencies yet. Which of course spells an opportunity for smaller, independent players.

At M!, we’ve been keeping an eye on this global explosion for some time, and preparing for it. More than a quarter of the staff come from countries outside the U.S., including Creative Director Davi Sing (from Japan) and Digital Creative Director Xavier Teo (from Singapore). “The U.S. is a little behind the eight ball because it’s been dominant for so long,” Xavier comments. “Now, it’s beginning to adopt a more international view. But Americans need to have a better understanding of how business is done in other countries. In Asia, it’s much more a social thing – people getting to know each other after work. It’s a question of developing trust. Strangely, I think that was once a lot more common in the U.S. than it is now.”

We came across an interesting cultural notion the other day from Fred Wilson’s post, which discusses the lack of women entrepreneurs, VCs, and software developers. It seems that entrepreneurial spirit and the startup world are male-dominated endeavors. Sure, there is less debate about the “glass ceiling” today, but why and how could this be true?

According to the New York Times, although “around 40% of private companies in the U.S. are owned by women, there is still a significant lack of female entrepreneurship in the tech sector – only 8% of American venture-backed tech startups are founded by female CEOs.”

Think of the stereotypical “nerd,” and you picture a poorly dressed male with glasses, and certainly a computer (or two) – but rarely is this person female.  Brad Feld and Eric Reis have recently advanced good thoughts regarding the lack of gender diversity within the tech entrepreneurial field.

What is pushing women into their professions at an early age – is it gender or lifestage?

If males and females have the same intellectual abilities, surely it’s a matter of upbringing. Some people argue that parents of young girls don’t push them into exploring math or computer science enough.  Are women taught to try something else if the math gets tough? It’s a valid thought, but the truth is that women have been attaining higher education much more than men within the last few years. Just read the Atlantic Monthly’s “End of Men,” and you’ll get an idea of where genders split on education.

On the other side, Wilson contends that women who start businesses desire to know what they are doing first and often have kids in their 30s before they finally hit their entrepreneurial sweet spot in their 40s. By then, coding or moving to Silicon Valley isn’t feasible.  It certainly sounds like a male-dominated world! But the good news is that Wilson is part of a new discussion that aims to engage women at their entrepreneurial peak and bring diversity to the sector.

Elizabeth Stark points out that “women comprise the majority of Internet users, so it absolutely makes sense to have a team that represents a variety of perspectives.” It seems simple to gain a woman’s perspective, so what’s the hangup?

This is an issue that applies directly to the world of brands.  At the heart of the matter is our education system, which isn’t structured to instill and properly foster creativity from an early age, for either gender.  Our educational system covers traditional creative fields such as music and art, but does it sufficiently address technology, product creation, and branding?

Today’s youths have grown up with iPods in hand and are savvy enough to decipher brandspeak from the truth.  They seem to be the most democratic generation yet, but what is the effect on women who want to become entrepreneurs?

The impact involves more than just jobs and diversity. Rather, it is directly connected to the future of creativity and content.  The world of brands has no shortage of diversity, but what’s being done to ensure that tomorrow’s crop of thinkers and doers are the most diverse possible? How can we capture creative people at an early age, rather than those trying to break in post-school, such as from ad schools that “farm” talent?  This is something the whole industry should discuss.

Ultimately, this discussion is about unleashing the future of creativity, and everyone should have a say in how we get there.

Last year on World AIDS Day (December 1), we launched a holiday campaign for (RED) that harnessed gift-giving around the world to drive contributions to The Global Fund. As part of that campaign, we designed (RED) pop-up shops in New York, London, Tokyo and San Francisco, each of which brought (RED) partner and special edition products together for sale under one branded, engaging roof.

In addition, to support the London (RED) shop and help announce Nike as the newest global (RED) partner, we took over the Oxford Circus Underground station with thousands of square feet of silkscreened panels featuring (RED) partner products and maps to partner stores above ground. And working with the animation ninjas at Psyop, we created a short film that ran in digital panels throughout the station, as well as on joinred.com and in all four pop-up shops.

This Oxford Circus takeover was recently recognized in AdAge and Creativity Magazine’s The Art & Science of Outdoor. Click on the thumbnails above or check out the work on pages 50-51 and 65 in the printed version.

Our animation is posted below as well – take a look and let us know what you think.  And look for more good stuff from (RED) and Modernista! this upcoming holiday season.

It’s been 50 days since the BP oil spill began, and the struggle to cap the flow continues. What if this happened where you live?

Take a peek at this visualization.

Food Should Taste Good, the maker of all-natural snacks, has named Modernista! its first-ever agency of record. M! won the business in a competitive pitch that saw an initial list of seven agencies whittled down to one. FSTG and M! plan to launch a fully integrated campaign across all channels, with a heavy emphasis on innovative online and in-store experiences.

M! recently garnered a silver Clio in the technical category for its “Re-ignition” TV spot for Cadillac. Check it out:

Modernista!’s Director of User Experience, Bob Goodman, will be a featured speaker on an upcoming Webinar to talk about how UX, social media, and taxonomy intersect. Bob tells us one featured topic is the way UX design needs to support both content consumption and conversation in the same space. “The experience of reading and the experience of publicly commenting on what you’re reading aren’t separate anymore. They happen in the same space and nearly the same time. People read about something one minute and share and talk about it with their personal network of friends and followers in the next minute; that’s an interesting opportunity in how you design for conversation.” Look for Bob from 1:00 to 2:00 EST on Wednesday, June 2. The webinar is hosted by Early and Associates:

http://www.earley.com/webinars/taxonomy/taxonomy-user-interface

M.I.A.’s new album title, /\/\/\Y/\, has the interwebs ablaze around the relationship between creativity and Google visibility, lovingly referred to in the ad world as SEO. Essentially, Google only picks up on the letter Y from the album title, leading to results on Yahoo or Generation Y, and absolutely nothing on M.I.A. or the album itself (I even tried the quotation mark trick, to no avail).  Folks over at hipsterrunoff and PSFK are asking a lot of good questions:

Does being un-Googleable kill chances for success in the modern world?

Are artists + businesses “constrained’ by having to consider the googlability of their brand, or is the ’search engine’ a tool that has helped every1 access more information + opportunities for commerce than ever?

Or, as one commenter puts it,

Intentionally or not, M.I.A. is making an anti-Google statement and reaching new heights of counter-culture irony. Which may well come back to taunt her, forcing her to use the alternate name MAYA for Google/iTunes/etc. purposes (this was the case with Justice who had to give their album † the alternate name “cross” to have it show up on Google).

So what does this debate mean for advertisers? Is anti-Google the new underground? If a brand wants to support a sense of exclusivity and nurture an in-the-know audience, should they strive for this search-engine-invisibility? Or would that make things difficult for a genuinely interested audience? At the end of the day, does it all just seem like it’s trying a little too hard, and being a little too arrogant? (I’m speaking in general, and hoping that M.I.A.’s intentions were to be progressive, not abrasive).

Maybe what’s more interesting isn’t what this means for advertisers, but how the things that used to only matter for brands are permeating everyday life. It’s not just musicians thinking about the Google cred of their album, song, or stage names. With a generational shift towards cultivating personal brands and standing out from the mainstream, SEO is starting to matter for the average Joe and Jane. Or, should I say, Jayne. An article in the Wall Street Journal commented on the importance of Google — when naming your newborn child.  And that was in 2007.

So what I really wanna know is what hipster parent will be the first to legally name their kid in ASCII. Now that would be ironic.