The Making of Honda SkyDive

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UPDATE: Honda's "Difficult is Worth Doing" ad will air during a live 3 minute spot tonight in the UK. YouTube will be here shortly thereafter. More here.

UPDATE 2: Looks like everything went as planned. Spot here.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hA3GL1mGfCQ&hl=en]

To piggyback the discussion on attention over traditional brand messaging, another unbranded advertising effort has been released by W+K London, though the first I've seen running on television. WK is essentially working to bring to the forefront the built in behind-the-scenes hype that's been created not only by their very own Honda Cogs and Choir ads, but others like Fallon's Bravia series.

The ads simply send viewers to difficultisworthdoing.com, a blog housing the materials for the upcoming skydive spot. It's not tough to figure out the natural connections between the brand and the way the sport is presented, but it's still a pretty big leap of faith, or leap of cash, that enough eyeballs or media coverage will be generated to create a connection between the spots and the car. Especially when you consider that you won't find a single car in any of the videos.

Take a look and let me know what you think. I'm a little torn here, although I suspect much of this will be crystallized when we actually see the spots released. Something tells me this very soft sell in the lead up will probably do much of what Bravia balls did for Bravia paint. Anytime you can successfully make an ad appointment viewing, the team probably deserves a round of high fives.

And Cam, I know I owe you a media report. I'm working on it!

Bezos on Innovation

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"Companies get skills-focused, instead of customer-needs focused. When[companies] think about extending their business into some new area, the first question is "why should we do that—we don't have any skills in that area." That approach puts a finite lifetime on a company, because the world changes, and what used to be cutting-edge skills have turned into something your customers may not need anymore. A much more stable strategy is to start with "what do my customers need?" Then do an inventory of the gaps in your skills."

-Jeff Bezos in Business Week.

Advertising Age Proves that Bloggers Can Sit at Large Tables

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P150rt3As most of you know, Ad Age invited some bloggers to their offices in New York a couple weeks ago to talk about the Power 150, the future of Ad Age and the broader social media landscape. Being the interweb powerhouse that I obviously am, of course I was invited.

I won't drone on about the details, but after all the discussion about how Ad Age needs to change their content to suit our needs, I can't help but think they need to focus on their core product more than anything else. That's not to say they shouldn't use and improve the Power 150, continue blogging over digital next and continue to cover the digital advertising and social media landscape. They should for sure. But I don't feel a lack of social media perspectives.

It is literally impossible for me to keep up with the instructive and informative voices that are here now. And that doesn't even count all the shit blogs! (Don't worry, I'm not talking about you).

What I do expect to hear from them is a reflection of what executives are thinking about. I do want to hear about how recessions affect both the agency and the consumer marketplace. And frankly, I'd probably never bore you to tears with Macy's localized strategy, but it is useful information for me to have when I walk into a boardroom.

It's important to make your content easily distributed and available, it's important to talk about the new and sexy, but it's just as important to keep up with the shifts in the things that the blogosphere isn't necessarily chatting up. And no it's not an either or proposition, but it can be a fine line between expanding and chasing.

Either way, a big thanks to Jonah and Charlie for bringing us out there, and to the man, the myth, the legend, Todd Andrlik for setting the whole thing up. Unfortunately, after having their pictures appear 3 times in the same Advertising Age, Sean and Armano have both set up their own security details and the collective entourage has now jumped into the double digits.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I'll be able to get into one of them, though. Maybe as Armano's hat keeper or Sean's director of electrical devices. I'll keep you posted.

Tune In Saturdays: Elephant Parade

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ElephantparadeBrooklyn's Elephant Parade is a slowly-building, quiet two-piece. They're full of pretty little pop songs that would make themselves comfortable in Juno 2, or perhaps some Wes Anderson joint. I just love the simplicity of a couple folks seemingly singing to themselves in the both literally and figuratively named debut album, Bedroom Recordings.

From Culture Warrior:

Brooklyn loves its girl-boy power indie pop duos. If Matt & Kim are in the high-energy end of the spectrum, Elephant Parade is most definitely on the lo-fi end. Gracing us with soft guitar and strikingly fragile vocals, to say that Estelle, from Gainsville, FL. and Ido, from Israel, are minimalist musicians is an understatement

Not unlike artists like Jana Hunter, Elephant Parade’s arrangements and vocalization sometimes emote more than the actual lyrics or instrumental ability (and they’re obviously a talented twosome). Adding their guitar and piano, the songs left me with an incredibly earnest sense of loneliness and sadness. (I’ve recovered since.)

Home.MySpace.

Elephant Parade - Riding in Your Car (mp3)
Elephant Parade - Goodbye (video)

The Future of Television is Bright

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Flying in the face of common sense and criticism, Les Binet of DDB Matrix has made a declaration, "The future for television advertising looks bright." While I don't really know anything about Les, I assume he's a pretty smart guy, but hopefully his opinion is backed up by more than he put in this slide show.

http://static.slideshare.net/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=les-binets-presentation2398

While the numbers can be questioned based on what study you're looking at, surely we can agree that there are still a shit load of people watching tv. So is it dead? Not so much. Agreed? Good. Les is disputing something that's not really being said (with the exception of few hyperbolic statements here and there). So we can get into what other studies say the decline is, how DVR changed the game, how the xbox and similar trojan horses are affecting viewing habits, how multimedia consumption affects attention, etc., but the bottom line is he missed the point. The argument seems to be that the future looks bright because things aren't changing enough to make up for a declining CPM, which I find questionable at best.

You won't find me advocating for the total removal of television from the marketing mix, but at the same time, now's not the time for us to feel comfortable sitting back on our laurels.

Check out the conversation over at Scamp's place...

(Reading back over the post, it does seem a little harsh. I think I'm getting soft in my old age. Sorry, Les. You're probably smarter than me and make more money, so you win.) :)

The Writers Strike is Over

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WgalogoThank god. Really. Now we can go back to watching scripted crap rather than reality crap exclusively. It'll be interesting to see just how bad of a hit television took on this one. My gut tells me that it'll be bad, but not all that much worse than it would have been with no strike. The technologies to replace the traditional television viewing experience just haven't arrived to the mass audience yet, and until apple tv or some such gets more pervasive, the networks have a pretty good stranglehold on the middle american living room.

Either way, the time off was at least another notch down for tv, and another notch up for teevee.

But I will be rejoicing to the return of the office.