Saturday, October 3, 2009 | Posted In Advertising
The fine crew over at PSFK liked the business card I gave them last Thursday so much that they decided to feature it on their homepage on Friday. All of the new content from Friday was sent out this morning at 2 a.m. in their newsletter, New Ideas & Trends Inspiration. My work is published together in the same newsletter and on the same page with Shepard Fairy, Maurice Sendak and Alex Bogusky. I’m having a pretty good day so far. Thank you very much PSFK!
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Monday, September 14, 2009 | Posted In Advertising • Producing
Monday, March 16, 2009 | Posted In Advertising • Producing
Originally posted on Fresh Ideas 365
Alexander here. Interactive Director for The Concept Farm. Before I post any official reviews of Griffin Stenger (Partner) and my time here in Austin at SXSW Interactive, I wanted to post a quick little pre-review. I like to watch people. Living in New York City it’s really easy. Riding the subway you are forced to. It’s a way of life. Here in Austin I’ve been doing much of the same. Since Friday I have been observing how many of the thousands of the attendants have iPhones and then how many have Apple laptops and any combination there of. I would say at least 60% of the attendants have both. And on these iPhones we have all been loading up all of the schedules and tweeting about this that and the other. The only downside, AT&T’s infrastructure simply can not handle all of the iPhone data concentrated in one area. 
So at one of the most important Interactive conferences in this country, the users of a device (argumentatively the most popular device) can not fully benefit from the very services being championed. You have to wait until late at night before you can expect any true activity or be in the convention center on the free WiFi. And even that shows signs of heavy load.
These above images are from today’s keynote in one of the three larger rooms. Virginia Herrfernan of the New York Times interviews James Powderly of FATlab and Graffiti Research Lab (GRL). Click to enlarge.
Regardless of the individual attendant’s gear of choice, that gear runs on good old American electricity. One of greatest faults of this convention (and really there are not many) is that there is no convenient source of power. All of the outlets run along the floor. Every panel room regardless of size is surprisingly short on outlets. Don’t you think that the organizers of the event would have coordinated with the Freeman union controlled convention center to install power strips? The results are obvious. You enter each panel room and everyone is huddled along the walls. Death traps by laptop cords. Between events you find people by the droves forced to camp out on the floor as if their flights were delayed at a crowded airport.
Surprisingly Apple does not participate in conventions like this. Despite the large percentage of people that would enlist immediately in an Apple army if one existed. Those companies, authors and aritsts that have been conducting panels or signings have really been inspiration to many. When my tour of duty expires on Wednesday, I’ll have the chance to go through the pages of notes, business cards, tweets, scratches, scribblings and memories and post something slightly more helpful here on 365.
Tomorow afternoons final keynote of SXSW Interactive will be the long-awaited Guy Kawasaki (Alltop) interview of Chris Anderson (Wired) on the power of free.
Friday, March 13, 2009 | Posted In Advertising • Producing
There is no way to post this without sounding like I am plugging MTV Networks’ Comedy Central so here goes. Tonight, on my way to SXSW I was able to catch The Daily Show (the photo shows everyone in my view also watching). For those that don’t regularly follow the show, tonight was the long awaited episode when Jon Stewart would face Jim Cramer of CNBC. Ending or potentially fueling the recent widely publicized fued (Google that). Jon rails into Jim on how Jim and those like him admit to knowing how the market can be cheated and where the holes in SEC regulations exist however they do nothing to stop it. Plug the holes over the last ten years that have caused the market free fall we are now experiencing. Jon suggests that perhaps Jim should go back to reporting financial news so John can go back to fart jokes.
I won’t profess to knowing about the markets. We at The Concept Farm are not and should not be regarded in whole as financial experts. So there will be no further exposition on a point of view. Just please watch the entire intetview.
And during the closing credits they show a clip from Jim on Martha Stewart (earlier in the day). Martha says “Jim does what Twitter does”. Alexander Rea from The Concept Farm asks “WTF!?”.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008 | Posted In Advertising • Producing
Today, Communications Arts has exhbitied the campaign I worked on at The Concept Farm for the Versus Television network.
Cable television network Versus will air wall-to-wall coverage of the 2008 Tour de France July 5–27. On average, fourteen hours of race action per day will celebrate clean competition in one of the most intense and grueling events in all of sports. To promote the event, New York City agency/entertainment group hybrid, The Concept Farm, created a comprehensive, multimedia campaign to champion the riders who compete clean, while providing a platform and a voice to the passionate fan base that supports them. The media push (all based around a single component, the Manifesto) includes three versions of multiple length on-air spots, viral films, several print ads, and a campaign specific Web site to reassure fans that even in the absence of the “celebrity” riders and marquis-name teams, that the soul of the race—and the tradition it was built on—remains.
Robert Singh, art director; Brian Thompson, writer; Tyronne Schaffer, associate creative director interactive; Ray Mendez/Griffin Stenger/Robert Waldner, creative directors; Alexander Rea, interactive director; Johnny Jacques, senior Flash developer; Mike McCall, The Production Farm, producer; Catherine Benedek, The Production Farm editor; APM Music & Beyond Music /Penny Lane Studios, music/sound; The Production Farm, production company; Post Farm, post production; Mark Albertson, account director.
Thursday, June 19, 2008 | Posted In Advertising • Performances
For those of you that subscribe to my RSS feed you’ll know that I did not post anything about my show last night with Les Funky Bitches Fantastique. A referral from Josh Landay who I performed Tock Tick with in February 2007 for Prospect Theater Company. We performed the opening set of the night at The Annex. There is unfortuntely not much online that is up to date regarding this project by Richard Caliban but you can can at least get some background at Richard’s site.
Meanwhile at my Bruce Wayne daytime advertising job at The Concept Farm, I’ve been busy producing a couple new campaigns that have recently gone live along with all of our consistent client base. Versus television network’s Tour de France campaign that incorporates a robust offering of print, broadcast and interactive with the first phase of the website now live. Along with our continued relationship with Estée Lauder and their Mustang For Men product launch of Mustang Blue. Made possible by the excellent developers I have working in my group. Robbie Roxas, Johnny Jacques and Tim McDuffie. And not to mention some great back-end support offered up by Firefall Pro. All under the art direction of Tyronne Schaffer and Nicole Miller.
