Wednesday, June 9, 2010 | Posted In Advertising • Producing • Recommendations
 My menagerie at home |
 Metal Voltron |
I wanted to quickly respond to a recent post and 140 characters were not enough.
Ben Malbon at BBH just posted a great article on T-shaped people and the new creative production paradigm and used Voltron as a visual reference. There have been a few other giant robot mashups since Voltron such as Transformers Constructicons that form Devastator but Voltron is the leader as far as I’m concerned. And Lion Voltron, not Vehicle Voltron or any other spin-off.
It struck a personal chord with me not only because I personally identify with the T-shape model but also that I’ve been a fan of many of the great robot properties from the 80′s since their original run and long into sydication. (We’ll keep this with animation only and not get into live-action because this would get long)
When I was a kid I was not able to have the Voltron toy because it was made of metal parts and had spring loaded projectiles. Remember, this was the era of Kenner’s Boba Fett mail-away action figure that had a spring loaded projectile backpack. Forcing Kenner to re-tool the line with the projectile attached. (One of the originals sold at auction for $16,000 in 2003). I’ve been collecting for as long as I’ve been able to buy my own things. When I had my collectibles company and was working the circuit my appreciation grew for both products and licensing. There was a plastic Voltron that was released years later but it lacked the character of the original heavy metal lions. I finally bought my own metal Voltron off eBay seven years ago.
Voltron is a great reference for the nature of the business right now. The work that’s going on at places like BBH is helping change a business long mired in out-dated practices. One day the word will spread up to the C-suite and we might see global change in how agencies are structured. And I don’t think this idea is necessarily restrained to the advertising community but could be adopted across the board to all varieties of client-service companies.
There was a panel at SXSWi 2010, Jack of all Trades or Masters of One? that I covered in my writeup that could serve as a great primer for Ben’s article today. I’ve included the presentation from SXSWi below and you can read Ben’s article at BBH Labs.
[slideshare id=3448651&doc=sxsw-specialistgeneralist-100316152054-phpapp01&w=600]
Thursday, May 13, 2010 | Posted In Producing
The crowd is about a 1/3 of yesterday’s here at Day 2 of the One Show Creative unConference. Some great panels are lined up for today including one from Richard Schatzberger of BBH and Anders Wahlquist of B-Reel amongst others.
Search for #unconference to see what others are saying.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010 | Posted In Advertising • Producing
The host crowd sources the group of attendees to come up with the ideas for today’s sessions. No rules or boundaries. Then we all took our ideas up to the wall and placed in time slots. I tried to make sure that my act followed something that was appropriate. Four of the room shave projectors. I’m thinking about putting together a deck before my time slot. My session idea is on Content. It’s openness and accessibility. Inspired in part by the talk by Tim Berner’s Lee at TED recently.
Search for #unconference and #oneshow to see what others are saying.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010 | Posted In Advertising • Producing
Postcard attached to the Stickybits sticker pad in the swag bag given to all attendees
It has been over a month since SXSW and since then the industry has seen two milestones from Apple and the advancement of Facebook footprint in your life. First, Apples iPad, which I have not had the chance to touch yet, and iAd, the HTML5 based ad platform. Then Facebook continuing to change how you syndicate what you like. All of these will change the playing field for usability and advertising. I’ve been writing and editing this since I got back home and I would have liked to have published this sooner but it’s been a challenge catching back up with my life after only a few days away. I hope you appreciate what I’ve been able to compile here. Your comments and tweets about this article are very much appreciated.
This was my second trip in a row to Austin for South by Southwest Interactive (March 12-16, 2010). Also known as SXSWi, or SXSW Interactive. Whatever you call it, make sure you put one of those number signs before it. Also known as a Hashtag, this year’s SXSW starred hastags, optical code scanning and check-ins, with supporting roles played by HTML5 and a cameo by iPad. The architects of the conference assigned a hashtag to as many things as possible so you might be able to track conversations on Twitter about them.
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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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