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Collaborate with a Passion.

Friday, October 21st, 2011

Gave a preso at Assoc for Women in Communication’s “Get Smart Conference” today. It really all boiled down to these two slides.

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Graduating into transformation.

Thursday, March 10th, 2011

A great post from Leigh Muzslay Browne a Butler Bros collaborator. She’s a copywriter finishing her graduate degree at The University of Texas at Austin.

This is the best, most exciting time to get into the ad business.

That’s what I keep hearing at least. And, since I’m about to graduate and start agency life, it’s what I choose to believe.

Sitting at the Transformation 2011 conference on Tuesday, it was both refreshing and scary as hell to hear agency heads say that only 20% to 45% of their work was great. (For those who weren’t there, when asked how much of their agency’s work in the last year was great, Gotham chairman-CEO Peter McGuinness said 45%, Claudia Batten of Victors & Spoils said 30%, GSD&M president-CEO Duff Stewart said 20% to 25%, and DraftFCB chairman Howard Draft said 20%.)

I was struck by how big the challenges are and how similar they feel to the ones I thought I’d ditched when I left journalism, another industry trying desperately to transform itself. Much like agencies, newspapers struggle with a declining economy and rapidly changing technology. Many cut back on groundbreaking but labor-intensive projects in favor of churning out more average work as cheaply as possibly because that’s what they thought they had to do to survive. And it stopped being fun.

Jeffrey Cole, director of the Center for the Digital Future at USC, said Tuesday that he thinks paper newspapers will disappear within five years (troubling considering they haven’t figured out how to make money online). But I have no doubt that advertising agencies will be around and stronger than ever.

But how do we get there from here?

I don’t have the answers. (If I did I probably wouldn’t post them for free.) I don’t run an agency. Hell, I haven’t even finished ad school yet. But it’s the people in my shoes who are going to have to “invent the future” as moderator extraordinaire Cindy Gallop advised. (She’s the former head of Bartle Bogle Hegarty, New York, founder of startup IfWeRanTheWorld, and the one who suggested panelists get into fistfights if so inclined.)

So, here’s what I took from the conference and what I think we need to keep in mind as we get to the exciting work of inventing tomorrow. (more…)

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LOHAS Forum. Critical mass for giving a hoot.

Monday, June 21st, 2010

Very psyched to be attending LOHAS Forum in Boulder CO at the end of this week. I will blog this event some, tweet it more. Look for #LOHASForum if you want to follow along in the twitterverse.

So what the heck is a LOHAS?

Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability (LOHAS) describes an estimated $209 billion U.S. marketplace for goods and services focused on health, the environment, social justice, personal development and sustainable living. The consumers attracted to this market represent a sizable group in this country. Approximately 19% percent of the adults in the U.S., or 41 million people, are currently considered LOHAS Consumers. This is based on surveys of the U.S. adult population estimated at 215 million.

What’s the forum all about?

LOHAS offers a rare opportunity for both business owners and consumers to meet with the decision makers from many large companies, including Coca Cola, Petco, eBay, and the CEO of Ecover, and for those larger businesses, who may not know how to navigate the rapidly changing market, to learn from smaller ones who are making it work. It is also a place to find out about new trends and approaches to engage conscious consumers, who pay close attention to more sustainable and ethical ways of doing things.

This trip also gives me the opportunity to connect with Alex Bogusky and Robyn O’Brien prior to their scheduled talk, “Phood and Kids” where they will be joined by Chef Ann Cooper the “Renegade Lunch Lady”. I fully expect to be very inspired by the cross pollination of idea people, world changers and ‘do the right thingers’. So many of our passions as a company overlap here – cause marketing, food truthing, holistic thinking about work and life. I hope I can put some energy back on the passion grid because I know I will be pulling plenty off.

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