Putting things in buckets

Here is a link below (I believe the credit will go with it) that caused me to reflect upon the task that I do quite often – interviewing.
Why? Because when I interview, I don’t begin by soliciting the comments that I want to hear. I begin by finding out what the subject matter expert wants to say. I don’t ‘categorize’ ahead of time. I ‘listen’. What a concept.
Here is the article about categorizations on the web.

http://www.shirky.com/writings/ontology_overrated.html

Stay Safe at College

Chris Jones was the writer and director for a DVD and intranet program designed to teach college students how to protect themselves while at college.

Here’s the link.

http://www.360staysafe.com/

Watch the trailer

Executive Buzzwords

It’s easy to tell when a buzzword has reached its Tipping Point. After doing a day’s worth of executive interviews, I find that the buzzwords magically appear.

Current buzzwords:

‘At the end of the day’ - why not say ‘end result’?

‘Low hanging fruit’ - easy pickin’s

‘Walk the talk’ - for Johnny Cash wannabees?

‘Grow the (fill in the blank)’ - bad grammar is now accepted

‘Solution’ - used so often it is now meaningless

‘Optimize’ - it’s waaaaay better now

One dead buzzword (thank goodness):

‘Synergy’

Blinking at creative concepts

I just finished the book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell, which caused me to think about the immediate reactions one gets when the phone rings, and a client is on the other end with an idea for a DVD, live meeting or video. He says, “What do you think of our idea?” The first clue is ‘our’ idea. The first response is usually “Sure, that could work.”

But the ‘blink’ is the immediate reaction that either the idea is brilliant, or that the idea will not work. Let me share a story.

A client came to me to write a live presentation script for singing actors and executive management. The event was a live sales meeting, held in July, to prepare the retail sales force for the holiday season. The retail chain sold leather goods. Their creative concept was ‘Explode the Opportunities’ (bad grammar idea but picked up on the meeting date of the 4th of July weekend) with a Scrooge storyline to reveal their holiday tactics. One of the Executive VPs, dressed as Santa, would deliver gifts to the audience from a sled drawn by a live reindeer.

I blinked. Everything about it was bad. Sure – any of those concepts will work, but there are too many of them. Pick one concept, not three I said. I tried to talk them out of it – to no avail.

In the end, Scrooge and the three ghosts sang their way through the sales meeting. When Scrooge had his epiphany at the end, he whipped off his nightgown, revealing an all leather outfit. He sang like Elvis with gusto as the fireworks went off on stage. The crowd went wild as the Executive VP dressed as Santa passed out gifts as he came down the center aisle on his sleigh.

The reindeer pooped in the aisle.

That was my last project for this client. Perhaps I should have walked away from the project. Perhaps worked harder at persuading them to go with a single concept rather than three. Perhaps presented a newer, better concept of my own.

The moral of the story: If something causes you to blink, trust your intuition.

Logo Trends

I try to stay on top of marketing trends, and with that in mind I offer this post. Logo trends

My own logo re-design is about to be unveiled so I of course had to check and see if it fit into one of the trends. Loosely I would say my new logo fits in ‘overlap’. Which is of course better than the old trend (1985 (3) color ‘cool’)…

Does yours fit into one of the trends?

Post Oscar 2008

I should learn. Go with the head and not with the heart. My emotional pick for Diving Bell and the Butterfly did NOT succeed. And my wild-ass-guesses did not succeed. The rest did 16/24. Till next year…

Oscar picks 2008

I’ll admit, I’ve seen fewer movies than in past years (me too busy, Oscars too early), but nevertheless, I’ve made some choices.

Actor – Daniel Day-Lewis

Supporting Actor – Javier Bardem (he joins the ranks of famous all-time villains)

Actress – Marion Cotillard (if enough voters saw this, she will win. She inhabits the character like Philip Seymour Hoffman did Capote)

Supporting Actress – Cate Blanchett (always excellent; consolation prize for passing on her performance in Elizabeth)

Animated Feature – Ratatouille

Art Direction – There Will Be Blood (Atonement was my second choice but I had to decide)

Costume Design – Atonement

Directing – The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (this is my emotional pick. this movie was too wonderful not to win something, and I’m going with this although No country For Old Men will probably win)

Documentary Feature – No End in Sight (powerful and well told)

Documentary Short – Salim Baba (wag on this one)

Film Editing – The Bourne Ultimatum

Foreign Language – The Counterfeiters

Make-up – La Vie En Rose (incredibly realistic aging)

Original Score – Atonement (loved those tapping keys!)

Original Song – Happy Working Song (too bad Enchanted split its vote 3 ways. It’ll probably be “Falling Slowly” but I had a wide grin on my face the entire time this song was playing. Way too much fun.)

Best Picture – No Country For Old Men

Short Film – Madame Tutli-Putli (another wag)

Short Film – Il supplente (wag #3)

Sound Editing – The Bourne Ultimatum

Sound Mixing – Transformers

Visual Effects – Transformers

Adapted Screenplay – The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (amazing storytelling within HUGE constraints)

Original Screenplay – Juno (well deserved)

Friends of Chris

If you’d like to play – you can click on the ez-pay button on the right hand column and submit $10 via paypal.

Or you can just play to see the strength of your predictive powers. It’s up to you!

Either way, you should begin by faxing your ballot to 914-470-4162.

Corporate buzz speak

We should all jointly pledge to never allow the following phrase into our corporate DVDs and videos:

‘At the end of the day…’

It is also a current favorite with politicians. I counted it 8 times within minutes on a Sunday morning news program. But I guess if your CEO is like a politician, then go ahead!

5 Myths of Corporate Video / DVD

I hate to see clients waste their money on poorly planned media communication – but it happens more frequently than anyone will admit. The PDF that is attached to this post is intended to be passed around (without changing it thanks) in hopes of educating the massive client base out there.

It has a number of good tips – and a few debunked myths.

Please read it and pass it along.Bring your Brand to Life