We advertising creatives work crazy hours, often tormenting ourselves late into the night trying to discover the “big idea.” That’s why I find it interesting that Wieden-Kennedy’s latest campaign for Old Spice featuring Fabio seems to have almost no concept at all.

In the world of online video, we’ve all seen how bizarre videos about a Honey Badger or Kitten DJs can garner hundreds of thousands, even millions of views. There’s no doubt that the pass along value is high and that people enjoy watching them. However, when it comes to online video advertising, is pass-along value all that matters? Will simply getting more views, without showcasing the brand’s UVP (unique value proposition), move the needle on sales?

Now, don’t get me wrong—I’m not knocking Old Spice. I loved the “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” campaign. The ads were funny, but they also had a point—every lady wants her man to smell like a hot guy who lavishes her with theater tickets and diamonds—just like Isaiah Mustafa. And the way Isaiah responds to real tweets with video, is genius—an incredibly smart way to get consumers involved in the brand via Twitter.

The latest Old Spice campaign, “Mano a Mano en El Bano,” however doesn’t offer the same brand promise. Fabio is so hard to understand, I almost feel bad for him in his awkwardness. Even when you can understand him, he drones on about nothing that has to do with why you should purchase the product. Even the final “battle” between Old Spice guys is completely nonsensical and reminiscent of an Insane Clown Posse video.

Were the guys at W-K on drugs when they came up with these? It seems they have been given creative license to do whatever they want with the brand.

I will be interested to see what Old Spice announces about the success of the campaign and the product sales later this year. What do you think? Does Fabio make you want to buy Old Spice?

As a creative agency, we are constantly on the hunt for the next big idea.

We hold many, many brainstorms and know from experience that being a great brainstorm leader is not instinctive, but a skill that must be learned over time. And keeping good brainstorms going is an even harder art to master.

We wanted to develop a tool that would not only hold all of our brainstorm tips, but would also help our staff plan and implement idea sessions internally.

We wanted something portable that could be taken from meeting to meeting with the flexibility to be used with groups or on an individual basis.

That’s what gave us the idea to create an app.

We decided to divide the app into two parts—tips and prompts.

• Tips – Advice on how to plan, prep and run a brainstorm for maximum idea output.
• Prompts – Questions and thought-provoking statements designed to ignite different areas of thought to keep brainstorm ideas flowing and avoid long, awkward pauses.

Having virtually no budget to finance the app, we had to get creative. We wound-up doing a trade with app developer Randy Hsiao who programmed the app in exchange for design work.

We then held an agency-wide brainstorm to collect ideas for tips and prompts. Afterwards, the team working on the project spent several late nights pouring through all the ideas and selecting the most effective ones to appear in the app.

We wanted to make the app as easy to navigate as possible so we incorporated the following features:

• No tip or prompt is served twice, even if you leave the app and re-enter it later on.
• You can navigate back and forth through the app easily using just a finger swipe (no buttons needed).

The app was such a popular tool for us internally, we decided to share it with anyone needing to come up with a great idea. We gave it to our clients, partner agencies and even offered it to attendees at the  2011 AAF Conference in San Diego.

Brain Grease is currently available on iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.

Check out some of the sample tips and prompt screens below.

Bailey Gardiner is looking for a superstar art director or graphic design intern for the summer quarter/semester who will blow us away with their talent and enthusiasm. This internship is full-time, paid and will start June 1 and continue for a duration of 3 months. Your title is intern, but since the role is full-time, you will be involved in projects like you are a full-time member of the team.
A little about you:

• A college student (rising senior) or recent grad majoring in advertising art direction, graphic design or something similar
• Willing to commit to working 5 days a week, 9am-5pm
• Amazing student portfolio of work that shows true talent, organization and enthusiasm
• Excellent skills in Adobe Creative Suite. Web and mobile experience is a huge plus
• A well-organized, self-starter who shows ownership over assignments
• Some production experience preferred
• Excellent communication skills – both oral and written
• Must have a good attitude and aspire to do award-winning work
• Eager to learn from senior creative team and other team members
• Creatively driven to make portfolio-worthy work

A little about your responsibilities:
Assist the creative team with the following:

• Develop concepts, design logos, collateral material, websites, identity and stationery packages, assist senior team members in art research and comping.
• Accompany senior team members to photo shoots, press checks, client meetings and assist in photo and art research when necessary

The experience you will receive here at Bailey Gardiner is unlike any other. We will take the time to teach, support, provide you with responsibility and of course, have a little fun.

For a little more information about us, visit our portfolio or get an intern’s perspective on working here on the blog by our interns.
If you are interested, please email your portfolio, cover letter and resume to kelly@baileygardiner.com

No phone calls please.

Out of home campaign for Hazard Center, a local shopping destination.

Woo-hoo! We had a great time last Friday, April 1 at the 2011 San Diego Ad Club Addy Awards, held at the Torrey Pines Hilton in La Jolla. As in years past, the BG team made a solid appearance, led by pack leader and Ad Club president Jon Bailey and featuring our latest team addition, Greg Joumas.

We couldn’t be happier with our wins and want to thank all our great clients and especially the team here at Bailey Gardiner for putting in a lot of hours and brain power to produce this award-winning work. Here’s what we won:

"Barf bag" flier to promote Seaport Village 30th Anniversary

Silver Addy Winners

Advertising for the Arts & Sciences, Integrated Campaign for “Sushi-Contemporary and Performance Art”

Advertising for the Arts & Sciences “Art Alive 2011 Save-The-Date Seed Envelope”

Bronze Addy Winners
Out-of-Home “Hazard Center, Avoid A Hazard Campaign”

Mixed Media “Seaport Village 30th Anniversary”

Interactive “Sushi-Contemporary and Performance Art Website”

Peoples Choice Winners
Creative Rescue “Aladdin Bail Bonds Billboard and TV Spot”

Interactive “Del Mar Thoroughbred Club”

Mixed Media “Seaport Village 30th Anniversary”

Advertising for the Arts & Sciences “Art Alive 2011 Save-The-Date Seed Envelope”

Check out all the other 2011 Addy Award Winners on the San Diego Ad Club website.

We have a secret.

Okay, maybe it’s not a secret but I bet most of you don’t know that Bailey Gardiner has a dedicated digital team.

Our mission? To research and share the latest technology, creative innovations and best practices in the online and mobile world. Each team member is assigned a different discipline that they research. We meet regularly to share our respective findings, listen to inspiring digital speakers and uncover the latest digital innovations that we can put to use for our clients.

It dawned on us that we were all really learning a lot and that it just wasn’t fair to keep all this great info to ourselves. This will serve as the first in a series of periodical blog posts designed to share our learning with a broader audience.

Online Advertising
Google’s is now beginning to test display advertisements highly targeted to the content of our emails and only for those already heavy in image content. Couple this with mandatory video advertising in YouTube and it’s clear that Google is getting more comfortable getting into the faces of its users.

Creative Innovations
Artist Alexandre Oudi has sparked a phenomenon on Facebook. Using the new format he has figured out how to display images in a conceptual way.

The Martin Agency and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts introduce a campaign to promote their new Picasso exhibition which uses QR codes and augmented reality in a unique way.

SEO
Local search is gaining in popularity. Google has listed how to optimize your Google Place Page and there is much content on the Internet about how to maximize review sites.  You can list your business on three major sites that will share your listing with many of the smaller ones.

A presentation from Benu Aggerwal gives great tips for making the most of Google Places and local search. Learn how to get traffic to your site as well as ideas for generating content. And last, get help with SEO competitive analysis.

Privacy
Google Chrome now offers an opt out feature as an app. This will allow users to prevent certain advertisers and data companies from tracking them online.  FTC has extended its deadline for the public to submit comments on its report about online privacy from Jan 31 to Feb 18.

Video
Breaking convention–altering the expected viewing experience–is still a popular technique for videos. Here are two examples for youtube. Sylvester Stallone’s Interview for The Expendables and Google’s Nexus X Unboxed by Ninjas.

Social
This is big stuff in the world of LBS. I know not all of you are fans of Foursquare, but these latest changes further prove that its developers know what they are doing. The platform is really getting quite sophisticated and has grown so much from its humble beginnings as a game. Just a few days ago it launched a whole slew of changes, but the explore tab and the algorithm for recommendations is particularly intriguing.

To save money, we printed the posters at our office. For a week we turned part of our kitchen into a silk screen studio.

Our pro-bono client Sushi Contemporary Performance and Visual Arts had a problem.

How do you create an ad campaign that increases attendance when you have virtually no budget?

And one maybe even larger problem, how do you target hipsters? That elusive, 20-something population segment that bucks mainstream advertising and is extremely difficult to market to.

First off, we took an in-depth look at our client. Sushi has a diverse range of acts, most of them up-and-coming artists who are launching their career. From musical flute solos to naked performers who crack eggs on their head on stage—each time you go you are guaranteed to see something shockingly different. We needed to capture the excitement and diversity of each performance and sell it.

Our solution?

We came up with an ad campaign that describes the art with phrases that are just as bizarre as the art itself. And knowing our audience loves hand-crafted, one-of-a-kind art pieces, instead of just running them as ads (which we couldn’t afford to buy anyways) we decided to silk screen them as posters on textured cotton papers. We numbered these limited prints and hung them in areas the creative community frequents—walls in North Park, coffee houses, near art museums and music venues. It may sound like a strange goal, but we wanted them to be stolen. The more people take them home and hang them in their houses, the more likely they are to keep Sushi top of mind and attend performances.

Instead of purchasing new ones, we borrowed silk screens from friends. They are almost little art pieces in themselves.

But we didn’t stop there. Our ultimate goal was to recruit new members and we needed a way to entice them to join. So we printed t-shirts and bags to be given out to as gifts for new and renewing memberships.

Lastly, because we were driving our audience to our website, our online presence needed to be just as hip as the artists that perform at Sushi. So we designed an updated, Wordpress site that allows the user to customize the site background image to one of their choosing and features a fly (our logo) that you can move around each page, echoing your experience at Sushi—like a fly on the wall.

What do you think of the campaign? Do you know any other budget-friendly ways to produce an ad campaign?

I recently read, Digital Advertising: Past, Present, Future. Written by a team of interactive creative directors and business owners known as Creative Social, it gives deep insight into how the advent of the internet has evolved the consumer-advertiser relationship.

Authors Sam Ball and Dave Bedwood explain that unlike TV or Print—which are essentially one way mediums—the internet is the first non-passive medium. It’s a place where the viewer makes the decision to engage with the ad… or ignore it.

Although this might seem like a challenge to advertisers, the advantage is that it brings customers and advertisers closer together. As Chris Clarke explains, while old advertising demonstrates product proposition using actors or pictures, new forms of advertising help potential consumers experience the product for themselves.

As Confucius said – “Tell me and I’ll forget, show me and I’ll remember, involve me and I’ll understand.”

This relationship has led to the advent of Branded Utility which Sam de Volder describes as meaningful marketing that improves peoples lives and adds value to the user. It can be a service, content, even a product, but it’s advertising that the consumer actively welcomes into their life.

Here are a few examples:

1. MySkyStatus – This app by Lufthansa shares your flight status while you are airborne via Twitter or Facebook, allowing your co-workers, friends and family to know if your flight is on time. The great thing about it is you can use it for any airline. This allowed broader use of the app and gave Lufthansa even more exposure.
2. Nike+ by Nike and Apple – These two companies worked together to create a microchip that transmit info about your run from your shoe to your ipod. You can then plug your ipod into the Nike+ website to keep track of your runs over time. This wildly successful product was embraced by consumers and the shoes are carried in most major running stores.
3. NonStopFernando – This ad campaign by Arab Emirates announced a new flight from Dubai to Sao Paolo taking only 14 hours and 40 minutes. To bring attention to this, the airline created content—a film featuring a character named “Fernando” who talks about everything you can do in Sao Paolo for 14 hours and 40 minutes. His video was shown inflight, on the internet and allows you to click on the film as it plays to go to the websites of restaurants, vacation spots, etc that Fernando talks about. You can also look him up on Delicious where visitors share their favorite Sao Paolo links. On Fernando’s Last.fm page you can even listen to tunes from musicians he talks about.
4. Fiat eco:Drive – This software allows you to track your driving behavior via a thumb drive that’s plugged into the car’s console. Plug the drive into your computer to view results that help you improve your driving techniques to reduce CO2 emissions and save gas money. Over 4 million journeys have been logged and analyzed online at eco:Ville where Fiat drivers can connect, provide experiences and insight.

So in this new year, I challenge all of you advertisers (including the team here at Bailey Gardiner) to discover what branded utilities you can create for your own clients.

In the words of Axel Chaldecott, “We’ve got to stop interrupting what people are interested in and be what people are interested in.”

Have you created a branded utility for any of your clients? Tell us about it. If you want to learn more, check-out this thoughtful presentation by Josh Chambers Associate Director of Planning at Tribal DDB in New York.

Three of the six Charger home games have been blacked out this season.

Several times this season I’ve been extremely frustrated with the Chargers. Not because of their performance on the field (that’s another blog post) but because of the six home games this season, three of them have been blacked-out due to poor attendance. Not only could I not watch the game at home, I couldn’t even go to a bar to see it because of NFL blackout regulations.

The theory of blocking out games is that the threat of a NFL blackout a week or so before a game will actually help spur ticket sales. And I think, in some cases, this is exactly what happens. However, when you’re in a recession economy I don’t think this works.

How can you force people to buy tickets when the price of them is so insanely high people simply can’t afford them, even if they wanted to?

I think that the NFL is bringing these poor ticket sales upon themselves. Because their ticket prices have historically been so high, they are creating a culture of fans who are accustomed to watching games at home—not at the stadium. And when the game is blacked-out, all these fans miss out on watching the game, including younger generations of future football-watching, merchandise-buying fans.

These young viewers are the future of the sport, and if they aren’t able to watch the games, I think it’s less likely that they will become devout fans. This is where the NFL is going wrong.

I know it’s hard to think that football could ever lose popularity, but look at hockey. After just one season off, the sport is still struggling to regain popularity. If the NFL wants to be successful going into the future, they need to start managing their brand, starting with fairer ticket pricing.

What do you think? Is the NFL’s brand is at risk?

Brainstorms are great for harnessing group power to generate lots of ideas, fast. At BG, we know what a huge asset brainstorms are which is why we do A LOT of them. And why we are always looking for new ways to keep them interesting in order to get the most ideas possible.

No one likes being in a brainstorm where there is more silence in the room than ideas. Take this test to see if you are doing a good job of keeping your brainstorms fresh. Give yourself a point for every “yes” answer.

Keep a jar of thought provoking questions in the room while you're brainstorming. When the ideas start to slow, read one to get the momentum going again.

1. Do you prep your audience?
Just like you prepare for meetings, better brainstorms require preparation, too. Give your brainstormers a brief run down of the topic you’ll be idea-ting on at least two days before you meet. That way they have time to learn about the topic and start doing their own brainstorming before they even get to the meeting.

2. Do you get out of the office?
It’s hard to think of great ideas when you’re not inspired by your surroundings. To think different, go to a different place that’s not the office. Brainstorming ideas for a hospital? Go to the hospital. Grab a bite in their café and do your brainstorm over lunch surrounded by doctors and nurses. There’s no better way to brainstorm than immersing yourself in the subject matter you’re thinking about.

3. Is everyone participating?
Every single person in your brainstorm is responsible for contributing ideas. In brainstorms the old adage is true, “no idea is a bad idea.” That means everyone should feel comfortable sharing and no one in the room should be nay-saying any ideas. Period.

3. Are you brainstorming different times of day?
Not everyone (ahem) is a morning person. Some people have more energy in the afternoon and some people are groggy after lunch. Try holding brainstorms at different times of day to see when your team is the most productive.

4. Are you asking questions?
During most brainstorms there are highs—when a lot of ideas are being generated—and lows—when there is virtual silence. To keep the momentum going, you need to stimulate your audience to approach the project from a different angle. Asking questions like, “What could we do if money wasn’t an obstacle?” or “What could we do that would get us in trouble?” are sometimes just the jump-starts you need to get the momentum in the room flowing again.

5. Are you using visuals?
Sometimes words aren’t the best way to capture ideas. Try drawing pictures of your idea instead of writing it out—this is especially good for a project that’s highly visual, like a logo design brainstorm. And don’t just write the ideas you brainstorm down in a notebook, put them up where everyone can see them. Seeing them visually can help stimulate more ideas.

6. Are you using different brainstorm methods?
Writing words down on a white board shouldn’t be the only way you brainstorm. This summer at the HOW Design Conference, designer and speaker David Sherwin gave some great suggestions on other ways to brainstorm effectively. Here are a few of his suggestions:

- Role play. Act out how a service, product or event would influence consumer behavior.
- Future-casting. Remove all reality constraints, working backward from what’s impossible to possible.
- Idea inversion. Take an idea and envision the exact opposite.
- Brute think. Force connections between your area of focus and a totally unrelated word. Pick something random, like the “ice” and force all of your ideas to have something to do with that word. You’ll be surprised at the very creative ideas you come up with.

How’d you do?
6 – 4 points: Congratulations, you are a brainstorming rockstar.
4 – 2 points: You could use a brush-up but you are well on your way to brainstorming brilliance.
2 – 0 points: Never fear, there’s always time to improve. Follow the tips above and you will soon be on your way to idea generating greatness.

I recently read Emotionomics by Dan Hill. As an emotion management and facial coding expert, Dan has been called on to interpret the real meaning of facial expressions from everyone from Barack Obama to Paris Hilton. His book is filled with valuable insights into client and co-worker relations including the importance of building positive emotional connections. Here are a few of my takeaways and thoughts:

- It’s almost impossible for you to disguise your emotions. Your face is the only place in the body where muscle is attached directly to the skin—this makes it extremely difficult for you to hide how you’re feeling. Initial reactionary facial expressions are so brief, they last less than half a second. Your eyes are so hard to control that only about 10% of the population are able to do so. During a meeting you can listen to a client’s rationale, but reading their emotions is even more important in understanding why they are/aren’t buying into an idea. A glimmer of something on their face might mean they are afraid—understanding this during a presentation can help you adjust what you say to assuage your client’s fears.

- There’s a reason humor works in advertising. Too much advertising has to be explained. Many brands have a complicated point of difference that is hard to get a consumer to connect with quickly. A better angle is to use humor—a joke is easy to get and doesn’t have to be explained. It provides an instant connection and makes the viewer want to engage because they are being entertained. End result? They walk away with a positive impression of the brand.

- Focus groups are a bad measure of what people really think. You never know if their opinion is really their own or if it’s been filtered through the group dynamics. The only time they work is if you read initial reactions instead of answers.

- People who can manage their emotions hold their jobs longer. According to a study by Leadership IQ, more employees are let go because they lack the emotional confidence than the necessary job skills—a stunning fact. The most toxic combo of emotions for people in the workplace is fear and contempt. It means you are afraid, dismiss people, find they’re below you and are afraid to take in new information. This leads many people to isolate themselves—the most dangerous situation.

- Some of the most successful ad campaigns work because they are emotional, not rational. Creating a rich story for your brand engages consumers. Just ask the people at Hal Riney & Partners. The San Francisco-based ad agency that mastered the art of the emotional campaign. They created a rich story behind the brand of Evian, helped Ronald Reagan get re-elected and popularized the Carpenter’s song “We’ve only just begun” in this commercial for Crocker Bank.

Want a contemporary example of emotional advertising? Just check-out almost any ad from the computer giant Apple. I bet you’re either a Mac or a PC person, right? Apple played-off that emotional urge to choose a side in these ads. How about their latest iPhone campaign promoting FaceTime? Yep, emotional too.

Have you seen any good examples of emotional advertising or have any good stories about using emotion in marketing?