Changing Focus

I've come to a decision. I created a separate Blog for work related stories and will keep this Blog for personal adventures, stupid thoughts and general merriment. My other Blog can be located here should you be interested in my Advertising related opinions:

http://waywardmediaguy.wordpress.com/

Now to go find some adventures to write about here...

Creative Media Philosophy

Over the years I've had a lot of successes, a few failures and my fair share of just getting the job done situations. When I look back on the places and projects I consider to be successes for me I find a few common threads.

1. I loved the Brand I worked on
2. I was learning as I went
3. I knew the client's business model
4. I had great partners, inside and outside the Agency
5. I had enough freedom to explore my ideas, but not so much that I had no accountability

I look at a recent(ish) project I worked on at DraftFCB San Francisco as a perfect example... Consider the suite of Del Monte Pet Products (Milk Bone, Pup-Peroni, Meow Mix, Snausages, Kibbles'n'Bits, 9Lives), these are all Brands I have a personal connection with as an animal lover, but more I loved the Advertising the Agency produced for these Brands. If you haven't seen the Pup-Peperoni ads I'm talking about check it out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqK8nbQ2ViQ&feature=related

I also was being challenged to learn more about response driven ads, specifically online coupons. This was the first time in my career that I was charged with both Brand measures and DR measures for the same campaign and it was eye-opening!

I was lucky enough to have clients that gave us the information we needed to effectively map out success measures before we went into Planning, thus we could really sink our teeth into how every dollar we spent in advertising mapped to the client's bottom line. Client types, you should hold your Agencies accountable to the level of information you share with them.

In addition to an AMAZING group of clients, I was also incredibly blessed with smart collaborative Creatives, some of the best Brand Strategy/Planning folks I've ever encountered, and a dedicated Account Service team. Not to mention I had the Buying power of Starcom Chicago behind me, which is always nice when you want to go crazy ... they ground you, but also make it easy to get enough media value to justify new ideas and I was lucky enough to have a sales rep community in San Francisco that listened well and brought back capabilities and ideas we could use!

Most importantly, since I was a Freelancer, I had a management structure around me that let me run with my ideas, but questioned and prodded and forced things to be absolutely perfect.

So, you ask, what's your point? Well, when I get right down to it I come to my personal "creative media" philosophy:

The best ideas are only ideas until you can execute them responsibly within your clients structure.

I've seen some amazing ideas put in front of me or my clients, that ultimately mean NOTHING if they don't contribute to the client's business objectives, or can't be executed responsibly. If you are a Media Planner, give some real thought into the difference between a cool idea and something that can drive your client's business.

Adventures in Advertising Part 2

This will be a quick one, relating why I think Media only Advertising Agencies don't always work so well...

My Most Dumbest Media Placement Ever

As a Media Planning professional I take pride in my ability to evaluate, negotiate and properly place ads in a variety of media vehicles. For years I ran the Print Planning/Buying at a "Full Service Agency" and took great pride in the work we did. But all good things come to an end someday right?

That someday came for me after a series of corporate decisions split my division off to be it's very own independent organization which would nevermore speak to anyone else in our old company (even though we were all still in the same building and worked on the same business).

We began our new life as an independent organization by telling our ex-coworkers all the things we would no longer be doing for them (in retrospect that may have been a bad way to start), no longer would we do co-op billing, no longer would we listen to them tell us why we should place ads were we didn't think it would work and no longer would we allow them to be our conduit to the client!! Funny how you draw lines in the proverbial sand only to realize your side of the sandbox isn't all it's cracked up to be...

With our new working relationship set up we proceeded to move on to the real work of evaluation and negotiations. We were now working effectively blind to the creative product, so all we had seen of the ads was a written "Creative Brief" with a load of Marketing jargon from the Client. Thanks to our new working non-relationship with our creative team we sure as hell hadn't seen the ad concepts!

For a lot of reasons I won't go into detail on we made the decision to run in a Sports Magazine with our ad... color me surprised when I opened up the magazine a few weeks later to look at my very well negotiated very premium positioned ad to find a lovely shot of a Bride with cake all over her face and a headline that read something to the affect of "on your special day"!

It only got worse, as is typical in my industry, another magazine at the time had a section the called "found porn" ... yup, they had thoughtfully run our ad gratis, with the headline changed to "Here Cums the Groom"!

oops... Guess the cake was on my face!

Adventures in Advertising Part 1

I’ve been a part of the San Francisco advertising community for more than 10 years, in retrospect I’ve had a great career (to date), but more importantly I’ve seen a lot fo crazy crap! This post is going to be the first installment of what I hope to make an ongoing series chronicling the quirky world I live in…

I’d like to relate what would have been my most embarrassing moment, hands-down ever, if I had been the other person in this story!

A Tale of HR Violation

Several years ago there was a boy who worked at an ad agency that had a VERY exclusive, employees only, Christmas party every year. The first year the boy attended the Christmas party he was warned by older, wiser more experienced ad-folk to be watchful as multiple HR violations were a mere step away… thankfully his first year sailed along smoothly and no untoward incidents happened.

By the third year the boy attended the Christmas party he was more seasoned and was charged with giving the warning to more junior, less experienced ad-folk and he was pleased, when again, no untoward incidents took place… in fact, the boy was beginning to think these HR violations were simply Agency legend!

By the fifth year, the boy was so sure he had missed the era of HR violations that he decided to skip the obligatory “HR violation conversation” with his staff… and this people is why I so love irony…

It was in this fifth year that the boy was given a very big promotion! As the liquor flowed and the music began the boy began to cut loose and enjoy his new title, his fantastic raise and the general adoration of all those around him… shots were taken, toasts were given and in time the HR manager swung herself onto the dance floor… the boy was suddenly wondering if perhaps the stories of old never happened because the HR people at his company were so vigilant…

Now the boy’s memory was admittedly clouded by the merriment, but there came a time when he was suddenly alone on the dance floor with the HR manager, it didn’t seem to matter that her dress was very short, and very tight, and that she had a predatory gleam in her eyes… she was the HR manager, and he was a well known gay boy! Surely this was safe…

The boy became nervous as he realized that he was the member of the pack who hadn’t kept up when the others had left for the watering hole. He began to slowly make his way out of danger, keeping an eye on the stiletto-shod creature on the prowl. It was at this point that the HR manager pounced on the boy like a Cougar on the hunt! Suddenly her hands were on him, her dress had “accidentally” slid over her hips and her tongue was in his mouth!! It took three women with cocktails to pry her off, and in parting she had this gem to share…

“I know you’re gay… but I can kiss whoever I want”

It was at this moment that the boy finally realized why the warning had always been carefully referred too as “the HR violations conversation”

Boredom

I don't really have much to say at the moment, but I figured I'd get my very first non-micro-blog posting out of the way.

I'm sitting on my couch in my PJs at 9am on a Thursday morning and because I'm taking a vacation day I'm contemplating drinking my face off! Luckily for me I'm scheduled to play tennis later today so I will have to hold off on the boozing until a much more socially acceptable hour.

I should be unpacking various boxes and organizing things around my new apartment, but instead I'm finding all kinds of not very interesting things to do in an attempt to lift the fog of boredom from my mind... Here's a list of crap I do because I need a distraction:

1. Facebook (I'm addicted to Facebook, I may need a 12-step program)
2. Drink (we've gone over this)
3. Smoke cigarettes (usually this is linked to #2)
4. Surf porn on the internet (hello I'm a guy)
5. Watch cartoons (yes I still channel my inner 6 year old)
6. Pace around my apartment and think about all the things I want to do to it (note how I avoid the actual work part by having deep thoughts?)

Now you've probably realized that these are all fantastic time waster activities, which of course means I accomplish almost nothing in my downtime. Perhaps I need to rethink my boredom strategies a little.