52LTD Blog

An Experiment In Fandom and Advertising

April 19th, 2011

Portland has soccer fever, specifically Timbers fever, thanks in no small part to the Timbers Army and Jelly Helm Studios. Last week’s sold out home opener put the loyal, raucous fans, known as the Timbers Army, in the spotlight as much as the team. The spotlight was bright enough that ‘Timbers Army’ and the mascot, ‘Timber Joey’ were trending worldwide on Twitter during the game. Even Oliver Phelps, who played George Weasley in the Harry Potter films took notice:

In the months leading up to the inaugural MLS season, a brilliant billboard campaign by Jelly Helm Studios got the buzz started. Jelly talks about the process on his blog: This Is Jelly’s Blawg

“Still, this was a cool exercise, and a pretty neat and unusual story: A major league sports team creating a billboard featuring fans AND letting the fans decide who was featured – not to mention the unexpected make up of the final group: a grandma, a guy in a wheelchair, a dad with a baby carrier and a ballerina in soccer cleats.”

Check out the Timbers schedule to see the Timbers Army in action.

Tags: crowdsource, Jelly Helm Studios, Portland Timbers
Posted in Advertising, Media | No Comments »

This Looks Familiar

December 14th, 2010

Ahhh PDX… the little, big city. Big enough to provide some big city shopping for this Christmas season (can I get a hell yeah for H&M?), yet small enough you almost always know someone meandering down the other side of the street. More than once, this little-big city effect has poked it’s head into 52′s conference room. While walking through a portfolio from one person, I recognized some work from the other side of the street…. er… from someone else’s portfolio. Though the two portfolio owners had roles on the project that were obviously different, they both used the same photo to represent the work. In this case, the two folks were fortunately very clear to point out their roles in the project and that the photo of the work was the only one the company they were contracted with had provided to them. That explained the duplication of the photo in multiple books. However, if they had not both been so clear, an interviewer could have mistook them for telling tall tales. Below is one recruiter’s account of an interviewee who fibbed about whose work was whose… and how to avoid giving the wrong idea if you happen to find yourself in such a situation.

I am very trusting, especially when it comes to portfolios. If you are showing me your book and there’s a load of work inside, I assume it is yours. I trust it is yours. Why would I doubt otherwise?

Am I too trusting? Are there recruiters out there who keep an ounce of doubt wondering whether every piece inside is actually truly that persons? I never, ever would have thought so.

Until today.

There is a crazy story circling the internet today about a not-at-all-junior creative who has be outed for putting creative work he did not do on his portfolio site. Un-capital B-believeable.

Lots of thoughts are swirling through my mind:
why in the heck would someone do this?
have I been looking at bogus work from other people?
how will I ever know what is truly legit or not?
how many other people do this?
why in the heck would someone do this?

Guys, this is never, never, never ok.

First, let’s just say you get hired off a bogus portfolio. Day one on the job you’ll have to prove your creative chops and when you come up short, you’ll be found out anyway.

Second, let’s say someone finds out (a la not-so-junior-creative referenced above). And not just someone, a large portion of the advertising community finds out. Well, you can kiss your reputation and hire-ability goodbye. And I will tell you, that is never going to be worth it.

Some advice: Be very clear on attributing who else worked on the pieces in your book. Be very clear about your role on the work. Be clear about what is your original idea and what is not. Be clear about whether you worked fulltime versus freelanced. Be clear on your title and role. Be clear about your salary (that’s a whole other blog post by the way).

Be clear. Be clear. Be clear. And, god forbid, do not steal another person’s creative work.

Written by Cecilia Gormon and originally posted at: http://www.creativerecruiter.blogspot.com/

Tags: creative work, Design, designers, talent
Posted in Design, How To's | No Comments »

The MAN and You

December 2nd, 2010

Written by David K. for 52′s Blog. David is a Portland writer/producer for a local news behemoth. He’s been writing, shooting and content creating for print, the web and TV since graduating from Portland State University in 1998. He also is an aging pseudo hipster veteran of Portland’s music scene, playing with the Hazmats, The Low Arts and Mr. Howl, among recent projects. He lives in North Portland.

No one wants be held down by The Man. The Man has been keeping down rebellious and artistic souls throughout history. The Man has inspired everything from Jesus’ crucifixion and Western Civilization’s breakaway from feudalism to the shaking hips of Rock and Roll.

People I am here to tell you – Oprah is The Man. Sweeping powers over women, television, lifestyles, maybe even presidential elections. You don’t want to get on the wrong side of Oprah, do you? Ask Letterman. Now – The Man is moving her empire off of the “vintage media.”

The decision to end the syndicated show has tectonic implications for the media of the next Millennium. In short, stations can’t afford to pay the massive overheads due to ad revenue fallout, and the overall decline of content worth in the rise of the .com world.

U.K.’s Observer sums it up:

“In the months and years to come, whenever big programs like The Oprah Winfrey Show sit down to renegotiate their deals with local, broadcast stations they are likely to find a grim market where station-group managers are unable or unwilling to match the fees of yesteryear, let alone increase them. That leaves two options for the likes of Oprah. Lower your fees. Or pack up shop.”

You may not think this affects you, as a creator, as a designer, a mAd Man, whatever your gig, but it does. What they say about war goes for broadcast mediums: You may not go looking for it (in this case TV-Web convergence) but IT may coming looking for YOU. A channel on the digital dial is where your work is headed. And you don’t need to know the number.

The days of the Big Three are obviously long past us, and their power to hold advertisers’ dollars are being condensed, specialized, localized and downsized. These are your clients. This is your audience.

Tags: Advertising, creative work, Media, Television
Posted in Advertising, Design, Industry News, Media | No Comments »

What’s so Wrong with Comic Sans?

November 29th, 2010

Comic Sans, that unassuming jaunty typeface lurking inside millions of computers, has become the target of an online hate campaign. Simon Garfield explains why normally mild-mannered people are so enraged by its use. Originally posted on bbc.co.uk

How did schools ever advertise their Christmas fairs without it? Has a homemade birthday card ever looked so friendly written in anything else? Have type lovers ever found anything they loathe as much?

If you wrote these questions in Comic Sans you’d have something that was warm, inoffensive and rather unsuitable, a typeface that’s gone wrong. And you’d also have something guaranteed to provoke a howl of protest.

Comic Sans is unique: used the world over, it’s a typeface that doesn’t really want to be type. It looks homely and handwritten, something perfect for things we deem to be fun and liberating. Great for the awnings of toyshops, less good on news websites or on gravestones and the sides of ambulances.

Last year it stuck out like an unfunny joke in Time magazine and Adidas adverts, and even the BBC wasn’t immune, choosing the font to promote its Composers of the Year during the Proms.

What can be done? One can buy the “Ban Comic Sans” mugs, caps and T-shirts, and help finance a documentary called Comic Sans, Or the Most Hated Font In The World.

Black-tie do (not)

Holly and David Combs, the husband and wife cottage industry behind bancomicsans.com, argue that the misuse of the font is “analogous to showing up for a black tie event in a clown costume”. Some of what the Combses have to say is tongue-in-cheek, but it is hard to disagree with their claims that type – used well or badly – has the ability to express meaning far beyond the basic words it clothes.

But why, more than any other font, has Comic Sans inspired so much revulsion?

Partly because its ubiquity has led to such misuse (or at least to uses far beyond its original intentions). And partly because it is so irritably simple, so apparently written by a small child. Helvetica is everywhere and simple too, but it usually has the air of modern Swiss sophistication about it, or at least corporate authority. Comic Sans just smirks at you, and begs to be printed in multiple colours.

Perhaps the most comic thing about Comic Sans is that it was never designed as a font for common use. It was intended merely as a perfect solution to a small corporate problem.

It was created in 1994 by Vincent Connare, who worked at Microsoft with the title of “typographic engineer”.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Advertising Culture, Design, Design fonts, design jobs
Posted in Advertising, Design | No Comments »

Shop Uses Freelancers to Avoid Hires

November 22nd, 2010

Originally posted in the Boston Business Journal – by Lisa van der Pool

As companies trim their advertising budgets, the ad agencies they work with are also learning how to survive the recession with less business than in recent years.

Jeff Freedman, co-founder and marketing principal of Boston-based ad shop Small Army, says that he has had to tweak his – and his clients’ – strategy.

Many of the agency’s clients, which include Bugaboo Creek Steak House, SolidWorks and Emerson Hospital, among others, are focused more on planning and how to spend their media dollars in this economy. For instance, some clients have trimmed print work, but beefed up their online advertising.

“There might be less ads, but more messaging and positioning work,” said Freedman, who is encouraging clients to be bold with their marketing messages to grab attention during the downturn.

As for his own business, Freedman, whose 18-person shop is on Newbury Street, has a positive outlook.

But Freedman is nevertheless taking precautions to keep costs in check by being conservative about hiring.

“We won’t hire people unless we know we can take care of them for a while. We never want to be in a position where we hire people and then the economy hits us. So we’re more dependent on freelancers,” said Freedman, who notes that there’s a large pool of talented freelancers in the market now.

Tags: Advertising, creative jobs, creative work
Posted in Advertising, Design | No Comments »

Changes at Light Speed

November 18th, 2010

Written for 52′s blog by David K. Thanks so much for contributing David!!

David is a Portland writer/producer for a local news behemoth. He’s been writing, shooting and content creating for print, the web and TV since graduating from Portland State University in 1998. He also is an aging pseudo hipster veteran of Portland’s music scene, playing with the Hazmats, The Low Arts and Mr. Howl, among recent projects. He lives in North Portland.

Glancing at the newspaper boxes, stop signs and telephone poles on Portland neighborhood streets there’s always some new meme to catch my eye, usually a band or political sticker, but sometimes I just can’t tell and it becomes an inspiration for my day. ‘Stop driving’ ‘Your band sucks,’ among the most seen around but many times much more thought provoking.

Heading out of the coffee shop on a recent bright morning, the red-and-white accordion player and the words “The Vintage Media” wrapped around the palm-sized sticker on the yellow Oregonian box.

Now of course, that would be a cool band name. Maybe that was their sticker, I didn’t know , I hadn’t heard of them yet (turns out they’re a Portland band with such killer influences as Elliot Smith, Guided By Voices, but we’ll talk about music later.)

http://www.myspace.com/thevintagemedia

Point is – the picture painted in my mind reignited the ongoing and light speed changes we go through daily in the media world. It seems by the time we can think of the questions, the conversation is already outdated by a new technology or application.

Whether it’s writing, doing video, broadcasting, podcasting or Tweeting, most people are still anchored in “The Vintage Media.” It’s where everything came from, with many castoff models along the way.

There aren’t many word processor support groups anymore, and Dagguereotypes are hell to pose for. We’re digging through the new toy box, chucking the clunky and looking for the slickest ways and gizmos to tell our stories as we fly through the pipe. Yet don’t forget, at the end of the day that is what we do. An iPhone is not a replacement for a campfire tale. And while the tools can help make the story easier to access, flashier and more connected, they do not by themselves demand the story is any good.

One of my favorite pieces of advice to those entranced by the ease, accessibility and power of modern media tools in broad and narrow casting is “Just because you CAN doesn’t mean you SHOULD.”

Did you ever wonder why NBC was owned by General Electric? Well, they made some of the first radios, and they needed something to say in between the Ovaltine and Pall Mall ads.

That sometimes has led to the enemy of art – Mediocrity. Any jackass can write, shoot and publish anything they want. And as today’s instant America’s-Funniest-Videos model Youtube shows us, they do. And it settles to the lowest common denominator. I’d rather see something so horrible it’s good, than something mediocre. The opposite of great isn’t awful — it’s benign.

As the new takes over the vintage (Comcast-buys-NBC comes to mind) it’s shattering (or confirming) the ways many of us see our future in the media. Don’t even get me started on newspapers. Too many old schoolers still think a blog is a messenger and not a medium.

Stay with my ramblings – next time we’ll talk about how Oprah is The Man, using her mighty hammer to smash the future of networks and where the content is bound.

Tags: creative jobs, creative work, Media
Posted in Media | No Comments »

It’s About Who You Know

November 15th, 2010

How many times do you hear the phrase, “its not what you know, its who you know?” Well, to a large degree it’s true. But it does not mean what you may think it means.

What it does is point to the power of networking in a job search. We advise that people do 3 main things when looking for a job. 1. Following job posting boards is a necessary evil of the job search. You may find a job here, but you are just one of thousands of people looking at the same posting. 2. A placement agency like 52 can open doors and provide opportunities that never show up on job boards. A placement agency is also a function of the next and critical step. 3. Network. Often networking is the most important missing piece. It’s also of course, the hardest one and the one that requires the most work.

So, getting back to the “who you know”. It’s not really who you know as much as it is what you know and who you know. If you don’t have marketable employment skills, it really doesn’t matter who you know, chances are you still are not going to be hired to run your mom’s friend’s marketing department. The key is to know as many people in your chosen profession and specialization as you can. If you are good at what you do, you should have a network of people that know it. When looking for a new job, you tap into that network and let it work for you.

If you need to build a network, it takes time, effort and focus. When you make a contact make sure you also ask that contact for a referral. That way one contact becomes two. And always follow up. Keep track of your contacts and the activity you have had with them. When trying to build a network on a job search you need to ask yourself, who would hire me? As in, what is the position or job title of the person who would hire me? If you are a graphic designer, it might be a creative director or marketing manager. Those are the people then that you target for your networking. You also target people who would be doing the same work as you, but they are more able to refer you to opportunities, the higher level people may be the ones doing the hiring. Either way, it’s still networking and building your sphere of contacts.

It’s good to get this skill down early because it is a recurring theme. A job search through proactive networking is very similar to the business development cycle that companies pursue. And it’s hard work. But, it is worth it because you never know the opportunities that will present themselves, either in the short term or years down the road.

Because, it’s all about who you know.

Tags: creative jobs, Jobs, Networking
Posted in Advertising, Design, Industry News | No Comments »

Confessions of an Account Planner

November 11th, 2010

Written for 52′s blog by Linda Z. Thanks Linda!

Working in the planning capacity in the marketing industry for more than 10 years, I and other account planners run into the similar challenges.

One of the biggest is clients and creatives who don’t believe in research. Usually the aversion has to do with an experience(s) involving bad research or a lack of knowledge on what to do with information once it is presented.

Research-averse people need to know that gathered information is a launching point. From there, you grow, create and excel.

On rare, and very lucky occasions, clients say out loud and directly that they don’t believe in research. However, the usual and unfortunate situation (and a source of ongoing contention) is that most clients will not admit this. Instead, they will hem and haw over the budget, methodology, your background, the timeline, the recruit and/or anything else they can use to pick apart the project. In so doing, they are avoiding the real issue: that they truly don’t believe in research.

Experience has shown me this stems from a lack of understanding.

At the same time, creatives will fight tooth and nail to avoid doing research. When a creative, hears “research” they equate it with “creative testing,” which to them signals the death of creativity.

Resistance to the concept of research puts planning in the role of the ugly stepsister: Abused and misunderstood.

It is seen as the last step to validate and confirm opinions, soothe egos or kill campaigns. We’ve all been there and it isn’t pretty.

The process that is “planning” is at least helpful and hopefully inspiring. Done correctly, research (creative testing) can yield insights regarding the target audience that can be used to help hone messages.

It can be a great tool for selling the work to the client, for creating effective resonance with the audience and giving vision and voice to the brand.

After all, brands live in the hearts and minds of consumers, and you are nowhere if you don’t know how to speak their language. Research provides understanding and interpretation!

But, I digress. Let’s get back to the root of this problem. When it comes to resistance to research, it is most likely because people have conjured in their minds a notion that research is some blue-haired lady at the library, using the Dewey Decimal system to look up a book written in 1967 by Professor So-and-So.

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Tags: creative jobs, creative work
Posted in Advertising, Design | No Comments »

But Yer’ Honor, He Asked Me to Be 1099

November 8th, 2010

By Sara Davey Schmidt, Senior Account Manager 52 PDX

For those who delve deeper into the world of independent contracting and incorporate as a business, there are greater tax benefits and retirement plans available to them than W2′s. They can write off business expenses (iPhone anyone?), pay themselves a salary to fit into a lower income tax bracket, and more. We say kudos to those who have found a way to effectively work within a system that still only parses workers into Farm and Non-Farm, let alone has the sophistication to accommodate a dynamic workforce of freelancers and contractors. These career contractors will prefer and may even ask to work as an Independent Contractor. For those lucky dogs writing their own ticket, they might even make it contingent upon accepting the work! They will be willing to sign all the paperwork that states as much, but none of that matters if the “powers-that-be” deem this “Independent” to look like, walk like and talk like an “employee”.

The Council of Bureaucratic Elders

Who is this nebulous group of “deciders” behind the proverbial curtain deeming individuals as “independent” or “employee”? They are the agencies that care about this great nation’s hard-working labor force; the agencies whose mission is to make the workplace a better, happier place, oh, and have a vested interest in income and employer tax revenue & Workers’ Compensation–the IRS, Departments of Labor, Departments of Revenue, and Employment Development Departments. Surprisingly, these disparate Federal and State bureaucracies haven’t yet agreed on a consistent set of factors that determine Independent Contractor status. Even when their questions coincide, they each weigh the answers to the questions differently. It’s like dealing with the government! Oh, wait…

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Tags: creative jobs, Freelancing
Posted in Industry News | No Comments »

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Written by Cecilia Gormon and originally posted at: http://www.creativerecruiter.blogspot.com/

Black-tie do (not)

The Council of Bureaucratic Elders