e/spyer

I lived in the U.S. from 17 to 14 years old. I could feel the racial segregation. At school there was a place where were the white people; the Mexicans / Latinos elsewhere; African Americans in other place. I was mixed a little with each group. I played basketball with blacks and made friends, we had a small group of Brazilians, and also had good vibes with Latinos and White people. But I felt there was a bond between them. No preconception: but something like: I belong to that group, here is where I’m staying.

It is impressive in a country like this, an African descendent with a Muslim name, going for election. Still intrigues me. Barack Obama had a great strategy that goes beyond marketing. I wanted to know more and I found a very interesting lecture on TED: Clay Shirky shows exactly how social media can make history.
He comments about how the idea has motivated individuals and the concept of spreadability. Makes a parallel with a political campaign in Nigeria, which uses SMS technology compared to the U.S. which uses a complete technology platform. He talks about the transfer of social capital and not the technological capital. Goes on the evolution of media. Twitter in China … The Great Firewall of China … a very interesting talk.

Internet is the first media in history that has native support for groups and conversation at the same time. Where the phone gave us the one to one power; television, books, magazine gaves us the one to many pattern; the internet gives us the many to many pattern.”

Here goes the complete talk:

I have also remembered Droga5 New York case that was in Cannes this year… Obama’s strategy to get the Orthodox Jewish votes in Florida. Fantastic.

The Great Schlep: Jewish Council for Education and Research

And finally I’ll link to the campaign’s music video:

and the poster that in such a short time has made history:

If you have time go see  TED, ideas worth spreading. View by category of interest. It ha always one talk better than another.

The media has changed. Yes we can!

When I was living in Miami, I was about 14 years old, I had in mind I would like to work in advertising industry, Of course I had no idea what that meant. Perhaps the main reason is because my father used to work on a TV channel and I had access to that world behind the screens.

I arrived there knowing three words in English: “How are you?” But I thought it meant: “What is your name?” It took a while to learn the first words in English and then I wondered how it was to say “publicidade”, they told me: advertising. Not easy at all! But that was just the beginning…

A guy that I was a fan in Brazil is called Washington Olivetto. A great source of inspiration to everybody: “alo, alo, W/Brasil.” And when I arrived in Miami I wanted to know who were the ad genious. So they mentioned Crispin Porter + Bogusky, also Wieden + Kennedy (its wonderful campaigns for Nike), plus DDB, BBDO, among others.

In this post, I am speaking specifically of CP+B, which surprised everyone with its recent campaigns for Burger King, Hulu, Dominos … and tis week surprised me three times in a roll.

First with this incredible Chuck Porter lecture organized by the Creativity Club of São Paulo – CCSP.

I don’t think the most valuable information about how we think about brands will be brought by an article or by a book that was published last week. I think it came well before that, around 380 B.C. and was developed by one of the first major advertising member, Plato. And what he said was: “there is no learning without emotion”

It is worth paying attention in his work philosophy:

Palestra Porter CCSP – São Paulo from Emanuel Spyer on Vimeo.

This philosophy has surprised me again when I visit the new website (http://beta.cpbgroup.com/) completely in beta and fully integrated to the business philosophy. It is an digital experiment in their corporate site. A site that shows blogs, twittes, news, creative works, tags to each client; in real time: all in one place. But what I found most amazing is that it is: SIMPLE and AMAZING.

And they were able to surprise me again. By clicking developers the following message appears:

We like sharing. If we wanted to keep things to ourselves, we wouldn’t have built a site that shows you the nasty things people say about us alongside all the nice stuff. In fact, we like sharing so much we’re even going to share this site with you by making Nude, the code behind cpbgroup.com, open source. We’ll be releasing it soon so check back often. And then do with it what you like. Build a website for yourself. Add a module to your existing site. Or, if you’re into sharing too, maybe you want to develop a new module for our site. We can’t promise we’ll use it. But if it’s amazing, we promise we’ll be amazed. Because besides sharing, we also like really smart people.

I will sure come check again to see the Open Source Code!

K.I.S.S.

This year Cannes was supposed to be a dog, and its name is Tura. It was subscribed in all campaigns as Creative Advisor by Chacho – Creative Director of Leo Lisbon. If you surf Tura’s website (http://www.turathedog.com) you’ll see everything that the dog has earned at the biggest advertising award and in many other competitions.

Was it a satire about the competition?

Where Leo won awards, there was the dog, wearing the right badge and everything. Nice idea!

I have never been very eager to advertising awards because I knew that most were ghosts. That is, almost everything we see was never approved by the client, and not even inserted in real media.

But this year, Dm9 creative – Murilo Melo did an interesting speech that was propagated by Flavio Proença, and that changed my idea about the award: “imagine that Cannes is our fashion week, and we are creating campaigns that normally do not leave to the street but are trends for future seasons. ”

I agreed with his thought. But what I think is the coolest this year were the ones that really happened, especially the campaigns for Burger King:

Freakout:

Virgins:

And also, the best job in the world campaign:

And of course the Tura’s campaigns:

Red Cross:

Efêmero Museum:

What I am most upset is that I know that the results in the vast majority of cases going to Cannes are increased or invented.

But it has one, I consider the best of all times, and that the numbers do not lie. A campaign that was pure strategy, marketing / communication / positioning: The Barack Obama political campaign.

It is worth reading a little more on the subject at AdAge. Also see this interview with Kotler:

This year, DDB has invited the Obama’s campaign strategist, David Plouffe, to speech at the Cannes Festival. And also took the award for second best global network of advertising.

DM9DDB celebrates the title of Agency of the Year! It was a job made on the basis of fashion week, which meant that the creative team had to think outside the box for a year for this award. And brought the agency back to the top of the advertising world.

Even with all this talk on Cannes, an award that is truly relevant to both agencies and to the client is the Effie Awards and I am happy to know that this award begins to be important in Brazil.

In addition, of course, the most non-sense and fun Brazilian advertising award: o desenlions.

The virus, like the swine flu, is something that appears suddenly and is now worldwide. According to Wikipedia, a virus is basically protein particle that can infect living organisms.

Today to make a viral is a trend. The client asks for a viral, the creative makes a viral. Do you think an agency is able to make a viral?

This is a talk of hours in my lunchtime: with friends of the agency and outside the agency. Whenever I see or hear someone talking about making a viral it makes me listen carefully. I think the viral is not just doing it, but rather a consequence. Nothing is born viral, but it becomes viral.

Every week I receive a new report (very inspiring!) made by Paula Rizzo (paularizzo.com) for DM9. A few weeks ago I saw a campaign of Rayban:

While I was watching this video it made me directly associate with one of the first interesting “viral” I saw on the internet:

And then to this Lego film:

These three videos were and are a hit on the internet and there many other similar.
Are we creating a formula to make a viral?

If so, this formula must end. Because when I watche Rayban’s film, I remembered the other two, and because it didn’t bring anything new or relevant to spread, I was not an active transmitter of this “virus”, in short, had no spreadability.

(if anyone remembers any more videos like those, please comment)

I see the current communication as the Black Swan Theory, or the unexpected is the key to understanding the world, explained for me at a lunch by my brothers Juca (naozero.com.br) and Pablo Spyer.

But I see many people offering viral as a normal media. Inside media strategy we see TV, Radio, Newspapers and Viral. That makes me a little concerned because they are thinking viral as a media and not as a consequence.

I went look for more information and found Henry Jenkins (http://henryjenkins.org/), one of the masters of new media, creator of the term transmídia, published on his blog a research done by the Convergence Culture Consortium called “If it doesn’t spread it is dead”, it’s worth see the video on the link. It explains the concept of convergence, not only technological convergence, but the social convergence.

“Today we live in a world where every story, image, sound, idea, brand will be present on all platforms of media.”

And Henry Jenkins goes beyond; he has written a post containing more than 80 pages, explaining the concept of spreadability. Reserve a time to read.