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• January 2006 (5)

  Exceptional Experiences | Making statements

  Posted by Misha Cornes | January 31, 9:32 am

  It’s just another building, right? Ok, so the new New York Times building is all steel, so maybe it looks a little cooler going up, but it’s still just another building. And since we live in a city with hundreds of new buildings going up all the time, what’s the big deal?
  Walk by the construction [...]

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  Exceptional Experiences | Dashboard for your life

  Posted by Misha Cornes | January 31, 9:01 am

  We loved Ambient’s Orb when its soft glow reminded us that the market was tanking. With the Ambient Dashboard, we can get a bit more specific. The new product ties simple analog meter design to a wide array of information feeds via Ambient’s nationwide wireless broadcast network. No need to plug the device into the [...]

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  Tech talk | Bandwidth with a little help from your friends

  Posted by Misha Cornes | January 31, 8:36 am

  The Coral Content Distribution Network is, according to their own site, a "decentralized, self-organizing, peer-to-peer web-content distribution network."  What this means is that if you’re running a web site on a server behind your cable modem, you can still serve up massive files (or small ones) to large audiences without using up all your bandwidth [...]

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  Culture | Institutionalizing innovation

  Posted by Misha Cornes | January 30, 6:48 am

  As the "world flattens", intense cost and creative pressure from emerging markets forces corporations to rethink innovation – in particular how scale and institutionalize it, and how it maps to customer experience.
  The theme has been popping up everywhere this week, from the "creative imperative" at the World Economic Forum in Davos to coverage of [...]

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  Exceptional Experiences | Save that cork

  Posted by Misha Cornes | January 27, 3:15 pm

  Talk about design within reach. The somewhat accessible design store that brought us in-stock delivery of Eames lounge chairs and Saarinen tables opened their online windows to champagne-drinking designer-wannabes. Create a miniature chair using only the cork, wire and foil from no more than two champagne bottles. Winners take home about $5,000 in DWR money [...]

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• February 2006 (5)

  Creative Sensibility | Altoids' Singing Love Telegram

  Posted by Misha Cornes | February 28, 8:51 am

  Some of you might have seen this already, but for those who haven’t
  Altoids created an exceptional experience for Valentine¹s Day. The Singing Love Telegram allows users to send a personalized love song to someone they love, or at least like.
  As always, it all comes down to the details. The carnival barker (who I believe is [...]

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  Creative Sensibility | Microsoft two ways

  Posted by Misha Cornes | February 27, 4:33 pm

  First, an insider, I presume, offers a piss take on Microsoft doing iPod packaging… including a walk through of the creative process.
  Next.. this one more interesting…. a planned leak? of a new mobile tablet from Microsoft called, Origami. More from Engadget. (thanks Rie, Nick)
  Troy

  More

  Media morphing | Edmunds introduces Carspace

  Posted by Misha Cornes | February 27, 2:04 pm

  Today one of the leading sites for car buyers, Edmunds.com,
  launches its own social networking model, CarSpace.com. It’s modeled
  after MySpace except it’s exclusively for those that obsess over cars.
  Edmunds has managed to consolidate all things automotive into a Branded
  site. For the nearly 60 million Americans that buy a new or used car
  each year it’s an added [...]

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  Exceptional Experiences | Dream to reality

  Posted by Misha Cornes | February 27, 2:01 pm

  UPDATE: BIG MEDIA PULLS CONTENT LIKE THIS FROM SITES LIKE YOUTUBE…Life imitating art. An exceptional story. (thanks Kathryn)
  Troy

  An

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  Media morphing | Democracy wants media to be free

  Posted by Misha Cornes | February 27, 8:03 am

  The Participatory Culture Foundation, a Massachusetts based non-profit, wisely thinks the best way to protect rights is via free and open tools that give everyone the ability to produce and and share media. Democracy, an open-source internet TV platform, is their solution. Video Bomb helps you find, the Broadcast Machine lets you publish, Democracy makes [...]

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• March 2006 (5)

  Creative Sensibility | Links for Friday

  Posted by Misha Cornes | March 31, 7:32 am

  Church of Lego (above), seats 1372 Lego poeple, over 75,000 bricks: http://www.amyhughes.org/lego/church/index.html
  Dutch mobile site with outstanding  Flash / video integration:
  http://www.hethuisvanmorgen.nl
  New Office features and design introduced: http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/asx/OfficeUIIntro.asx
  Lee Clow and
  Alex Bogusky talk about the future of advertising:
  http://www.adcritic.com/creativity20/
  Alex Bogusky at Future of Advertising
  Summit:
  http://www.obttv.com/2006/02/future-marketing-summit-alex-bogusky.html#comments

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  The social net | More mashups

  Posted by Misha Cornes | March 31, 6:45 am

  The post on the Skittles mashup ignited a  great thread inside Organic this
  week… some excellent resources to share as a result. For your
  Friday enjoyment:
  Partybenhttp://partyben.com/downloads
  "RadioHollaback": Clash vs.Gwen Stefani’
  …and for Fugazi nostalgia:"Independent Room": Fugazi vs. Destiny’s Child

  Kleptones
  http://kleptones.com/pages/downloads.html
  “Closer to the Boxer” : The Cure’s "Close to Me" vs. Asheru’s
  "Think About" vs. Simon and Garfunkel’s "The Boxer"

  Go Home Productionshttp://www.gohomeproductions.co.uk/mp3.html
  "Uptight
  Maggie": [...]

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  Media morphing | Youtube's most popular commercials

  Posted by Misha Cornes | March 30, 7:42 am

  I thought this was an interesting tidbit as I’ve haven’t seen the effect of social networks on traditional advertising quantified quite like this. There is an important distinction to  be drawn from these numbers as these represent "active" views and not "passive" impressions. Sony and VW have to be happy with 1.9 and 1.3-million views [...]

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  Exceptional Experiences | Why I love the internet

  Posted by Misha Cornes | March 29, 7:09 pm

  I love the Internet. It’s full of obscure little pages that people put up that are dedicated to the things they love.
  Film Title Stills: http://www.shillpages.com/movies/mnew.shtmlBottle Caps:
  http://www.members.global2000.net/~buda/Sweaters:
  http://www.lesliehall.com/8-sweaters.htmlThings on Kitties:
  http://www.stuffonmycat.com/Kitties in Things:
  http://www.catsinsinks.com/GUIs: http://www.guidebookgallery.org/
  And
  my current fave:Batman Onomatopoeias:
  http://www.batmania.com.ar/paginas/serie_onomatopeyas.htm
  !OX?-eth!
  Roger
  Wong 

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  Culture | The future of customer intelligence?

  Posted by Misha Cornes | March 29, 8:07 am

  Video artist Chris Oakley imagines a invasive new era of RFID powered CRM in his short film, the Catalogue.
  Troy

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• April 2006 (5)

  Tech talk | Application development for the people

  Posted by Misha Cornes | April 28, 8:18 am

  Web application development is dramatically simplified with forthcoming apps like Dabble DB. The result… cheap applications on demand. More idea, less execution.
  Watch a brief demo here. Blog post here and here.
  Troy

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  Marketing strategy | Everybody wants to be a copywriter, part II

  Posted by danielturman | April 27, 7:00 pm

  Now it’s Mastercard’s turn. No doubt aware that the spoofs of their “Priceless” campaign have been quietly viral for some years now, the good folks at McCann Erickson and Mastercard are letting the world play MadLibs with two spots. The ability to store and/or send your creation is notably missing, perhaps in a nod to [...]

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  Exceptional Experiences | State of photography on the web

  Posted by Misha Cornes | April 27, 10:07 am

  The latest (actually the May/June issue) of American Photo profiles the state of photography on the web.
  One of my favorites, the aerial photography of  Vincent Laforet.
  Chris Whiteford

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  Creative Sensibility | Design in culture

  Posted by Misha Cornes | April 27, 6:00 am

  The new Canadian Design Resource  blog (should evolve to a wiki?) is an open source gallery of
  sorts, bringing together a range of Canadian product, graphic design, fashion and memorabilia – with a clear bias to the everyday,  like the 70’s Muk Luks above or Nortel phones below. Browsing the site you realize just how [...]

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  Marketing strategy | Generation Why

  Posted by Misha Cornes | April 27, 5:06 am

  Luke Wroblewski has a great primer post about the next generation of consumers (generation Y, millennials, echo boomers, Net gen).
  I think the recent rise of YouTube, MySpace, and podcasts simply validates this generation’s voracious appetite for discovery, content and the need to create content. As a creative, I love this quote:  “More than half [...]

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• May 2006 (5)

  Media morphing | Agency 2.0

  Posted by mcornes | May 31, 3:00 pm

  Earlier this month, the IIT Institute of Design at Chicago hosted its second annual Strategy Conference, billed as a "business conference about design, rather than a design conference about business".  One question on everyone’s mind was the future of the advertising agency.
  Usually we hear from traditional agency heavyweights like Bob Jeffrey, CEO of JWT. But [...]

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  Exceptional Experiences | When Simple Sells

  Posted by mcornes | May 30, 12:19 pm

  In the tradition of that crazy blue balls site, our friend P.J. Pereira and AKQA have launched an intricate one-page site consisting of a single looped .GIF file.
  The site promotes MSN Messenger with a single line of copy, plus one link to download the application.
  British artist Will Sweeney created the animations, which have a [...]

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  Creative Sensibility | Flickr Soviet poster set

  Posted by Misha Cornes | May 30, 9:14 am

  Flickr find…a fantastic collection of Soviet era ad & propaganda posters from 1917 to 1991 , many with English translations. (thanks Al)
   
  Troy

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  Consumer trends | Burn Barbie, burn

  Posted by Misha Cornes | May 30, 5:46 am

  If you were a girl, or, better, if you had a little sister, then I am sure you were exposed to the ritual of Barbie torture.  It may have started with cutting off her hair and probably included the removal of a limb, or worse, a trip into the microwave.  My favourite was burning my [...]

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  Creative Sensibility | Cross-branding fun from true gearheads

  Posted by danielturman | May 24, 4:49 pm

  So the massive buildup to the release of Pixar’s "Cars" continues unabated. With some of the biggest cross-branding potential east of the Star Wars quadrant of the galaxy, it was inevitable that we’d start seeing Lightning McQueen, et al., in some unexpected places. Goodyear. AT&T. But even I didn’t see this one coming.
  Kelley Blue Book?
  Okay. [...]

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• June 2006 (5)

  ThreeMinds: Thought of the day | This Week's Sign That the Apocalypse is Upon Us

  Posted by Misha Cornes | June 30, 3:59 pm

  LG Electronics is set to introduce a new cell phone feature into the US market.  The LG-SD410, LG-KP4100 and LG-LP4100 will feature a built-in breathalyzer.
  The phone can also be programmed to block outgoing calls to selected  numbers (aka Drunk Dialing) when the BAC reading is over 0.08.
  Apparently the features are already a hit in Korea, [...]

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  Beyond the Brief | I Heart Zlango

  Posted by Misha Cornes | June 30, 11:46 am

  An Israeli startup called Mantis has just released a new mobile application they’re calling Zlango. Zlango is a lightweight mobile Java app that allows people to use symbols in the form of icons to communicate… think texting with icons.
  The symbols have predefined meanings such as “love” for heart or “hello” for a hand, that [...]

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  Creative Sensibility | Some monkey sent me an email

  Posted by Misha Cornes | June 30, 7:39 am

  Wanted me to know about Monkey Mail from Career Builder. Express you inner primate here.

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  Culture | Stopping Between Stations

  Posted by Misha Cornes | June 29, 6:39 pm

  When I was in college, I took a two-day train journey from Moscow to Prague.  We stopped late one night in a desolate, flood-lit field, a few miles from the Czech border.  Soviet trains run on rails that are set further apart than the European standard, and we waited  in the cold while every single [...]

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  Marketing strategy | Google Commerce

  Posted by Misha Cornes | June 29, 6:11 pm

  Google Checkout has
  launched. Some say it may be the death of PayPal, others feel it will be a
  Visa/MasterCard-like peaceful harmony.

  In any event, they
  have a nice video tour of the their product.
   
  I like it because it
  uses very simple imagery to support the narrator’s message (simple=nice
  ).
  Tony Jankiewicz

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• July 2006 (5)

  Creative Sensibility | Photosynth Ready to Bloom

  Posted by Misha Cornes | July 31, 9:47 pm

  The combination of digital photos and 3d virtual world mapping is just one of the goals of Photosynth, a new project by Microsoft to be demonstrated August 2nd.
  Here’s Microsoft’s explanation:
  "Ever wondered what it would be like to walk through your digital photos in 3D or see what hundreds of other people shot at the [...]

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  Exceptional Experiences | Organic Back From WebSideStory

  Posted by John Kopanas | July 31, 11:04 am

  (from left to right:  myself, Aaron, Mike, John, Joe, Bob, Chris, Julie, Katia and Jason at WebSideStory’s head office in San Diego)
  Last week Organic sent a total of six analysts and four engineers from our offices in Detroit, San Francisco and Toronto to San Diego for training at WebSideStory’s head office.  We went for training [...]

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  Beyond the Brief | Advergaming for Moms

  Posted by Misha Cornes | July 28, 11:12 am

  Johnson & Johnson has lauched a simple online game to promote its line of childrens’ shampoos and soaps, dubbed Buddies Scrubbies.  It’s similar to Atom Shockwave’s wildly popular Diner Dash- bathe as many toddlers as you can in a set time using the J&J products. 
  It’s a smart site that taps into an under-appreciated fact: [...]

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  Beyond the Brief | TV on the Web

  Posted by Misha Cornes | July 27, 7:12 pm

  The relationship between traditional agencies and their interactive counterparts is still evolving and can at times be contentious.  Christian Spinillo of VideoInsider offers a succinct critique of what’s wrong with the current obsession with repurposing TV commercials for the web.
  His message is that viewers are ready and even eager to interact online, and that simply [...]

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  Digital culture | MMORPG goes MMOSNaDS

  Posted by cstoller | July 27, 9:39 am

  In a world of social networks, online games, mashups, community and social networking, its fun to sit back and watch them all collide. Enter the "World of Datecraft ," a social networking and dating site targeted to the game playing community of Blizzard’s top selling massive multiplayer online role playing game "World of Warcraft."
  World of Datecraft [...]

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• August 2006 (5)

  Consumer trends | Billboard Half Life Now Measured in Minutes

  Posted by David Feldt | August 31, 2:56 pm

  We’ve posted about "guerilla marketing" and CGM on billboards before.  Here is another wonderful example. I was driving home from the Toronto office when I noticed this billboard. It looked like a recent campaign promoting literacy except the content was way too, um, "edgy".
  It was one year ago this week (Labor Day weekend, 2005) that [...]

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  Beyond the Brief | Closing the Community Loop:

  Posted by David Feldt | August 30, 1:45 pm

  How Marketers Can Join Customers in Social Networking Conversations

  Organic’s John Manoogian III and Christian Dodd are featured on Adotas today talking about how marketers can join their customers in social networking conversations.
  Way back in 1999, Christopher Locke, Rick Levine, Doc Searls, and
  David Weinberger put together cluetrain.com (the contents of which were
  published as The Cluetrain Manifesto [...]

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  Branded entertainment | Slow-mo Flash Mob by Improv Everywhere

  Posted by David Feldt | August 29, 12:07 pm

  Imagine walking into the hustle and bustle of a Home Depot on a Saturday morning, only to find most of the store silent, occupied by frozen shoppers, standing perfectly still.  You’d feel as though you’d entered an episode of the Twilight Zone, or worse, you might feel "uncomfortable". Employees and shoppers alike experienced that surreal [...]

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  Culture | Welcome to AllHands

  Posted by Misha Cornes | August 29, 9:53 am

  Welcome to the first post on AllHands.Organic.com–our company blog. The objective of the blog is to open up communications–in essence to turn ourselves inside-out–in order to have a more real and open dialog (and debate) with people inside and outside of the company.
  Our company has added almost 200 new Organics in the last 12 months. [...]

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  Consumer trends | Little Miss Sunshine, Word of Mouth and Quality Cinematic Storytelling

  Posted by David Feldt | August 28, 6:34 pm

  Count on Hollywood to make a distinction between playability and marketability.  Last Friday’s LA Times Online included a good piece about how word of mouth has evolved in the age of instant communications, and how this evolution has affected the entertainment industry. The article’s case study is Little Miss Sunshine, which opened in seven theaters [...]

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• September 2006 (5)

  Culture | Florida

  Posted by Misha Cornes | September 29, 11:41 pm

  Images from a Florida pitch:

  Conor Brady

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  Branded entertainment | Dark M&M's Movie Game

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | September 29, 5:34 pm

  Last month, Mars annouced that it would make
  Dark M&M’s, a dark chocolate version of their popular candy, a permanent part of their product line-up.  It’s part of an ongoing effort to appeal to the older consumer’s palate.  Remember when grown-ups had to content themselves with Toffifay ("It’s too good for kids")?
  And what better way to [...]

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  Branded entertainment | Dark M&M's Movie Game

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | September 29, 5:34 pm

  Last month, Mars annouced that it would make
  Dark M&M’s, a dark chocolate version of their popular candy, a permanent part of their product line-up.  It’s part of an ongoing effort to appeal to the older consumer’s palate.  Remember when grown-ups had to content themselves with Toffifay ("It’s too good for kids")?
  And what better way to [...]

  More

  Creative Sensibility | Expanding the Desktop Metaphor

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | September 29, 11:36 am

  We’ve blogged before about Bumptop, which uses ‘piles’ as a method for organizing files in a desktop GUI.  Piles was a feature that was once rumored to be included in OSX Panther, but never materialized.  Nice to see such intuitive improvements to the desktop- it actually embraces clutter.

  Here’s the 20-second hip-hop version.

  John Schuchard

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  Exceptional Experiences | Need Toys Now

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | September 29, 11:18 am

  Forget next-day delivery. The cat’s meow now, when it comes to buying gadgets, is LicketyShip’s same-day, four-hour delivery. The service is available only in the Bay Area for now but they intend to extend it to other states soon.
  www.licketyship.com
  Mauro Alencar

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• October 2006 (5)

  Digital culture | LX.TV

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | October 31, 10:40 am

  Two former MTV executives launched a site earlier this year (Code.TV) designed as a lifestyle and entertainment guide for urbanites. The site re-launches today as LX.TV. The company founders have essentially taken the proven success formula of cable TV programming, like the Food Network and Fine Living Channel and print magazines such as Best [...]

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  Branded entertainment | Let your feet do the interacting

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | October 31, 9:16 am

  As technology evolves, we’re seeing new ways of interfacing and engaging with digital marketing beyond the "traditional" web browser, keyboard and mouse.
  Organic recently partnered with Reactrix Media to deliver an exceptional experience for our Sprint client that allows customers and prospects to engage in a fun way with the Sprint brand in malls, movie [...]

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  Creative Sensibility | Lost Looking for Lost

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | October 30, 4:03 pm

  I am a big Lost fan but am never at home when it airs and the DVR situation at my place is worthy of a separate blog post. The first season I watched all the episodes commercial-free on DVD.  Last season, I downloaded all the episodes from iTunes.  This season, I am trying to keep [...]

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  Free Advice | Mixed Up Banner Placement

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | October 30, 1:32 pm

  Earlier this month, we posted about the New York Times web site showing the date and stories from a few days before.
  This isn’t quite as strange, but today I encountered a banner placement on the Washington Post where the 728×90 and the 300×250 unit were mistakenly swapped.
  Then again, it certainly was eye-catching. Keep that in [...]

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  Exceptional Experiences | Newseum: Front Pages Around the World

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | October 30, 10:29 am

  A very cool view across the front
  pages of newspapers around the world. 

  Not quite enough to make me toss
  that hard copy of WSJ just yet… but getting there.
  http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/
  Emin Aliev

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• November 2006 (5)

  Gaming | XBox Buys Space on a PS3 Site

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | November 30, 6:09 pm

  Via Digg, Microsoft’s XBox has managed to make a full page media buy on CNET/Gamespot’s main editorial page for Sony’s Playstation 3.
  Somewhere an agency team is having a rock star moment
  Jay Bain

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  Branded entertainment | Office Max Holiday Advergaming

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | November 30, 4:43 pm

  If you can’t dazzle them with orginality, baffle them with sheer volume.
  Office Max has gone all out for the holidays with not one, not two, but TEN microsites.  Here are five of them…all are accessible from the tab at the bottom right of the site.http://www.greetingsfromthenorth.comhttp://www.elfyourself.comhttp://www.reindeerarmwrestling.comhttp://www.seasonssculpting.comhttp://www.shaketheglobe.com
  Kelley Barry

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  Exceptional Experiences | [BLANK] Like A Rabbit

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | November 30, 12:43 pm

   
             

  I spotted this ad last night and it blew me away.

  It’s for the new VW
  Rabbit and allows the user to complete this sentence ala Mad Libs: “____ like a
  Rabbit.”
  Type in “run” and the car zooms around. Type in “jump” and it
  jumps off a ramp. What else do rabbits do? [...]

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  Exceptional Experiences | Use Only What You Need

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | November 29, 5:09 pm

  Denver-based Sukle Advertising + Design created a great advertising campaign for water conservation in Denver. They illustrate the tagline “Use Only What You Need.” very cleverly by using only a portion of the advertising space. A great example is the billboard which has been exposed except for the area that contains the actual message.
  Check [...]

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  Consumer trends | News Junkie meet T-shirt Junkie

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | November 29, 12:01 am

  For those of you who are self-admitted t-shirt junkies always hunting for off-beat, unusual, edgy t-shirts check out T-post.
  If you are a news junkie, T-post offers a new way to express yourself:  "The world’s first international news
  magazine on cotton."  The Sweden-based t-shirt company offers a different twist of the monthly t-shirt subscription service that [...]

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• December 2006 (5)

  Culture | Another Day, Another Conspiracy

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | December 29, 3:41 pm

  A conspiracy to help launch a newly redesigned car, that is. We creative types decided to frame the whole deal in an X-files meets V
  for Vendetta conspiracy garb to spark interest and poke a little fun.
  So behold what happens when a card-carrying Berkeley conspiracy
  theorist helps craft a pseudo conspiracy for marketing purposes. The man in
  the [...]

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  Consumer trends | You're the Star

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | December 29, 1:42 pm

  Lately we have been seeing a resurgence of ads that make the viewer the star.  It seems to fit in a prediction by futurist Faith Popcorn that 2007 will be the year of the "networked self" -  the year of personalized media.
  The earliest viral video of this kind that I can remember was the [...]

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  Consumer trends | You're the Star

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | December 29, 1:42 pm

  Lately we have been seeing a resurgence of ads that make the viewer the star.  It seems to fit in a prediction by futurist Faith Popcorn that 2007 will be the year of the "networked self" -  the year of personalized media.
  The earliest viral video of this kind that I can remember was the [...]

  More

  Beyond the Brief | Monetizing Traffic on eBay

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | December 28, 1:55 pm

  Am I the only one sick of the Yahoo run-of-site media buy?  When it comes to reaching a general audience online, web marketers are still very much beholden to a few major media properties – Yahoo, MSN, AOL, Google.  Because of higher CPMs, it rarely makes economic sense to spend more than a fraction [...]

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  Consumer trends | The Year In Ideas

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | December 28, 1:50 pm

  Two weeks ago the New York Times Magazine released its 6th Annual Year in Ideas Issue.   It features 74 examples of innovation that reaches across all disciplines and cultures to give a fascinating view into the current state of human thinking.
  As the intro states, “Our editors and writers have located the peaks and valleys [...]

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