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• January 2007 (5)

  Branded entertainment | The Caveman's Crib

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | January 31, 12:39 pm

  Low cost insurer Geico has created an apartment (or is it a persona room?) for their popular TV spokesperson as he readies himself for a party.

  Besides all of the the amazing details, humor and slick transitions, the fact that the whole site reads like a story really makes this site actualized.
  http://www.cavemanscrib.com/
  Jason Levine

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  Branded entertainment | The Caveman's Crib

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | January 31, 12:39 pm

  Low cost insurer Geico has created an apartment (or is it a persona room?) for their popular TV spokesperson as he readies himself for a party.

  Besides all of the the amazing details, humor and slick transitions, the fact that the whole site reads like a story really makes this site actualized.
  http://www.cavemanscrib.com/
  Jason Levine

  More

  Branded entertainment | Reversa's Sexy Cosmetics Campaign

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | January 31, 12:01 am

  In the past, I’ve used this space to complain that too much online content is aimed at young men.  While microsites like Mitchum and Axe focus on babes, Burger King and Borat go after the Jackass demographic.
  But lately women are getting their chance to objectify the opposite sex.  Last week Diesel ran a four-day campaign [...]

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  Branded entertainment | Reversa's Sexy Cosmetics Campaign

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | January 31, 12:01 am

  In the past, I’ve used this space to complain that too much online content is aimed at young men.  While microsites like Mitchum and Axe focus on babes, Burger King and Borat go after the Jackass demographic.
  But lately women are getting their chance to objectify the opposite sex.  Last week Diesel ran a four-day campaign [...]

  More

  Beyond the Brief | Vista + Demitri Martin

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | January 30, 9:58 am

  The future of TV advertising could be 1950’s soap opera-style sponsorships, plus a website.   
  Windows Vista just kicked off a campaign on Comedy Central on 1/14 by sponsoring a Demitri Martin special.  Each commercial break was “free of clutter” meaning that there were no :15 or :30 spots.  Instead, there were informative 2 minute segments [...]

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• February 2007 (5)

  Beyond the Brief | Is Google about to acquire SecondLife?

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | February 28, 11:21 am

  Remember Google Video? And what happened to YouTube?
  Well, there’s a service being offered by BrightGIS that lets you promote three dimensional models of your business location within Google Earth. Its currently not an exceptional offering but one can see the possibilities.  They are also offering Google Earth 3-D virtual billboards. 
  Are we about to [...]

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  Branded entertainment | Scion's want2Bsquare Campaign

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | February 27, 1:01 pm

  Apparently undeterred by Cartoon Network’s Aqua Teen Hunger Force controversy, Toyota’s Scion brand has launched an aggressive integrated marketing campaign in major metros around the country, including San Francisco’s Bernal Heights neighborhood.  This gruesome guerilla poster points to want2bsquare.com, a mysterious and interesting interactive website. 
  I love website experiences that require unraveling, although to be [...]

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  Branded entertainment | Scion's want2Bsquare Campaign

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | February 27, 1:01 pm

  Apparently undeterred by Cartoon Network’s Aqua Teen Hunger Force controversy, Toyota’s Scion brand has launched an aggressive integrated marketing campaign in major metros around the country, including San Francisco’s Bernal Heights neighborhood.  This gruesome guerilla poster points to want2bsquare.com, a mysterious and interesting interactive website. 
  I love website experiences that require unraveling, although to be [...]

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  Beyond the Brief | Scarcity and Exclusivity Online

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | February 26, 11:47 am

  Web-centric companies like Organic spend a lot of digital ink chronicling the ways that the Internet is driving cultural change.  Social networking in particular is a unique web phenomenon that has  profound implications for the way that modern humans interact with one another.
  But after a vacation spent entirely offline, I’ve had a chance to think [...]

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  Consumer trends | Escaping the Scourge of Voicemail

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | February 23, 10:08 pm

  SimulScribe has come up with an elegant
  solution to one of my pet peeves – voicemail and the ridiculously laborious and
  time wasting process of retrieving voicemail messages.
  I just signed up
  and tested the system and it works really smoothly. They provide you with a
  call-forward number that you program into your (mobile or landline) phone.  When
  someone leaves [...]

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• March 2007 (5)

  The social net | Hitchsters Ride Sharing

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | March 31, 12:01 am

  New York is amazing for many reasons.  I believe only in NY can you have access to anything at your fingertips.  Hitchsters is a match-making site that allows you to find a fellow passenger to share a cab to or from the airport.  I made a trip to NY years ago before I moved here [...]

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  Branded entertainment | Get The Glass

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | March 30, 12:47 pm

  http://www.gettheglass.com/
  This is a fun little game from none other than the "Got Milk?" people.  Nice use of 3D and fun mini games. Some can be a bit overwhelming since you have to jump right into them (pleasing the mother was hard…. you’ll understand if you get that mini game), but overall, an Exceptional Experience. I [...]

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  Free Advice | The Underdog Theory of Marketing

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | March 30, 12:01 am

  When big brands lose some of their luster, there are a few common culprits.  One is the inherent pressure of growing too fast (think Starbucks).  Another is a kind of institutional inertia that sets in as a company ages.  Smaller, more innovative companies step in and steal away market share (think Gap).   
  But can sticking [...]

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  Reviews | Made To Stick

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | March 29, 3:03 pm

  I just finished listening to the unabridged version of "Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die: by Chip and Dan Heath.  This is an excellent book and very applicable to what we try to accomplish everyday with our clients.

  Here’s an excerpt of what makes a sticky idea adhere to our gray matter:
  Six [...]

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  The social net | Visual Blogging

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | March 28, 11:55 pm

  As you know, the blogosphere has created space for anyone with a need to express themselves… to divulge their opinions, intrinsic feelings or unique level of knowledge in a written forum, instantly. Journalists, would-be-journalists and anyone with an editorial opinion can wax-on eloquently (or, not so eloquently) as fast as their fingers can stoke a [...]

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• April 2007 (5)

  Creative Sensibility | A Thousand Words

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | April 30, 1:58 pm

  This is a nice clean portfolio site for commercial photographer Art Streiber, the work of Jay Lane over at Studio Pyro.
  http://www.artstreiber.com

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  Creative Sensibility | Bobby Neel Adams "Age Maps"

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | April 30, 12:16 pm

  Bobby Neel Adams is a Brooklyn-based photographic artist. As his bio says, a lot of his work "addresses the transformation of the human body by aging and circumstance". Some of his best work, I think, has been what he calls "Age Maps", which are two photographs of the same person from different periods of time [...]

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  Digital culture | MTV Goes Lo-Fi

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | April 26, 12:01 am

  MTV just relaunched, and took it back a notch:
  http://www.mtv.com/
  I dunno if you were familiar with it before, but they latched onto flash as early adopters, and went overboard with it. There were videos, there were ads, there was music. It was icky. The new site reminds me of OG MTV – refresh the page [...]

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  ThreeMinds: Thought of the day | Web 1.0: The Computer as a Communication Device (1968)

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | April 25, 10:14 pm

  About a year before they came up with the internet, two guys from ARPA got together and started writing about computers as communications and social networking tools.
  It’s kinda neat to read that 40 years ago, people were already writing bits like:
  A communication system should make a positive contribution to the discovery and arousal of [...]

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  Reviews | Froogle No More!

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | April 25, 10:03 pm

  Apparently Google has decided to rebrand  the Froogle offering as "Google Product Search".    No need to fear the Google Product Search just yet as it seems to have all of the same features as the Froogle offering.  But it is streamlined to a certain degree.  The Froogle search pages for example would display more [...]

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• May 2007 (5)

  Digital culture | Microsoft Innovative on the Surface

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | May 30, 7:32 am

  Shocking the world with their ingenuity today, Microsoft introduced us all to their new multi-touch system, called Surface. Multi-touch platforms and systems are nothing new, the idea, which was first born in the 1980s has recently been propelled forward by thinkers like NYUs Jeff Han, who has started Perceptive Pixel [...]

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  Consumer trends | Updated: Where is Here, at Where 2.0

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | May 29, 9:47 am

  We are live and in attendance at Where 2.0, O’Reilly’s conference focusing on the latest in geo-based information and application services. "Location is everywhere" according to O’Reilly and map / location based applications are rapidly making their way into popular social networking services and consumer electronics products.
  The 2 1/2 day conference kicked off last night [...]

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  Reviews | Ambient Findability

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | May 25, 12:01 am

  I recently started reading Ambient Findability. a short but inspirational and idea-packed book  published through O’Reilly Press by Peter Morville. 
  I thought that others might find it an exceptional read.
  Subtitled, "What We Find Changes Who We Become," here’s what the O’Reilly site has to say about it:
  "A thought-provoking book that describes the future of information and [...]

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  Creative Sensibility | Design + Co-Creation= Social Innovation

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | May 24, 7:05 am

  Technology-driven organizations have traditionally based their growth
  strategies around technology-based research and innovation, primarily
  carried out by highly skilled engineers and product designers in closed
  research labs.  Think about the skunkworks team of engineers
  responsible for the design of the Motorola Razr. 

  Realizing that technology-driven innovation drives short term growth,
  but often fails to deliver on long-term value, many organizations [...]

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  Creative Sensibility | Scent Marketing

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | May 23, 9:29 pm

  I am staying about a block from Radio City Music Hall in New York,  and this evening I followed my nose to M&M’s World on Times Square.  I had heard that they pump chocolate scent onto the street, and it’s true.  M&Ms is only one of the more visible companies using scent marketing to lure [...]

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• June 2007 (5)

  Engaged consumers | iPhone by the numbers

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | June 29, 10:52 pm

  So, iDay is over and I promise this is the last iPhone post you'll see on Threeminds (well, at least for the next 24 hours).
  The razzamatazz continued all day with reports of people lining up all across the US.
  Let's look at the numbers …
  eBay is listing the 8GB model for sale between $710 and [...]

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  Going mobile | Cell Swapping

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | June 29, 1:54 pm

  Jeff Jarvis at BuzzMachine has found a cool marketplace for those hungry iPhoners who are locked into an existing contract with Verizon, Sprint or T-Mobile.
  http://www.cellswapper.com
  Interesting to see how much business they do in the next few weeks as iPhone Mania sweeps the nation.
   

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  Art | Women in Art

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | June 29, 1:16 pm

   This is amazing, hypnotic and the cello in the background makes for a nice relaxing 3 minutes. Claude Silver

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  Beyond the Brief | The Lost Art of the Interview

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | June 29, 11:59 am

  It’s as simple as an oak table, black back-drop and no motion graphics. For those of you, who enjoy the lost art of the interview, be amazed by the re-launched CharlieRose.com. It is a great video resource for knowledge from the most influence people in our society.
  Paul McConnell

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  Beyond the Brief | Scion's Book of Deviants

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | June 29, 5:15 am

  In a sweetly dark and twisted effort, Scion has created an underworld for users to play in. Existing amidst the pages of a gnarly old pop-up book titled “Book of Deviants”, users get to be a “Deviant” whose goal is to take back the world which is populated by “sheeple”. The book flips through a [...]

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• July 2007 (5)

  Branded entertainment | Léo et Choc

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | July 31, 11:50 am

  Here's a simple but very entertaining site for Léo et Choc, two voiceless cartoon characters that promote chocolate milk in Quebec.  I've never seen the series before, but it looks like each vignette ends with either Léo (the milk) or Choc (the chocolate) killing the other and, uh, drinking him, then exploding. Fun!
  http://leoetchoc.com
  The site [...]

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  Digital culture | What's Chuck's Secret?

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | July 30, 6:34 pm

  As the interactive Agency of Record for Best Buy's Geek Squad brand, we're pretty interested in the NBC's new fall show, Chuck's Secret. Chuck is a sad-sack tech support guy who becomes an unwitting spy. His character works for "Nerd Herd", a subsidiary of "Buy More", where all the employees wear green polos (instead of [...]

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  Digital culture | What's Chuck's Secret?

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | July 30, 6:34 pm

  As the interactive Agency of Record for Best Buy's Geek Squad brand, we're pretty interested in the NBC's new fall show, Chuck's Secret. Chuck is a sad-sack tech support guy who becomes an unwitting spy. His character works for "Nerd Herd", a subsidiary of "Buy More", where all the employees wear green polos (instead of [...]

  More

  Digital culture | "Eye" Can't Believe How Good This Looks

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | July 27, 10:07 am

  For the upcoming all-CG Robert Zemeckis movie Beowulf, the animators used a process called Electrooculography ("OEG") which maps the actor’s eye movements, down to the eye-lid flutters.  They place three sensors on the skin around the actor’s eyes that pick up electrical pulses given off by the eye muscles and surrounding nerves. 
  The result, I [...]

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  Digital culture | "Eye" Can't Believe How Good This Looks

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | July 27, 10:07 am

  For the upcoming all-CG Robert Zemeckis movie Beowulf, the animators used a process called Electrooculography ("OEG") which maps the actor’s eye movements, down to the eye-lid flutters.  They place three sensors on the skin around the actor’s eyes that pick up electrical pulses given off by the eye muscles and surrounding nerves. 
  The result, I [...]

  More

• August 2007 (5)

  Branded entertainment | Glass Half Full

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | August 31, 2:29 pm

  I have no idea what this site has to do with chocolate bars, but hey, made you look.
  http://www.aglassandahalffullproductions.com/
  According to Fallon UK, this campaign the first step in a gradual shift by Cadbury's from ads to branded entertainment.  Thanks Simeon. Enjoy.  
  Misha Cornes

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  Branded entertainment | Lacoste Tennis Challenge

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | August 30, 9:21 am

  Being an avid tennis fan I am excited to see about all the coverage that the US open is getting.  Reading the NY Times section on the open I cam across this ad from Lacoste with a shadow image of Rene Lacoste in the background and the phrase “un peu d’air sur terre” which translates [...]

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  Digital culture | Route-Specific Search

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | August 29, 6:27 pm

  The latest addition to the online mapping phenomenon will be route specific search. Thinking of use-cases for ATM location finders it became apparent that most people don’t always need or want radial search. The majority of us travel the same few routes many times each week with very little deviation. So, it follows that most [...]

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  The social net | Shareware in Web 2.0

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | August 29, 6:46 am

  I clipped this image from a news site. It appeared at the end of a story. Clearly this publisher wants readers to share their content. It looks like Web 2.0 companies are perfecting the art of micro-branding.  I think del.icio.us wins at this scale.
  Mark

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  Digital culture | Shrinking (Virtual) Cities

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | August 28, 4:15 pm

  Does Second Life need an intervention? Having studied regions such as Detroit, Manchester, Leipzig/Hälle and Ivanovo, the German project Shrinking Cities thinks so. In fact, they’re sponsoring a contest to gather ideas for ways to reuse the virtual world's assets.
  As they report, Second Life lost 2.5% of population in June alone, and some of the [...]

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• September 2007 (5)

  Consumer trends | Zipcar

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | September 28, 10:00 am

  It's ironic that I often have a harder time getting to meetings with local clients than to offices that are a plane ride away.  In the last few months I have been working with companies based in Foster City and Sunnyvale (30-40 minute drives from Organic's San Francisco office), and my teams have had a [...]

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  Culture | LiveNeutral

  Posted by Misha Cornes | September 27, 4:07 pm

  Organic has embarked on a journey to improve our environmental impact.  In June, we began by measuring our carbon footprint from utility use, business flights, and employee commutes for all of our offices around our network.  At the same time, we investigated the market for carbon credits.
  We identified three main sources of carbon credits:  [...]

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  Creative Sensibility | Looking for something? Try Microsoft Live 2.0

  Posted by pshih | September 27, 11:20 am

  Yesterday, Microsoft began releases updates to their Live Search platform.  The changes were focused on improving current customer search engine experience, rather than continuing to focus on Share of Search and Share of Market levels against primary rivals Google and Yahoo!.  It is this focus on improving customer experience that may lead to new users.
  Is [...]

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  Creative Sensibility | Liu Design Lectures

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | September 26, 6:07 pm

  Consider This: the 2007 David H. Liu Memorial Lecture Series in Design begins tomorrow night at Stanford University. Leading off is Jan Chipchase, the mind behind Future Perfect and a Tokyo-based human behavioral field researcher for Nokia.
  Also featured over the coming weeks are Janine Benyus, my friend and mentor Sara Beckman from UC Berkeley's Haas [...]

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  Beyond the Brief | Michael Vick and Targeted Ads

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | September 26, 5:17 pm

  This is an interesting juxtaposition of a news story and a banner ad.   I don’t know if PetMeds intentionally asked for this placement, but I bet that a good number of the page views are from dog lovers. What a way to get the attention of a captive audience. Mark Himmelsbach

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• October 2007 (5)

  Consumer trends | Like the Ambient Orb, only cuter

  Posted by mstrickl | October 31, 11:33 am

  For those not completely familiar with the concept of ambient devices:

  Ambient devices are new genre of consumer electronics, characterized by their ability to be perceived at-a-glance (also called “glanceable”). Tie this at-a-glance technology into an internet enabled device and you get something like the Ambient Orb, “a glass lamp that uses color to show [...]

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  Branded entertainment | Sparks, the "Caffeinated Alcohol Beverage"

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | October 31, 11:05 am

  Here’s a fun site for Sparks, the alcohol+energy drink now owned by Miller Brewing.  It features the popular panning-camera navigation system first seen on WeFail’s site for photographer Matt Mahon and later repeated on campaign sites for Wrigley’s Gum and a site for the new Visa campaign.
  Another interesting aspect of CPG sites is the insight [...]

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  Branded entertainment | Sparks, the "Caffeinated Alcohol Beverage"

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | October 31, 11:05 am

  Here’s a fun site for Sparks, the alcohol+energy drink now owned by Miller Brewing.  It features the popular panning-camera navigation system first seen on WeFail’s site for photographer Matt Mahon and later repeated on campaign sites for Wrigley’s Gum and a site for the new Visa campaign.
  Another interesting aspect of CPG sites is the insight [...]

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  Tech talk | Skyrails Customizable Visualization System

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | October 30, 4:50 pm

  Skyrails is a crazy 3D visualization of graphs/data. It looks like something from a movie.
  Skyrails was designed to create visualizations of social networks, but it could be applicable to any kind of graph.  The system has a built-in programming language  to customize the graph and its attributes, designed for experts as well as novice users.
  You [...]

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  Consumer trends | Clean Ads Only Please

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | October 25, 8:49 am

  While guerrilla marketing is often accused of defacing public property; London’s Street Advertising Services offers a better solution…with cleaning solution!
  A street team uses high-pressure sprayers to wash a client’s stenciled logo or message right into dirty sidewalks and walls. They perform their magic during the night (fewer pedestrians to get in the way), using [...]

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• November 2007 (5)

  Culture | Ain't No Party Like a Talent Acquisition Party

  Posted by Daniel Turman | November 30, 11:02 pm

  TORONTO — As the year is starting to wrap up and we celebrate our achievements in 2007, the Talent Acquisition team is busier than ever.  We hosted the 3rd  of our 14th Birthday Celebrations in Toronto at Brassaii.  The evening hosted great talent from around the area, energetic Organics, along with great music, food and [...]

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  Culture | What can $6 buy you in the City of Detroit? Well…

  Posted by Daniel Turman | November 30, 10:44 pm

  DETROIT — On Wednesday evening we attended The D Show in downtown Detroit (www.thedshow.org).  This show highlights the brightest and best work to come out of Detroit based agency offices.  The evening begins with the standard advertising networking hour that lasts well over 2 hours. 
  Since over 300 people attended this event, it was great [...]

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  Strength in Numbers | What's Google Up To Now?

  Posted by Marta Strictland | November 30, 6:01 am

  Is Google trying to steal a bit of Digg’s thunder? Or is this yet
  another move towards user personalization of Google’s results?
  The web community is trying to guess what Google could be up to, after Googlified revealed that “Google Experimental is currently running an experiment that allows some selected users to “influence [the] search experience by [...]

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  Culture | Foiled Again: Why you shouldnt go on vacation

  Posted by Mike Hudson | November 29, 7:22 pm

  The other day as I was sitting in the office looking at all the white stuff coming down outside. Then, I got an IM from a team member on vacation.  Yes, we are such a tight knit team that even on vacation we are concerned about what’s going on in the DAA department!  As he [...]

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  Shameless Promotion | Gift on Fifth

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | November 29, 1:26 pm

  If you are in New York doing your holiday shopping, Bank of America wants to make life a little easier for you. They have launched a lounge for tired shoppers called the “Gift on Fifth”.  It’s a place to chill, have some hot chocolate, get some gift-wrapping and avail yourself of their restrooms – not [...]

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• December 2007 (5)

  Exceptional Experiences | Mesmerizing Little Semi-Scientific Game

  Posted by Daniel Turman | December 26, 11:14 am

  Sometimes the nieces and nephews of the world are way ahead of the aunts and uncles. This fun and educational little time waster comes courtesy of the “tween” demographic. This has got to be one of the most Zen games ever. Throw some plant life down. Build a wall of sand. Light a fire. And [...]

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  Creative Sensibility | Punked, Burger King Style

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | December 21, 12:22 pm

  If you don’t watch TV and haven’t seen any of the latest Burger King commercials, check out the link below.   Whopper Freakout is featured at the end of a series of TV spots that were created and produced by Crispin, Porter + Bogusky.   The latest campaign is centered around a staged Burger King where the [...]

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  Culture | Season's Greetings: SF Gives the Gift of Achim This Year

  Posted by Daniel Turman | December 21, 5:26 am

  You all can stop shopping. Dig into this treasure trove and win “best present giver” as quick as you can hit “forward”…custom narrated video cards of merriment hosted by one of the more talented voice artists in our deep stable.

  Diverse friend group? No problem. The SF crew has got it covered with eight options, running [...]

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  Culture | Beautiful Minds at Work.

  Posted by vsadler | December 20, 10:57 pm

  Strategist Jay Joichi uses the panoramic windows of an unnamed Denver-area hotel to map out the strategy for the team. So far, nobody has descended irrevocably into madness.Daniel Turman

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  Creative Sensibility | Mmm Mmm Toasty

  Posted by Hilton Barbour | December 17, 7:08 pm

  What would you do if you were assigned the Spam account?  Well Dustin Black and Dan Armstrong of BBDO Minneapolis decided to dive headfirst into Spam as a punch-line.  Their vision for Spam.com looks more like a Monty Python fan site than a CPG website. 
  They also developed a separate launch strategy for what appears [...]

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