I’ve been a fan of Brains of Fire since I first read about them in Groundswell a year and a half ago. I love their mission and the way they approach life (and marketing, of course). When I found out that they were writing a book about what they do, I immediately put it at the top of the “Books” section of my Christmas wish list. (Yes, I categorize my list– often it ends up being “Books” and “Other Things”.)

While using examples from their list of great clients like Best Buy and Fiskars, the leaders of the Brains On Fire agency spell out ten lessons to finding and reaching out to your most passionate customers and involving them with your brand.

I loved that this book isn’t really a “how-to” be successful but it helps you recognize and use the resources that you already have: your company and your customers. There’s a great section in the first chapter that asks a series of questions to help you discover if your company is one that fosters passion in the first place. After all, if your employees aren’t excited about what you do, why should your customers be?

A word that comes up often in the book is “Passion.” And that would also serve as a great one-word summary for what this book and the agency is about. Like they say, it doesn’t mean anything to find customers that just “like” you– You need to find those who Love you.

I could keep going with the great examples and ideas I underlined, but you should pick it up for yourself. But as one last thing I want to say that I love their approach to social media in chapter eight. It was refreshing to read their cautions to focusing too much on any one form of social media (or technology for that matter).

To close this little review, I’d like to share evidence that I did learn something from the book. In the introduction they spend some time to make the distinction between a “campaign” and a “movement.” A campaign is a temporary communication about yourself aimed at a certain audience, while a movement is an indefinite action by by a passionate group outside of yourself. I like this way they explained it best: “Campaigns are an on-off switch; Movements are a volume dial.”

After their 17 pages or so of spelling out the differences I felt I had a pretty good grasp on what their focus was and how to identify a true movement. That’s why, when I saw this video a couple months ago, I had to laugh to myself at the line at the end of this video:

(Found via BrandflakesforBreakfast)

If you’re not sure what I’m going for here, read the book. I don’t think the Brains on Fire people would feel comfortable calling that a “movement.” The John St. agency might want to read their book, too…

Have you read it? What did you think? Are there other books you’d recommend?

I also want to say that I think it’s cool that the academic vice president from my alma mater was quoted in the book (see page 42).

And I love the cover! It’s a nice visual representation of igniting ideas and movements. The drawings make more sense after reading the book– except I still don’t understand why there’s a drawing of bathroom stalls… haha

You were probably one of the nearly 3.3 million people who saw the first video of the Coca-Cola “Happiness Machine” placed on a college campus. There is no way you can watch it without a smile.

Now they have over 30 more videos from nine countries around the world. One of their latest is from Brazil where they converted a delivery truck into a Happiness Machine:

But as I was watching the WWHSN videos I noticed something– Even though most of the videos had some text to introduce the idea or location, you don’t have to read it to enjoy it. This video from Japan brought me to that realization:

When I first watched it, I was disappointed that I didn’t know what the Japanese text said, but then I realized that it didn’t matter. Even if that was the first Coke video that I watched and had no foreknowledge of the WWHSN campaign, I’d still love to watch the surprise and happiness on the people’s faces. Coca-Cola shows–without saying anything–that it can bring happiness.

And for an international product, that’s a pretty valuable thing. I can’t think of many other global campaigns that can have such a unified campaign without having to translate the whole idea into other languages. (Though VW’s Fun Theory gets close.)

What do you think? Are there some other good global campaigns out there? Tell me about it below!

…But I hate their new commercials.

Maybe it’s because I’ve been a customer for over 4 years and I feel somewhat a part of the company (It can be pretty easy to win my loyalty), but I’m almost offended by their 4G MyTouch campaign. It’s great that they have this cool new phone and it’s great that they have fast connection speeds, but just because Apple ended its successful “Get a Mac” campaign doesn’t mean they had to pick it up to keep the idea going. While I loved those ads, after four years the campaign was getting a little old.

Now I’m switching sides to the Devil’s T-Mo’s Advocate (or is it “Loyal Customer”?) role. I think the commercials are done pretty well and they do keep the humor of the original Mac ads without directly copying any of the specific ideas/metaphors/imagery of those ads. These new 4G ads stand out from most of the regular cell phone ads that feature “simulated screenshots” or nicely dressed people using the advertised phone.

…But the ad man part of me is still annoyed that T-Mobile (and their agency) didn’t take the time to come up with something completely new. Of course, it’s easy to sit in the audience and criticize–I wasn’t in the agency meetings and I don’t have any better ideas of my own (as of yet), but I believe that there exists at least one totally original idea for every campaign/product out there. It may take some time and several edits to find it, but it’s gotta be there.

What do you think? Was this the best T-Mobile could do for its new 4G phones? Do you have any new ideas for them? Discuss below!

P.S. Dear T-Mobile, I really do like your service and your phones and I will very likely stay with you for another two-year contract. This was just something I had to get off my chest. No hard feelings?

To complete their campaign, BYUtv put together four spots to promote the anniversary.  The spots won a Davey Award from the International Academy of Visual Arts. Here are my two favorites:

(You can see the rest here.)

I love how they were able to make classical music seem more interesting than most people might think. Kudos to BYUtv and congratulations to Classical 89 for 50 great years! You can listen online where ever you are, so check them out.

But then some new Orbitz ads came along. I liked their earlier ads with the hovercraft. It clearly gave the message that you would get money back if someone booked the same hotel cheaper than you. Great. Good to know.

But then they switched it up with these new ads (see below). They are trying to be goofy, but they come across as confusing. If this guy really likes to know what to expect, why doesn’t he try to avoid the negative things? Does he like it when his pants are “embarrasingly transparent” after getting hit with an “unrealistic splash”?

The first few times I saw this, the spokesperson moved so quickly through his predictions that I didn’t know what was going on. After a few more times I finally understood the premise, but only until I looked them up on YouTube for this post was I able to catch the 5-second message stuck within the 30-second spot.

The guy’s actions don’t reinforce the message. If Orbitz helps you know what to expect at hotels with their ratings and pictures, why can’t the guy avoid the negative events and be happier–thanks to Orbitz?

Or–going deeper here–are we all ruled by fate and we can do nothing to avoid our destinies? We may know about the bad hotels, but nothing can stop us from staying there? For all I know, he could have used Orbitz to book his flight to LA on Oceanic 815…

I think I’m going to name this new Orbitz guy “Oedipus.”

What do you think? Did you like these ads? Did you get the message? Please leave a comment!

The other day I saw a booth set up on the campus of the local university for “B-cycle.” I didn’t have time to stop by, but I looked it up later and found out that it’s a new bike-sharing program where you pay a membership fee that allows you to take one of their bikes and use it for free for up to 30 minutes (or pay for extra time) and return it to any other B-cycle station.  Would the $65 annual fee be enough to pay for this service? Why not have a cheaper membership fee (say $20/year) and then charge $1 for every half hour? People would go for the cheaper fee, right? Well, you might be surprised at what a difference those free 30 minutes could make.

I recently finished the great book “Free: The Future of a Radical Price” where the author, Wired editor Chris Anderson, uses this same example with the bikes (except in Paris and Brussels) and many others to show how Free is becoming a lot more common, and how Free is also making people a lot of money.

This book gives so much information about a subject you probably haven’t thought of very often: Zero. Anderson gives a history of the idea of Nothing and how that has led to our current ideas of “Free.” He does a great job of explaining the four main types of Free and gives several examples of each of them.

I love this book because it made me look for new business models everywhere I went. It opened up so many new ideas because I wasn’t limited by the conventional ways to make money.  Giving something away for free doesn’t necessarily devalue that object/service, but it could make the next best version of it more valuable and worth paying for.

Anderson includes a lot of information, including several sidebars on how different companies have made money off of Free. (Like the bike example–see page 166.) He even put together a list of fifty business models built on Free.

“Free” is a comfortable and easy read that will get you thinking anytime you use a free service or consider new business ideas. I highly recommend it for anyone who might be looking to revamp and update their own business offerings or who is simply interested in this new economy.

Have you read it? Did you like it? What are some other books that deal with this kind of idea? Comment below!

But PBS is becoming a lot cooler than I ever remember it being.  I was watching “Masterpiece Mystery” the other day and this ad came up between programs:

(Sorry for the bad quality– It was the best one I could find.)

Instead of just a regular promo for the next program of “Antiques Roadshow,” they took a simple idea that everyone relates to (Who doesn’t speculate on the prices when they watch that show?) and made a great video out of it. And with all of the regular promos that they show, this one really stood out.

And as a bonus, here is the actual footage from the show featured in the commercial. I guess at one point it was the most valuable item ever appraised on the show. I love this guy!

So kudos to PBS for breaking away from “boring”!

But what I liked most was that Kleon doesn’t use the book to present himself as a master of the art and a hugely profound philosopher/poet. Instead, at the end of the book he included a how-to section. He doesn’t have a monopoly on the method, and he encourages his readers to play around come up with their own poetry and even submit it to his Tumblr blog. He wants everybody to experiment and come up with their own “found art.”

I think this can be a very powerful idea for brands. We all know that the more uses you can promote for a product, the more value it can have–and the more it can sell (Arm & Hammer, anyone?), but how many brands go out of their way to encourage their customers to use their products in new ways or give them a way to share new uses with others?

This Newspaper Blackout example reminded me of what TOMS Shoes did for Earth Day. Since their shoes wear out just like any others, they came up with a few ways you can recycle your old pair of TOMS into a bracelet or plant hanger, among other things. If you come up with your own project, you can share it on their website.

Another quick example: I’m sure you’ve heard of someone who made their Prom dress or tux out of duct tape (by the way, the Duck brand does a great job of owning that idea), but did you hear about the girl who made her own dress out of gum wrappers? She liked the colors of Wrigley’s “5″ gum wrappers, so she collected as many as she could and put together a dress and her boyfriend’s vest.

I don’t know how she made a dress out of the wrappers and I have no idea if Wrigley ever contacted her, but how cool would it be if they had a contest or website that featured different uses or even art made of the colorful wrappers? (This almost reminds me of this campaign by DDB Sydney.)

I’m sure that for every WD-40 there is a dozen products that people have found additional uses for. Why wouldn’t a brand want to energize and give a voice to these innovative people? Have you seen other examples like these? Do you know of any new uses for a common product? Let me know below!

A week ago I finished Chris Anderson’s “The Long Tail,” which explains how–thanks to the online marketplace–businesses such as Amazon and iTunes can offer almost everything and make money off of the collective few purchases of the many instead of just the many purchases of the few. Now I’m finding examples of it everywhere. I am currently in the middle of his newer book, “Free,” which explains the (old and) new economy of giving things away to make money.

Maybe that’s why this post from Holiday Matinee (which is a great ad/design/creative/culture blog) caught my eye and now the next book on my business book list is this one. Watch this video that explains the Collaborative Consumption Groundswell. (Sorry, I’d stick it here, but I’m having trouble embedding it…)

Not only is that a cool video, but there’s some awesome information there about some of these latest trends. I was amazed by some of their numbers. This book is definitely on my reading list this fall! (Unless I’m in the middle of “Great Expectations” or something…)

What do you think about this book? Are there other great business books you’d recommend? Comment below!

Each TV spot during the finale was a regular TV spot that I had likely seen some other day. But Target made three new ads that dealt specifically with the show and it’s audience. (Scroll down if you want to see the ads.)

Now, every brand didn’t have to go to the level that Target did and use a specificimage from the show (like the smoke monster or the Dharma computer), but there are plenty of themes and characters and ideas that would easily connect to the show. It was such a simple idea and it worked wonderfully.

I agree with Darryl Ohrt: “Whoever said you can’t be creative in 15 seconds, or speak to a niche audience, or have fun with a meme can shut their pie hole now.” (He also used my first idea for the title of this post…)

With this example I wonder if we’ll see more like it in the future. I would love to see more ads that are specific to the show I’m watching, that deal with some theme or location in the show and connect it with their brand. I guess it’s a little like reverse product placement–Instead of fitting the script to the product, the product gets to fit the show to it’s own brand.

Did you see these ads during the show? Were there other ads that I missed that stood out during the Lost finale? Let me know!

(Disclaimer about only recalling the Target ads: I will admit that I didn’t pay rapt attention to each commercial break–that was time for theorizing and re-filling my plate with snacks.)

Continue reading to see the Target ads that aired last night:

(This first one was my favorite)

What do you think?