From great advertising and branding to incredible art, design, music, films, and anything worth a second look or  second thought, this is Diegoliath’s weekly source of creative inspiration. I’ll use this space on the web to showcase some of the things that brighten my day and re-ignite my creative thinking.

If you have some inspirational sources of your own, please leave a comment and a link.

1. Rock Band: Beatles Cinematic Intro
http://www.thebeatlesrockband.com/cinematic.php

Please take a moment to soak in this beautiful dreamy animation by Passion Pictures for the upcoming Rock Band: Beatles game.  Each colorful scene is directly inspired by song lyrics from the Beatles. From an art direction standpoint, this game is a great example of how a unique visual style can really spark interest in people and even bring out emotions. It really made me happy when I saw it.  My love for music games has been slowly growing cold with the extensive amount of releases this year, but this animation definitely got me back in the game.  It seems like I won’t have to wait for DJ Hero to experience something new.  Enjoy.

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Craig Newmark founded Craigslist as a hobby in 1995. The site is one of the most popular destinations on the Internet and Craig’s way of seeing things is still much part of how the web company operates.

Craig was very kind to answer our questions about his current role at Craigslist, lessons learned from past work experiences, controversies, customer service, design, and more.

Please check out his very interesting blog and follow him on Twitter.

1. Every month, Craigslist gets 20 billion page views, 40 million new classified ads, and 50 million people looking to buy stuff, meet others, and get a job. What would you have done differently from 1995 to 1999, if you had known what your hobby was going to become?

I wouldn’t have done anything differently overall, but would have listened more to the lawyers and my own instincts.

2. In what ways (positive and negative) did your previous professional experiences help shape the culture of Craigslist?

I learned how important customer service is, and how largeness in organizations leads to dysfunction. For example, in a hierarchy, you get ahead by telling your boss what he or she wants to hear; then he or she tells his or her boss what they want to hear.

3. Craigslist is largely based on trust. Do you often wake up and wonder how your site continues to deliver what it offers despite the controversies and criticisms?

Not a problem, unfair controversies and criticisms just strengthen us, and increase community support and traffic.
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It was my privilege to interview Christopher Barger, Director of Social Media at General Motors, this past Monday morning.

The GM Social Media Team took some time off their busy schedule to talk with me and I write about it on the paragraphs that follow. I also highly recommend that you listen to the interview by downloading our very first podcast on iTunes or streaming it via blogtalkradio:

First of all, let me say that Christopher proved to me, over the course of our 30 minute conversation, that GM is serious in its efforts to engage in sincere communication with real people, particularly during the challenging phase in which the company is operating in. Christopher’s openness and candor, combined with his deep insight and thorough knowledge of the auto industry, make him an example of how to lead a corporate social media initiative.

Now, I did not previously know Christopher or anyone in his team, but I felt as if I almost did by the time we finished talking. As you listen to the interview you will notice that Christopher answered each question with a combination of deep and simple thoughts that he conveyed with confidence, poignant honesty, vision, and passion.

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John A. Byrne is the executive editor and editor-in-chief of BusinessWeek.com. Byrne previously launched the magazine’s ground-breaking rankings of business schools, best and worst corporate boards, and most generous philanthropists. He is also the author of eight books, including The New York Times best-seller “Jack: Straight from the Gut”, with former General Electric Chief Executive Jack Welch.

John was extremely gracious to provide us with his thoughts, which he wrote mid-flight from his BlackBerry. His insights about social media, online collaboration, business writing, and the future of journalism will certainly encourage and inspire you.

Please subscribe to the “Cover Stories” podcast and send John a message on Twitter. You can also join Business Exchange and add us to your network while you’re at it.

1. The BusinessExchange has grown to be a major part of BusinessWeek.com. What has been the secret to its success?

The Exchange is unique. No one does what we’re doing in our business category or outside it. I think that’s one major reason for its success to date. The other is that it meets the information needs of a business professional who wants to stay on top of his or her industry, company or discipline. Today the amount of news and information available on the Web is overwhelming. The Exchange allows you to quickly and easily get your arms around the most useful information you need, whether it’s on your company, your competitors, or aspect of your job. If you’re in human resources, for example, it will bring to you the latest news, feature stories and blog posts on stock option programs, human resource best practices, or the administration of benefits. And it will do this through intelligent human filtering so that a community of smart people in the topic will help us determine what the most valuable information is. That saves you time and gets you to the most important content you need to know to be the smartest person in the room.
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Alex Bogusky is the co-chairman of Crispin Porter & Bogusky, one of the most awarded and creatively relevant ad agencies in the world.

CP+B has quite an impressive list of clients (Burger King, Guitar Hero, Hulu, Volkswagen, Coke Zero, Microsoft, etc.) and it will soon also provide the services of its interns to the highest bidder in an eBay auction (Update: Sold for $17,655!).

Alex, who has won hundreds of top industry awards and was recently inducted into the Art Director’s Club Hall of Fame, was very cool to answer our questions during Memorial weekend and we’re confident you’ll enjoy reading his wise and down-to-earth words.

Please make sure to learn more about CP+B, follow Alex on Twitter, and allow yourself to think like a 12-year-old more often after reading this.

1. Crispin Porter + Bogusky has been named “Agency of the Year” by AdAge, Creativity, Clio Awards, and others. What is it like to be part of an agency that creates so much buzz for clients that it gets some buzz of its own?

It certainly doesn’t suck. But the accolades come and go and the buzz about the agency can sometimes get distracting. And I think a lot of the buzz is because we were the first agency to really rise to fame during the digital age. It’s been pretty wild because we haven’t had anybody to model ourselves after when things get bumpy. But it’s all good. The real fun is in helping build businesses by using the tools we have both with media and creativity to make our clients famous. As a rule we get off more on the culture jamming aspect of what we do for clients than the actual advertising aspects. For example we get more excited to see all the twittering on Hulu than we do about the creative awards. And for me the best part is you get to spend the day with a ton of your favorite people.

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The last 6-12 months have been quite interesting. The credit crisis hit harder than most people expected and we now find ourselves in an unapologetic downturn. On the upside, social media (or social web) has exploded everywhere and it is now officially mindblasting.

From Facebook co-founders working for former presidential nominees, to Twitter love on Today, Colbert Report, Oprah, Super News! and Ellen, social media and anything and everything related to it has become quite the serious matter.

Celebrities have become bigger celebrities (Shaq, the real one, is now appreciated much more for his tweets than for his free throws). Congress is getting super duper good at least at something. Universities are offering social media degrees. Companies and brands are now rushing to create profiles, viral videos and YouTube apologies, blogs, forums (Verizon’s Community Forums), podcasts, plugins, iPhone apps, browser toolbars, RSS feeds, creative forms of crowdsourcing, wikis, Second life empty islands, volunteer networks (V2V + Starbucks), Adobe Air applications, entire web sites (skittles anyone?),  and ad campaigns (Burger King Whopper Sacrifice)…

The list goes on and on. And ALL of this around the idea that social media / web / interweb is the secret to generating meaningful and desperately needed cost-effective buzz.

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