Sarah Austin was one of the first live streaming, life-casters popularized on Justin.TV and she is the founder of Pop17, “a collaborative blogging platform and web show that covers and tracks emerging web trends and tells the stories behind what’s going in social media.” 

Sarah and I have a SXSWi 2011 Panel Proposal with Brandon Prebynski, Joel Cheesman, Christopher Kahle and Ryan Paugh. We’d really appreciate your votes and comments at http://bit.ly/howtogetajob by August 27th, 2010.

Listen to this entire 38th episode of “The Social Nerdia Show!” with Sarah Austin on the Flash player below. You can also subscribe on iTunes, stream from your phone on Stitcher, and listen to upcoming shows LIVE on blogtalkradio. Some show highlights and quotes are below. Enjoy!

Brands on Social Media

 ”When brands become a part of the community, it really feels like the brand is like your friend. You really love them, like you would a real person. In social media, they take on attributes of people because there are personalitieis behind the brand making tweets, answering questions, customer service, and establishing relationships with people, connecting with people on their interests, and offering something back to the community.”

“Ford’s really great. I had such a time doing the Ford Fiesta Movement. I got to drive a car around and go on all these adventures. It was also a competition. I got to do interviews with Ford designers. It’s interesting to see them being really progressive. Ford used to not appeal to the Millenial demographic. Ford’s really changed and become hip.”

“Companies like Virgin America are doing a really good job. They appeal to a tech demographic and people in social media really like flying on Virgin America. I was able to meet with them and interview Richard Branson. They are really involved in social media and they value people in tech. They syndicate shows like “Wine Library TV” by Gary Vaynerchuck.”

Facebook and “The Social Network” Movie

“Facebook has taken over the world. They own everything but China and they have all the conversations and connections all over the world.”

“To some people, things aren’t official until it’s on Facebook.”

 ”Movies are starting to document a real movement, a social media revolution, and it’s really hitting the mainstream.”

Foursquare

 ”I use Foursquare and have been using it for a while. I have a lot of friends there. If I want to know where my friends are right now, I’ll get on Foursquare. Facebook Places hasn’t quite reached that with me yet. I’m still on Foursquare and plug that in to Facebook.

” It will be interesting to see how developers use Facebook Places and do something cool with it. I don’t think this means Foursquare is over. I think they have to create more relationships with businesses, maybe small local business, so they can provide value on Facebook and stay on there.”

Live Streaming Platforms and Privacy

“Each of the platform has its advantages. There’s just a lot going on. It will be interesting to see how it all plays out when YouTube starts to get into the picture.”

“These sites are going in different directions so what will make them stand out for the long-run will be withstanding all the legal issues that they’ll have to go through, and making the sites safe and guarding by age, demographics, and region. The content and making these sites as secure as possible will be some of their most valuable developments.”

“I use Justin.TV  and I have a lot of information on there. I’ve had 10 million video views and 27,000 followers there. These are people that have a lot  access and have know me about 5 years. I dont really know the informationa bout the people watching me. Having more peripherals set up and have security on my broadcasts. Privacy is a big issue and whichever of these companies can tackle that will have a huge advantage over the competition.”

Word of Mouth

“Word of mouth is one of the most powerful communication tools because people believe that more than anything else. That is the most convincing element.”

Sarah the Geek

“I’m a geeky filmmaker. That’s what I’ve been doing for 13 years. Anything about film making I love to geek out on.”

Interviewing Others

“I think the secret to a good interview depends on whether you’re trying to get a person’s story or trying to get a story out of them. There’s a web of six degrees of separation… everyone is very accessible and the more people that become accessible it opens a lot of doors. What I really wanted to do is capture a positive angle of growth and success, not only contributing to one personal success but also to what they are doing for their communities.”

“I feel like everybody in social media has something to give back to the community and my way of giving back is providing media, documenting and doing interviews.”

Acting

“I took a theater class once. I did act in an indie film that was about a video blogger, it was a horror film. I dabbled in it a little bit, but nothing serious.”

Alternative Careers

“If I had to do something else, it would be something sporty. I’d like to do something where I’m physically active. This might sound silly, but the career before I was thinking about before before was being a park ranger. I hike a lot. It’s beautiful here.”

Our SXSW 2011 Panel Proposal

“We’ll provide a lot of information about how to get a job using social media and how to leverage social media for your career.” http://bit.ly/votesxsw2011

Brandon Prebynski is an Emerging / Social Media Strategist at FKQ Advertising and Marketing and the host of a live USTREAM show called Web Trends. Brandon is one of the first people I “met” on Twitter; you can follow him @Prebynski.

Brandon and I have a panel proposal with Sarah Austin, Joel Cheesman, Christopher Kahle and Ryan Paugh for SXSW 2011 so please vote for us at http://bit.ly/howtogetajob before August 27th, 2010!

Listen to this entire episode of “The Social Nerdia Show!” with Brandon Prebynski on the Flash player below. You can also subscribe on iTunes, stream from your phone on Stitcher, and listen to upcoming shows LIVE on blogtalkradio.

Brandon recently joined FKQ so I asked him about his new role as a strategist. “It’s been great because within a set of guidelines I’ve been able to shape what the position is,” Brandon told me. He is helping clients create long-term strategies around marketing, customer service and product development.

He’s also been working on tracking, analysis and metrics. “We have this big myth out there that it’s really difficult to measure social media and there are many who say you can’t measure the results especially when it comes back to revenue, and that you can only look at trends over time, but frankly with the correct tools implemented correctly, you can sometimes measure it directly.”

Brandon and I agree that the best place to start is with the business’ goals and objectives in mind. If you’re already measuring simple things like the number of followers and Facebook ‘likes’ and comments, “you need to see how it helps you meet your objectives.”

While measuring the size of your community and the level of engagement within it is good, “if you don’t determine what your objectives and make your roadmap according to it, you’re going to be measuring engagement without knowing what engagement means.”

“Companies right now have to define what engagement is. Avinash (Kaushik) has said this many times: ‘the word engagement is an excuse.’  So what is engagement? It has to come back to your objectives as well. If you have lead generations as your objective and you have 500 leads generated over 3 weeks as your goal, then you could say that a user submitting their email address is engagement.  If you produce an online video and all you want is brand awareness, then a view can be engagement.

The word engagement overlaps a lot of times with conversion. We had x amount of conversions and that can be revenue, but isn’t always creating revenue; it could be someone submitting their email, loading a page, or making a purchase.”

Engagement is important when building community. iI you’re starting to build an audience that didn’t exist, then you can consider engagement the number of times that people communicate with you and each other within the community.”

The size of a community and the engagement within it build on each other, and they often demand a deep understanding of the context in which such connections and conversations occur in order to really understand what is happening and where people are coming from. The fact is that a lot of the tools available today can get expensive despite the fact that they often provide vague information like 90% neutral sentiment on a sentiment analysis and they often can’t even provide information (such as Twitter ReTweets). So we talked about context.

Brandon told me “thinking of context… if I’m driving down the road and I see a billboard that has a political message and I repeat that or if I even think about it in my head, i could compare it to a ReTweet.  Does that mean that I agree with that message? Do we even have the tools to crack that anywhere outside of social media right now? It’s a huge issue that requires a lot of work.”

Brandon and I talked about several other topics including the end of Google Wave, the rumors about Google Me, and his live show Web Trends (which is coming back to USTREAM soon!) so listen to The Social Nerdia Show! for much more.

David Kaiser is the co-founder and chief executive officer of Coincident TV, a software suite that allows content creators and distributors to design, manage and measure interactive video engagements across digital platforms. Kaiser is a serial entrepreneur behind seven startup companies, including RespondTV and Navisoft, and was also the first VP of engineering at Macromedia (acquired by Adobe).

Check out our interview with David below and connect with @coincident_tv on Twitter.

1. As experiences become more immersive in the social web, Coincident TV has created an interesting platform that intertwines content, social media, and ecommerce. Please tell me more about how the company came about and what your vision is.

I thought of the idea behind Coincident TV (CTV) in 2008 while at home watching the news with my laptop beside me. After a story caught my attention, I went online to look up more information but found myself frustrated with the disconnected experience. Although simple, it sparked the idea to build a technology that enables hypervideo, the merging of online video, social media, weblinks and commercial transactions.

My vision is to change the way we watch TV by transforming how we view and interact with online video. The goal of hypervideo is to create an interactive experience for the audience, enabling greater engagement between fans, programs, brands, businesses and content owners.

2. What would the ideal implementation of Coincident TV look like?

The great thing about Coincident TV is that it’s flexible and scalable, so the ideal implementation of CTV technology is whatever the author wants it to be. The software suite, both an editor and a player, enhances the video production and viewing experience. Whether it’s a content creator wanting to add real-time social media access to their video or a content producer looking to create revenue-building solutions through increased brand integration, the sequence and combinations of possibilities is only limited by what the author develops.

3. The Coincident TV executions I’ve seen on Fox.com for Glee and So You Think You Can Dance, and the demos on your Web site do not have the option to embed, which has become a key feature for YouTube, Vimeo and most video sites. Is embedding something that you have not decided to pursue or have clients not requested for it?

We are poised to jump into video embedding in a big way this Fall. While most technologies presently focus on sharing individual videos or pieces of content, Coincident TV will soon enable any video viewer to quickly and easily assemble entire video playlists and channels to share across the web. They’ll be able to use videos from YouTube, Blip TV, their own computers – literally any source. Users will also be able to add their own content links and other annotations into their content channels – without ever editing or even accessing any of the source videos. We see this as a quantum leap forward for embedding and we’re excited to launch the application.

4. What is your personal view about HTML 5 vs. Flash?

Flash is still the dominant and ubiquitous standard. And while our technology was originally conceived to work with Flash, we definitely understand the long-term potential of HTML5. And since CTV is based on a proprietary language, we were able to quickly adapt our software suite, both the editor and the player, to support HTML5. We see this as a huge competitive advantage for our platform: build one CTV file and it seamlessly works in Flash, HTML5, even Android.

5. What were some of the best lessons that you learned from working at Navisoft and Macromedia?

I learned the importance of surrounding yourself with a team as dedicated and passionate as you are. At both Navisoft and Macromedia, I worked with enthusiastic teams of technology professionals and our hard work paid off. AOL acquired Navisoft in 1994 and our technology became AOLPress and AOLServer. At Macromedia, we developed Director, the seminal PC animation application and precursor to Flash, and were later acquired by Adobe Systems in 2005.

6. What does it take to be a successful entrepreneur and how did you decide to become one?

While I have found it takes a number of things to find success as an entrepreneur, one key is having patience. It takes time to raise funding to get off the ground, and with any business, you don’t immediately start to see profits. It takes time and an investment. Although I didn’t start my career with the intention of becoming a serial entrepreneur, I discovered that I enjoy the challenge that comes with a startup that introduces new, exciting technologies, like CTV, to both businesses and consumers.

7. Is Silicon Valley still as essential for startups and tech companies or are cities like NYC becoming more attractive for talent, opportunities, and funding?

While Silicon Valley is still a hub for many startups and tech companies, the landscape is definitely starting to change and having a presence in other cities can be beneficial. While Coincident TV is headquartered in San Francisco, we also have offices in Los Angeles and New York. By having a presence in these cities, we feel we have an advantage as Hollywood and Madison Avenue are currently seeking new ways to monetize their content online and offer a more dynamic entertainment experience. We’ve been able to meet with studios and television executives and show them that Coincident TV can help them create an effective monetization model.

8. If you could bring web experiences to television sets, what would you do to ensure that people would find it appealing?

With Web television already available to consumers and new advances happening daily, Coincident TV wants to bring interactivity to these experiences.

Additionally, our technology can be applied to DVDs to create an experience similar to online video viewing. With CTV’s technology, DVD extras will have the ability to constantly be refreshed and can provide a unique experience
every time they are viewed, depending on the audience’s real-time interests and curiosity.

9. With the rise of Twitter and Foursquare, and the opening up of Facebook, social media continues to change the way we view privacy. Do you think “opening up” is essential for the evolution of the social web?

I think there has to be a balance. The evolution of the social Web is exciting because it is making everything more collaborative and engaging. People want to interact with each other and content online but not at the expense of their privacy. There has to be a happy medium where people feel safe sharing otherwise the advantages of the social Web will be negated.

Lisa Murphy is the Product Marketing Manager for Metaio, a company that develops software products for visual interactive solutions between the real and the virtual world.

Metaio is responsible for some of the coolest augmented reality implementations and they recently partnered with Time Out New York Kids to bring P.S.22′s famous YouTube video to your phone through mobile AR (via their Junaio browser). It’s a brave new AR world and Metaio is one of the companies leading the charge.

1) From movie posters to Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, augmented reality marketing is generating a lot of buzz. However, the usage and awareness of AR is still not very high. Is buzz the ultimate goal in AR marketing today?
 
Buzz is definitely a goal for brands and it sometimes is the ultimate goal. But for many others, brands are looking beyond the buzz to deliver an interactive brand engagement experience or help drive sales of their products. For example, LEGO, a partner of ours, created the LEGO Digital Kiosk installation at their retail stores. The LEGO Digital Kiosk allowed shoppers to see a 3D model of the actual LEGO toy with animations and sound right on top of the product package when held to the kiosk. ( )In this execution, LEGO not only created a buzz, a great brand experience, but also sold more products as a result of the experience.

2) Time Out New York Kids and Metaio recently partnered to create a mag cover with AR using the Junaio browser, similar to Esquire’s AR cover some months ago. Now that AR is becoming a reality on print, do you think AR is going to become a trend in the print industry?
 
Print industry is a great fit for augmented reality. As we see a more steady push toward digital ebooks and wide consumption of articles online, publishers are looking for creative and innovative ways to engage their traditional magazine readers beyond just text in a magazine. We definitely see more publishers using augmented reality to create this mixed and interactive experience for their readers and drive more sale of the magazines on newstands. For Time Out New York Kids, having a feature cover and an editorial on PS22 definitely pointed out how talented the Chorus was, but to be able to connect the reader to a video of their performance is instant and engaging.   
  
3) One of my favorite examples of AR is the Adidas Originals 3D Neighborhood sneakers. Where did that idea come from and how successful has it been?

The idea of creating an AR shoe that serves as a game controller for the Star Wars game came from Sid Lee Marketing Agency. They approached us with the concept and we jointly implemented the AR experience using our Unifeye software. The campaign has been very successful and generated much press coverage and buzz. I am not able to disclose any statistics regarding usage as they belong to the client. However, the campaign for the user was successful because it extended beyond just a simple AR campaign, incorporating interactions and social media features to make it engaging and fun. We have heard a lot of good feedback.
 
4) Apps like Tweepsaround (based on Layar) have been able to give us a hint of the integration of AR and the social web. Is Metaio doing anything in the social networking space?

Yes we are. Junaio, our augmented reality browser, has a social focus that allows users to leave “geo-tags” at locations to share with friends. For example, any user can create a “user augmented channel” and leave photos, comments, notes, or 3D objects at locations for friends to discover. Recently, I created a channel called “Lisa’s Adventures” and it’s full of my favorite places to go in the city. My friends can tune into my channel and see my recommendations just by pointing their phone. We have also embedded features such as adding friends, news to create a fun and social experience for our users.
 
On the channel side, Foursquare and Youtube are some of the social networking AR channels that we make available for users to discover. 
 
5) Going back to TONY Kids, what do you think this will do for PS 22, the YouTube sensation and Webby Award-winning fifth-grade chorus from Staten Island?

When we told PS22 about the AR cover, they were very excited. Part of the reason why they were so successful was their viral YouTube videos that garnered more than 2 million hits. Using augmented reality, we were able to connect those videos to the magazine article that allowed the readers to experience the magic as they were reading. More readers are able to see their performance.
 
6) It seems like kids these days are born knowing how to operate computers and smartphones. What about education? Is there an area in which AR could be helpful in the classroom?

Yes! Augmented reality is making books more interactive and fun to read. We did a project with Bertlesmann in 2008 where we turned a couple of pages in their Atlas to 3D AR pages.  The AR experience with visual, audio supplement allowed a reader to better understand the content of the book. Learning by watching a video or having a 3D construction of the terrains vastly improves the intake of information. Future is Wild is another example project.

7) Industrial AR is another interesting use case. Any examples of companies doing this effectively?
 
Yes, Peugeot, Opel, VolksWagen are some of the pioneers in factory planning and prototyping. 
 
In what other ways could the world benefit from increased use of AR?
 
Augmented reality creates a simple interface to data and information that is available in the world. By a simple point of the phone, users can get information immediately. For example, if I am a tourist in San Francisco and looking for places to go, I can use AR to discover landmarks around me.  No more searching through a map or reading a guide, you now can get instant information that is relevant and location-based.
 
9) We’ve gone from webcam/printout examples of AR to all kinds of AR-enabled games and mobile applications. What’s next in Augmented Reality?
 
The growing area is definitely on the mobile side. Everything that we have seen about AR can now be done on a smart phone.

What’s next is mobile AR games? Check out Zoombie Shooter.

Web analytics are cool. If you agree with that statement, there’s a good change you’ve spent some time reading Occam’s Razor, the fascinating blog about web analytics by Avinash Kaushik (author of Web Analytics 2.0 and Web Analytics: An Hour A Day).

If you don’t know who Avinash is then just Google “Web Analytics” and you’ll surely find out who he is. I’ve personally  learnt much from his thought-provoking and action-oriented writings, and I’m sure you will too. Below is an interview about some of the hot topics in web analytics today.

1. Tools like Woopra have introduced us to real-time analytics. Is real-time the future of analytics? Why are we not there yet?

There is more and more real-time data available. Google Analytics is updated, officially, every hour. Then there are cool tools like Chartbeat, etc. My personal perspective on real time analytics is…. if you can’t take real-time action then why do you want real time data?

In 99% of the cases real-time data is not actionable (it is not statistically significant and people jump the gun on the wrong signals), and companies (big or small) can’t actually take any action even if there is an actionable signal (change campaigns, landing pages, stop emails from going out or whatever). Then why do you want the data?

Real-time data becomes an excuse to stare at computer screens or do data puking. It keeps people from doing thoughtful analysis and looking at non-tactical things (and adding value to their employer).

If your organization meets these two rules: a) You have enough traffic / responses on your site to get statistically significant data AND b) You have a capacity to change things (take action), you should seek out real time data and you should make use of it. If you don’t meet the two rules take a long hard look at if you are engaging in any activity that is adding to your company’s bottom-line when you tap into real time data.

2. In 2007, you wrote a post  about “engagement” often being an “excuse,” not a metric. Now that we can measure things like comments, Facebook likes, ReTweets, check-ins, etc., what are your thoughts about the importance of measuring engagement?

My point of view on engagement is simple: What the heck does it actually mean? The answer is? Everything to everyone. Hence my minor displeasure at that metric. I believe in clarity of communication and a razor sharp focus on solving specific problems. Hence precise measurements, and naming metrics for clarity.

Engagement means nothing, hence does not drive action.

My recommendation was that if you are measuring time spent on the site as “engagement” then call it Time on Site. If you are measuring the number of visits by one person as “engagement” call it Visitor Loyalty. Then people know what you are measuring and what to do with the data.

With regards to your point about Twitter and Facebook…. it is very very cool that we can measure new things. The metrics I like (or have formulated) are….

# of Retweets per 1000 followers. I call it Message Amplification.
# of Replies sent & received per day. I call it Conversation Rate.

Both measure “engagement”, but they are called what they actually measure. That’s what I recommend. More here: Social Media Analytics: Twitter: Quantitative & Qualitative Metrics.

In each new medium (like social now) we’ll get even more opportunities to measure if we are doing this right. Unique metrics for unique “engagement” processes. 

3. Today’s tools and vendors seem to still be fragmented so we find separate tools for web analytics, monitoring, and specific insights. Do you see the industry consolidating to provide clients with a super tool that does it all?

Yes, and no.

Yes in the sense that as things get settled you’ll see tools evolving to incorporate that reporting. AdWords reporting used to be all by itself (it was too young, too new and no one new where it was going). It is now standard reporting included in Google Analytics and Omniture and other tools.

In the last couple of years AdSense, TV, Email, Display are all incorporated into Google Analytics, as an example. Or sometimes different vendors merge things together, as it the case with the 4Q voice of customer survey which merges with Google Analytics.

So as digital strategies reach some level of maturity expect tools by Google and Yahoo! and WebTrends and more to incorporate them together.

No in the sense that we live in such an ever evolving space (I think of web analytics today as a toddler, a lot of growth/change is to come and we actually have no idea what it is going to become). So new things will keep coming and they’ll be outside and we’ll have to become comfortable with what I call Multiplicity, the idea that to do your job effectively on the web you’ll have to:

a) Use the right tool to answer the right question, and b) Be very comfortable with managing / learning / using multiple tools at one time

And I’ll tell that that to me that is just so exciting that the world changes and evolves and you can have so much fun. Every day!

4. Bloggers often pay attention to comments and Social Media sharing as a way to measure success. What should bloggers be paying more attention to?

This should not come as a surprise… I have a blog post on Blog Metrics! : ) Here it is: Blog Metrics: Six Recommendations For Measuring Your Success.

It is important to focus on the impact of social media on your blogging success (retweets, likes, replies to you on twitter and facebook to posts about your blog etc etc). But blogging is about more than social media links / clicks. The essence of my blog post about is that you should measure holistic success of your blog. The metrics I recommend are:

1. Raw Author Contribution
2. Audience Growth
3. Conversation Rate
4. Citations / Ripple Index (social media falls here)
5. Cost
6. Benefit ($$)

Taking that view allows you to have a robust understanding of if you are adding value and if you should keep doing what you are doing (or change!). I encourage people to do that beyond simply checking retweets or likes.

5. Your 10/90 rule is great because it focuses on people, not tools or technologies. With that rule in mind, what advice would you give to young people getting started in marketing research and analytics?

Learn to try new things and play in the real world. There is no better medium in the world for you to try anything you want, all by yourself without the need to rely on your employer to empower you. Tools are free or cheap. Platforms are free or cheap. All you need is a pinch of effort and a dash of desire to learn in the real world. If you do that no one will refuse to hire you because you’ll actually know what the heck you are talking about. If you don’t do that… well…. life will be tougher.

Here is a blog post that outlines how to do that, at least for Web Analytics: Web Analytics Career Advice: Play In The Real World.

6. Your books “Web Analytics 2.0″ and “Web Analytics: An Hour a Day” have not only helped many people, but also created excitement around web analytics. Did you ever think you would one day be the closest thing to an Analytics Rock Star?

There is no such thing as a Rock Star. From dust to dust.

But I did want to share that I feel incredibly blessed that blogging and engaging in social media allows me (and anyone else!) to simply do what I am passionate about (writing and analytics), and have something come of it. My blog is responsible for Wiley contacting me and requesting me to write a book and things kept evolving like that. All I did is focus on writing things people would find to be “incredible” and “of value” (my two mantras for blogging).

As you know, all my proceeds from both my books are donated to charity (Doctors Without Borders, The Smile Train and Ekal Vidyalaya), and in around two years that amount is over $100k. I am astounded at that outcome.  More than anything it shows how “powerful” each and every one of us can be when we leverage the beautiful internet and focus on adding value through our passion.

Viva la web!

Big ideas have been essential to advertising since it’s early beginnings, and they are often the subject of great admiration and inspiration. Many have become interested in the process of identifying big ideas, executing them, and measuring their success, but what about the process of coming up with those ideas? Where do big ideas really come from? 

Glenn Griffin and Deb Morrison are the authors of “The Creative Process: Illustrated,” a fantastic book about how advertising’s big ideas are born. They are also university professors and scholars who have built great ad programs; Glenn at SMU, and Deb at UT and the University of Oregon. On the most recent “The Social Nerdia Show!” we talked about creativity, education, the brilliance of Old Spice Man, award shows, BP’s advertisements, and of course, the release of their book, which includes insights from some of the ad industry’s greatest (ie. David Kennedy himself).

Listen to this entire episode of “The Social Nerdia Show!” with Glenn and Deb on the Flash player below. You can also subscribe on iTunes, stream from your phone on Stitcher, and listen to upcoming shows LIVE on blogtalkradio.

While there has been some debate about whether education has an impact on creativity, Glenn’s research as a PHD student showed that there is ”largely a positive and significant influence.” It was as a PHD student that Deborah became Glenn’s mentor and their conversations about the source of creativity, particularly in advertising, is where the idea for the book became implanted in their minds.

The Creative Process: Illustrated

Deb told me that “process matters“ and “process is beautiful” so their book is an exploration of “how people think about thinking.” 

She told me that one of the most amazing things about working on the book was seeing ”writers using no words to visualize their process and art directors describing theirs.”

Metacognition is a concept that human being leverage their own understanding of how their own brains work and advertisers are “metacognitive powerhouses,” Glenn explained to me. There is a lot of  ”personalization and pride in peoples’ creative process,” he added.

Glenn: “This is a whole area that is largely missing in the scholarship in our discipline. It’s not observable. Developing this technique of visualization and drawing meaning is a really cool way of capturing process in a way that hasn’t been done before.”

Artistry, Brilliance, and Old Spice Man

I asked them if creatives in advertising were similar to artists like dancers. While there are similarities because creatives are using their minds as their tool, they explained some big difference. Deb expressed that  those in advertising are “artists who always have to be cognisant of whether it will help the brand and solve a particular problem.”

Glenn said the biggest difference was “anonimity. The people in advertising are anonymous.” He gave the example of Isaiah Mustafa from the Old Spice commercials because “they’ve made him a superstar overnight.. a lot of people know that guy’s name, but nobody knows Eric Kallman and Craig Allen, the guys who write every word he says. They are artists that don’t get to sign the canvas.”

We continue talking about Old Spice’s campaign and Deb said ”I love that Old Spice is such a story. My 16 year old loves it, my husband gets it, we can all watch and say ‘yes.’ Humor can be a great tool. The Old Spice campaign is a grand slam”  

Part of what made the story so big was that they decided to “talk to guys but let’s also talk to women. I know Craig and Eric, and I know, I know that they were writing and concepting that to make themselves laugh. It was just brilliant insight, and from a brilliant insight of ‘the man your man could be.’ I’m sure Craig, the art director, came up with ‘look at me, look at him,’ and Eric is thinking of ‘I am on a horse.”

The idea of the Old Spice Man commercials and the YouTube videos addressed to specific people but meant to be watched by millions is one that anyone can appreciate. But what is its long-term impact?

Deb: “This will be long-lasting and the interesting is we don’t know how long these memes will last. They’ve created something that will be a very high benchmark for that team. For the culture they’ve re-established Old Spice as one of those brand that will have to out-do itself.”

 ”Also, Wieden has an amazing media group. Weiden is one of those agencies where the creative has to be brilliant. Brilliant media, brilliant writing. Brilliant creative.”

Everyone Works in a Creative Field

In the book, Deb and Glenn go into how everyone has the potential to be creative and the importance in passion so I asked why not everyone worked in a creative field.

Glenn: “I think everyone does work in a creative field. We have a wrong sense about what creativity is. Every human being is creative. The problem is that the term has been wrapped up in the performing arts and that warm and fuzzy place that’s for poets and musicians. Creativity is fundamentally problem-solving and everyone of us engages in problem solving.”

“I tell my students, I don’t care what you’re passionate about, but be passionate about something because life is too short. That part of being a human being is essential.”

While, as Deb pointed out, ”our educational system forces us into looking for linear and very logical answers.. instead of a multitude of answers,” educators are starting to re-think education to enhance collaboration and creative thinking. Both Deb and Glenn agree that the art director plus copywriter team is a great example of something that is taught well in their programs and prepares them for real world collaboration and ideation.

Deb: “Collaboration is a must. A good advertising program makes sure people are working together, not just the art director and the writer, but the planner comes in, the account person comes in; doing big work trying not to segregate anyone, but let everyone be creative and strategic. The best agencies are doing exactly that.”

Building a Great Advertising University Program

So what else do you need to create a great ad program? Deb said it starts with  ”good people” and a “mission statement that is blissfully optimistic.”

Glenn: “You also need students that buy into it. The key is to give them tools, frameworks, and advice, and let them do the amazing things that they’re capable of doing. When they see the fruits of their own hard work, that’s the seed that germinates. It mushrooms from there.”

Deb: “Let’s face it, advertising gets a deserving very bad rap at times. I tell students that what we’re here to do is to change that. There are ways to be bright, brave, heroic and help people with what we do, and do work of meaning.”

Glenn: “We spend so much time with our students that we get to know them probably better than most professors get to know their students. A lot of times you sit and talk, and you do more listening, than speaking back.”

Since “The Social Nerdia Show!” is a live podcast on BlogTalkRadio, someone in the chat asked about students who might simply don’t have it to be successful in the the creative side of advertising. Glenn shared that he often helps students find out what else they could do. He also provided insights on preparing students for the difficult aspects of the industry, Glenn said:

 ”There is no way to prepare someone to get fired. I tell students not to work in advertising if they could imagine themselves enjoying something else more. The people that are the biggest successes are the ones that can’t imagine doing anything else. That passion is what can take you through anything.”

Deb: “I talk a lot about agency culture. It might take some time, but it’s important to find a place that fits your values.”

Awards and Award Shows

Deb sits on the board of the One Club and she believes in awards as “benchmarking. I don’t like the greed that comes along with awards. If that’s all you’re doing it for then priorities get mixed up. But when you see good work.. it’s a lovely thing.”

Glenn: “Sometimes stuff that I don’t want to hold up to students will win awards; from a students’ perspective awards equal success so you have to train them to see awards with some perspectives. I love it when my students win awards, but I also want that to be tempered with the ideas that it’s not about that.”

Overblown green claims and BP’s failures

I asked Deb about some of the things she dislikes int he industry and she said ”there’s so much hyperbole and overblown claims towards what is green. I don’t like that. I want adv to be honest and authentic. Telling the truth and using our powerful tools in the best way.”

“Many of the oil companies grab on to this sense of hyperbole. They look at 10% good that they do and claim that. BP is in a special place, they are in one of the rings of hell right now.. they have not done authentic work, they’ve claimed a lot of things they shouldn’t, and now of course they can’t claim anything. They can’t save face at this point.”

Despite BP’s huge fail, Deb agreed with me that the company is going to be fine due to the nature of their business. “They are in the ‘too big to fail’ category. My head spins about that. That’s awful for the culture, and awful for our sense of selves,” she said.

Living in an Anything is Possible World

Despite failures and problems in the industry, it is an exciting time. Technology has truly converged with marketing and advertising in a way that has brought much excitement to creative thinkers. And the opportunities don’t exist just in technology and the social web, but in all kinds of places.

Deb: “Right now we are living in an ‘Anything is possible world.’ It’s such a wonderful place to begin a career.. immense possibilities to do film, books, art exhibits, events, and beautiful brand thinking at a 360 degree level. A few years ago it was just print, television and maybe a billboard. Now we have incredible opportunities to do work of meaning at so many different levels.”