continuing on the RFID tip…Epic Mix from Vail Resorts.  Set to roll out at Beaver Creek in November, the new platform will roll out to Vail, Breck, Keystone & Heavenly through 2012.

part Nike+, part FourSquare, this custom interface developed by (who else) Crispin Porter + Bogusky and Odin Technologies is 100% skier/rider friendly.  In digitizing the mountain, they’ve removed the need for pulling out mobile phones and hand-helds in exchange for the one thing everyone has on them:  their already RFID-enabled lift ticket.

a perfect blend of customized tech trends (pins vs badges), social media interface (seamlessly works w twitter & the book of face) and branded utility (track your vertical feet, find friends on the hill)…all smashed into something you’re buying already.

vid from Contagious

you don’t always expect the big mega-brands to be ahead of the curve.  experience tells me many take a wait-and-see approach…only to throw money at something in an effort to catch up.

not the folks in Atlanta…or at least their co-workers oversees.  an amazing example of digital loving experiential…and vice versa…here from Coke.

Coke certainly is “it”.

via Contagious

high design & concept lab IDEO has launched an new “open platform” called OpenIDEO that encourages people to come together in an effort to solve big social problems.  in exchange for their words, videos and creative thinking, group members receive a “design quotient”…or DQ…something IDEO hopes becomes social currency in the smarty pants world.

which got me thinking:  how long before consumers aren’t happy to just be a part of something and demand compensation beyond the warm and fuzzies?

crowd-sourcing is no longer novel…nor is the idea of “listening” to your consumers.  from Doritos crashing the Super Bowl to Pepsi Co launching Dewmocracy, any brand worth a lick is trying to get their fans involved.

but up to now, the chance to be part of the game was reward enough.  submit your creative and it could be on the Super Bowl?  name our new flavor and you can tell your friends you named our new flavor?  design our logo and we’ll throw you some DQ points and you can brag that you have some…DQ points.

when will consumers realize this multi-million dollar companies are, for lack of a better term, using them for free work?  researchers will tell you that consumers want this responsibility…that as passionate brand advocates, they’re looking to be an influential part of a larger “brand community.” which is great…until you have to pay rent.

questioning this isn’t about work being taken out of the hands of professionals (designers, writers, agency types)…it’s more about empowering the people.  people who are adding value to the brand…people who are making other people money.

i’m fully aware that it’s not all about the benjamins all the time, and yes, IDEO is an outstanding company with an amazing track record of delivering breakthrough thinking.  but being loosely tied to said agency via some digital brain dump ain’t cutting it…and until those DQ points can buy me a pint across the street, i’ll pass.

By Bill Buzan, sound designer/ sr. technical director

photo credit: jekert gwapo

Did you see that?  That explosion, foot step, door slam, etc.?  Sure you did.  And I’m pretty sure you heard it too.  When something prominent happens in a movie, TV show or commercial, it’s hard not to notice it; visually and audibly.

How about something happening in the back ground?  If you saw it happen you probably didn’t think about the fact that you also heard it, and how odd it would have been had you not heard an associated sound.  For instance, if you were watching (and hearing) someone hammering a nail, and in the back ground you saw a dog barking, without hearing a bark, you might think it a bit odd.  Wouldn’t you?  That’s Sound Design for video.

One of the biggest things that attracted me to sound design was the way sound can be used to help tell a story.  For example:  Let’s say you’re watching a scary movie.  In a stormy late-night scene, while the camera is on the actress playing the teenage babysitter, we (and she) hear a car pull into the gravel driveway, the engine shut off, the car door close and then footsteps walking slowly toward the front door.  The actress reacts to the off-screen sounds as the music intensifies.  We don’t need to see the car or the feet walking to the door to feel the anxiety welling up in the actresses character.  Animation and motion graphics bringing on text, a logo or as an effected transition from one scene to another, has more impact when a “whoosh”, “ping”, “vroom” or “eeow” is added.

Another way that sound helps to get a message across is, simply, from a point of clarity.  Let’s move from the professional world to the, for a lack of a better term, non-professional world.  In this age of You Tube, people have become accustomed to “it is what it is” quality video.  Audio isn’t allowed the same luxury.  If the viewer can’t understand what’s being said, the message is lost and the video serves no purpose.  I’ve spent hours trying to pull a voice out of a sea of noise.  Sometime successfully, sometimes not.A good rule of thumb for the amateur videographer:  Listen with headphones while you shoot.  If you can’t understand what’s being said, no one else will either.

Something I always get a kick out of is using one sound to represent something else.  Many years ago I needed to create the sounds of a busy street.  I had sound effects CD’s with city sounds that I liked, but something was missing that I though needed to heard:  a jack hammer at a construction site.  I don’t know why I wanted it, but I just did.  I looked through my library of effects and found a jack hammer, but it just didn’t fit in the mix.  I don’t remember exactly why.  Whether it was recorded too close or too far or it didn’t have the right pitch; I don’t remember, but it was wrong.  So I began listening to any sound I could think of that could possibly double as a jack hammer.  I found conveyor belts, Model T Fords, WWI airplane engines starting up.  Nothing was quite right.  The perfect sound turned out to be an automatic garage door opening and closing.  The way it nestled into the cacophony of city noise was perfect.

I’m sure no one noticed the “jack hammer”, let alone that it was really an automatic garage door.  Maybe they would have noticed if it wasn’t there.

we presented an idea to a client last week to give a film maker creative freedom to create a series of shorts that captured the essence of the brand…without really showing the brand.

the sans-brand film has been around for awhile…but picked up some major steam when Spike Jonze teamed up with Absolut to create a Sundance-worthy short…that really had nothing to do with vodka.

today i was digging back through some old emails and found this link for a super-duper film series outta Europe.  Coke energy drink-brand Burn teamed up with Publicis Mojo, Rumpus Room, Exit Films and Steve Bara for a series of killer vids.

Per the article from Contagious, Coke nor the shops involved are talking much…but there’s more to see on YouTube.

Obviously, the under-branded branded content is hot right now.  I just saw a great preso on Slideshare from the head planner dood at GS+P on how you should be looking to create good media vs. finding good media.  But in the end…while I certainly think Burn is forward thinking…I’m no more included to drink it than before.  And isn’t that the goal?  To convert to purchase? (pls suspend reality and pretend i’m living in Europe)

thoughts?

This week’s Rad is extremely serious.

Texas Instruments wanted to remind parents of the 80s that a child’s mind is not a f@&%ing joke.   They get the message across with an image of a kid who’s clearly got it going on in the brain department. So innocent, so inspired. Uuh, hell yes he can spell AND do math. With tools like Spelling B, Mr. Challenger and Math Marvel hovering above his head, he can pretty much plan on being a presenter at the upcoming TED conference.

The headline says it all… Literally, there are no other words on the page. And why should there be? Texas Instruments does the right thing by not junking it up with, I don’t know, their logo or anything. This is as much a PSA as it is an ad for a calculator company that would go on to make millions with their TI-83 graphing calculators.  You know, the ones used by 8th graders everywhere to play the shit out of games like Tetris and Block Dude.

So while your kid is almost certainly using TI products to play games in Pre-Algebra class, you can be sure that Texas Instruments is not playing games with their mind.

By Eduardo Nieuwenhuyzen, Senior Creative Director

As a creative type, you’ve no doubt experienced the pressure to “CREATE MAGIC” in the blink of an eye. Some creatives have even begun to poke fun by saying, “just hit that ‘FM button’ (freakin’ magic) for quick results.” However, we know that the creative process is not always linear, and it isn’t a formula that should be expected to perform on command the same way each time.

In fact, the creative process is an organic and emotional experience, where even the best creatives are affected by bad days where they may fall into a rut of not knowing where to begin. What differentiates “good” from “great” creatives is how quickly they can rebound.

How do you keep the creative juices flowing?

The trick to staying as far away from complacency and dullness is to cultivate “fun” within the creative team. This doesn’t mean just afternoon ping-pong tournaments and crazy clothes contests on Casual Fridays, but real team building opportunities.

Photoshop has provided us with many parody’s where interns have taken the liberty to highlight the team in funny situations. For example, there was a parody that celebrated the last episode of The Sopranos, and another was created as a thank you for the folks at Companion Bread for taking the team on a special bakery tour.

We wanted to share more of our personal passions within the group, we took the simple concept of “SHOW & TELL”, and gave every artist the opportunity to share something they loved. Because every artist brings a unique perspective on life to their designs, it only made sense that we learned more about each other. SHOW & TELL took us from a behind the scenes VIP tour of Busch Stadium to a once in a lifetime tour with a Brewmaster in the caves at Anheuser-Busch. In honor of graffiti art, employees were encouraged to tag each other’s houses with washable spray paint. And in a somewhat more productive domestic situation, we got a lesson on simple and impactful ways to entertain guests at your home.

The SHOW & TELL concept not only promoted presentation skills and experiential connections, but also unified a group of artists through healthy competition, which in turn provoked a spark in creativity. The process itself stays true to our company’s mission: Switch engages audiences to explore fun brands by immersing them in sensory experiences. We immersed ourselves in sensory experiences, and “fun” became a personal tool for us to erase stress and other pressures. As we all know, the happier and more energetic the environment, the stronger the creative product.

Take a recent situation where we lost a piece of business. The group was demoralized and in desperate need of a pick-me-up. Thus, The Chicken Strip Challenge was born. The CSC was staged in the midst of a work day as a competition where 3 teams competed for glory in 4 simple challenges: the most difficult challenge included eating a chicken strip with 13 different condiments layered on top of each other.

Staying creative isn’t as easy as one might think, but being creative is in every single one of us. Some might be blessed more than others, but collectively, creativity is inspired by a positive state of mind.