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A writer gets a cool opportunity to do a piece on legendary Hollywood screenwriter Charlie Kaufman and turns it into a chance for Wired to go transparent; blog, film it and invite people in.

I guess the idea is to take a Kaufman-like approach to Kaufman.

Here's the pitch video- it's a little low tech and tough to watch..



While this is all very 2.0 and "on trend" it creates some interesting problems and issues.

1. Does any one care enough to spend valuable time going through this stuff?

2. Who might these people be? How can you give them what they want?

3. Is it really transparent- what are we missing/not seeing?

4. Notes and process also need to be compelling. It's not enough to just post or shoot you need to do more- real creative skills are required

5. Does the telling of the backstory take away from the main effort?

It's a brave attempt to do something new and original and the goal of taking the reader into the process is nice. The challenge is making all this stuff compelling enough to make people want to check it out.

Perhaps thinking it of two distinct parts is the problem; the research and the story or the process and the story.

Does it need to be "a whole"; something we just explore  and navigate around with hyperlinks et al?

It's smart of Wired to try this and I think with more work they could be on to something interesting that could lead to a new type of more "game-like"media experience.

Clearly, not everyone wants to be taken on a ride down a "wormhole", but there will be a few who might appreciate the experience, if it was designed correctly.


Posted by Ed Cotton Although the television networks don't yet have the technology to bring "smell-o-rama" to our living rooms, they appear to be experimenting with it in their promo advertising campaigns.

CBS is using flavor strips to promote a new Fall show called Cane that follows the exploits of a rum-making dynasty. The print ad running in Rolling Stone uses a mohito flavored strip, sadly the strip is non-alchoholic, which sort of ruins the fun.

However, CBS seems happy with the advertising, regarding it as something of a breakthrough.

"What better way to launch a new series like this than design a one-of-a- kind print ad you can taste."

George Schweitzer,President of the CBS Marketing Group.

What better way, indeed.


Posted by Ed Cotton Ad agencies are always on the hunt to do more for their clients.  Often, the goal is to provide creative thinking that permeates the brand well beyond advertising.

Walrus is one agency that's doing that with it's new client, Radar magazine and creating quite a stir doing it. I fired some questions across to the agency's founder and creative director, Deacon Webster, to find out more.

1. How did the relationship with Radar develop?

We actually sought them out. There was a lot of press around Radar when it launched and we were really taken with the mission of the magazine. In an interview Maer Roshan (the Editor-in-chief) was explaining how, in his estimation, the line between high and low brow in conversation had become completely blurred. People today segue between the war in Iraq and Britney Spears without missing a beat. He wanted Radar to fuel both halves of that conversation. It seemed like something completely fresh, so we contacted them. One thing that we really thought we could help with was house ads – those “Subscribe Now” messages you see in the back of the magazine that look like they were done by an Art Department intern two hours before it went to press. We felt there was a real opportunity to turn them into serial content that people looked forward to rather than throw-away filler. We presented a whole bunch of ideas and Maer basically said, “Great! We love these. Any chance you could help us with the cover?” Since then we’ve moved on to helping with other editorial content as well. For instance, we created a series of fake campaign buttons for an election piece they were running. People actually wrote in and wanted to buy them, which was pretty great.
 
2. Where you inspired by George Lois and the way he worked with Esquire?

 
He was an ad man, so he knew that a magazine cover is like a big billboard. It sits on a newsstand amidst a sea of other covers, and it essentially needs to talk you into buying it over everything around it, right then and there. He did an amazing job of creating big iconic images that stood out and pulled you in. The funny thing is, as famous as the work he did with Esquire became, very few publications are doing “conceptual” covers today, which is great for Radar.

3. What's your favorite magazine of any era and why?

That’s a hard question, because I’m kind of a magazine junkie. Looking back, those that stand out over time are usually the ones that are pushing the envelope design-wise, so things like David Carson’s RayGun, Tibor Kalman-era Colors, some of the early Wireds and �migr� are some pretty obvious contenders. Certainly I loved Spy. Today, from a design perspective, it’s hard to deny New York magazine, Janet Froelich did some amazing things with the New York Times Magazine and Good is also really well designed by the guys at Open. Content, to me, is kind of a different thing because you’ve got your New Yorkers, Harper’s and Economists out there that have really amazing content, but from a layout perspective, they’re somewhat intimidating (and downright boring in the case of Harper’s). I know this is weird, but I’d actually include Cook’s Illustrated on my list. If you like to cook, it’s freaking impossible to put down.

4. A few other agencies have attempted to work with magazines, most recently Modernista with Business Week, any thoughts on these collaborations?

There are a lot of people in advertising that have been on the publishing side at one time or another and Gary Koepke, one of the founding partners at Modernista is one of them, I believe, so it makes sense. I think agencies can bring a lot to the table for magazines in terms of rethinking the way they communicate information, but it has to be the right type of collaboration. You  have to be really careful not to step on any toes. Magazines have floors full of editors, designers and art directors who, understandably, aren’t always excited to have another set of writers, designers and art directors come in and start changing things. In our case, we work with Radar largely as creative “advisors” – sometimes we’ll design an entire piece, sometimes we give them a concept for something and they make it their own. Since we have similar sensibilities, it works really well for us, but I wouldn’t say that this is the next big trend in publishing. There are too many egos. Somehow I can’t imagine Alex Bogusky sitting across the table from Anna Wintour pitching cover ideas. It’d be great, but I can’t see it.

5. Where did the Prince Harry inspiration come from?

Of course we always start with the story – in this instance they had a pretty juicy piece on Harry. We knew that we wanted something that contrasted the conservative, traditional notion of British Royalty with the frat boy behavior we were seeing from the prince. This was one of probably 20 that we presented and was inspired by the opening scene of The Queen, where Helen Mirren is having her portrait painted. It just as easily could’ve been Elizabeth I sitting there in that same chair, wearing the same jewels. It doesn’t get much more traditional than that.

6. What kind of coverage has the cover gotten?

It’s been causing a real stink over in England. We first caught wind of it via the Drudge Report (the man knows all) and realized that the British newswires were all picking it up and saying it was blasphemous etc. USA Today wrote about it online as did Huffington Post and New York Magazine. E! did a big piece on air. If you Google ‘Radar Prince Harry cover’, it’s amazing how much has been written about it. I got through the first 100 or so links and had to stop.

7. Any thoughts on other potential future covers?

Sadly, I can’t talk about upcoming covers, but I will throw this out there: isn’t it about time somebody explored the obvious sexual tension between Michael Moore and Ann Coulter…

 

Posted by Ed Cotton News magazines are having a difficult time trying to imagine a future beyond the printed page.

The Economist, is one news magazine,that despite bucking the trend with increases in circulation and ad pages, is still preparing itself for the future.

To do this, it created Project Red Stripe; basically a group of The Economist’s youngest and smartest minds from around the globe. They got together in a London office provided for them by their ad agency and for a few months considered hundreds of ideas for the future.

At the end of their journey, they settled on one.

Lughenjo

It’s big, powerful and imaginative.

Their idea is to link their intelligent, highly influential reader base to projects in the developing world.

As the team writes:

“Imagine a CEO examining a business plan for a developing world social enterprise. Or when one of the 450 000 finance and accounting professionals of CFO and Economist.com can look over the books of an NGO in Nairobi. The possibilities are endless. What’s more, by allowing skilled, smart, professionals to help development organisations, they will help solve development problems with market-based solutions.”

Of course, there are other people trying to do this all over the web, but the fact a paid-for big media entity like The Economist, is even prepared to think about this type of idea is interesting.

Everyone in media might be talking about community and user-generated content, this idea takes all of that a stage further by trying to do something good for those who lack resources.

The Economist has a global circulation of around 1 million, so the impact could be considerable.

The initiative still has to be approved by senior management.

It would be nice to see other media companies think this big.

Content→Community→Action
 

Posted by Ed Cotton Doubleclick did an interesting piece of research last year, they asked consumers what forms of advertising (media) they thought worthwhile and what they would  eliminate.

The results are somewhat suprising- despite living in a DVR world, only 7% would prefer to eliminate them, less than 2% would prefer to eliminate magazine or newspaper ads. They also found these traditional forms of media more worthwhile, than Amazon recommendations.

Less worthwhile and in-line for elimination; telemarketing, spam and pop-up ads that were rated more "evil' than spam.



Via Bankwatch

Posted by Ed Cotton A few months ago, Influx looked at RED, worried that it might be in danger of getting drowned by the growing attention being placed on the environment.

We wondered if people were giving up on Africa and it was becoming a forgotten story.

We wondered if the interest and awareness for RED that we saw in 2006, was dwindling away. 

We suggested that RED made more of an effort to get its story out.

This month, something big finally happened, with the help of Conde Nast’s Vanity Fair, who invited Bono to be the magazine’s first ever guest editor, for a special Africa issue for July.

In the magazine, RED gets the chance to share its story about getting pills to Africa’s 28 million AIDS sufferers.

The article talks about the power of ARVs to restore normalcy to the lives of AIDS victims and highlights the progress made by the country of Rwanda, where 67% of the people who need the drugs, now have them.

Elsewhere across the continent of Africa, only 28% are getting the drugs they need, so there’s still a lot of work to be done.

Beyond this month's Vanity Fair, RED seems to be making more of an effort with its communication, it has an active blog (RED, please make more of this!!!) and its starting to use YouTube a bit more.



The Vanity Fair July issue is a huge coup for RED, hopefully it will prompt more in the media world to donate the time and space to help RED tell its important story in new and intriguing ways.



Posted by Ed Cotton