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Levi's new "work" campaign is being brought to life with a series of workshops around the country, the latest being a photography workshop in Wooster Street, New York.

The brand has been deliberately elastic with the idea of "work" allowing it to stretch from manual graft to the more creative avenues, like art and photography. There's no way Levi's wants to cut itself off from the cultural cache of the arts and go full bore into the blue collar arena.

The Wooster Street workshop is lavish, beautifully designed and well-thought out; combining elements of experience together with the practical means of letting people make and print. If it steers a little too much one way, it's too much of a 3-D billboard and not quite enough raw studio.

The other thing that's interesting is the location, it's Soho, but in the outer limits, so it's not in the mass tourist area, but it's easily accessible. This is understandable because there's a clear sense with this effort that Levi's wants its workshop to be seen.

However, you can't help but think the effort would be better placed, for obvious reasons in Brooklyn, Harlem or The Bronx.

On the plus side, you've got to commend a brand that goes beyond ads and actually facilitates creativity and action from its target and that's not an easy thing for marketers to grasp.

Real empowerment over implied, is a potent force for a brand and we can expect others to think how they might make their experiences, even "flat" pop-up stores, more engaging and participatory.

 


Posted by Ed Cotton

There's nothing that makes people in marketing more nervous than handing over control to the consumer. The idea is that they (consumers) are supposed to listen obediently to everything they are told and like good "puppies" act only on that information. Of course, this is complete fantasy, but the mythology and illusion still perpetuate the mind of many a CMO, marketing dept and creative team.

When it comes to the interactive world, this attitude is the kiss of death. If you ask a people in user testing to just sit, watch and obey- they will either ask to see the "skip" button, or leave the room.

It's great to have good content, it's the thing that really matters, but you've got to let users into the sandbox to play and get out of that content exactly what they want. This defines a good user experiences vs. a "non" user experience.

A fantastic example of a great experience comes from conference maestros TED and their freshly minted iPad application. The app allows users to select one of TED's awesome talks based on duration and/or theme, also it can even organize playlists for based on big ideas.

You instantly can see that this solves the convenience and practicality problem right away and also has a nice level of play potential.

TED could have easily just put its videos up on a site

It shows how fat TED has moved from being an aloof, expensive gathering for millionaires to an opinion leading think tank, that provides inspiration for all and this iPad app proves it.

Now all we need is for all those marketing types to give up their fear of handing over control and great user experiences will abound. 


Posted by Ed Cotton Dave  Pescovitz has a great piece over at GOOD on the emergence of DIY family burials. He begins his piece with this interesting taking on the desire for real experiences.

"As cyberspace becomes a “layer” on top of the physical world and we spend more of our lives online, a new-found appreciation emerges for authentic experiences, interactions, and goods. I think that’s part of why so many people are embracing the “maker mindset” of DIY culture, from Stitch and Bitch to Maker Faire.

In many ways, authenticity is the flipside of the mediated experience. For example, the United States has seen a trending down in the average age of farmers. A new documentary film, The Greenhorns, explores this growing culture of young farmers driven by eco-motivation and the quest for authenticity. They’re getting their hands dirty. For them, reality is still where the action is."

Thanks to Core 77

Posted by Ed Cotton Easy You Tube is a nice example of playing with pre-existing experience to make it better for certain segments of society.

The one size fits all approach of web design has some serious limitations, everything is optimized around a set of supposedly common needs and you end up with a number of significant compromises. It's clear that certain groups would approach an interface in different ways and their expectations for interaction could be different.

This is not about the personalization of content choices, everyone does that, instead this is about your real interactions with the user interface and the fundamental essence of the experience.

Easy You Tube shows how you can play with code to develop an experience, which in this case, might make You Tube a lot more enjoyable for kids or seniors.



In the real world, there are TV sets and laptops designed to be used by kids.



Why shouldn't YouTube or Google have kids and seniors versions of their sites?

Online brands should encourage the development of these new experiences because it would allow them to create a lot more relevancy for their users.


Posted by Ed Cotton R/GA's Nike+ site, although created in 2005, has been much heralded this year as the gold standard in "Brand Utility".

It has been the marker to judge this new hybrid world between the banner and the website, sadly, nobody, not even R/GA has come close to the excellence of the Nike site.

So, while we wait for another contender, it's worth taking a look at what's happening on the Nike + site today.

Interestingly, in common with every diet product and fitness center, Nike + is now in full resolution mode.

The site is allowing its users to upload their resolutions, to track them and send notes and encouragement to others making resolutions.

It's a great example of the dynamics of the site and how the experience can be flexible enough to respond to short-term needs like New Year's resolutions.



Posted by Ed Cotton It's clear that the next big change for ad agencies will be the shift to place digital at the center of the shop.

Euro RSCG has already made the leap and others will doubtless follow.

This move has implications for planners, as demands on them will change considerably.

R/GA has been leading the field in digital development, so it makes sense to take a look at the role of planners at the shop.

Thankfully, Admap covered the topic in May of this year when Anne Benvenuto, Vice President of Strategic Services at R/GA explained the agency's planning system and approach.

The shift is driven by the variety of client needs that R/GA deals with, these range from campaigns to programs and experiences. Each of these had different demands from the perspective of channels and insights.

Beyond the client needs, R/GA is set up differently from a conventional ad agency, with an extended creative team (a "Creative Hydra), which includes both an interaction designer and a tech head, in addition to the "traditional" copywriter and art director team.

The planner's role is to deliver insights to help the team in the creation of brand interfaces and experiences.



The UI and tech heads have critical roles to play, in respectively crafting the experience and defining and developing the technology to make that happen.

This enlarged team places greater demands on the planner, who needs to ensure they equip each member of the team with specific and relevant insights, as well as an overarching cohesive thought.

R/GA looks for its planners deliver insights on four dimensions (perceptions, culture, behavior, technology) and a singular idea that links all of them all together. It's clear, that unlike most ad agencies, at R/GA, media and channel behaviors are also included in the line-up.



This leads to briefs that are both simple and complex; allowing the team to see both the single-minded 30,000 ft idea and drill down into the detaled and specific insights that drives the idea.

R/GA's model marks a significant departure from "planning as usual" approach and reflects the dramatic change that adding a tech head and a UI person to the conventional creative team makes.

However, much more than these personnel changes, it's all about agencies thinking about client’s long-time needs, rather than just short-term campaign requirements.

Quite simply, it's all about ad agencies helping brands to continuously connect with their customer base, by adding programs and experiences to the mix and this big shift presents a brave new world for ad agencies and their planners.



Posted by Ed Cotton