Springfest @ McCannNY

I got very lucky and was invited to attend SpringFest, which was held at McCann Erickson NY (it didn't hurt that I happen to work there too). It was a wonderful day full of innovative concepts in media, social behavior and design. All very relevant and awesome topics for someone like myself, engaged in Strategic Planning on a daily basis. This was a FREE conference offered up by McCann and Brainjuicers - I applaud them both for going against the status quo of pay to play collaboration events.

Of the many memorable intellectuals that spoke, I was highly impressed with the concepts brought forth by Mitchell Joachim - co-founder of Terraform1 and honestly he's a design genius. His mass transit concepts helped to fuel the transportation scenes in the movie Minority Report, which is one of my all time favorite movies (and again shows if we can imagine it, it can be created once technology and demand catches up with our imaginations).

Evolution of Social Media

I've been proud to watch social media over the past five years and its growth into one to the most powerful forms of communication and interpersonal interaction available. It's also interesting to watch the ad industry's different techniques for utilizing the influence of person to person dialogue via social platforms. I stumbled onto this new campaign by Ford Motor Co. for the new Ford Fiesta (back from the dead, if you remember the old Fiesta), appropriately title the Fiesta Movement. In a bold move, they are attempting to launch the model strictly on social media platforms, by providing 100 real people with a FREE Fiesta for 6 months, and then asking them to 'tell their story.' They are to blog, tweet, update and post their experiences, opinions and such on sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Blogger etc. Very interesting, and honestly very ballsy. Good luck Ford, you guys need it.

Viral Done Right

I enjoy seeing when a Brand get's the premise of viral done correctly. I'm not a fan of overt viral branding, as is often done, to no prevail. The idea here is that you want to create somethings awesome (or useful), and hope that other people feel that thing is awesome (or useful), so much that they feel compelled to share that awesomeness (or usefulness) with someone else... and so begins the spread IE impressions. It's also key not to litter the content with your brand or message - therefore making people feel like a communications tool, instead of a participant in spreading awesome. I ran into this video, that I personally felt was just pure genius. I love the mash-up of two relatively simple and long existing elements (sheep herding and light bulbs) to creating something new and intriguing - thus representing LED technology. Well done Samsung, I'll gladly participate in the spread - buying a TV ummmm, not right now.