social-creature

For the past two years, Espresso has taken a stab at answering a simple, compelling question: “What The F**k Is Social Media?” The answer has turned into a series of presentations that have been viewed over 750,000 times, translated into about 10 languages (including Russian, so I’ve finally been able to explain to my parents [...]

Remember the whole hoopla going on when the characters from Mad Men up and started Tweeting? It was Fall of 2008, the  show was in its second season, and the controversy erupted when AMC started DMCAing Twitter into shutting down these “infringing” accounts. After a huge backlash, the profiles were un-suspended and the rest is [...]

In case you happen to have missed it, Tropicana changed the design on their cartons last month, and in the process discovered that “Some Buyers Are Passionate About Packaging,” as Stuart Elliott writes in the New York Times:

PepsiCo is bowing to public demand and scrapping the changes made to a flagship product, Tropicana Pure Premium [...]

A few months ago I’d written a post called How Not To Use Condoms, about the misstep of  Trojan’s “Evolve” campaign.
Here, then, is Durex’s take on how to advertise condoms, courtesy of Fitzgerald & Co:

And I’d actually been planning a more substantial entry to be the first post of 2009, but when I came [...]

I know the Trojan “Evolve” Campaign has been going on for a while now, but just recently something occurred to me that I hadn’t quite realized about it before.
The campaign started out last June, with the premiere of a commercial featuring women being hit on by a bar full of anthropomorphized pigs. It’s only when [...]

Have you ever been in a meeting where everyone in the room is using a Mac except one person? Ever notice what happens when suddenly everyone starts to get on that person’s case about the fact that he’s the only one not on a Mac?
I have, and it kinda looked a little bit like this…

That’s [...]

In Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between Who We Are and What We Buy, Rob Walker talks about “underground brands”–lifestyle symbols created by independent entrepreneurs. In fact, I actually think it’s easier to think of underground brands as “independent brands,” (cuz what does “underground” really mean, anyway?) much like independent music:
In popular music, independent music, [...]

i’ll admit right now that this is not what i ought to be writing about.
i’ve been travelling for more of the past month than i’ve been at home, and just coming up with things to write about that i had no time to follow through on. so now that i’ve finally gotten to shower in [...]

my good friend marsi frey was the visual effects producer on this goodby silverstein & partners spot for HP.

 
the flow of the whole thing has such a slick pace that it actually has the feel of more substantial scripted entertainment. that’s right, the ad is entertaining.
(not surprising considering Goodby and Silverstein predict that brands will [...]

while the rest of the do lab spent the last week preparing to syndicate our show for japan, i spent it putting together a powerpoint presentation. slide number 17, the one titled:
“Expanding Brands into Experience Platforms”
ended up featuring this image from lucent l’amour 2006 :

photo by: mickipedia
i figure, depending on how well the presentation has [...]