Brett Macfarlane

Dreaming and Doing

Without really realizing it we just marked three years in London. An occasion born from my original placement in Paris. 

 

 

This year has been one of those years to take stock of what the past years have brought us and all the many many things learned along the way that we never would have known if still in comfortable Vancouver. 

 

The hard thing about all the lessons learned through doing hard things is the challenge to relate them to friends and colleagues after the initial curiosity quickly fades.  Truth is how can you translate, without extreme boredom, such personal and individual experiences. 

 

My fear is that all the little things from everyday will some day start to feel ordinary.

 

My hope is that having joined one of the planet's most exciting emerging creative dynamos full of Dreamers and Doers that life will be anything but ordinary. 

 

So maybe it is time to re-grasp for myself the classical spirit of blogging. The unpolished and often unformed points. The observations, noticing and random of life. Maybe the mundane, maybe insane, maybe neither. 

 

I am going to dissolve the artificial wall between work and non work life. There will be some work things, some food things, events and activities, some boring stuff about natural wine, probably things related to my book Everyday Paris and undoubtedly travel bits. Whatever seems worth noticing for myself. Maybe, just maybe, you'll find it interesting.

 

It won't be over polished or conceptualised.  It won't be overly self aware, it might come accross as pompous at times, trite at others.  Not by design but that's how it may seem, to you.  The stretch is the point.

 

Right, so let's see how this goes. 

TED Vancouver. Why not us?

TED is moving to my hometown Vancouver in 2014.  That is pretty cool, but why Vancouver?

One of my favorite memories of the first Interesting Vancouver was meeting the artist David Young when planning the event.  He had recently moved to Vancouver from the US and remains absolutely convinced Vancouver today has the right ingredients to become the world's next great creative hub.

As a born and raised self-loathing Vancouverite it seemed equally ridiculous and addictive this provocation of his.

"Why not us?" he challenged me.  

In his Interesting Vancouver 2008 talk he dissects the great cities and creative eras of human history to build his argument why the present generation's Vancouver is potentially the next great creative culture. 

I fully agree with David and part of my reverse migration to Europe is to experience and study more closely how other cultures - be they local, national, regional or global - operate with success, mediocrity or failure.

Having left Vancouver, I increasingly identify the reasons why Vancouver already is one of the planet's leading thinking hubs of the moment.

1. Hard Natural Resources - wealth of the land is helpful.  Traditionally hard natural resources timber, minerals, agriculture and fishing have provided the wealth of the region and a financial backbone of a community. 

2.Soft Natural Resources - have created new opportunity and financial resource - such as near perfect natural light conditions to create the largest film production centre outside L.A. and NY. Technical knowledge from logging built one of the most technically advanced rigging expertise centers for big budget action films (eg. the X-men films) or early computer pioneers driven by an economy that only knows technical progress (and a bit of local sci-fi rebel rousing from William Gibson types.)  These are soft resources developed in one area that then jump laterally to areas like video games with EA who develops most of their sporting titles in Vancouver.

3. Collaborative - while a big city it is not so big that individual business sectors never cross over.  Each sector has a handful of players (take advertising where there are maybe 5 meaningful agencies today) such that they naturally cross paths with many other areas.  Likewise, two large but excellent universities and the top notch Emily Carr art school who have departments but never the entrenched silos of old world institutions.

4. Curiosity - Vancouverites tend to be more introverted than elsewhere but certainly are curious types seeking stimulus from all sources.  It is one of the world's few genuinely multi-cultural cities.  Many great cities like London or Paris are international but their government and self-image remains caucasian male with barely a handful of exceptions despite the factual demographics and thriving ethnic  communities.  A strong world life balance mantra of work hard play hard also keeps people fired up and full of interests fueling curiosity.

5. Pioneer spirit - over 90% of the population moved within at most two generation to the region in pursuit of a better life.  It is hard wired to think that however something is done today it can be done better tomorrow - change is always better than not changing. A few quick examples being Greenpeace for the environmental movement, Lululemon for modern sportswear and Vancouverism to embrace a new model of mixed use urban planning transforming downtown over two decades.

David, who attended TED before the Chris Anderson buyout and subsequent commercialization noted that Interesting Vancouver felt very much like the free exchange of the early TEDs.

TED has become something completely different, and very bloody good at what it is.  But why bring it to Vancouver?  

Why not?

Now, is there still room for Interesting Vancouver?  Or course, they are brothers of the same mother after all, just growing up to be very distinct people contributing each in their own way to the world.

In defense of social media, no, actually, in defence of any media that doesn't suck

You have probably Noticed a lot of articles of late looking at different stages of "digital" things and how people jumped on board expecting a panacea.  Currently the "participation" model is under heavy review.  The baby is mid toss out with the bath water.

An article today from Tim Malbon is particularily well argued. Arturate.  True, and something to hold up in the mirror.

But, and this is a big but, are we not missing the bigger point?  Not because they are wrong.  The smart folks writting these articles, no, they are very right.  They need to be read.

But, are we not debating ultimately, regardless of the medium, what is great versus crap?  Are we not finding that the "participation" world, like every other world, is based on being insightful, interesting and truely in touch with the consumer?  Just doing it doesn't really do it.

It is cool now to talk about Old Spice and the 48 hour thing they did.  But, it is rarely discussed why they did what many other brands could have done, but didn't.  Like when the first mile was run under 4 minutes, quickly many others could too in subsequent weeks, despite so many for so long being so close for many years with the potential but never pushing into the perceived dangerous terrain.

I am, embarred to say, on extended vacation in the alps, but just read this amazing speach by a lead researcer at Bell Labs presented in 1986.  Found it from the blog of Jelly Helm.

The speach is powerful and direct, it ultimatley looks into what makes great first class, versus good or prolific researchers.

Read it, put the word advertiser instead of researcher throughout and it will hopefully inspire you to think harder about how to make what we do better, more compelling and effective.  Regardless what medium.

We must ask ourselves if we are at peak medium range of selection - are we at the point now where deciding what medium we choose is increasingly less important than what we do with any one medium we do chose?

Is the medium is no longer the message, what you do with a medium is your greatness?

Or something like that. Back to vacation...

 

 

Evolution

Skateboard videos is one of the original forms of consumer generated content.  Early skate films were pretty crude things.  But in the eighties when people like Greg Stump were experimenting in other forms of action sports, teh bar stepped up and snowboarding films took it to a whole new level.  My home hill of Whistler Blackcomb saw much of that evolution which after tearring through the world of snowboarding Whistler Blackcomb did the same for the world of skiing through the freeskiing movement.  However of late the genre started running into the old problem of whatever could be done had been done.

But as with any genre of creativity there invariably will be someone who comes along and out of nowhere takes it to another level.  Spike Jonze has just done that for the skateboarding genre.  This intro for Fully Flared is stunning.  The score, use of the Phantom and just general set and stunt design is awesome.

Raw creative talent always rises to the top.  And redefines what we know.  More and more they operate across traditional genres and industries.  Spike Jones is an amzing example of this having done commercials, music videos, films and documentaries.  His expertise is moving picture with sound and it's hard to find many doing it better.

On the Road

Heading on the road this week.  Doing the creative presentation exective tour.  Blogging will be light or more frivilous than normal.

But here's a little bit of heft to start your week. Thanks to the blogospheres favorite Wannabe Ad Man for the discovery.

Creative integrity

I learned everything I know about creative integrity from Ayn Rand.  From The Fountainhead to be specific.  A story of a creative individual with such integrity and vision for his/her work that it would be preferable to see it destroyed than completed with compromise.  It's probably where my idealism comes from.

Last night watched the film version of The  Fountainhead.  Actually a good film adaptation of a hefty tome.  This is a closing speech of the principal character defending in a court his destruction of his own work.

Great minds

Great new Creative interview on ihaveanidea.org from Gerry Graf.  CD on one my personal favorite campaigns from Cannes 06 - Combos, what you mother would feed you if she was a man.

Interestingness

Interesting video on interstingness from Jeffre Jackson of OIA.

Brand You

Every once in a while you hear the career advice "imagine if you were a brand what you'd want to stand for?"  Kind of daunting.  Something I've thought passively about, but never in depth until one of our art directors asked me what my initials "T. T." stand for.  He was thinking names, but I started thinking further and imaged, if I was a brand, and was treated like a brand, and was researched to death and over articulated, I might be something like this:

I am currently reformulating the brand articulation of what the T.T. stands for. On a literal sense it stands for Tyler Thomas, however, in terms of perception the two t's stand for much more. Research has shown the two initials speak of exclusivity, elitism, arrogance, and indecision (can't you just pick on damn name.) Hence the rebranding process. Objective is to make the t's stand for aspiration, translucence, magnetism and energy. A simple brand pyramid should get us there...

Any thoughts on how to "activate" brand me are welcome...

Note: random photo serves no actual purpose.

Content Creation

Instead of reading yesterday's post, just watch this video from Bill Davenport, founder of Wieden Kennedy Entertainment, where he talks about what makes good created content.