Some of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever received are things I already knew. If you haven’t had your head in the sand, I’m sure you too have heard all of the “best practices” to help you “get ahead” in your career and your life. This is – and isn’t – one of those lists. It’s primarily a cathartic way for me to admit that I might have actually learned a few things during a project I was reluctant to even begin. As is the case with many good stories, it begins with love.

Love has played a huge role in making me who I am today. It’s why I have a house full of little people, act like a grown-up most of the time and why I haven’t grown a beard. It’s also why I recently found myself knee-deep in lumber, building a chicken coop. “I would like to have some chickens,” my wife said to me. “I’m sorry, what?” I replied to her. Yada yada yada, I’m knee-deep in lumber. And although I was initially reluctant to spend a large chunk of my life on this particular activity, I can now readily admit that I learned – or was reminded of – a few things.

Not being a chicken myself, I do not know what a chicken requires to comfortable and productive. So although I might have had Frank Gehry-esque aspirations for this coop, the coop was not for me. I had to learn what makes a chicken tick. I mean cluck.

Haste is the enemy of a good chicken coop. Haste makes things fall down or leaves fox-sized gaps in your structure. Words to live by: think before you speak, draw before you design, and purchase plans on the Internet before building a chicken coop.

In addition to the time savings, partners help you ask the right questions, and get to the right answers: “Does this look right to you?” “I think you put that on backwards.” “Um, do we have any band-aids?” And if your partner happens to be pregnant, (see above) then you should volunteer to do all the heavy lifting yourself.

This one is critical. Instead of focusing on how much there is left to do, find victories to celebrate along the way. Fist-bump, take a break, marvel at your work so far!

If I didn’t know any better, I would say these chickens don’t fully appreciate the work I put into their new home. They still give me the stink-eye when I come near, and apparently don’t even lay eggs until they’re several months old. If you build a chicken coop and expect fireworks and fame, you are mistaken. It’s clear my gratification will not be instant, and I’m ok with that. Most of the value of a project lies in the doing of it.

(Hey Chris Kindrick, thanks for the illustrations!)

Phoenix’s 110° temperatures melted more than the occasional flip flop at Admerica, The American Advertising Federations’ national conference. It must have been the heat that was melting down the creative and strategic silos that have long been an aspect of traditional agency culture. And from conference-goers to featured speakers, most attendees agreed on two things, the convergence of digital strategy with traditional creative was hot and we liked it.

The line up of panelists read like an all-star cast of agency a-listers and brand-side superpowers, and while they didn’t agree on everything, a common theme emerged from their discussions.

The line between what represents a digital and traditional strategy has become blurry at best, but most panelists suggested that the truly great marketing of the coming years will throw out that distinction entirely to create disruptive ideas that operate in conjunction with a brand’s core story – regardless of campaign.

When asked what their favorite creative campaign of the past year was, many didn’t turn to a 30-second commercial, a print series or a website – or any singular campaign at all. Tweets from the power outage at the Superbowl, whether by Oreo or All-state, were at the top of many lists (in fact, no one mentioned any other Superbowl advertising.) But the work that built the band platform for tweets, across campaigns, across channels and even across agencies, represented the unified brand stories of which those tweets were just the pinnacle. A short burst of brand story-telling at the right place, the right time and to the right audience.

Both presenters and attendees ranked in the upper echelon ideas that combined online video with a simple marketing premise and spread virally, such as the newcomer Dollar Shave Club, right next to more established brands.

Pete Cashmore, Founder of Mashable and Keynote speaker of Admerica, represented a true convergence of social media, blogs, traditional advertising and native advertising. His insight on the future of native advertising — essentially telling people stories they want to read sponsored by brands — harkens back to an early age of advertising but modernizes the concept with innovations in storytelling, format and user engagement.

Convergent thinking is something we’ve always done at Stone Ward. It should come as no surprise that a more nimble agency can innovate with each coming creative opportunity and reorganize internally to allocate resources to best fit the brands they serve, while larger more traditional agencies struggle with traditional agency roles. I was surprised, however, just how much larger brands, such as Coke or Dove are requiring their partners to work together across agencies, development companies, and publishers to coordinate brand stories throughout divergent channels. I was proud to represent both my club, Little Rock AAF, and my agency at the event, and bring just a little bit of that Phoenix creative heat back home. Even if it did cost me a melted flip flop.

…but did you know that this is how your web browser sees YOU…

… well, maybe that’s not completely true. But, it is possible for a modern web site to capture images from your computer camera, process those images, add effects, identify objects, and drive user interactions using camera input.

The technology that makes these possible is a combination of new faster Javascript engines and WebRTC support in your browser. WebRTC is a new web standard that allows pages to access your computer’s camera via your web browser. That video can then be relayed back to a central server (for example for a video chat app) or processed locally as it is in the examples below.

Support is coming soon for most browsers, but is spotty at the moment. You’re likely to have the best luck with the Chrome browser when viewing these demos. I’ve supplied a few screenshots so you’ll get the idea, but you really have to click the links and play around to get the full effect. You’ll also have to watch out for the little prompt at the top of your browser asking if you allow access to your web cam, be sure to click “allow” or these won’t work.

Let’s start with a fun and funny face detection example…

This is a more basic presentation of the same type of face detection and tracking many consumer digital cameras use……

In other applications, Javascript and your camera can detect features in your environment, like object corners…

In this example, you can click a point on an object, then move the object and watch as the camera tracks a point on that object…

Cool visual effects like this edge detection are possible too…

The really great thing is that many of these examples have been created with the JSFeat library. This free open source toolkit lets developers incorporate this functionality easily into their web apps.

We know video viewership is growing by leaps and bounds. We have heard the stat that video streams will make up 95% of Internet traffic by 2015. And video usage is projected to outperform Facebook and Twitter by 2017. Mobile video will grow 16-fold from 2012 to 2017, and account for 66% of all mobile data traffic during that year.

Brands are jumping on this bandwagon and producing video that they hope their fans will love. However, “while there’s been lots of talk about brands acting as publishers, we’re increasingly finding that fans drive more value by creating videos about the brands and products that they love.”

What? That means that brands are spending significant time, money and effort on producing video content but the raw fan videos are more popular? Sometimes, yes. And that is not a bad thing. Nor does it mean that the high-quality videos that brands are producing are going to waste. Many times these fan-produced videos are positive spoofs of a brand’s original commercial. Or just a display of their love for the brand product.

Here are the four ways fans are introducing their own versions of brand videos on YouTube (according to AdWeek):

• Upload commercials that resonate with them.
• Creating videos of the unboxing of products that they love.
• Creating how-to videos for the products they love and want to share how to use them.
• Uploading videos related to the brand that capitalize on a pop culture movement.

How can brands capitalize on this movement?

• Embrace these fan-created videos. Relinquish control of your brand when it comes to these videos and even help share the ones that you think best represent your brand.
• Keep creating create video content that fans want to share, comment on and recreate their own versions.
• Pay attention to what your fans are sharing and saying. Learn what they love and give them more great content to work with and love even more.
• Give your fans elements to create their own versions of your videos and make those elements easy to download and share.

The most important things for brands to realize from all of this:

• Video content is important for connecting with audiences.
• Video needs to be a part of any online content strategy.
• Video provides a human connection to brands.

Image source: Shutterstock

After being in the ad business for more than 30 years, it’s still a business that fascinates me.   Here are my top five reasons to love the work and the clients for whom we do it.

Reason #1—Advertising is so educational.  In our business you literally learn something every day.  Sometimes it’s a mind-blowing technology.  Sometimes, it’s a compelling stat.  Sometimes it’s a piece of wisdom from a smart client.  When you immerse yourself in a myriad of companies, categories and culture–you leave every day smarter because of it.

Reason #2—Who doesn’t love telling a cool story?  We get to tell one story after another to entertain, engage and persuade audiences of all ages and stages.  We get to use some of the coolest and newest tools to tell these stories.  And sometimes, these stories and the people in them even make history.  That makes us really proud.

Reason #3—Hard work doesn’t seem so hard when you love doing it.  Yes, there’s nothing easy about the ad business.  But for those of us who love it, doing anything else is what’s hard.  The pressure to perform, the opportunity to create, the pursuit of the big idea, the problem solving, the compelling conversation, the constant exploration, the constant innovation and expecting the unexpected—all of this gets our adrenalin going and keeps us coming back for more.

Reason #4— The friendships are amazing.  When you spend time in the trenches with someone you get to know him or her very well.  And if your agency is doing a good job of choosing its people and its clients, then every one of those “trench opportunities” is a building block for lasting friendship.  We all spend more time at work than we do at home.  The people we share that work with on both sides of the business are some of the most interesting and special people we ever get to know.

Reason #5—We get to help good people and good companies succeed and in doing so, we create success for ourselves.  That’s a win-win proposition that puts us in control of our own destiny.  And we like that.

Image source: Shutterstock

Lately I’ve been interviewing for a couple of positions here at the agency. Due to this, I’ve noticed some things that have surprised me about how candidates are now approaching getting “the” job. What I’ve found is that younger people have a different mindset when it comes to the interview process, so I thought I’d put down my “Top 3” tips to impress someone when in an interview.

Dress for success – While this may sound like a “no brainer” you’d be surprised how many people don’t dress for the job they are interviewing for.  I’ve been shocked to see how casual people have dressed when coming to interview. While we live in a more business casual environment, when interviewing for a new job or your first job, it’s probably best to dress more business and less casual.

Bring your resume – This was shocking to me, and even to a co-worker I had in the interviews with me. We interviewed five people in one day and not one of them brought copies of their resume! How do you expect to sell yourself if you don’t have your resume? Your resume tells your story, it gives the person conducting the interview information to ask you questions, it creates conversation. While I thought this would be a given, surprisingly enough, it’s something that apparently needs to be repeating.

Ask questions – When the interviewer asks, “Do you have any questions of me?” Take the opportunity to ask questions. This shows that you’re truly interested in the position and the company. It’s impossible for an interviewer to tell you everything you wanted to know about the position or the company. Asking questions doesn’t make you look stupid, in fact it makes you look smart.

So while these three tips aren’t anything you probably haven’t heard before, it’s amazing how many people don’t practice these basics when trying to land a job.

Image source: Shutterstock

We have a new group of Camp Reality interns that started at Stone Ward this week. Fresh faces that are eager to learn and absorb all that is around them in the agency environment. Today, I talked with them about how to be an “infovore” and voraciously absorb news, trends and information related to our industry. You can view the presentation here.

This isn’t a good idea. Regular people will fail to catch that manual, and will only get hit in the head with it. We’re all just regular people, and we can only read so much at one time. Furthermore, once they pick up that book, the cover is pretty stacked with content. That’s a good thing, right? We all want to know what this site is about, right now! It gets a little tricky when the cover of the book looks like this.

Don’t read books? Everyone eats donuts. You’re a donut now.

When donuts visit websites, they get information, in the form of sugary glaze. Right now, you’re getting glaze poured all over you, and you can only absorb so much of it. If you wanted to become some sort of super donut, then you need to wait to let the glaze cool, and then you can pour more glaze on. Layers and layers of sugar will accumulate on your donut body and you’ll be revered amongst donut kind. Or you will have an easier time understanding the information. When a site feeds you content in smaller chunks, the information from that content can be absorbed better and built upon. Let a donut visitor absorb information in staggered increments to allow them to retain the information from the content.

The wonders of too much information: People will glaze over. Like donuts that become oversaturated with delicious glaze, so too with people when all of your really important information is fed to them at once. Like books without concise descriptions and covers, websites without a clear message will fail to deliver information through their content.

Much like you reference a book in the sense of the question, “Where did you read that?” websites are referenced as places you visit. When the content of a book is referred to, it’s associated with the message of the book. “I read in Moby Dick that…” The message of the book is it’s title and author. The message of a website is a little more abstract than that, but it ties the content to a single reference point that brings everything together.

After a donut visitor has an idea on what this site is about, then they have an anchor. The information they get from the content is tied to this anchor, and it holds everything together. This anchor is the essence of the message, and should work with the content. The message should make the content easier to understand, and the content should support the content. When this happens, the information is more convincing and stronger, and stays on the donut with the visitor.

Consider two different websites that are trying to sell you the same thing:

Even though they both sell the same thing, donuts visitors will know that the products sold on the right will turn them into a mad scientist. There are a lot of products shown at once on the site to the left, and this confuses them. They are comparing a mere product they can’t fathom much about to a product that turns you into a mad scientist. This level of persuasion is simple yet effective in setting the whole mood for the website, and giving it purpose greater than just a store.

So give donuts everywhere the chance to become super donuts. Let them have a clear message and let the glaze settle over them before you cram any more sugar information down our throats. Give regular people everywhere a chance to understand a website. Don’t load the homepage with as much content as you can, and provide a clear message to anchor the content to.

Eschersketch multiplies your brush strokes across a mirrored geometric space. Created by Anselm Levskaya.

Bomono has you trying to corral an unwieldy set of swinging oscillating brushes across a canvas. Created by Philipp Lenssen all of the way back in 2008.

Harmony has a number of funky tools for drawing shapes and lines. The neatest of the bunch connect nearest points with an intricate webwork of fine lines. Created by pioneering WebGL and HTML canvas artist Ricardo “Mr. Doob” Cabello.