May 2008

6 Career Tips from Jeremiah Owyang. - Great advice for anyone, even those who find themselves in that grey area of not knowing what career path to take.

New Ways To Find Business Mentors from GeekPreneur. Some tips on how to find successful entrepreneurs who are willing to lend a helping hand/give advice.

Pixar’s Brad Bird on Fostering Innovation - A great article on how Pixar tries to keep their employees in a constant state of collaboration, including having the bathrooms centralized to help avoid the emergence of workplace segmentation.

Zivity hires Napster Co-founder Jordan Ritter as CTO - this should be interesting - sleazy executive finally lands the gig he’s been waiting for… a fully-funded soft-core porn startup.

How To Get A Job In Venture Capital - Interesting follow-up to a previous article on how to break into the funding side of the business.

image courtesy of Mohamed Shaaz

I’ve posted about Guy Kawasaki’s latest venture before, Alltop.com, however yesterday was a big day for the site in that they finally added a marketing/advertising section and Everything’s Better With Brentter is amongst the chosen few listed there.

So head on over to http://marketing.alltop.com and you’ll find my RSS feed listed alongside a lot of other great marketing/advertising sites.

Thanks for the add Guy, alltop’s a great website that keeps getting better each week!
-Brent

BBDOATL partnered with 1st Avenue Machine to create a flowery spot for AT&T’s “Celebrate Spring” campaign, which recently has been re-edited to incorporate the song DayDreamin’ by Lupe Fiasco (also featuring Jill Scott) in a push for their upcoming Mother’s Day specials. There hasn’t been much said about the above spot, nor the original version that can be seen at the bottom of this post, on youtube here: AT&T - Celebrate Spring (original version) or by visiting 1st Avenue Machine’s website other than the recent incorporation of the popular song (I’m not going to lie - I’m also a fan), however it’s been recently pointed out to me that this spot seems to have taken it’s concept almost entirely from the flash work featured on another advertising agency’s corporate website - Rapp Collins Worldwide. If you select the “News” link or almost any of their other sections (via the menu on the right or just by scrolling down) you’ll see what I’m talking about. It is eerily similar, especially in a few specific instances.

Here are a few screenshots of what I mean, judge for yourself:
[click for expanded view]

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Regardless, I enjoyed the spot, whether or not they used the work done over at Rap Collins’s website as inspiration can be up to you. The original ad was created by Patrick Herold (Copywriter and Associate CD) and Tim Zastera (Art Director and Associate CD) with Nicole Lundy as Senior Agency Producer for BBDOATL. No news on any specifics regarding who over at 1st Avenue Machine worked on this project, however they were the production company used.

Read the rest of this entry »

Co-founder and web-usability expert Erika Hall from San Francisco’s Mule Design Studio gave a pretty interesting presentation/speech on how copy has almost become the interface in a lot of cases on the web. She aptly entitled the presentation - Copy As Interface. Her view, which I share, is that people don’t read long copy on the web, that’s why the best sites always tend to be the ones that are short on copy and sweet on design. A simple “click here” instead of a long explanation of what they’ll get by clicking, etc.. Watch it for yourself below. Lots and lots of different examples were used, it goes without saying she must have put a ridiculous amount of time into this one.

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I agree.

I just came across this over at www.themoth.org/listen/ It’s a collection of some of the most odd as well as some of the most hilarious stories as told by the person who lived through the event.

From Dr. Ari Handel (Ph. D in Neuroscience in 2000) talking about the problems that arise when you fall in love with your monkey to an EMT talking about the time that he was shot, there are some crazy stories to be heard there. Another good one is from Richie DiSalvo talking about “Anthony The Hat.” Richie’s claim to fame is that he is credited as being the inventor of the Baby Calzone as well as the cheese-filled pizza crust. Genius……

So go have an early morning laugh by heading over to www.themoth.org and prepare yourself for story-time with some great storytellers…

image from the flickr collection of flickr.com/photos/gregor_y/