Constant okayness?

A slow(ish) day at the office allowed us a fun personal(ish) project -- art directing this interesting quotation from Pema Chödrön. (Just in case you're wondering is she really truly all that badass, yes, she has TWO umlauts in her last name.) Soon, we'll be taking our massive digital file to our new, hot-shit local analog letterpress people to have it printed/pressed/molded onto a piece of impossibly thick paper. Can't wait. Call us if you want one, we just might share. (click on the image to see it bigger.)

Pascal Baes

Way back in the day. Early 90's perhaps. This guy was making the coolest videos we'd ever seen. The Paramount Hotel used him in for a series of commercials, which can be seen on this page from the now defunct Yellow House production company, which is now part of or known as DogAndPony. Enjoy thsi short non-commercial film, "Come back to factory". It's what we used to call video art and it's still impossibly cool stuff:

http://www.yellowhouse.tv/friends/pascal_baes/factory.html

Send your email marketing between 8 and 9!

MarketingProfs.com recently reported on a study from email marketing company GetResponse.com. Here's what they found: The study found that 23.63% of all email opens occur within the first hour after delivery. Within the second hour after delivery, the results drop by half.

 The top engagement times for email are as follows: in the mornings, 8 AM to 9 AM both for opens and click-throughs; and in the afternoons, 3 PM to 8 PM for opens, and 3 PM and 4 PM for click-throughs.

Volunteer

One of the nice things about volunteer design work is that we usually (not always, mind you) get to do something that we think is cool. This year, the local elementary school's fall festival was adding a bunch of new games and a new attitude and wanted a poster to reflect it. The upside down leaf is a fine symbol for fall, simple and clean, so we adopted it as one of our two design constants that we used throughout a series of posters relating to the event. The other was the autumnal color bar on the left of each poster. 

One other art directorial note here: sometimes when we get a long list of items to include in a printed piece, we like to treat that list as a design element rather than a list with bullet points or dashes or what-have-you. That's what we did here with the list of activities one could play at the fall fest. We think it not only looks great, but also is actually more inviting to read than a plain old stack of stuff.

Woodstock Film Festival

Well, the film festival has left town and with it the last glance of the season of impossibly hip movie and city types gracing the sidewalks and eateries of Woodstock. This year, after the umpteenth person mentioned that we should really do the poster art, we decided to share the creation we made for the film fest a few years back. It still looks good: Overlook mountain adorned with the famous sign, slightly jiggered for our needs:

What is branding? (or: the lazy KY)

What is branding?

Branding is the act of burning a letter-based design onto the side of livestock with a hot iron stamp.

It’s also the creation of an important, intellectual and emotional connection between a product or service and the consumer who may use it.

But let's stick to the cattle kind of branding for a while, because our pal Jim from Missouri explained it to us not too long ago and it seemed to present a lot of useful parallels for the modern day concept of "consumer" branding. Both leave indelible marks, both require a certain amount of skill to do just right, are easy to do wrong, and can be incredibly useful to protect or create profits.

Behold below an instructional image from the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association "Texas Brand Registration" page on "How to design a brand".

Front and center in this lovely chart we can find the Woodstock Organic Concepts rule #1 for creating a consumer brand: keep it simple. Complication equals confusion and let's not forget the words of the infamous cattleman Oscar Wilde, who said: "to define is to limit". The more we define the brand with needless complexities, the more we have defined it into a narrow corner. Pigeonholed our cow, so to speak. Not a good idea. Simplicity in the branding will allow for complexity in the messaging later, if that's really what we need.

Now let's look at the painting below: "The lazy K Y", by Charles Marion Russell. Look closely and you'll see a brand on the steer. The "K" is on its side so it's called a "lazy K" and the "Y" is to the right or below it so it's read second.  The brand is, as the title of the painting says: the lazy KY.

This brand, the lazy K Y, happens to be a really good brand. Why do you think? Here's what Jim from Missouri told us:

Well, for starters, it nicely embodies rule #1: it's simple -- a "K" on its side and a "Y". Not complicated in the least. Secondly, the letters are not easily transformed into different letters by the addition of lines. Here's what we mean . . . take the letter "F" for example, burned onto the side of a hypothetical cow. A cattle rustler could, with the simple addition of a short arced line, transform the "F" into a "P". A branding design flaw. A vulnerability. In the same way, an "I" could be easily turned into a "T" or a "V" into a Lazy "A". (an upside down "A"). Not good at all, but it brings us to . . . 

Branding rule #2: make it ownable for you and not ownable by your competition. Now this is a great rule but there are a lot of ways to do it. One way is to cultivate your brand's honest eccentricities, i.e., what is it that your brand has that your competition does not. Kent cigarettes famous "Micronite filter" from the Mad Men days or Ivory soap's "99 44/100% pure", which is still in use today. No competitive brand can make those claims, as opposed to, say, Nike sportswear company's claim "Just do it." Those 3 words, so well-owned by Nike, could actually be used by lots of different companies: "Weight watchers . . . Just do it!", your local car wash or bowling alley, and "Trojan" to name a few. It's just not inherently ownable.  BUT!!! Nike has spent a gadjillion dollars connecting those words and the thoughts behind them to their company. And now they really and truly own that sentiment. So that's another way to own it: burn it into people's heads with repetition on a large scale.

So back to the lazy K Y, it's a brand identity that could be put on anything: a cow, a horse, a barn, a ring, a t-shirt, a print ad. It's versatile. Which brings us to branding rule #3: it should work everywhere -- in all media and for every story your company needs to tell. The brand part is the umbrella under which all your communications can comfortably fit. If you're Volvo and you need to introduce consumers to a new car, you can tell them about the engine and the suspension and the chassis and the interior and you can discuss how all those important elements add to the overall safety of the vehicle, that is, you can discuss them all under the umbrella of "safety".

But the branding here goes both ways: the micro feeds the macro and vice versa. The details support the umbrella, which in turn shades the details. It's what we here at Woodstock Organic Concepts have dubbed a "reinforcing branding loop": the details validate the overarching brand idea which validates the details and so on ad infinitum. And ad nauseum, too: it works in all media: print, radio, tv, web, outdoor, etc. WHEN it's executed just right.

Another strength of the lazy K Y brand is that when it's executed, it's not likely to become confusing. Just suppose you're burning that brand onto your cow and you hold the iron in place a little too long or maybe the cow's hide is wet and the lines you intended spread out and fill in in ways you didn't intend. Well, in the case of the KY, those lines are not likely to touch, so they're not likely to be confusing. They radiate out from their centers and are easily recognizable. Which brings us to branding rule #4: make it clear. This will help you to avoid creating confusion in the minds of consumers when things go well and even when things don't. You can probably guess by now why the lazy QO might be confusing. Beware of traps like that.

To review: simple, ownable, versatile and clear. These are the elements of good branding. (As we've identified so far.) Piece of cake. Now let's look at some examples. In the marketing arena, not the livestock arena. Who are the companies that elicit an immediate visceral reaction just when you hear their name or see their logo? -- Apple. Volvo. Nike. Starbucks. Google. To name a few. Not surprisingly these companies, these brands, beyond creating an emotional connection, have backed it up with an intellectual underpinning: smart, safe, striving, delicious, helpful (respectively). This combination of appeal to both emotion and intellect creates the simplest, most versatile, clearest, and most ownable branding.

It's something that every company, big or small, should have to help them communicate most effectively with their clients. It's the difference between generic and premium.  Between "that'll do" and "I've gotta have it". It's the difference between a product and a brand.

Branding, as the landing page of our site puts it, is the speciality of Woodstock Organic Concepts: "helping clients to better understand and leverage their inherent strengths in an increasingly competitive marketplace." Let us help you create your brand. It's what we do.

Email creative case study

After the post below about email marketing, we were cajoled into sharing some of our creative in this arena.  All of the work went out through Constant Contact, unless otherwise noted and most of the CC templates included links to registration forms and donate now buttons and whatnot. As soon as we get the quantitative info from the client, we'll share that too.

Our simple rule for email creative, a great image (not too large) and fun copy. Click on this link to see a big batch of e-creative and let us know how we did: http://woodstockorganicconceptscasestudies.blogspot.com/2012/10/creative-case-study.html

Our primer on email marketing

Well, we just finished doing a big email marketing campaign for a client and so, as it always goes, we get a bunch of inquiries from other clients, current and potential, asking us how to work this very effective media. Well, taking our own advice (see #6 below), we've posted our email response here. We'll tweet it later.

A dozen tips for a successful email campaign

1) Have a great list

You could buy or borrow a list, but the best names on your email list are the ones of people who have actually asked to be there. Make sure your website, your blog and your social media all offer an opportunity for people to sign up for email news. Likewise whenever you’re out in the real world, at conferences or trade shows or anywhere you might go.  Also, don’t forget that your emails themselves may be forwarded around, so always include a sign up link in the email itself.

2) Create content, borrow content, make it relevant

Content is king. Tell a story or, preferably, use a real anecdote that is going to be helpful to your target. Illustrate how your goods or services solved a problem or increased sales, as seen here or here.

Use client success stories, testimonials, relevant content found on the web, and so on and so on . . . take it (with proper attribution of course) and use it and make it make sense for your clients, as seen here.

3) Make it “about them” rather than “about us”

Your company should be seen as a problem solver, not as a shill. Your readers don’t really care about your company unless it can solve some of their problems. Keep this in mind always.

4) Pull them in deeper

Creating hyperlinks that lead your readers away from your email actually helps build long term loyalty. In each email, try to include one link that leads outside of your company (click here) and one that leads inside, to your website or blog, for example.

5) Make a record, create a library, be the expert. Blog.

A blog allows you to create a permanent record of all your success stories in one easy to use, searchable location. Use it frequently and it will make you look like the expert you actually are. Every email should include a passive link or an active redirection to your blog.

6) Repurpose, reuse, reach more

If you wrote it for email, maybe it could be a blog post.  If you wrote it for your blog, maybe you should tweet it, if you tweeted it, you should probably pop it up on facebook.

And if it’s worth doing all that, it’s even more worth doing it all again. Reach and frequency are the classic measures of advertising media, but for some reason these days, many people don’t think to send their message out more than once.

In fact, reposting in any format can increase reach by up to 50%. Think about how you personally use social media: you’re on at a particular time of the day, day after day. If someone posts updates during the times you’re not there, you might just miss them.

7) Find content from within

Invite all your employees to blog about your goods or services and how they work in real world situations for real world users. There are no better experts than your own employees. Let your customers hear from them -- many of the questions your clients or potential clients might have about your goods and services will be answered in this way.

Mine these posts as a source of email content.

8) KISMIF

Keep It Simple, Make It Fun. If you have a more complicated story to tell, tell it after the jump with a link so that your readers won’t get bogged down with it unless they want to.

9) Write a good headline!!!

Even the Nigerian 419 scammers know this much. 

10) Send test emails

Send them to friends on Macs and friends on PC’s. Send them to androids and iphones. Make sure your email (and any included images) works in all formats.

11) Analyze, repeat, delete

Most mass email programs (such as Constant Contact, MailChimp or iContact) allow you to see how your various emails are performing. Without feedback, there can be no learning. Pay attention to what’s working or not and soon enough, you’ll develop a nice feel for email marketing.

12) Update your great list

Take care to delete those who have asked to be removed, delete duplicates, add new contacts. Update it after every single mailing; it’ll be best for everyone.

VVA FOAF

Well, a friend of a friend put us in touch with the proprietor of this cool start-up that restores vintage tube amplifiers. They needed a logo for their name: Vintage Vacuum Audio.  We did a whole bunch of logos, generated free hand and in photoshop. Many of them really nice work. And then, casting about the world of high-end audio refurbishment, we saw a sine curve on an oscilloscope and lo and behold! there it was: VVA. Right there in the fancy equipment used to repair the fancy equipment. We love it when luck checks in to the creative process.

Just the frackin' facts, ma'am

When the Catskill Mountainkeeper came knocking on our door looking for an anti-fracking campaign, we'd already seen lawn signs all over the state, most of them making a not-too-clever-but-still-kinda-effective play on the similarity between the words "frack" and "fuck." And so naturally, we wanted to do something different. 

The facts about fracking, the ACTUAL facts are fairly disturbing from an environmental point of view. The question is how to get them out there in an impactful way. That's where Cheltenham bold hd comes in handy. It's the font used on New York Times headlines. Automatically adds an air of authority to the facts. And for media, we took it out of the front yards and into a medium that imparts a little more authority: billboards.

But wait! Don't stop there! Who's gonna sign off the ads? If these were "signed" by the Catskill Mountainkeeper, people might automatically write them off as mere tree-hugging cry-baby propaganda. So we created the US Energy Commission.  DOT ORG! A website that would have explained more of the actual facts about fracking's environmental impact.

 

And that's it, a slightly subversive campaign to win friends and influence people. Or at least it woulda been. Our contact at the Catskill Mountainkeeper org didn't like it for some reason that we can no longer remember. And it died a lonely death only to live on in the annals of ads we wished we'd done.

Dr. John

We don't usually go in for spec. work, but the opportunity to pitch some website ideas for Dr. John was just too evocative to pass up. We came up with two ideas, both pretty fun, but judge for yourself. The top one would be a sculptural object -- an old apothecary/voodoo cabinet with live buttons throughout, and the bottom one is a flowchart mapping the many worlds the good Dr. inhabits.

Brownie branding mini-case study

Once in a while we get called in to help with a name. It almost always spills over into logo and branding. Cause, really, what's in a name?  The world of successful consumer brands with crappy names is huge. Smucker's even made a whole ad campaign (complete with SNL parody) on THIS VERY TOPIC years ago.

However, in this case, the existing name represented a missed opportunity. The name that came into our office was "Sweet girl brownie company." We felt that "sweet" was a wasted word since "brownie" already connotes sweetness. So we changed the name to Happy girl brownie company, feeling that "happy", a word describing emotions, added something to the story rather than just fluffing up what's already there.

The client also had an illustration they'd found online that they liked. A cute, big-eyed girl who would be their spokes model.  We liked it well enough and sent them off to an illustrator to make it their own.

In the meantime, we mocked it up as a potential label on brown paper and kinda dug the way it looked. Then we found a kid's drawing lying around the office and we all fell straight in love with it -- it resonated so deeply with the innocent bliss of eating a brownie. We loved it, the client loved it. Now let's see how it flies.

Well, we did it again. We weren't going to, but this was the 60th anniversary and all, so when the fine folks at WAAM called to ask us to produce this concert again, we kinda couldn't say no. And, as often happens, we ended up well rewarded for our involvement.

To begin with, the talent. Ooooooh, the talent.  Jazz legend Karl Berger agreed to perform and Cage biographer and iconic art critic Kay Larson agreed to speak.  Honest to goodness, what a treat to get such heavyweights involved. In a FREE concert!!

If you want to read more about it, click on the alphabetical press release here. Otherwise, just take our word for it: it was freakin' awesome and we were sincerely honored to be involved.

More theatre posters!

We love doing the theatre posters, especially when it means free tickets.  Here below are two posters for Waiting for Godot, in which fearless leader plays a tyrannical slave driver.  No comment.

It's not silence

Well, we're producing our first concert here at Woodstock Organic Concepts and it's a doozy. 2 performers and 3 assembled experts for the Q&A after the show. The performance will consist of Mimi Goese and Ben Neill (below) doing John Cage's classic piece, 4'33", during which they will put down their instruments and not make any noises for 4 minutes and 33 seconds. The piece will be performed on August 29, a day before their new cd hits the stores. What a great promo! (If we do say so ourselves.)

Now, usually we pack these blogs full of links to this that and the other thing, but this time we already did it with the "alphabetical press release" we put together to promote this event. Click the link to check it out.

Web design

Web design is so much fun. Maybe it shows in our work and maybe that's why we're getting so much more of it these days. Prospective clients always want to see our work as website designers and we always collect the best links and send them off. Not anymore. Now you can see our favorite web accomplishments here:

• The Gipsy Kings website

• radioUnleased website

• CA Sound Inc website

• Green Nature Prints website

• Our company website

• Fearless leader's website

Butter paper

We don't do a lot of package design here at WOC, but when one of these fun projects falls into our lap, we're always happy to have a think.

This new line of flavor infused butters came into our lives last week.

The client was planning on putting 4 oz. of the product (one stick's worth of butter) into those little plastic tubs that they give you at the deli counter to put olives in, or cole slaw, or a small container of potato salad. Noooo! We screamed. Please don't!! After looking into numerous other containers (tiny earthenware crocks from Morocco for example), we hit on the supremely novel idea of putting the butter in sticks. And wrapping them with some gorgeous paper, as seen below.

Imagine going to the refrigerated gourmet section of your supermarket and seeing a stick of this all wrapped up and beckoning to you. Positively regal! That's what it is! The kind of packaging that says: "I'm expensive, but worth it."

Another fun day at Woodstock Organic Concepts!

Greenification

Looks like we finally got approval for a logo we did a while ago. Yay! Energy Transformation Group helps buildings become more green. And hence the lovely color stripes transforming from black to green in the big little e.

We can't wait to get a t-shirt with this on it. Cause we love this logo. Go green!

Slow day

Well, we've had a few slow days in a row here in Lake Hill and now it's come to this: On slow Sundays, "fearless leader" takes out his watercolors and noodles around. On slow Mondays, he shows everyone in the office what he's done, saying shit like "Isn't it cool?!" or "I dunno, I just really like it." And god forbid we have a slow Tuesday, like this one is shaping up to be, fl says something along the lines of "Why don't'chew pop this up on the blog? Maybe we'll get more logo work." Fine. Whatever. Hope you're happy. Here it is. Now we're going out for an early lunch and won't be back until much later and no, we won't bring you a "small" something or a "medium" anything from Starbucks. Get over it.

Branding with teeth

The best assignments are almost always the ones where we can be brought in on the ground floor. This is what happened with Unleashed, a syndicated radio program that was looking for broader nationwide syndication.

The best assignments are almost always the ones where the clients are awesome. That's what happened with this one: dJ/radio mogul Dave Leonard is thoughtful and insightful and helps us to do our job even better.

Here's how it all went down:

• Product name. The client's other, related business is called JTD, which stands for "Jeffrey the dog." He wanted something dog-centric for this venture too and was using "Unleashed" as the name for his radio program, which is a great name but: a) is already out in the world a bunch, b) is not as descriptive as it could be and, c) was not available as a URL. "radioUnleashed.com", however, was available as a URL. Nicely descriptive, right on, dogwise, and ownable. We bought it. Our client thought it over for a few days and bounced it offa his staff and clients and finally bit: radioUnleashed it would be.

• Parity product. radioUnleashed sorts through all the music that's out there and brings its listeners only the very best of it. Heard that before? We had. Our client even noted that there were a few stations out there on XM and whatnot that promise the exact same thing. We asked him what he did differently than those stations and he told us that he does it better. Now, we, of course, believe him, but still, "we think we do it better" is not much of a hook to hang your hat on. So... not having a serious and ownable point of differentiation to talk about, we decided we could own how we talked about it. Let the other guys bring you the very best of it, we'd "sort through all the kibble and bring you the good bits." Dog talk all the way to the bank.

• Logo. Keeping with the dog theme, we did a bunch of drawings, some were versions of the JTD logo, some were brand new ideas depicting slightly more feral pooches. Eventually we saw a dog hanging its head out a window and the light bulb went off. Lotsa fun, a little indulgence and just a bit of danger, it was a perfect image. A few hours on the drawing board and we came up with the drawing, a little bit rough, a little bit fun, a little bit toothy. We liked it, the client liked it and after a little fine tuning, we had radioUnleashed's new logo.

• Tag line. "Music with teeth." No brainer. It's how we always described the common thread of the diverse range of music we like and now we could give it to our client. Music with teeth. Perfect.

Once the logo and the line were nailed, executing the rest of this stuff was an exercise in fun. Designing the website was a blast and a swell exercise in doggie free association. You can see it here: radioUnleashed.com.

Business cards would have a bite die-cut out of them...

...collateral materials would have the fun logo....

...or even better, they would more organically express the dog theme....

...and what the heck, maybe we should even make some actual dog bones to give out.

All well and good, the radioUnleashed brand is really starting to take shape. Fun logo, great line, and lots of fun executions. What about print ads? Well, just as we were starting to think about that, our client Dave sent us a scan of his playlist from the week before. Handwritten and perfectly descriptive of the kinda music you could hear on rU, it was a thing of beauty. Engaging and lovely and nearly the perfect print ad just as it was. So we threw the logo and line on there and called it done. One of the best, easiest, no-brainer print ads we've ever done. Here it is: (click on it or any of these images to see them bigger.)

We added a laundry list of associated promotional ideas ranging from art show sponsorships, guerilla concert "sponsorships", recording studio sponsorships, and our patented "9 ways to saturate the local bar scene with your image and URL" plan. In the next few weeks, we'll sit down with our fab client and sort all of this stuff into a sensible chronology following our "seed. launch. sustain." scheme. It'll be fun.

So that's the radioUnleashed story. Smart and fun and comprehensive. We're so proud of our thinking and our work and we're so happy to have a client as awesome as Dave. Now all that all of you have to do is to go give it a listen. Go to radioUnleashed.com and click on "fetch" to hear last week's show. It's a great listen. Bow wow wow.

logo smorgasbord

Well the phone rang again this week with someone asking if we could do them up a logo. Times being what they are, we said "maybe" and updated a nice big jpeg with a few of the logos we've made over the years. Compressing a few year's work into one page almost always looks impressive, so we're always happy to do it and to share it with you, our loyal readers. Here they are: (click to see them bigger. Hollywoodstock was for the Woodstock Film Festival.)

A new degree of awesomeness in social advertising.

Via Osocio.org, here is Spent, "an online game that challenges players to survive for a month in the United States after losing your job (and having no savings)."

An esteemed copywriter friend of ours from days gone by used to say: "nothing beats a good product demo" and we always agreed with him. A good product demo defines the problem and illustrates the solution. Here, the demo illustrates the difficulties of life as a minimum wage worker and ends with a plea to donate to help those who help those in need, the Urban Ministries of Durham.

In addition to being educational and engaging (a pretty great trick by itself) and a great demonstration, Spent ingeniously incorporates social media, creating its own mechanism for going viral.

Click on the link above and play Spent for yourself. We made it 24 days. See how you do.

Oh yeah? Well you had just the opposite effect on us.

We got, in our mailbox, the other day, a fine example of a recurring advertising problem.

The cover of this good looking, perfect bound catalog from Boden came with the fun and engaging headline "696 new reasons to be gruntled". Now, if you're like most people, you immediately think "oh, like 'disgruntled' but the opposite!" If you're like some people, you've maybe even wondered before what "gruntled" means and/or seen lists of words like it: "ruthless", "unkempt", or "dismay" to name a few. And if you're like a few people, you think "oh my, what if readers don't get it? They'll feel stupid and will hate our brand. We'd better add an asterisk and explain that "gruntled" is "*as opposed to disgruntled"" Ahhh. There. Idiot-proofed. So happy now. NOOOOOOOOOO! NOOOOOOOOOOOOO! NOOOOOOO! Don't do it. People won't hate your brand, the majority of them will feel an almost conspiratorial kinship with your brand. With a wink and an elbow nudge, you're inviting your readers in. And they'll be happy for it. And the ones who don't get it? That tiny under 10% of the people who don't get it? We've always asserted that those people will want to get it and won't be turned off, but will be tuned in, wanting to belong to that club they know is right there in front of them and happy that they weren't be spoken to like they're idiots.

Ad of the year

...and new poster boy for our incessant talk of "badvertising" goes out to Vern Fonk Insurance. Look at it! It's on strategy, it totally DOES NOT look like every other crummy commercial out there, the track cuts through the clutter, the graphics are hilarious and it probably cost next to nothing. Badvertising at its finest. Shipoopi indeed.

Another band logo

We don't usually share work in progress, but everytime F.L. looks at this hand-drawn script logo he says "wow! I love that!" and so we're posting in here, as some sort of talisman that will hopefully get him to zip it.

Oh how we love great copywriting.

Via AdFreak comes this ad for a store in Stockholm:

Toronto Dominion

The local TD bank was doing a local baseball sponsorship and we got to do this little design.

Logo work

The whole office loves the logo assignments when they come in. The winning logo for this client came from the hand of fearless leader, a pencil sketch to be precise. We're all happy with how it turned out, and, of course, more importantly, the client is thrilled. Logos. Bring 'em on.

New work from WOC

The Gipsy Kings site is up! http://www.gipsykings.com/ We had a blast doing their new logo and designing their new website, which was brought to life by tech wiz Tom Peditto of Local Galaxy. We think they really capture the "mysterious and romantic" band brand essence. Poke around and see if you don't agree with us.

As is always the case, the work is only as awesome as the client and in this case, the GK manager Peter Himberger was a dream to work with. Thanks Peter and Tom for helping make this a great project.

Watch it and weep. It's the perfect commercial.

The concept, the writing, the performances: all perfect. A million hits by July, two million by August. That's my prediction. Cost of media buy: $0.

New bp logo

We're sickened every day with the enormity of this disaster.

Cul-de-sac

Cul-de-sac means "bottom of the sack". A French toast is "cul sec", which translates literally to "bottom dry" but essentially to "bottoms up" or "down the hatch", and that's my toast to whoever created this super ass kickin' "let's make the minivan cool" video for Toyota.

One from the archives

We're pitching a new B to B client and it got us thinking of all the great B to B work we've been involved with over the years. Here's one that fearless leader wrote a few years ago for insignia real estate. Super fun. See the whole campaign here: http://www.funism.com/ads/insignia.html

Just zig, dammit.

An ongoing theme of this blog (and our little agency) is how we like to design messages that look and feel different from the others in their categories. To do this, of course, we first look around to see exactly how everyone does it just the same as everyone else. We have to define the rules before we can break them. Uncover the zig before we can zag. Via the fab Brand flakes for breakfast blog, this video defines the rules of the newscasting category in a most delightful way.

Some of you fine readers out there may be aware that F.L. (fearless leader) used to work in London with a fellow named Stinky. Well, F.L. and Stinky traveled far and wide whilst living across the pond and spent a fair share of time on the beaches of the world.

F.L. always found beaches just a little boring until Stinky showed him how to make sand balls.

Now this is way before anybody had ever heard of Andy Goldsworthy, so don't even think of saying "Ooooh, that reminds me of Andy Goldsworthy!" It reminds us of Stinky, and now that we've shared this little tidbit of info with you, it should remind you of Stinky, too.

Here's a sandball line made by F.L. a few summers ago in Hilton Head:

And here's what showed up in our RSS feed this morning, courtesy of the beloved SwissMiss blog:

And here's what we found on the FormFiftyFive blog: a few pics of advertising created by Curb, the world's first natural media company. Sooo cool that it makes us happy to be alive.

And here, for those who have not been reminded of Andy Goldsworthy, is a nice creation by Andy Goldsworthy:

Join us tomorrow as we turn our sites to the seas.

xo, the team at WOC.