Archive for July, 2010

KING ST. Q&A WITH BETH GALLOWAY

Friday, July 30th, 2010

Beth Galloway is VP, Management Supervisor at SaatchiNY. If you’re interested in learning more about her work, feel free to visit her LinkedIn Page. You can also check out some of her photography work here.

1. What do you do at Saatchi & Saatchi?

I help create and sell IDEAS (MS, Account Management).

2. What was your first job?

It was at a BBQ joint called Remington Grill (as you might guess, it’s down South where I’m from). I loved it. I bet if I walked in today, they’d either throw me an apron or a free “Doc Holliday” sandwich.

3. If you weren’t at Saatchi & Saatchi, what profession would you most like to try?

A chef – not that I’m the best cook, but I like that it’s another profession with endless room to be innovative and create new things for different audiences.

4. What motivates you most?

When it comes to work – doing things that have never been done before, ideas that I want to tell my friends/family about, and that I just want to see in market NOW.

5. What blogs, magazines, books, papers or websites can you not live without?

I’m an inspiration junkie, but I rarely have the time to take it all in. A few favorites:

- For NYC happenings: NY Mag, The Times, Gothamist

- For home/design/ideas: NotCot, Swiss Miss, Design Sponge

- For lifestyle/fashion: Cup of Jo, Rockstar Diaries, The Sartorialist

6. What are your Lovemarks?

Google, Vita Coco, Target, Central Park, UNC Tarheels

7. What’s your best “nothing is impossible” story?

Getting ‘white coat’ doctors on network TV for the first time in the history of TV.

8. What is your favorite place in the world? Why?

Anywhere I can explore with my camera, boyfriend and bike. Or with my family on the NC coast.

9. Who do you most aspire to be like?

My mom, dad and brother are all hard-working, motivated and successful at what they do, but also have their priorities in check. They love life and appreciate the little things – it sounds cliché, but it’s true and it’s important to me.

10. If stranded on a deserted island and you could bring only one thing, what would it be?

A journal – I imagine the days would become a big blur and I’d want to remember it all. I’d tell myself it’d be a book someday, so that’d be my motivation.

11. Tell us something surprising about yourself.

Despite a 56 year age difference, my Nana is one of my best girlfriends. We chat on the phone and love so many of the same things.

12. What’s your DOT?

Riding my bike to work. My bike is the one thing I absolutely couldn’t live without – especially in NYC.

13. What’s your favorite creative pursuit?

Photography.

14. What led you on the path you’re on today?

My interests and love for NY led me here, but Saatchi and the people here have certainly helped me grow and provided some great life and career experiences.

15. Do you have a motto?

Life is short – all we have is today.

16. What do you do for fun?

Exploring the city and new places, biking, running, yoga, taking pictures, cooking and entertaining

17. What’s your favorite thing to do in NY?

Grab a bottle of wine and some friends and have a picnic in Central Park while some live music is playing or walk until my feet feel like they’re going to fall off — most people don’t know you can walk the entire island of Manhattan staying on Broadway, from 225th Street all the way to Battery Park. It’s an amazing way to see the city and all the neighborhoods.

18. Who is your favorite artist/musician/designer?

I could never pick just one. The Tim Burton exhibit @ MoMa was the last thing I saw that really struck me – I’m fascinated by minds like his that seem to stretch in ways mine never could; the way he sees and interprets everyday things is just mind-boggling and awesome.

Pixar is another creative organization that I admire. Their flawless execution, attention to every detail, and ability to capture more emotion from animated characters than we often see from real actors puts them far beyond others in my mind.

19. When is the last time you gave a standing ovation?

I think it was for my nephew – he’s two and a half and pretty much the most adorable kid in the world. Everything he does deserves a standing O.

EDITORS NOTE:

Interested in doing the King St. Q&A? We want to meet all of you! All you have to do is copy and paste the Q&A, overwrite with your own responses, then send it to the editors via the Contribute button on the bottom right.

Category: King St. Q&A, New York, Our People

What Makes a Creative Company?

Thursday, July 29th, 2010


At a time when all agencies are discussing what creativity means and how to squeeze it out of every person it’s maybe useful to hear from an organization that I think has an incredible attitude towards its people and how ideas are brought to life.

When you have a moment, check out this talk by Ed Catmull (CEO of Pixar). I was lucky enough to get a guided tour of Pixar earlier this year, or maybe it was last year, I truly have no idea. Anyway, the point being that although they have directors and that person is nominally ‘in charge’ of their creative product the whole place is set up for ideas and experimentation.

One quote for example (which I stole from Neil Perkins’ excellent blog post):

There is this illusion that this person is creative and has all this stuff, well the fact is there are literally thousands of ideas involved in putting something like this together. And the notion of ideas as this singular thing is a fundamental flaw. There are so many ideas that what you need is that group behaving creatively. And the person with the vision I think is unique, there are very few people who have that vision.. but if they are not drawing the best out of people then they will fail.

I met the director of Up, Brad Bird, and the writer of Ratatouille and while they were, yes, incredibly creative and they had a vision it was a vision shared by everyone and something that everyone felt they could input into. One of the painters we met at Pixar had worked with George Lucas on the three most recent CGI-laden Star Wars movies (Episodes 1-3). When I asked him why they sucked so bad, his answer was that no one had the guts to tell George Lucas that they sucked while they were being made. Apparently Lucas’s wife edited the original Star Wars trilogy (Episodes 4-6) and she was responsible for giving a counterbalance when he went overboard. She obviously wasn’t around for the new ones.

Have a look at the movie and have a read of Neil’s post about how we often pigeon hole creativity when it should be everybody’s responsibility to bring ideas to the table.

Category: Creative, Our People

Art Directed Viral

Wednesday, July 28th, 2010

SaatchiNY’s James Cooper was recently named to the expert panel of YouTube Brand Channel Show & Tell. If you haven’t checked it out yet, the channel (which launched in April and is curated by the Art Directors Club) is a depository for all of the coolest advertising and marketing work on YouTube.

Viral marketing  has a lot in common with the brand-centric apps Shel Kimen talked about designing effectively last week – a lot of people are doing it . . . and here are ones who are doing it well. It’s also an amazing resource for the latest fun (and funny) sisomo.

The content is divided into:

Viral Hits

Interactive Video

Brand Channels

Home Pages

The Panel

ADC also assembles a rotating panel of “well-known creative and strategic experts in advertising, design and interactive” to review the content that’s been selected and chat about industry trends relating to YouTube. You can watch the work James selected and his critiques of the videos in The Experts tab on the right side of the page.

James Cooper is SVP/Interactive Creative Director at Saatchi & Saatchi New York

Category: Creative, Digital & Interactive, sisomo

CALL FOR PEACE BREAKTHROUGHS

Tuesday, July 27th, 2010

Taking the Saatchi & Saatchi mantra to heart, BBS Saatchi & Saatchi Israel is calling for creative solutions to one of the biggest challenges of current times: the conflict between Israel and Palestine – described by the BBC as “enduring and explosive”. The Nothing is Impossible Challenge centers on bringing new and different thinking to the conflict. The brief:

THE BACKGROUND
The Israeli – Palestinian conflict (see Wikipedia page) has been going on for over 60 years. Political leaders have failed in reaching a diplomatic solution to create a sense of closeness between the two nations.

THE OBJECTIVE
To break down the barriers between two nations that for a long time have been physically close, yet mentally worlds apart.

THE MISSION
Rather than “out of date” policies, we need “out of the box” solutions. Let’s show the world that creative minds at their best can inspire even political leaders.

THE IDEA
Detail your original, creative and truly inspiring suggestion for how to bring these two nations closer together.

THE RESULT
The most inspiring solutions will be selected by a joint panel of Israeli and Arab advertising people from the BBR group. The winner will receive a ticket to the 2011 Cannes Lions, and who knows, you may even win a Nobel Peace Prize.

BBR Saatchi & Saatchi Israel, based in Ramat Gan, a city located east of Tel Aviv, has created a a website, Facebook page and a video channel for the project. They launched and promoted The Impossible Brief at the Cannes Advertising Festival in June with billboards, posters, t-shirts, fliers and media/pr. WiredUK has just run a story on the call for ideas, which runs until September 21st.  Contributions from all parts of the world, especially New York, are called for.

top image source: http://behebekfalasteen.wordpress.com/

Category: Creative, Sustainability

Big Italian Family Dinner

Monday, July 26th, 2010

One Team, One Dream was alive and well Thursday night as people from all departments gathered to welcome Con Williamson as Chief Creative Officer. The SSpace became a trattoria and a traditional Italian dinner was served complete with tenor and accordion music. The night was noisy; ideas flowed; fine words were spoken by Mary, Con and Seth. Lasciare l’azienda creativa iniziare. Let the creative business begin!

Photos from the night provided by Courtney Winegar, Erin Lyons & Robin Erler.

Category: Events, New York, Our People, Saatchi & Social

King St. Q&A with Shel Kimen

Friday, July 23rd, 2010

Shel Kimen is SVP of Digital Strategy at SaatchiNY. To learn more on her professional background, you can check out her LinkedIn page.  If you’re a fan of sailing, music or olives, you might be interested in her blog.

1. What do you do at Saatchi & Saatchi?

I do a lot of different stuff that loosely falls under the heading: Digital Strategy. I help our brands find new ways to engage with and learn from their consumers. I’m part of our strategic planning group.

2. What was your first job?

I worked the counter at McDonalds. I got my first real break though when I was 18 working in a T-Shirt shop. They let me design a font. Back in 1989 we did that by hand…

3. If you weren’t at Saatchi & Saatchi, what profession would you most like to try?

Sailing adventurer? I’d also like to write about eccentric and inspiring kooks and history, like about how the Inuit played three day long ‘soccer on ice’ games over a ‘field’ that spanned ten miles and used a walrus head as a ball.

4. What motivates you most?

The search for new perspective. Good old fashioned competition is pretty powerful too.

5. What blogs, magazines, books, papers or websites can you not live without?

I’m not very attached to most media unless it helps me fix my boat or find wind like Practical Sailor or Windfinder.com. (She’s a super geek, super geek, super geeky). But I am pretty sure I couldn’t live without a radio. A real one. There is something sexy about uncontrollable and intermittent static.

6. What are your Lovemarks?

Kiehls makes me feel simple and sophisticated. Fairway Market is luxurious, exotic, and insanely practical and democratic all at once.

7. What’s your best “nothing is impossible” story?

My mother spent most of her life working very, very hard and taking care of other people – her brothers, father, me, my father, her mother, etc… She kept trying to go to college but work and family always got in the way. When she was 48 she finally got to go to school and ended up with two degrees and a masters in education. She always wanted to help kids with learning disabilities. Now she teaches mostly migrant middle school kids in Florida that don’t know how to read. They love her. She is awesome. And she knows that people learn best when they want to learn about something they care about. So she has them study phonetics with their graffiti fonts and make hip hop songs to teach poetry. It’s frickin’ inspiring.

8. What is your favorite place in the world? Why?

Tierra Del Fuego and the icy fjords at the very bottom of South America. I like all snow and ice but until you see it there is no way to describe it – all blues and greens and fierce power. It is epic and raw and I am humble and small. Plus, penguins ROCK.

9. Who do you most aspire to be like?

I think it’s hardest and most worthwhile to just be who we are…

10. If stranded on a deserted island and you could bring only one thing, what would it be?

My boat.

11. Tell us something surprising about yourself.

I am a huge Green Bay Packers fan and I am addicted to fantasy football. Wanna have a Saatchi league?

12. What’s your DOT?

A return to minimalism.

13. What’s your favorite creative pursuit?

Writing and making mix tapes (even though they aren’t tapes anymore and I use my laptop now instead of turntables…).

14. What led you on the path you’re on today?

Doing what I enjoy. Building real and lasting relationships. Trying new things. Taking comfort in ambiguity. Embracing failure. And OK with occasionally being broke because of it.

15. Do you have a motto?

Nope.

16. What do you do for fun?

Sail. Read. Listen to music. Harass Aisea Laungaue.

17. What’s your favorite client story?

I’m very much a behind the scenes woman. But any story that involves a client respecting the Account Sup or Producer who stayed here until 1am for a week straight makes me really happy.

18. What’s your favorite thing to do in NY?

I’m a broken record here… but yeah, I like to sail. And sailing in the Long Island Sound is just spectacular. You don’t have to go far to get very, very away from it all.

19. Who is your favorite artist/musician/designer?

Lately, I really like this writer Pierre Berton, a Canadian who writes about miners and artic explorers. I also like the photographs of my friends Gabriella Marks (www.triggerfinger.com) and Julia Solis (www.darkpassage.com). And I listen to possibly unhealthy amounts of American roots music. John Fahey is super awesome. WKCR on Sundays rocks my world.

20. When’s the last time you gave a standing ovation?

EFFIE awards June 2010. A big ad man who cared deeply about kids in Detroit died suddenly near the end of a tireless campaign to engage them in their own education. He got the gold and in a tear-jerking moment his wife and two kids came up with the team to receive the award. Should’ve been High Life though…

EDITORS NOTE:

Interested in doing the King St. Q&A? We want to meet all of you! All you have to do is copy and paste the Q&A, overwrite with your own responses, then send it to the editors via the Contribute button on the bottom right.

Category: King St. Q&A, New York, Our People

Take me out to the ball game

Thursday, July 22nd, 2010

SaatchiNY Intern Mentors (Emily Grassmeyer, Travis Lau, Dan Riddick & Fran Edwards) took the 2010 interns out to a Mets game (vs Cincinnati Reds). There’s nothing more emblematic of a New York summer than sun, a beer, and a baseball game. Check out photos from the day:

 

Photos taken by True Blue Team Leader Erin Lyons

Category: Events, New York, Our People

Krafty Apps

Wednesday, July 21st, 2010

Steve Smith had some smart things to say about the iPad and app design in this week’s Media Post Mobile Insider. He rightly tells us that “an app is only as good as the content that flows through it.” It seems so “Digi-Strategy 101,” but remarkably, in the frenzy to be cool and go iPad, many brands and content providers have fast-tracked apps that don’t provide real value or entertainment. They don’t think about their content and how people will really interact with it, and the whiz-bang fizzles pretty quickly.

After some well-deserved praise for Kraft and its successful and relevant apps iFood and Big Fork, Little Fork (great name) that teaches parents and kids to cook together, he gives some real-deal recommendations to creative folk that we think are important enough to rebroadcast here.

GIVE PEOPLE LOTS OF CONTENT & KEEP THE COST LOW

    KEEP THE INTERFACE CLEAR & CONSISTENT (DON’T MIX METAPHORS!)

      PROVIDE EXTRA CONTEXT FOR YOUR CONTENT

      In the case of Kraft this is nutritional data and shopping lists and quality games.

        DON’T GO CRAZY WITH THE BRANDING

        People know what app they bought and who made it. Show some subtle restraint and don’t clutter the user experience with persistent branding and logo

          HAVE FUN WITH IT

          Kraft lets you squish tomatoes and write your name in flour. What kid doesn’t want to do that?

            He ends with these wise words:

            Simple news feeds or pleasant mobile toys are not appropriate for this platform, and a mobilized Web site is not likely to cut it either.

            Amen. Now let’s go make some cool stuff!

            Shel is SVP, Digital Strategy at Saatchi & Saatchi New York

            Category: Clients, Creative, Digital & Interactive