Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Time to Fill Out Your So You Think You Can Dance Season 10 Bracket

Tonight's So You Think You Can Dance live Top 20 performance marks the start of another exciting season. I hope you studied the dancers and rewatched that Travis Wall blindfold contemporary routine (if not, you have a week to do your homework) because now it's time for you to fill out the third annual SYTYCD bracket!
Here are the rules:
  • You must fill out who will continue each week for the entire season leading up to the finale
  • You must decide on one female and one male winner
  • You have to decide who is on the bottom (boxes shaded yellow) each week
  • Most importantly you must fill all of the above out before next Tuesday's episode on July 2nd
If you want to participate in the pool I'm in (there are a few others), take a photo or video of your bracket before Tuesday, July 2nd and post it on Facebook or Instagram with hashtag #SYTYCDbracket. Make sure it's legible and your posts are public.

*Also, note that there are TWO Jasmine's so make sure to specify which Jasmine you are choosing, and also "Fik-Shun" is not spelt Fiction.

Download the SYTYCD Bracket to print here


Wednesday, May 8, 2013

What Makes a Good Digital Campaign Idea

A "good campaign idea" in digital can be super subjective, and rightfully so, since there are so many variables for creatives and strategists to think about, such as who are we speaking to, where does it live, what's the user engagement, what's the key message we want users to takeaway, so on and so on. While concepting campaign ideas can be a complicated process, a "good campaign idea" shouldn't be. I continue to defend that the best campaign ideas are often the most straightforward, for example:


These digital ideas are old, meaning six months to over three years ago, but to this day, I bet you and I can agree these ideas are "good". However, to be clear, "good" is not equivalent to "successful" as success relies heavily on the activation of the campaign across all media channels. I'm not going to get into campaign activation or how the best ideas are tied to consumer insights--although this is very important--instead I have created a simple formula above for creating good digital ideas that people want to engage with and (that all-mighty buzzword we all love) "share". 

My chicken-scratch above is nothing groundbreaking but often times as creative strategists we need to ask ourselves these simple questions like "why should consumers spend time with this experience?" or "what makes this idea different from everything else?". And if you have a strong answer, then great! Novel interaction refers to new technology or new uses of old tech/interaction, interesting content refers to images, video, copy and whether it resonates with the audience and compelling incentive mainly refers to prizes and promotions because some brands need to beef this piece if their product is not that compelling.

Disagree with the criteria of a good digital idea above? I'd love to hear your thoughts, as my goal at the end of the day is for advertisers and agencies to stop creating shitty (excuse my language) digital campaigns.

Friday, May 3, 2013

Brooklyn Botanical Garden Photo Shoot

Sean and I typically aren't the photo-taking-type, and so, as you can imagine our engagement photo session was filled with wisecracks, awkward faces and too much silliness. But thank goodness Pat Furey Photography is an amazing photographer with Dumbledore-level wizardry skills because the photos came out beautifully. Thanks so much Pat! xx