All My Witz

I wrote a new poem each day for 25 days in a row.

As the popularity of rapper Wiz Khalifa has increased, his personal brand has evolved through both his lyrics and fashion choices. When it comes to fashion, Wiz Khalifa has set numerous trends over his career from snapback hats to Chuck Taylors. The two music videos below are each examples of Wiz’s fashion choices of the time, which are a major part of his personal brand.

“Say Yeah” (2008) 

Back in 2008 when Wiz wasn’t as popular as he was now, his personal style was rather bland. As seen in this video, his style mostly consisted of wearing regular looking hoodies, black jeans, fitted hats, and a gold chain. His style wasn’t unique and his hair was also cut short, much like everyone else’s at the time. He also is seen wearing Adidas sneakers in the video, opposed to the Chuck Taylors that he’s been know for wearing in recent years.

“Work Hard, Play Hard” (2012)

Fast forward four years to this past week when Wiz released the music video for his new single and we see a totally different Wiz Khalifa (fashion-wise) than we did five years ago. In the video and in recent concerts, Wiz has been wearing fedoras, faded jean jackets, bandanas, combat boots, sunglasses, scarves, and Chuck Taylors. His hair is grown long and his look is similar to that of Jimi Hendrix.

This goes to show how over the last four years, Wiz’s image and personal brand has changed dramatically. Back in 2008, Wiz dressed much like any other rapper and wasn’t unique fashion-wise or musically. Now with massive popularity and and increase in wealth and experience, his fashion choices are unique and unlike any other rapper. Soon enough, other rappers are going to start emulating Wiz’s style. Due to this, I predict that his fashion choices will continue to evolve as well as his personal brand and within a year he’ll already be dressing differently.

Here’s another fake Craigslist ad I wrote and a few responses:

Here are some of the responses:

Hey Big Mike…

Sorry I cant help  you with your angry cock situation.

But I just wanted to thank you for a good laugh.

Eloquently written… I added your post to the Best of Craigslist.

Have a great weekend.

K

Just want u to know that this entire post absolutely cracked me up!!!!!! Good luck findin them homes. And u made my day :) 

We want the angry birds! we have a mini farm and they can peck the hell outta whatever they want. where u located. call plz

 

thx

This week in class we were lucky enough to be joined by John Russell. John is the Director of Marketing at Tillamook Cheese and previously worked as an account executive at Wieden+Kennedy, Saatchi & Saatchi, BBDO, and Leopold Ketel. 

John spoke to us about his experience and gave us valuable advice, ideas, and trends that will prove very helpful in navigating our way into the advertising industry. Below are a few notes from John’s presentation that I wanted to share:

Two Important Pieces of Advice

- Play in the “gulf stream” of the advertising world. By this John meant working for a big name agency on a brand name (John worked for 8 years on the Nike account) and being well-connected. This gives you the power to play in the gulf stream and work anywhere in the world.

- Once you get into the advertising industry, search for the stuff that gets you excited. The more excited you are, the better work you do. The better work you do, the better your career goes.

With experience on both the agency and client/company side, John told us about each of their upsides and downsides:

Agency Upsides: fun, energetic, creative environment, exposed to many brands/categories, you can work anywhere in the world, short lead times, strategy, TV, print, interactive, radio, outdoor, design, events, etc.

Agency Downsides: Extremely competitive, hard to get into, low pay to start, job security, long hours; weekends.

Client/Company Upsides: 3D, 360 degree view of a brand (same as agency + pricing, distribution, sales, etc.), much better job security, work with agencies, you make the final decision.

Client/Company Downsides: You make the final decision (you get the blame if things go wrong), 1 brand, bureaucracy, and long lead times.

He also shared six huge trends in the industry with us:

1. Balance Between Traditional and New Media

2. TV, Magazine, Newspaper, Radio Migration to Internet

3. Internet Migration to Mobile 

4. Importance of Bloggers

5. Viral Videos

6. Big Integrated Agencies to Small Specialized Shops

Overall, John’s presentation gave us great insights on brand management from both the agency and client side. He also shared tips on how to break into the business, which were extremely helpful.

Thank you for your generosity, John!

(Photo courtesy of @debkmorrison)

With music being a big part of my life, it’s no surprise that my favorite ads include great music. Sometimes this music is part of a favorite song and other times it’s brand new to my ears. Music can add to the effectiveness of a spot and connect with the audience in a variety of ways as people become attached to their favorite song and hearing it in a commercial might result in them being also being attached to the product.

Below are two spots that use music effectively:

The music in this Air Jordan commercial compliments Michael Jordan’s narrative, almost as if his words are the lyrics. The increasing pace of the piano keys is also a key factor in its effectiveness as it connects with the emotional tone in Michael Jordan’s voice.

This music in this spot is the song “Promontory” from the film The Last of The Mohicans. The song’s intensity complimented the intensity of the player’s featured in the commercial and also correlated with the “Leave Nothing” tagline at the end of the commercial. The song being from a film made the spot somewhat epic and helped each each of the player’s efforts on the field make them look like a hero in their own right. The commercial’s song has stuck with me throughout the years and last year as a member of the Oregon Duck’s football team, when this song was played in practice I thought of the Nike “Leave Nothing” spot.

In my previous post I mentioned human bandwidth, which is the amount of information that a human is able to absorb and process on a daily basis. To follow up on that post, I wanted to focus on the art of finding a balance between working hard and overworking, as this term I’ve unintentionally experimented with finding this balance. I’ve always prided myself on my strong work ethic, but during the last four weeks in particular, I’ve been dancing on the fine line of working hard in a productive way, and working hard to the point that I become unproductive and uncreative. There’s a difference between staying up until 2am getting work done because you’re in the zone creatively, and staying up until 2am feeling worn out and not being able to produce great work. This term I’ve been working on finding my balance and recognizing when I’m not being productive or creative anymore. Finding this balance will help me in the future as I know that working late and working weekends, and driving oneself to produce stellar work is a regular thing in the ad industry, and I love that. I look forward to this because I intend to be doing work that I’m passionate about. 

Human bandwidth is a phrase pertaining to how much information one can truly absorb from the internet, magazines, books, TV, movies, newspapers, or anything else that humans can absorb information from. Our minds have a limited capacity, no matter how smart or dedicated we may be. We can only process a limited amount of information, unlike the bandwidth of our internet service.

Last night, after feeling a little overwhelmed with information, I stumbled across this blog post on human bandwidth, which recommended eliminating something from one’s reading routine. I thought about the amount of links I come across via Twitter and the different news sites/blogs that I read each day, in addition to my school work. I already know that I can only read and meaningfully process a limited amount of information each day, but recently this amount has been pushed to the limit as the demands of my school work have increased. In the past month, howeverI eliminated a part of my daily reading routine by saving relevant articles to an app called Pocket and reading them at a later time. This has definitely helped my own bandwidth and allows me to space reading sessions out and not be distracted from my work. However, I have to make sure that when I do read these saved articles, I don’t read them all at once as avoiding an information overload is still the main goal. 

For this fake ad posted in the “rideshare” section of Craigslist, I created a character named Mike looking for a ride out of Eugene as soon as possible. Mike will only accept your ride offer if your car is a 2006 model or newer and wants to get out of Eugene so desperately that he will even ride in your trunk. Meet Mike below.

(This ad and everything in it is completely fictional and does not reflect my personal views/opinions)

With the NBA Playoffs currently in full swing, watching a game on TV is an experience that is bombarded with advertisements. Thankfully though, some of these ads are actually good ones. In particular, the NBA has been running team-specific ads throughout the playoffs, using just copy and sound to deliver their message.

The ad above first caught my attention during a recent Heat game and I enjoyed the use of copy flashing on the screen, as opposed to a voice-over. This allowed the sound to dominate, which was particularly effective in this case, given that an intense track from the Inception was used. The copy was also well written and in 30 seconds successfully summed up what is probably the biggest storyline in this year’s playoffs. The copy for each of these commercials also ends the last sentence with the word “BIG,” which utilizes the NBA logo for the “I.”

The only thing I didn’t like about the Heat’s ad was the lack of any basketball action. It focused on the faces of LeBron, Wade, and Bosh, which made sense in regards to the copy, but some actual basketball would have been nice too. This is why I like the San Antonio Spurs version of the “BIG” ad so much (even though I’m not a Spurs fan) as it shows them executing a play in slow motion and the instrumental for “Shook Ones” is played throughout. Props to whoever got that one cleared. 

I’m hoping for a Heat-Thunder NBA Finals. Please make this happen, basketball Gods. 

Recently, Pepsi MAX and NBA Rookie of the Year, Kyrie Irving, released a viral ad in which Irving is disguised as an old man playing in a pick-up game. The video, which was also written and directed by Irving, takes on the premise that cameras are at the court shooting a documentary on a basketball player named Kevin. Kevin then asks his uncle (Irving) to come into the game when someone on his team gets injured. I’ll let you watch the video instead of explaining what happens next, but I will tell you that the video’s concept is extremely well-executed.

Pepsi MAX’s tagline, “a zero-calorie cola in disguise,” fits perfectly with the video’s concept of the incredibly skilled Irving disguised as the older “Uncle Drew.” The video also serves as a great example of “Brand Thinking,” as it doesn’t really have anything to do with the product. There are a few times in the video where someone watching the game is drinking a Pepsi MAX, but these shots are presented in a way that focuses on the crowd’s reaction to what Uncle Drew is doing on the court, opposed to focusing on the bottle in someone’s hands.

As someone who doesn’t even drink soda, I still found the video tremendously effective due to its concept. People always make jokes about an old man coming to the gym and schooling everybody on the court, but in this commercial that actually happens as all of the other players were unaware that Irving was Uncle Drew. Irving also did a great job of progressively improving Uncle Drew’s game, going from air balling shots, to blowing by defenders, and finally dunking. Irving does an awesome job acting as “Uncle Drew” and delivers hilarious dialogue, referring to the other players on the court as “youngbloods,” much like an old man playing basketball with younger players actually would.

The video has been very successful for both Pepsi and Irving, and has spread rapidly across the web. This success shows how effective viral ads can be when the right idea is perfectly executed. So make sure that next time you’re playing pick-up at the gym and an old man joins, you better guard him closely as you never know when you might come across someone like Uncle Drew.

As a music enthusiast with an eye for design, album covers are important to me. I’m keen on minimalistic design and always appreciate album artwork that is both simple and beautiful. When the music is timeless, great artwork can become iconic and forever serve as an effective visual representation of the music itself.

Below are two of my favorite album covers of all time:

Drake - So Far Gone

This cover is actually a mixtape cover opposed to an album cover. Nevertheless, it stands out to me as an iconic cover for a number of reasons. The use of a black background with white type and vertical type structure with an isolated, bigger “D” at the top draws attention to the silhouetted figure at the top. The line of sight then continues to the red hearts and dollar bills floating above the figure, which symbolize Drake’s pursuit of love and money. This beautiful cover design, and its symbolism, is complemented by its lyrical content and spectacular production from Drake’s in-house producer, Noah “40” Shebib. 

Kanye West - 808s & Heartbreak

Kanye West’s fourth album’s cover is highlighted by an assortment of colors ranging from purples and pinks to yellows and blues, which are spread vertically in a thin stripe, on one  side of the cover. The way these colors are assorted reminds me of the color palette window in Adobe Illustrator and they give the cover another dimension. I also like the way that the central image of a heart being torn in half is depicted, as it represents part of the album’s title - 808s (representing the classic Roland TR-808 drum machine) & Heartbreak - in a very direct way. Overall, this cover is memorable as it is an effective visual representation of the music itself. 

In my creative process, my location and surroundings play a significant role. For example, I find it easier to focus and be both creative and productive in the library as opposed to my bedroom, where I can hear, through the walls, the TV show that my roommates are watching. Sometimes, I just put on music and drown out the noise, but there are many times when I don’t want to listen to music, and the quiet serenity of the library beckons.

However, location and surroundings play a different role when it comes to collaborating with others in the creative process. When doing so, no quiet is needed, as I believe the collaborative creative process works best in an environment where you can all talk and bounce ideas off each other. On campus, I usually collaborate with others in a coffee shop, as the collaborative creative process take the lead, and I become oblivious to distractions.

Let’s get back to the individual side again. Through my own recent experience, I’ve realized that different places can lead to fresh ideas. This year, I’ve discovered new places in the library and on campus to work. These new locations have allowed me to maintain my focus, which has helped my creative process. These tranquil spaces are mostly free of distractions, something I find invaluable when working on my own.

Sometimes though, I find myself sitting at the desk in my room working. Whether I do this for the sake of convenience or for other reasons is still up in the air but I do know that sometimes I am able to focus amidst possible distractions.  Most of these times have come late at night though, when the house is quiet. Over the years, I’ve found that when I’m alone late at night, my creative thoughts increase. I’m unsure if this is due to the quiet of the night or just being isolated and able to think more deeply and creatively. Either way, my creative process is accelerated and productivity increased when I’m able to focus in a location that is quiet, calm, and distraction free.

As I’ve written on this blog before, I love music. Recently, I’ve been listening primarily to one of my favorite artists, Kanye West. In addition, I’m also working on a project about his personal brand for my Creative Strategy class. Kanye’s influence on me is evident in more than a few of my posts and I wanted to share a clip of Kanye in the studio, creating music and elaborating on his creative process.

In the clip, Kanye says, “There’s nothing that makes me feel better than just the ability to create.” In addition to his music, Kanye also is a fashion designer and film director. It’s clear that he loves to create and I believe that he is truly a creative genius. Kanye’s five solo albums and collaborative album, with Jay-Z, display his creativity through a diverse range of production and lyrical themes.

Another interesting note on Kanye’s creative process is that he recorded the majority of his last 3 albums in Hawaii and Australia. While he is a Chicago native, he crafted his earlier albums in New York and California. This is why I was intrigued by Kanye’s decision to record the majority of 808s & Heartbreak (Hawaii), My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (Hawaii), and Watch The Throne (Australia) in different and new locations. It got me thinking about how one’s surroundings and locations affect one’s creativity. Instead of just touching on it here, I’ve dedicated an entire post to it, which you can read here.

Below is a 10-minute documentary on Kanye and Jay-Z recording their collaborative masterpiece, Watch The Throne. The video displays Kanye and Jay-Z’s creative processes both individually and collaboratively. This documentary is one of my favorites as it’s not often you get a glimpse into the creative process of two of the world’s best artists.

I believe that a large part of staying productive is staying organized. Aside from the electronic tools that help me stay productive (see the post below), I use a variety of non-electronic tools to help keep me organized and productive, the first being my academic planner. I like separating my schoolwork from other work and do so by writing everything school-related in this planner. I know that I could also do this in an iPhone app, but I find it more useful to write these things down by hand. I like to plan out and write down due dates and deadlines weeks in advance and this helps to reassure me that I am organized and can efficiently complete my assignments.

I also take all notes in my classes using pen and paper. This rids of the distraction of the Internet when using a computer and keeps me focused on the lecture. Actually writing down the words on the page and trying to make it look as neat as possible helps me better comprehend the material and allows me to easily draw diagrams or connect certain points with arrows. I think it’s just easier to retain knowledge and stay organized by handwriting notes for class.

On a similar note, I also keep a notebook filled with ideas that randomly pop into my mind, as well as reminders and to-do lists for random tasks. I enjoy making to-do lists by hand for tasks ranging from homework to laundry. I enjoy the visual aspect of seeing everything I have to do and being able to modify or add to it by hand. Another perk is the satisfaction of being able to check boxes or cross items off upon completion.

I find it easier to initially translate ideas from my head on to paper before digitizing them. I also like to write myself notes and tape them to the wall above my desk, giving me the option to add to them as I please.

While we’re on the topic, I’ve been having fun completing my ideabook assignment as I get to handwrite and sketch my thoughts and ideas, but in a focused way with a specific goal in mind. This has also confirmed my belief that pen to paper is the best way for getting ideas out and beginning the creative process.