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  • Hero

    Posted on March 31st, 2006 by Spike and currently 1 commenting.

    For those of you who don’t already know, there’s a very cool game for the PlayStation called Guitar Hero. It’s a kind of karaoke for guitar. And, even better, the controller is shaped like a guitar. You play through a lot of popular songs on various difficulty levels and go on to bigger venues, etc. And one of the best parts is that if you’re hitting most of your notes, then the crowd is going wild.

    Like I said, it’s a very cool game.

    Well, we were playing it here at the office last night (we hooked it up to the big screen in the media room). And during one of the songs, with the crowd going wild, Brains on Fire’s First Impression, Chris, leaned over to me and said, ‘You know, the best video games make you feel like a badass.’

    You know what? So do the best companies.

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  • Performance-Based Compensation?

    Posted on March 30th, 2006 by Spike and currently 4 commenting.

    I recently read an article on Adweek.com that reported on a speech given by Cone & Belding’s CEO, Steve Blamer. His message was centered around the idea that ad agencies should put their money where their mouth is and create a compensation structure based on the results of the campaigns they create for their clients.

    We all know that this isn’t a new idea by any means. And I wonder why no one has tried it yet (maybe they have and I just don’t know about it). I do know that Brains on Fire has bought the stock of some of our clients in the past…

    But I think the problem with this concept is that, if my paycheck was to be based on the naming and identity that we do for a client, then there would have to be some ground rules centered around control. A good chunk of our business is project-based. And once we create that name and/or identity for a company, we hand it over to them and that’s it. We have no control whether they decide to fully implement all of our recommendations or to do their own thing. (It happens. And it happens to all of us.) Sure, we make very strong and specific recommendations (must do’s and must never-do’s) from everything to language to uniforms to WOMM…but we are no longer in the driver’s seat. So they can listen or not. We’ve seen the ones that take our words to heart do extremely well. But that’s up to them. Like I said, it’s happened to all of us at one point or another.

    And I think that’s the gaping flaw in the performance-based compensation theory.

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  • Mudding Up the WOM Terminology

    Posted on March 29th, 2006 by Spike and currently 0 commenting.

    This might be considered by some as splitting hairs, but the people over at MarketingSherpa published an article a few days ago entitled How to Convince Your Boss to Launch a Word-of-Mouth Marketing Campaign: 4 Steps.

    The article is an interview with DuPont’s eBusiness Manager, who gives advice on how to sell WOM ideas internally.

    It’s an okay read, but what really irks me about it is the first sentence: Although word-of-mouth marketing — also known as evangelism marketing — is being hyped as the hottest “new” tactic, many companies are dragging their feet when it comes to tests.

    What bugs me so much? The fact that they tell the reader the terms “word of mouth marketing” and “evangelism marketing” are interchangeable.

    Wrong.

    Evangelism marketing is a form of word of mouth marketing, just like buzz and viral. They are not interchangeable. And until the press learns the fundamental definitions of the WOM world, they shouldn’t be spreading the confusion.

    And while I’m at it, they also used the terms ‘target’ and ‘campaign,’ which I’ve already ranted about.

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  • Come on, work for free. Pretty please?

    Posted on March 28th, 2006 by Spike and currently 5 commenting.

    Got this email late last night:

    We are in the midst of a logo design/branding work for a new global 24-hour musicTV channel about to launch soon. We have been receiving submissions from a variety of design/branding companies and I visited your website last night and was quite intrigued, so I would like to know more about the people involved and if you are willing to submit some rough draft ideas without upfront fees, etc……..?
    The thing is, our deadline is VERY soon so we have made a tentative end to receiving submissions by this Friday Mar 31. I could send you all of the written info on the company and what our design needs are etc if you are at all interested.

    Good grief. Will an airline let me fly for free to see if I like it? Will Cingular let me have a phone for free for a month to see if it suits me? Yeah, right.
    Look, we don’t sell our time. We sell our ideas. And when we give them away, we devalue them and make them common. It is a plague that runs rampant in our industry. Is this a tempting offer? Hell yeah. But that doesn’t excuse the fact that spec work, RFPs ” all of it ” is ridiculous. If you give away work, you are automatically putting yourself in a lesser position. And once you’re there, it’s hard to get back to equal ground.

    So stand up and take pride in what you do. Creatives might be a dime a dozen. But truly talented creatives are rare. Don’t give away your livelihood in hopes that it will lead to work that pays, because the reality of it is that it rarely ever does.

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  • Staff Swap!!

    Posted on March 28th, 2006 by Robbin and currently 0 commenting.

    Hi Robbin

    You’ll hopefully remember that a few months back I posted a message on the MYOB group about a staff exchange with my UK agency SUMO. I received a huge response with companies up and down America and Canada voicing an interest in doing this exchange with us.

    I sat down with the designer who we would like to send on a staff exchange (Stephen) and looked through lots of websites, and we both thought that Brains on Fire looks great, and has a similar culture to our little place. We’d like to know if you would want to go ahead with a staff exchange this summer for two weeks.

    We did this with a dutch agency in 2003 and found it to be a great experience for both the designers involved, and for both companies. We are excited about doing a second exchange and we hope that you are still open to the idea.

    Anyway, check out our website : http://www.sumodesign.co.uk , check out the costs (you can fly via Washington or Amsterdam with just one stop), and think about the pain of being without one of your employees for two weeks, but also what your company and one lucky employee could gain from this…

    Hope to hear from you soon.

    Jim

    From Robbin: How cool it is this? You bet we’re doing it. And Justin is the just the man. He is an awesome designer and illustrator. I absolutely love this idea! Stay tuned for more details as we firm up plans. I hear Justin is planning to journal his experiences online.

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