Insights

Jeff Bridges, Widelux & Me

Peter · April 30, 2013 · Leave a Comment

Widelux Camera & Me

This is a Widelux camera. It is a rather unique 35mm swing lens film camera and as I have discovered over the years, it is loved by Jeff Bridges and, yes you guessed it, me.

As Wikipedia says: “The Widelux is a fully mechanical swing-lens panoramic camera first developed in Japan in 1948, with both 35mm (the F6, F7 and F8 models) and medium-format (1500) models available. The WIDELUX cameras manage this trick because of a 26mm lens pivoting on an axis.”

The New York Times article, “The Dude Abides On The Other Side Of The Lens”, just highlighted some of Jeff’s film set work and his thoughts about this strange tool. He is also one of the few Widelux information resources on the web. Here he is on the camera and how he deals with its delights…

The Widelux is a fickle mistress; its viewfinder isn’t accurate, and there’s no manual focus, so it has an arbitrariness to it, a capricious quality. I like that. It’s something I aspire to in all my work — a lack of preciousness that makes things more human and honest, a willingness to receive what’s there in the moment and to let go of the result. Getting out of the way seems to be one of the main tasks for me as an artist.

Here are a couple of shots from a series I did on very tight Japan retail – click them. You can see more of my Widelux photographs from Cambodia and beyond on my photography website.

4 Insane Advertising Agency Home Pages

Peter · April 30, 2013 · Leave a Comment

I’ve been studying advertising, branding and digital agency websites using my Pinterest Advertising Agency Directory. I’ll be writing about my findings over the next few weeks.

Let’s Start With Insanity?

Here are 4 local and international agency home pages that are insane. Can you imagine an agency that is in the business of branding and digital marketing — and being creative — having a home page that announces: “Coming Soon?”

Allow me to state my somewhat obvious (but not apparently to some agencies) POV.

An existing agency should never, under any circumstances, have a Coming Soon home page. Visitors will come, see that you have nothing to say, have no creative approach to transitioning from one site to another and will split fast. Will they ever come back? Are they going to keep coming back to see if and when you’ve finally launced the new home page? My bet is not often and maybe never.

One more obvious point, this is not a good thing for your new business program.

The solution: be patient and wait until you make any changes until you’ve designed the new home page ready to go. Here is my little secret. I guarantee that no one is wondering when you are going to update your website. So, sit tight and live with what you have intill you are ready to relaunch. tell your CEO or ECD to chill.

Here are the 4 agencies. I’ll end with my “favorite” serial Coming Soon home page agency and, interestingly, its a big one:

Carrot Creative. This is a savvy digital agency. What’s up?

TBWA/LONDON, a rather large agency, OK a very big agency with clients like Nissan, Absolute and GSK, had the Coming Soon page on your left up for at least a couple of months.

Baron & Company. A Bellingham Washington agency with the tagline, “Technically Creative.”

Goodby Silverstein & Partners. Get this… the first Coming Soon page is from April 2013 and the second is from 2003. Yikes, these guys are repeat offenders.

2 Pieces Of Advice For Ad Agency CEO’s

Peter · April 29, 2013 · Leave a Comment

The big idea is that your agency should be making things — for yourselves (and your clients.) It is simply too easy and you have the brains, talent and energy. What’s more, you will walk the design talk. One idea is futuristic and the other is simply something you should be doing anyway.

Here are two ideas.

1. Learn 3D Printing

Buy a 3D printer, experiment and be much smarter and on the ball than all the other agencies in your town.

My suggestion is buy the the soon to be released Form 1 from Formlabs. As Formlabs says,Form 1 is…”An end-to-end package. Printer, software, and post-processing kit that just works. Right out of the box.” Check out their video.

$3,300 puts you right in the middle of the 3D printer explosion. And, its so damned beautiful. Put it on that expensive front desk that really does zero for your agency’s street cred. Go here if you need to geek out on this big idea.

Make Some Tee Shirts

It’s summer. Need I say more?

I have a few more ideas. Most are about how you can make more money. Now, that’s a cool thing for an advertising agency to make.

Apple, Innovation And Valuation

Peter · April 28, 2013 · Leave a Comment

Here is an interesting and somewhat revealing chart on Apple’s innovation timeline correlated with its stock price.

Rhetorical questions coming… Do you think that being innovative is good for adverting and digital agency business development? Does innovation drive valuation?