dp | me

What’s an NTAF? That’s the problem, solved by HelpHOPELive, a brand spankin’ new brand/logo/name for what once was the National Transplant Assistance Fund.

Renaming NTAF (National Transplant Assistance Fund) was never a primary goal of our Brand BackStory™ process. But it was certainly a major outcome. The branding process led to a new naming project that more accurately reflected what they do and the way they do it. Their new name—and invitation to donors, clients, and advocates—is HelpHOPELive.

You can read more about it here: HelpHOPELive Brand Backstory™

Originally posted some time in 2009. Don’t Facebook as much, or Twitter. Too dang busy (shoemaker’s children, if you know what I mean.) – dp

I have a confession to make. I signed up for a Twitter account close to a year ago. Had to. Working in advertising/marketing, especially on the creative side, demands keeping up with all the latest, even if it’s dumb, halfbaked, or just plain stupid (think: Jonas Brothers).

So I signed up and posted the following the day I joined:

“trying to figure out how twitter can possibly work for me (let’s just say I’m dubious).3:15 PM May 21st, 2008 from web”

And then I went radio silent for the next eight months. Because I just didn’t get it. Same thing for Facebook/My Space. I’m sure if I was 21 again and on the constant prowl for the urban legendary “booty call,” I’d be all over the social networking thing. But unfortunately, I’ve got a life. A damn busy one. And I just didn’t have the interest in adding another obsession to my acoustic guitar/XBox/Biggest Loser/chocolate Lab/new Apple tech/Mad Men/iPhone apps/tube amps/reading the Little House books (all of them) with Claire/cheap vintage guitars/TiVO/Lost/adoring Elizabeth and every thing she says or does/Daring Fireball/Fender Stratocasters/Eschaton/AmericaBlog/Talking Points Memo/Fender Telecasters/reading Harry Potter (all of them) with Anna/Boing Boing/TUAW/POPURLS/reading Katie Kazoo (all of them) with Julia/4 emails accounts/EBAY…you get the picture.

I’m pretty overloaded already. So who needs another comm channel opened. Apparently me, all because of Facebook status updates.

I started out simple enough: actually start using the Facebook account you set up a year ago. Post a status update (that hopefully shows how hilariously self-aware you are). Then wait.

What do you know. There are people I know on Facebook. People I have thought, seen or talked about since the day before graduation (high school/college, doesn’t matter). And the weirdest part? I was mildly interested in the fact that they were getting coffee after a Bikram yoga session. I didn’t know they were still alive, much less doing Bikram yoga. That’s kind of cool, in an incredibly trivial way.

One status update begat another. And another. And another. But all that other stuff on the Facebook page? Too distracting. That’s when a little bird entered and quickly took over my life (or as much of it as I’ll let it).

Twitter is nothing but the status update in their Aristotelian form. Pure communication. To the point. With no extraneous B.S. (depending on the writer’s talent and editing ability).

And Daddy likey that. No pictures of your kids (cute as they are). No vacation shots to rub in the fact that you got to go to Florida in February while I’m near frostbitic in Madison. No need to load an overloaded page. Just pure, bumpstickers about your life. Bumperstickers that are incredibly easy to ignore.

So now as I type this, my eye subconciously scans right to my Twitteriffic client, my ears await that cute little chirp, my “Gawd I’m bored of what I’m doing right now” need for distraction is anxiously anticipating the next little bird seed of data to be delivered via my favorite avian interloper. And it’s all because of Facebook status updates. So please, don’t pick up the pipe, unless you’re prepared to do hard time.

Crack has nothing on CHIRRRRP.

-dp

True story: an employee of Briargate who was unaware that a new marketing campaign was being launched was watching TV the night this spot aired. Half way through she said to herself “this is the kind of commercial we should be running for ourselves.” She was delighted when she saw the logo at the end, and that the spot captured the truth of this brand-new, old-style community.

Originally posted some time in 2009. Recycled for maximum blog churn. – dp

There’s been a lot of Cable TV babble about cell phones, “location based” services, and the creeping fear of Big Brother knowing where I am, what I’m buying, what I’m watching, what I’m thinking! ARRGGGH!

My advice: just relax. And if you’re really, really worried, just turn off your phone dipstick!

This has been the same fear/pseudo argument of the Luddites since the very first technologies. And I’m talking about farming. That’s right, farming, the thing that turned the wonderfully free (and woefully under-bodyfatted) hunter/gatherers into stay at home Moms and Dads. Quel Horror!

No longer free to starve to death or be eaten by cave lions, these saps in skins made a deal with the devil when they started cultivating crops, developing technologies and having the temerity to not die every time there was a famine. The gall!

Seriously, every technology comes with a tradeoff. The question that needs to be asked every single time is “Is it worth it?” The tech behind Location-based cell services is just the latest to raise the specter of Big Brother. And guess what, a lot of people (especially younger ones) will say that convenience trumps paranoia and will embrace the cool of it all.

T’was ever thus. Since the first purposely cultivated seed was shoved in the ground somewhere in/around Mesopotamia. Me, I’m splitting the difference and embracing a mild form location-based paranoia. Because Kenneth always knows the frequency.

- dp

Madison’s a great city that’s determined to get even greater. GO•GO is an initiative that seeks to take the city’s already golden reputation as a cycling capital to the next level (which happens to be Platinum).

Corvo “Food Fashion Fun” Radio :30 from D.P. Knudten on Vimeo.

Food. Fashion. Fun. And the inimitable vocal stylings of the great Ken Nordine.

A custom homebuilder for the ultra-riché, London Bay Homes needed an ad to run in symphony concert programs.

My thought? The buyers for these homes travel in Gulfstream jets, not VW Jettas.

Let’s make an ad that looks like it should run in Vanity Fair, not New Homes Finder. It’s also an example of how I think visually.

Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra “Karl” TV :30 from D.P. Knudten on Vimeo.

Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra “Diedre” TV :30 from D.P. Knudten on Vimeo.

No budget. Production donated by a local TV station. Shoot four spots in two hours. Go.

Originally posted some time in late 2009. Still think it’s going to happen. Guess I’m just a…futurist. – dp (writing 6.30.2011)

It’s inevitable. And for many, it’s going to be painful. I’m talking about what happens when the first wave of Social Networking enthusiasts crashes into the rocks of real.

We’ve already seen the first of its victims. Remember that wack mom who faked her Space and quite possibly led to the suicide of a teenager? That was “woh” number one. And there are more coming. Like the Virginia Republican whose ill-timed tweeting allowed the Democratic party to talk a would be defector out of a party switch. DOH! Burned by ill-understood technology. But that’s what happens when you fling a box of power tools into a kindergarten.

Step One: COOL.
Step Two: Howzit work?
Step Three: 911

ONE COIN/TWO SIDES

Social networking (and I’m lumping all the usual suspects into one big chunk) is fantastic. Incredibly powerful/time wasting. Wonderfully entertaining/annoying. Great bouquet/potentially bitter finish.

Like Girls Gone Wild tapes that lead to years of regret, SocNets are a lifetime’s worth of “that’s not what I meant” waiting to happen. It’s almost here, and we better be ready for it. Coming soon to a theatre near you:

– the Senate confirmation hearing that dives deep into some unlucky nominees Twitter detritus
– the job interview that starts with “Does the screen name ‘drunkboy69′ mean anything to you?”
– the Thanksgiving dinner that erupts with “I never thought a son/daughter of mine would ever ___________ (based on photos your friend’s friend’s friend posted of you doing _________ to a ________).

The old hands among us will pine for the days of strictly anonymous BBS flamewars when it was possible immolate your opponent with an arsenal of ASCII while safely ensconced behind a nearly impossible to track nom de ‘Net. Good times.

Don’t get me wrong. Marketers, you have to embrace this trend, craze, fad or whatever you want to call it. And for y’all regular folks: Face/Tweet/Space yer @$$ off. SocNet is a communications tool of immense utility and power. But never, ever think its incapable of biting that self-same @$$ when you least want/need/expect it.

So while the growth curve for Social Networking is staggering today, it will peak, flatten and eventually mature into a mundane tool that everybody uses for what it’s good at while avoiding what it’s bad at (just like jet travel, feta, merlot, and Jerry Seinfeld). The Wild West always ages into the Mild West.

…sigh…

- dp

PS: Sue, can you take that photo of me off your Facebook page? It’s kinda embarrassing. Thanks.

Originally posted some time in 2009. Re o t d oo re ak a oin . – dp

You see it all over the place, every day. Puzzles. Games. Invitations to engage/enrage/enrapture. Pattern recognition: it’s fundamental to our very survival and has been hard wired into our brains since Ogg figured out those things in the dirt pointing in one direction meant there was food on the hoof somewhere over that a way.

People really, really enjoy p z l s. They like room for them to engage with the communication. So why doesn’t that fact figure into more American marketing? Like this. Or this.

You don’t have to be an evolutionary anthropologist to understand the natural draw of such things. Just look at the popularity of global, cross-language phenomena like Sudoku and KenKen.

As a writer, it pains me some that wordplay doesn’t factor much here (although this is really nice), but the reality is that in a truly global village games everyone can play, regardless of Mother Tongue, will displace language-dependent styles to the margins.

But that doesn’t answer my big question: Why isn’t there more room in American marketing for a little audience engagement?

Pick up a copy of Lürzer’s Archive and you’ll see page after page of universal visual puzzles that invite, nay defie, the reader to figure it out. They’re generally fun, occasionally challenging, and the best of them creatively align message with brand to make a memorable image that demands a piece of your brain’s precious real estate.

Now take a look at who’s creating this stuff. Sure, it’s a Euro-publication, but still. It seems like the entire world’s playing a different game that we Gringos just don’t get—exactly like soccer.

So why doesn’t American advertising do more of that and use puzzle techniques in marketing? I think a big reason is that we all speak the same language. And that our culture as a whole fetishizes the overtly direct and plain spoken over the subtle, the poetic, and the not immediately obvious. It’s bullet points  over brain power. The PowerPointilization of American Communication. …sigh…

Yes, time is at a premium, but consider much of that time is spent looking for games to break the monotony of everyday life. Couldn’t, shouldn’t marketing take note of this and run with it? It’s certainly worth           about.

-dp