Writing on About.com, Paul Sugget has published an article entitled What to Avoid When Assembling a Portfolio. His primary piece of advice is to avoid going for the simple, the obvious, the easy. If you've ever done work for the likes of Nike, Viagra, Victoria's Secret, Red Bull or Wonderbra, leave that work out of your portfolio. Why? Because, in his opinion, it doesn't require much strategy or effort to come up with creative solutions for those categories.
He claims Wonderbra ads are a dime a dozen writing, "Big breasts, and the outcome of them, is a very simple idea to get behind, and it's easy to be visually funny and verbally concise." Instead, he argues, "do ads for bland products or services that have no easily-identifiable or unique traits."
He suggests an airlines, dish soap, a wireless carrier and we'd toss in anything from the business to business category.
Additionally, he urges creatives to avoid creative that looks expensive to produce as it could cause someone to think you can't work on a small budget. he says to make sue you don't stuff your portfolio exclusively with popular forms of media, make sure substantive ideas outweigh glossy polish, don't include anything your not 100 percent proud of and always finish strong.
SocialFresh, an organization that hosts social media conferences and other events, has launched InvestInSocial, a directory of social media companies and resources. The genesis of the site was the proliferation of comments thanking SocialFresh Founder Jason Keath for mentioning companies in his blog posts.
The site, currently in public beta, will list agencies, vendors and consultants that offer various social media services. Currently, rankings are based upon the completeness of a company's profile.
During the private beta period which began three weeks ago, 72 companies have listed themselves including Edelman Digital, Porter Novelli, 360i, Cake, Klout, Dachis Group, C.C. Chapman and Convince & Convert.
New York-based trend and research company PSFK has launched PurpleList, a Quora-like question and answer service for marketers staffed by 750 invited industry experts from around the world including Foursquare Founder Dennis Crowley, Engadget Founder Peter Rojas and Treehugger FOunder Graham Hill.
PSFK Founder Piers Fawkes tells us, "The site has been specifically designed to accomodate the rapid research needs of agencies. Strategists and planners will especially find it useful during new business pitches or when preparing an urgent creative brief."
Pricing for the service begins at $1 per question.
Who wouldn't jump at the chance to hang with Maria Sharapova? Certainly not Jonny Watson and Dan Harrison from Dare who were offered 90 minutes of the Russian tennis babe's time to come up with a video to promote Google's Search by Voice technology. The resulting video became part of Google's Demo Slam which allows the public to vote for their favorite Google product demo.
Sharapova, being the famous beauty she is, and the pair's Whack A Guy With A Tennis Ball approach has garnered the video 156,000 views and the number four slot in the Demo Slam competition.
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People love to save stuff for later. For when they have a free moment to get to it. It's why Evernote is so popular. It's why we have Read It Later. Photocopiers. Folders. Clipping services. Basements. Garages. Atticks. You name it, everyone has a place where they keep stuff they think they will need later on.
But advertising? Would anyone ever bother to save an ad to refer to later? Scott Kurnit thinks so and he's launched an entire business around the assumption that if, given a mechanism, many people would love to save ads and refer to them later. Kurnit, founder of About.com, is CEO of AdKeeper, a service that allows advertisers to place a button in online advertising which, when clicked, will place the ad in a person's "Keeper" to be referred to at a later date.
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So there's this thing in the advertising business where the work a company does to determine a brand's vision, mission, essence and position is supposed to carry significant value. And it should. After all, it's what's going to affect how a potential customers perceive a brand. But what if all you want is a logo and none of the lengthy, mumbo-jumbo filled platitudes that come with it?
That's where companies like Logo Mojo come in. We know. We know. We just heard every creative in the ad business groan with contempt for what they perceive to be creative chop shops. Companies with no true understanding of what a brand needs to survive in today's crazy advertising world. And any site on which there's an "Order Now" button can't possibly be worth anyone's time, right?
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- Absolut is out with an iPad version of its Drinkspiration app.
- To help raise money for the United Way, Colle+McVoy has launched Happy Exchange where everyone is invited to join the effort by posting their smile for just $1.
- Calling McDonald's a "hip hangout" is never a good thing. Especially in a forced product placement.
- Former buy.at executives have launched Performance Horizon Group which is out with new products aimed at improving campaign management for agencies and lead generation for publishers.
- Gossip Girl's Blake Lively has been tapped (not literally, of course...because that would be gross) by Karl Lagerfeld to front his Winter/Spring 2011 Chanel ad campaign.
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Well here's a problem we can all identify with: getting paid on time. These days, it seems the only reliable method of income is a directly deposited paycheck. But for those of us who rely on invoicing to get paid, well, reliable just isn't a word that comes to mind.
What does come to mind is your invoice buried in a pile two feet high on the desk of some accounting person who could care less who gets paid when as long as it fits withing their predetermined process of moving that stack from one side of their desk to the other.
And God Forbid if if the invoice doesn't match the estimate. Then you're in a kind of Hell that's far worse than your invoice getting lost in a stack of papers.
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- Bored in that dull meeting? Check out Adverbotz, a collection of your favorite phrases spoken in robot voice.
- The Gerald R. Ford Airport in Grand Rapids has launched a new brand and advertising campaign.
- Minneapolis-based Little & Company asked 30 creatives to record their thoughts on design. The results are collected on ThirtyConversationsOnDesign.
- And the Cornelius Trunchpole idiocy continues. Now a person claiming to be Gerry Graf (who likely isn't since our reply email bounced) says Mr. Trunchpole is Trevor Bittinger, an art director who once told Graf he intended to create an agency based on a ficticious ad legend. Does anyone really care?
- To promote Red Bull's Flutag event, Monkeyhead is out with another On the Wings of Glory video.
- AdWeek's Social Media Strategies Conference will take place on Oct 13th & 14th at 10 On The Park in New York City.
- Well here's a pretty cool iPhone iAd.
Don't tell the client but you can create an iAd (or any other) in 45 minutes! With Sprout's AdVine, now you can whip out an ad in 45 minutes, bill the client for, like, 25 hours and spend 24 hours and 15 minutes playing foosball or flirting with the interns.
OK so maybe that's oversimplifying it a bit but this AdVine product is pretty cool. And we like any product that makes things easier and gives more time to flirt with the interns. Which, is exactly what we're going to go do right now while you watch this two minute demo video explaining AdVine.
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