ParaNorman In-theater Standee

We went to see Moonrise Kingdom this weekend and there was the standee W+K made for ParaNorman sitting front and center in the lobby of the theater. For some reason when you work in advertising, things don't seem real until you actually see them out in the world.

Best Super Bowl spot

W+K won the Super Bowl with this great new spot for the Chrysler 200.

What I Do

An advertising agengy in Canada has put together an amazing case study that sums up what we do in advertising in a perfect two minute video.

The Oregon Golfers

I am posting this video again because it just won an "Excellence" award at the Portland Ad Show - The Rosies. Enjoy, and come spend your money in Oregon.

10th Annual Pie Contest

If you are a regular reader, you know our boss Dan Wieden prefers pie to cake, so every year for the last 10 years we have had a pie making contest. There are seven categories and anyone in the agency can enter as many pies as they like. Judges pick the category winners which then go to the winners table where Dan picks the overall winner. One lucky baker wins a trip to NY for two, and gets bragging rights for a year. This year Michele Lefore, the head of the studio, won with her banana cream pie. Unfortunately I didn't get to taste it was gobbled up by the time I could find a plate and get to the table.


This year we had a new addition to the pie making contest, pie throwing. Several of the the big wigs at the agency, as well as an IT person, the girl who always bugs you for your time sheet, and a couple of others lined up to get a pie in the face from the highest bidder. We raised over $3500, which the agency matched, so we donated over $7000 to the mission for Thanksgiving dinners.

Monday's Off

For the first time in a long time I took Monday off and now I am addicted. Having that extra day makes the weekend so much more enjoyable, plus you miss out on Monday, the worst work day of the week. I have heard of people taking off Friday, but this does not make any sense to me. Friday is a fun day. You are getting things wrapped up for the weekend. People feel bad if they ask for something after 4:00 PM. If there is ever an office party, it's on a Friday. Nope, Monday is the day to miss. I only wish there was a way I could make it permanent and only work four days a week. Unfortunately people have tried that here and they end up taking a pay cut and still doing the same amount of work. Oh well, a person can dream.

The Tiger Woods Learning Center

Yesterday I took a trip down to LA (Anaheim to be exact) to tour the The Tiger Woods Learning Center. Unfortunately Tiger was not there, but it is a pretty amazing place. It is a huge building on 14 acres of land with a driving range and a putting area. However, it is not a golf academy. The TW Foundation was founded in 1996, by Tiger's dad Earl. The idea back then was to try to get kids interested in attending a session by offering up a little golf, then getting them into a life lesson course. Then in 2006 they built this great building where they offer classes in everything from nutrition and money management to rocket propulsion and marine biology. The first, and still most popular class, is in forensic science, where kids can learn how to test for finger prints and solve mysteries.

The Learning Center serves kids in the Orange County area from elementary to high school, with all kinds of classes. You can attend an eight week program or drop in after school and work on the computer of in the video lab. They also help kids with AP classes, SATs and college applications. If you get into college you can get scholarships and find mentors that can hook you up with a part time job. Basically they do everything they can to help you achieve your goals of getting a better education as long as you are willing to commit and do the work.

TMZ was right

It can now be revealed that TMZ.com was right, we were in Florida shooting a commercial for Tiger Woods return to golf a couple of weeks ago. I guess we were naive in thinking we could somehow keep this out of the news, but I was surprised how fast it was posted on their website. We finished shooting at 11:30 AM and this was up by 1:30 PM.

If you somehow haven't seen the spot yet you can see it on the Nike Golf YouTube page.

World Record Founders Day

As you know Wieden+Kennedy, the people who pay me to make ads, founded our company on April Fool's day. As is tradition we closed down the office at noon to celebrate 28 years of being in business. This year everyone divided up into teams and tried to set a world record. We got flip cameras to record the records and then posted them to an Internet authentication site to make sure they were real. Unfortunately I spent the entire day at Nike trying to get some work approved, so I missed out on the fun, but it sounds like it was pretty cool.

One group went down to the Taco Bell about half a mile away, and tossed a burrito from person to person all the way back to the office, to set the world's record for longest burrito toss. Another group set the world record for the number of times they could make a mattress salesman to say the word mattress on a call with Mattress World before he got mad and hung up. The day ended with a show from comedian Aziz Ansari who plays Tom Haverford on the NBC show Parks and Recreation and music from a really weird band that undressed down to their underwear as the show went on.

Another Founders Day complete with no deaths.

Win a Trip to Oregon

Looking to visit Oregon? Our Travel Oregon client has put together three cool prizes for their Oregon Adventurecation Campaign. They’re giving away three week long trips for three groups of four: an ultimate golf road trip (includes a sneak preview round on Bandon Dunes’ new course “Old Macdonald”), a cycling wine country tour, or a daredevil adventure trip with rafting, skiing, surfing and climbing. Includes airfare for four.

Enter to win all three. Spread the word.

Saving the World

We have officially launched the website that will save the world! I have talked a little before about the campaign we have been working on called Four Years. Go. and we now officially have the website and the video we made on the world wide web. You can go there and find out lots of different ways you can get involved in saving the world. As time goes on we hope to get more organizations involved and at the end of 2014, we hope to have millions of people working for change, whether it's the environment, human rights or social justice.

Let's go bloody curling!

Last Friday afternoon, we went curling with our Nike Golf clients at the Lloyd Center Mall. My grandparents were both very good curlers back in Scotland, but I had never actually thrown a rock on ice before. It looks pretty easy when you watch it on the Olympics, but it is actually pretty hard. The rock moves a lot faster than you think and it is hard to gauge the right speed to get it to land in the house (the circles). The sweeping is also much more important than you think. You can easily make the rock slide an extra 10 feet or so if you sweep really hard, and sweeping hard can leave you out of breath and sweating.

The key is to get a good push out of the hack (the starting area) so you can slide along and release the rock. If you try to push it as you are sliding, you can easily fall or get it going too hard. It's also hard to tell if the rock is going too fast or too slow which dictates how hard you sweep.

The rules are pretty simple, you have four players per team. You get eight rocks per team. You alternate players with each person throwing two rocks. If you are not throwing, you sweep or captain. The captain shows you where to aim and how hard to throw. If he is good, he can also tell which way the rock is turning on the ice and get you to "curl" it in correctly. Basically, you are trying to get as many of your rocks in the house as possible. The team that has the rock closest to the middle wins a point. You can win a point for every rock you have closer to the middle than the other team. In the first end we played, we got four points because we had four rocks in the house and the other team had none. In the second game, we had three rocks in the house, but only one was closer to the middle than the other team so, we only got one point,

The last rule you have to remember is not to touch the rock when you are sweeping, this is called burning the rock, and takes it out of play. When you are sweeping you want to get right in front of the rock and brush as hard as possible with really short strokes as the rock only glides on a small surface. Another common beginner mistake, letting the rock get past you and trying to run after it. You will slip and fall. Also, don't try to pick up the rock, it weighs 42 pounds and is much easier to slide.

Welcome to Hell!

Last year Wieden+Kennedy got the assignment to launch Dante's Inferno, a video game that EA did not seem to have high sales expectations for. Deciding that there are no small video game launches only small video games, the W+K team pulled out all the punches and turned this into one of the hottest selling games of the year. They started out with some amazing Internet videos and PR stunts, including sending body parts in a box to video game affectionados. The trailer is up on the official site, as well as some other cool game play, but you have to search around the web to find the really weird stuff. Of all the great work, the only weak link, was he TV spot we did for the Super Bowl. I know it reached a huge audience, but it ws the least in

To celebrate all this, W+K had a First Thursday art show at the agency to showcase the work. It was a great experience and it drew a big crowd. There were reporters, creative types and lots of goth gamers. It was very cool to see the agency celebrating this success.

Where is Tiger Woods?

Everyone is asking where Tiger is, and we can now reveal he has been at Nike Golf World Headquarters practicing his swing. Actually this is just the new TW mannequin that will be in stores later this year. It is very life-like and although it is a little darker than Tiger, it's pretty cool.

Now everyone can get their picture taken with Tiger, all you have to do is visit your local Golf Galaxy.

The best bathroom in Portland

When W+K first moved to the Pearl District there were not as many tall buildings as there is now, and we had great views from every side of the building. One of the best views was from a seldom used rest room on the sixth floor. I am not sure why this rest room even exists. It is the biggest one in the building on the least populated floor, and it is on the other side from the cafeteria and conference room where people might actually want to use it. I bet there are a lot of people that work at W+K, that don't even know this rest room exists.

If you stand at the second urinal there is a window that looks out towards North Portland. In the old days you could see the Freemont bridge and the Port of Portland. Unfortunately this view is now gone and all you see is the side of an apartment complex.

Super Bowl Commercials

Let's get started with the best Super Bowl commercial for 2010, hands down our Simpson's Coke spot. I heard through the grape vine that this was a difficult spot to produce, but it was well worth it. Even if you are not a huge Simpson's fan, you got to love it. The story was funny and the animation was great. Unfortunately the USA Today Readers Poll did not agree with me, ranking it number 30. They choose the Snickers Betty White spot number one. While I agree it was a very funny spot, I didn't think it was the best spot.

My next favorite ad was a promo for Late Night with Dave Letterman. How he got Jay Leno and Opra to be in the promo is a great story you can read about on USA Today. Jay is a good sport for doing it and Letterman is a genius for conceiving it.

There were also a few too many spots where people were not wearing pants. The Career Builder spot was funny, but the Dockers one was not. What was truly strange is that there were two pantsless spots back to back, could that have been coordinated?

W+K had a total of four spots on the Super Bowl. There were two Coke spots, a Dodge spot, and an EA Dante's Inferno spot. I thought the Dodge spot was funny (as did all the folks at my viewing party), but the NY Times panned it as sexist.

There were way too many Bud Light and Doritos spots for my liking. I didn't think any of them were as good as years past.

The most controversial spot of the year has to be the Tim Tebow Focus on the Family spot. If you hadn't heard about it before the game, you may be wondering what all the fuss is about. The issue is that it is an anti-abortion spot, and this is the first time a network has allowed an advocacy spot on the Super Bowl. To me this is a little taste of what we can expect next election year due to the Supreme Court's ruling, which allows corporations to spend whatever they want on ads. We are going to be inundated and politics are going to get even more nasty.

If you want to judge for yourself you can see all the spots on Spike.com and vote for your top 10.

Back to Work

Everything that could wait until next year was still waiting for me when I got back to work. Somehow I thought it might all get done by the worker elves over the holiday. You can tell all the people that have kids, they were happy to get back to work; a little too much family time. While I would rather have another week off, I am glad to get back to my routine. It was nice to go for a run when I woke up, despite the fact that it is still dark at 7:00 a.m. Watching the sun raise was cool. Seeing the regulars and new crazy person on the bus was also reassuring. The Portland streets were pretty empty and tame compared to the French Quarter. People were walking around with coffee cups as opposed to huge ass beers and hurricanes.

Work is going to be super busy for the next couple of months. We need to start planning a vacation.

Christmas Party

The Christmas party was a little sad this year. Instead of a big lavish party, with spouses and clients, it was an agency only party. We all got together at 2 PM in the atrium and got $10 each. Then we all went out and bought the best gift we could find for the money. About an hour later everyone got back and put the presents under the tree. Then the white elephant exchange commenced. It was fun to watch folks stealing the good stuff and getting stuck with the crap. Things picked up after that as the party continued over at the Crystal Ballroom.

Santa visits W+K

Santa came to Wieden+Kennedy today, but unfortunately everyone has been bad, so he took a few pictures with the kids and left. No love.

NW Film Financing: Movie Marketing

Today I made my way down to the Red Lion to sit on a panel about movie marketing. The funny thing is I have only marketed one film in my life, so I am not sure I was super qualified, but it was interesting none the less. I was on the second panel of the day that consisted of four people. The others were experts in social marketing, film festivals and getting your movie exhibited (in movie theaters). The panel before mine was all local film makers. I am sure this was a lot more interesting and probably more pertinent to the people in the room as they were all making or aspiring to make movies. That said, I think the presentation went pretty well.

I showed a short video that gives an overview of the marketing we did for Coraline, and then gave an overview of my involvement. I got a lot of questions about social marketing and how people could get the word out. While most of these people are making movies for $100,000 or less, less than what we spent on making our trailer, I think there are a lot of parallels. There is no doubt you are going to have to make a good film to get it widely seen and you are probably not going to make money. Once you come to terms with this, there are a lot of things independent film makers can do to get their movie seen.

Instead of investing a lot of money in a website, I suggested they try to get attention where people may have natural connections to their films. For example, I talked to one person who is making a film about street dogs in Chile and the people who try to help them. She was looking for funding help, which I am no expert on, but I suggested there would be a huge audience across the US of people involved in animal rights. If she were to go on tour and screen the finished film to people involved in these types of organizations, I am sure they would help promote it for her. I was surprised at how little people had thought about the potential audiences for their movies, as everyone I meet seems to have an opinion on how they could do my job better.

One of my favorite panelists was Kelley Baker. He is a local film maker that Barbara knows and he has been quite successful, i.e., he doesn't make any money, but this is his full-time job. I should clarify that by saying I doubt he makes any money on his films. He has been the sound designer on several of Gus Van Sant's features and he uses that money as well as his constant fundraising efforts to make his own films. In fact, he once sent out 100 letters to friends asking for $100 to make a movie, all he offered in return were tickets to the premier. We contributed to that effort as did 48 other people. If you want to check out Kelley's films or buy his book on making the extreme no-budget movie check out his website, the Angry Filmmaker.