Yesterday I ran into old colleague, now an art director at another agency.  Here’s how he greeted me.  “Hey, I heard you’re no longer creative.  You’ve gone 100 percent digital and social.”

Now, I am under the impression that if you lose 30 pounds you may no longer be fat. Or that if you convert to Judaism you may no longer be Catholic. Or that if you have a sex change you may no longer be the same gender you used to be.

But I had no idea that if you went all digital and social that it meant giving up your creativity.  Heck, for a moment I had actually believed that digital and social was the new creative.

Sure it’s possible, maybe even likely, that my encounterist employed the word as a noun rather than an adjective.  But it was, nevertheless, a reminder that in our business we continue to apply restrictive labels far too liberally. Labels that affect how we think of each other.

Want a creative idea?  You go to the “creatives.”  Need a digital creative idea?  Seek out the “digital creatives.”  If it’s a social media idea you’re after, well then, find yourself a social media person.

We do the same with companies. If you’re an ad agency, you can’t be a digital agency.  If you’re a digital agency, you can’t be very good at branding. If you’re a digital production company you can’t do digital strategy.

Certainly there are times when specialization, either as a company or an individual, positions us more strongly or enables us to differentiate ourselves in competitive pitches.

But in general labels holds us back. Worse yet, they become self-fulfilling. It’s hard to grow if you’re nothing but a boutique. Tough to get invited into the creative brainstorming if you’re merely the strategist. Challenging to win a digital client if you’re a traditional agency.

If I were to be labeled anything my preference would be someone who defies labels.  Is that possible?

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Klout's a cool tool, but is it the best determinate of a candidate?

Earlier this week my friend  Michelle Tripp, blogger/CD/social media consultant asked how Mullen assesses talent when we hire people to develop strategy, content and online presence for our social media clients.

Specifically, Michelle wondered if we’d starting using tools like Klout to evaluate someone’s online presence, influence, and community engagement, and if not, did we have a formal approach to determining someone’s social media skills?  Apparently, Michelle has clients who are starting to check candidates’ Klout scores before hiring them.

Anyway, the answer is we don’t.

While Klout is a pretty cool tool, and will no doubt evolve,  it appears to emphasize the impact of one’s “push” content on Twitter and Facebook – reach, influence, re-tweeting. But it can’t identify the rest of the qualities – conversation strategy, flexibility, timeliness, and authenticity – that a smart agency or brand should look for in a social strategist.

Obviously there is no magic app or metric to determine whether someone will be good at all the skills you need to them possess: add strategic thinking, creativity, familiarity with tools, writing, blogger relations, and a knack for collaboration to those mentioned above.

Being on Twitter, having a large following, writing a blog, and generating content for one’s self may be a good sign that someone gets how social media, content and distribution work. However, I have met plenty of candidates who were brilliant at promoting themselves and creating a personal brand but would have no clue how to generate ideas for a client.  I’ve also encountered people who were great at knowing how all the platforms worked, but had little or no talent for determining the best way to use them strategically or creatively when challenged with a specific assignment.

Today, everyone in our business should be social. They should have an online presence, a community, and a basic familiarity with the popular platforms. They should know the protocols and acceptable practices for each, embrace virtues such as transparency, and understand how a brand has to behave when it’s earning attention versus buying it. But even that’s not enough.

What we inevitably look for in our social influence group are smart, talented people who have all of those qualities but are then experts at something –strategy, analytics, SEO, blogging, story telling, video content. More importantly we try to make sure they possess a clear sense of how their particular skill contributes to a larger platform or campaign.

Yes we’ve hired social media strategists or practitioners who were early adopters of Twitter and had amassed thousands of followers — people who had Klout, if you will.  But we’ve also recruited people who were masters of technology, tools and SEO techniques. We’ve brought in journalists for their writing and story development skill. We’ve even grabbed participants out of the Ford Fiesta Movement, knowing they could create content across all media. In every case we opted for talent first, then focused on whether they could be essential members of a larger social team.

I guess in the end we don’t care what someone’s Klout score is.  We’re more interested in whether they can have an impact on everyone else they work with and the clients who depend on them.

What about you?  Have any tactics for determining social media prowess and skill?

image by thekenyeung

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I give Kevin Roddy a lot of credit for coming out and declaring that creative directors might actually be clueless when it comes to creating ideas for the post digital age.

In a guest column in Ad Age, Roddy suggests that traditional CD’s may still know a great idea when they see it, but he questions whether they can inspire or conceive complex digital ideas if their real comfort zone is in the media of TV, print and radio.

BBH New York’s CCO goes on to suggest that advertising creative directors whose experience comes from old media story telling should “admit that they don’t know enough about technology and start asking for help.

“Take down the walls and ask other people for suggestions about how to make the work better,” he smartly suggests.

I’m in total agreement with everything Kevin says. But I might go one step further.  Knowing how most traditional CDs, writers and art directors work, I can confirm that there’s still a tendency among many to generate ad “ad idea” first and then go seek out their digital counterparts who might “make the work better,” to use Kevin’s words.  In fact plenty of creative technologists will tell you that the question they usually get is, “Can you build this?”  When the question they want to be asked is “What should we build?”

Kevin’s right that those of us who grew up on the traditional side of the business need help with the new complexities of technology.  But we should make sure we get that help before we have an idea.

In fact we should be aggressively and proactively learning as much as we can about what’s possible with mobile, geo, APIs, social media and the very latest technology before we or anyone on our team closes the door to go and concept.  Better yet, the people we concept with should be the techies themselves – creative technologists, UX professionals, social media enthusiasts.

I once had a CD tell me that he didn’t really need to know technology because, “No matter what I think up there’ll be someone who’ll know how to build it.”  True, but my question back to him was, “But if you knew what was actually possible, wouldn’t you think up even more interesting ideas?”

Thanks again to Kevin for admitting and reinforcing what we all need to do.  Let’s just make sure we get the help he recommends first. Then we can brief teams, look at ideas, and know we’ve picked the best one.

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It’s that time of year again. When we start thinking about Austin and ribs and digital friends and panel nerd badges. But first, we have to take care of business and do our job influencing, or at least commenting on, the submitted panels and talks.

Granted there is no shortage of great panels up at SxSWi this voting season. In fact there are more than I’ve had the time to plow through. So, just in case you’re in the same over extended situation, I thought I’d share a few that Mullen colleagues and I have either submitted or been invited to join in hopes that they meet with your approval and ultimate vote. Of course, in the spirit of honest engagement, don’t vote for anything you wouldn’t actually want to attend. I’m not a big fan of the popularity contest approach to anything.

Ad Agencies Need A New Mindset To Survive

Submitted by me:  read more and vote

If the advertising agency is to survive in an era when the reigns of media have been transferred from a few professionals to 2 billion individuals, it will have to revamp its entire way of thinking. The mindset will have to shift from thinking about target audiences to communities. Strategy will require more insight about a consumer’s relationship to media and technology rather than just how she feels about the brand. The team will change entirely to include production, mobile, and experience design in addition to art and copy. And the consumer will play an active, rather than passive role, in the creation and sharing of everything. What does an ad agency have to do to survive? What are the practices it must unlearn? What new skills will it require? This panel, comprised of agency leaders, each in a different stage of evolution, will explore the challenges and offer ideas.

Radian6 and Mullen Hijack the Superbowl

Submitted by Christian Madden: read more and vote

In 2010 (and again in 2011) Mullen and Radian 6 turned the Superbowl, an old media event, into a new media event. With a simple website, a hashtag, and real time sentiment analysis, Brandbowl2010.com analyzed Twitter conversation to rate the game’s commercials in real time.  Find out how sentiment analysis can fuel a creative idea and how an analog event can be converted into a digital experience. It’s a model that anyone can replicate.

Augmented Reality and the Launch of the Olympus Pen

Submitted by Michael Bourne: read more and vote

Augmented reality usually sucks. But this example is pretty good, (note it was done by Mullen). The agency, Total Immersion and Wired collaborated to create and run the first ever augmented reality camera demo. What were the challenges in creating a fully functional “digital” digital camera that shot videos and still images using a computer webcam and what did WIRED learn in the process of activating the creative in its first iPad edition? Interested?  Give this panel a vote.

Beyond Mad Men: Are Traditional Agencies Dead?

submitted by Ross Kimbarovsky: read more and vote

This is a great topic. The old models are dying fast. If you don’t believe it just look at newspapers, magazines, and any of the traditional media (though it appears TV numbers are still up.) There are too many options for marketers and advertisers to be found, to engage, to generate and own their own content and to sell. There are also new options for how to source ideas, talent and crowd participation. Social media and crowdsourcing work hand in hand leading the change. We still don’t know the real impact of either as no one can predict the future. But it appears after a brief year or two of argument and debate that they are both here to stay. So you can fight it or embrace it. Hoping this gets in.

Agency Structure: Where Do We Fit New Creatives?

Submitted by Rachel Mercer, VCU: read more and vote

The students at VCU brand center have invited me and Ben Malbon to join this panel.  As I’m a huge supporter of the 20-something crowd, I had to say yes.  Plus we need to hear the new voices coming up.  In their words “As new technology continues to intimidate unprepared agencies, this panel will bring together industry powerhouses to discuss the value of being agile in a changing media and social ecosystem.”

Generation C (for content): Changing the future of business forever

Submitted by Sherry Lowry: read more and vote

Forget about Gen X and Gen Y, it’s all about Gen C — the Content Generation. Business is changing and content is becoming king. Gen C understands this; Gen C is both audience and media, focused on creating, sharing and participating, versus promoting, interrupting and selling. Best of all, Gen C isn’t defined by age but by ideas — it’s 20-somethings working alongside 70-somethings. (Yup, we’ll have some on this panel.)  Leading edge companies know it’s about collaborating, not competing, and Generation C brings that to the table. During this inter-generational panel, you’ll learn why age matters less and content is the new currency.

Some others I hope get in

Ladies Claim Digital Strategy is the New Creativity

Submitted by Ana Andjelic: read more and vote

Fear and the art of creation

Submitted by Jonathan Fields: read more and vote

Are thinkers and makers mutually exclusive?

Submitted by Trevor Eld of R/GA: read more and vote

Community Thunderdome, Branded vs Unbranded: You Decide

Submitted by Mike Arauz:  read more and vote

The power of what we won’t wear

Submitted by Heidi Hackemer: read more and vote

Panel about nothing (that you don’t care about)

Submitted by Mike Schneider: read more and vote

This one is really interesting. Live, real time, interactive, audience decides on the topic.

For other recommendations you can read what BBHLabs has to say (they have some great panels, too) and also consider Mike Arauz’s recommendations. See you in Austin.

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Marriott gave me a great opening to a speech on social media and a lesson in how anyone can create content, distribute that content and influence a brand conversation. Above the first four slides of a talk I gave at Sears.

If you’ve been here this week you know the story of my dripping hotel room ceiling and my frustration with Marriott’s initial response.  But I’m pleased to report the story has a happy ending for all involved.

For starters, the ordeal gave me a brilliant opening to a speech I was making to Sears HC the next day. Perfect timing for a talk titled “The End of Us and Them,” and the thesis that media is now in the hands of two billion amateurs rather than a select group of privileged professionals.

I opened with a photo of the ceiling, thanked Sears for putting me up there, and then proceeded to reveal the early morning Tweet stream along with a video I’d shot and edited on my iPhone that morning calling out Marriott.  (Truth be told I didn’t actually post the video on Youtube, but faked it in my presentation to make the point.)

Needless to say it got a great reaction and emphasized that in an age of social media, when consumers control both content and distribution, all brands need to learn a different set of rules and behaviors.

Anyway, the rest of the story worked out well on a number of accounts, too. When offered free nights and points by the Marriott (nice of them) I told them, “no thanks,”  and instead requested a public apology on Twitter and a comment on this blog. The point wasn’t to embarrass anyone but simply to get the hotel to admit its mistake, acknowledge my frustration, and turn the entire mishap into a conversation from which people could learn.

It appears to have worked. The comment stream on the last post is a rich one. It questions whether one’s social footprint influences the response that they get from a brand.  It reveals disappointments with service in general. It earns Marriott credit for engaging. And, perhaps most importantly, it shows that a blog post that exercises a little restraint, replacing the venom-filled rant with some productive advice, gets a slightly better reaction that one that simply vents.

Furthermore, the hotel actually suggests that there’s room for improvement in both customer service and employee responsiveness. We may even see a guest bill of rights.

Lance Misner, the manager of the Marriott Hoffman Estates, has become a reader of this blog, a Twitter user, and maybe even a convert to social media’s potential for learning, engaging and marketing.

Here, in fact, is what he’s had to say in response to my last post and his own exposure to the story playing out in the social space.

“Let me say first of all that I do not know anything about Twitter so if I sound ignorant I am. I signed up myself in order to publicly apologize.  I hope that worked.”

“There are some incredible things going on in the business world as it relates to social media.  This has been a real wake up call, I need to embrace these concepts and find opportunities to further market our property. In fact I am looking forward to showing your blog at my staff meeting on Tuesday.”

“I would love to pick your brain as this old dog needs to learn a few new tricks.  I hope your presentation went well at Sears and if you are home, or wherever you are tonight, I hope you are able to get some rest.”

I supposed I should add that Lance also threw in a bunch of points and an upgrade to the big suite next time I’m in town.

Lessons?

We should make our issues public.

It’s smarter to offer suggestions than criticism.

We should welcome any brand or individual who tries to learn and engage.

If we want brands to deliver better service, it’s partly our responsibility to guide them there and hold them to it.

This just in:  Just as I was about to post this, I got an email and phone call from Marriott headquarters letting me know they plan to use this as a learning and training experience.  Not sure if it would have generated that kind of response if it weren’t posted, blogged and tweeted about, but that turns out to be just one more reason that consumers should wield their new power and brands should heed it.

Finally I made it clear to Marriott that I hoped no one employee would be called out, but that it the entire incident be turned into something positive.

Your thoughts?

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The ceiling above my hotel bed leaked all night long, onto the mattress, the end table and the rug below. Had to sleep on the floor as a result.

OK, so maybe it’s not your fault that my hotel room ceiling leaked all night long. Though the fact that there was already a stain in the same corner of the room suggests you should have known about it.  But what doesn’t really work for me is the response that I got when I called in the middle of the night. It went something like this:

“We’re sorry, the hotel is totally booked there’s nothing we can do.”

Really? Nothing you can do?  How about a real apology?  How about an offer of five free nights at any Marriott in the system? How about setting up a bed in a conference room? They’re not full in the middle of the night. Or perhaps it doesn’t really matter to you.  After all, you’re full.  Business is good. What do you care if you lose one customer or have an occasionally unhappy guest?

Well I think you should care. Because not caring is the beginning of the end.  And whether you believe it or not, no business these days is indispensable.

My suggestion is this.  Develop a customer bill of rights if you don’t have one already.  Post it at the front desk. Place it in the rooms. Train your employees in what says and what it means.

Start with:

1. We guarantee your satisfaction.

2. We guarantee your room will be clean and that everything works: the clock, TV, lamps, bathroom.

3. If for any reason your stay with us was unsatisfactory we will make it up with comparable accommodations on us.

4. We will take any complaint and suggestion seriously and respond as quickly as humanly possible.

5. We encourage you to Tweet, blog, and post images and video of anything you find below standards or unresolved.

The last point is to me the most important. It acknowledges that Marriott recognizes it lives in an age of social media and expects to be held to even higher standards as a result.

What do you think?  Do brands have to be even more responsive when all of its customers can create, share and disseminate opinions and reactions?

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Perhaps it’s the inspiration of Zappos and its pioneering use of Twitter.  Maybe it’s the success of Best Buy, whose Twelpforce has turned employees into an online service and support staff.  But retailers everywhere are jumping on the social train.  And well they should.

Today shopping happens anywhere: offline, online, on the go. And shoppers can connect and share every step of the way. Mobile utilities make it possible to find a product in a store and quickly order it for less somewhere else. Services like Groupon deliver daily and or regional discounts providing the crowd responds. Platforms such as Placecast offer all of us a chance to opt-in to offers and messages from our favorite retailers entirely on our own terms. And multi-feature apps such as Springpad (note they’re a client and I serve on the board) will soon actually hunt down the best prices for products you’ve saved to your wish list.

In fact it’s only a matter of time before consumers can issue their own RFI for a given product type or even a specific brand.

So what are retailers doing besides the obvious presence on Twitter and Facebook?  Lots of stuff. In the last couple of months I’ve come across the following.  My guess is it’s just the beginning.

Uniqlo sets the bar

If non-stop experimentation and creativity is your criteria, check out Uniqlo. Their constant fashion innovation extends into social media. For example, UTweet takes all your Twitter content and gives it a cool new look. They’ve got something new every month or so and all of it is designed to engage with customers, connect them to each other and inspire them to pass it around. This is a brand that’s being social rather than doing social.

JC Penny hires haulers

Among the many phenomena brought to us by YouTube are haul videos. Shoppers sharing their most recent purchases. Don’t ask me why, but some of these young women have thousands of followers and hundreds of thousands of views. (Amazing what we are interested in.) JC Penny figured, “Why not have them haul home stuff from its stores?” Give some of the popular ones a couple of gift cards and turn those haulers into customers and advocates all in one fell swoop. No doubt we’ll see more retailers trying to leverage the influence of the individual.

Kohl’s crowdsources customer stories

Again, you may ask yourself why, but it appears we want to share everything and even pay attention to what others are sharing. Kohl’s figured this out and created a simple site where customers could hold up receipts, sharing what they bought and more importantly how much they saved. Granted $100 prizes helped generate participation, but shoppers showed up and shared as much because they wanted recognition and inclusion as they did the money.  In a matter of weeks Kohl’s got thousands of customers to share their purchases and brag about their savings. Note: Kohl’s worked with This Moment, whose platform lets them create a unified brand experience across all the social networks, from YouTube to Facebook to Kohl’s own site.

Diesel introduces social dressing rooms

This is pretty cool. In Spain, Diesel created the Diesel Cam, essentially connecting mirrors right outside the dressing rooms directly to Facebook. When you try on an outfit you can log in, upload a photo of yourself in your new jeans, and solicit immediate feedback and “likes” from your friends.  We all want the opinion of people we trust and who better to watch our backside than our friends?  Social shopping, whether it’s via our iPhone and a quick TwitPic or full-blown installations like Diesel’s, is definitely here.

K-Mart post gamers’ online reviews in-store

This one couldn’t be simpler.  K-Mart invites its video game customers to review games online and possibly have them appear in-store as POP right on the shelf where the game is sold. You get your review and your name front and center for other shoppers to see.  Ups your gamer cred and makes you feel part of the franchise. We all know it’s easy to post comments online, but to have them displayed as a miniature billboard? Much cooler.

Retailers may still be addicted to FSI’s and the offline tactics they’ve always depended on, but if I were in the Sunday circular business, I’d be even more worried than I already am.

If you’ve seen other cool retailer uses of social media, please share. I’m taking up a collection.  Thanks for reading.

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Gareth Kay at Boulder Digital Works

I just came back from Boulder Digital Works and two intense days of teaching, learning, exploring and sharing with peers (some of whom are often rivals) as part of a workshop titled “Making Digital Work.” Or what Executive Director David Slayden calls an experiment in Radical Collaboration.

BDW seems to have struck a nerve and identified a true need: digital talent. We need more young people trained in the skills that our industry now depends on. Technologists, designers, UX professionals, information architects and digital producers remain in short supply and high demand. Just as importantly, those of us well into our careers need to learn new skills and ways of thinking. BDW’s mission is to help on both fronts.

This week’s session, like all the sessions BDW runs, was inspiring, invigorating and exhausting all at once. In fact between the flight out and back, the time change, long days of presentations, discussion and debate (not to mention a few too many glasses of wine at raucous late night dinners) I’m only now recovering.

Still, I wanted to share some of the content.  You can check out many of the presentations in slide form and in video form via UStream. Though the quality and camera positions aren’t ideal you can get the gist of the presentations. Personally I think you’d be better off just attending one of the sessions but if that’s not a possibility, perhaps the videos will be of some use.

This time out I also took the opportunity to get up close and personal with a number of instructors and attendees, among them Gareth Kay of Goodby Silverstein; Matt Howell of Modernista; Brian Morrissey of AdWeek (he was actually covering the event); David Slayden; Kat Egan, founder of Exopolis; Michael Tabtabai of Saatchi and Saatchi; Alistair Green of Team One; and finally Kim Laama of AKQA.

Matt Howell at Boulder Digital Works

David Slayden at Boulder Digital Works

I wish I’d had a chance to interview Dave Schiff and Alex Burnard of Crispin who masterfully presented their very cool Brammo case study, but I somehow missed them.

Anyway,  ambitions for a full blown documentary gave way to the new mindset that 80 percent and now is better than 100 percent and three weeks from now.  So instead here are a few less ambitious video interviews on Vimeo.

The three seen here — Gareth Kay, Matt Howell and David Slayden — are the first of six or so. Eventually I’ll get the others posted and will share links when I do. In the meantime they give you a sense of the excitement and conviction of the people involved. Let me know what you think.

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Today I am once again flattered to be speaking at Boulder Digital Works with the likes of Gareth Kay, Matt Howell and all the other incredibly smart folks who have welcomed me into the digital fold.

I think of myself as an advertising refugee and a digital immigrant. Not sure if I qualify yet for full citizenship (can’t really code) but I’m working on it. What’s amazing to me is the openness of the digital community. I have been embraced on Twitter, at SxSWi, at SoDa meetings, by IAB (where I’m hoping to make a contribution to the future of online advertising) and here at Boulder Digital Works.

Had the advertising community learned earlier to be as open and collaborative as their digital counterparts it would be in a lot better shape than it is now and all those people still spending their energy defending traditional messages could instead be focused on inventing and creating new experiences and ways to tell stories. “Hello Ladies.”

Anyway, back to Boulder. The session this week is called Making Digital Work. It’s a two-day workshop compromised of  small lectures, group discussions, and projects all designed to give attendees a better understanding of their role in the digital age. Of course the real purpose of any learning isn’t what happens in the classroom, but rather what you do with the experience after the fact.

With that in mind, I offer you my list of lists – books, blogs, creative – something to take with you as you depart Boulder and continue your digital evolution.

Forgive me if it’s content, people and ideas with which you’re already familiar.  Last time I was at Boulder there were people who’d never been on Ted.com and who had never even heard of Slideshare.  Of course, this list of lists will be better still if you share yours, whether it’s decks, docs, or apps.

Five books you should read

Pick and choose from the list below. Some are already a few years old, but they lay out the background and cover a lot of the disruption we’ve been living through. Change by Design and Cognitive Surplus might be my favorites.

Groundswell, Charlene Li, Josh Bernoff

The Shallows, Nicholas Carr

You are not a Gadget, Jaron Lanier

Change by Design, Tim Brown

Cognitive Surplus, Clay Shirky

Five more books if you’re really determined

If you really want to download some ideas, keep going.  Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead is fast and fun with a few useful tips. Free is controversial but worth the read.  Anything by Jonah Lehrer will make you think. The Checklist Manifesto has nothing to do with digital, but it’s filled with rich ideas you can extend into your own business and behavior.

Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead, David Meerman Scott, Brian Halligan

Crowdsourcing, Jeff Howe

Free, Chris Anderson

How we Decide, Jonah Lehrer

The Checklist Manifesto, Atul Gawande

Five big blogs you should have on your RSS

If your RSS is anything like mine it constantly grows until its out of hand and there’s more there than you can ever consume. My colleague Stuart Foster often reminds me to pare things down and focus on the content that matters. I admit to an inconsistent and erratic consumption of content, which is why I sometimes just visit the New York Times. They filter stuff for me.

PSFK

Mashable

Read Write Web

Digital Buzz Blog

NY Times Technology

Five small blogs you may want to include

There are many more I could have added here, but it strikes me that these may be more relevant to the audience attending the BDW digital workshop. Faris and BBHLabs will keep you up on digital and marketing trends and innovation. David Armano is a good source for social media. Joshua Porter offers insights on UX and design.  And Rob Schwartz is great filter for cool creative, some of it digital, some not.

Talent Imitates, Genius Steals, Faris Yakob, Chief Innovation Officer, MDC

BBH Labs, Ben Malbon and Mel Exon, co-founders BBHLabs

Logic + Emotion, David Armano, SVP/Digital, Edelman

Bokardo, Joshua Porter, experience designer

Metal Potential, Rob Schwartz, TBWA/Chiat Day CCO

Five platforms worth knowing about

There are now 70,000-plus Twitter apps and new platforms being introduced daily. Some will burn out before they ever catch fire and the next big thing is hard to predict, but these all seem to have potential, or at least make you think about what’s possible.

Kickstarter:  crowdfunding

Philo: Foursquare for TV

Placecast: opt in to receive mobile marketing

Plancast: announce and share your plans

Springpad: save the plethora stuff you find online via photo, geo, notes, url

Five creative ideas you should dissect

I suggest everyone master the skill of dissecting creative ideas. What makes them great? Technology? Story? Juxtapositions? Consumer participation? Viral technique? You don’t want to copy, but tear them apart and use some of the components.

The Colony: transmedia story telling

Art of the Trench: simple crowdsourced content creation

Chrome: interactive video

Olympus Augmented Reality: useful camera demo

Wheat Thins: social, TV, viral

Five small ideas that might inspire

What individuals and small teams are doing is way more interesting than what most big brands are doing. These are a few of my favorites at the moment. And yes, one of them is mine.

@BPglobalPR: reminder that consumers want to create, control, take over

The Uniform Project: new business model blending cause and fashion

The 3six5 blog: simple crowdsourcing project to generate year’s worth of content

Brandbowl: turn an analog event to a digital event

Bud Caddell on Kickstarter: new way to fund creative projects

Five Ted videos that will inspire you

Find your own, but these are five that I’ve watched more than once and find both motivating and thought-provoking.

Malcolm Gladwell on Spaghetti Sauce

Sir Ken Robinson on Finding Your Passion

Tim Brown on Creativity and Play

Benjamin Zander on Music and Passion

Steve Jobs on How to Live Before You Die

Five people to follow on Twitter

Everyone starts out following the people on the Twitter lists who have the most followers. But that’s an easy system to game.  These are people who get it, who live it, who are digital natives. Most are young, interesting, opinionated and share some pretty good stuff. Hoping you don’t already know all of them.

@StuartFoster: social strategist, digital cool hunter

@thaz7: connected planner often the first to know

@lenkendall: smart, forward thinking digital guy

@mikearauz: he’s from the Internet

@conradlisco: mobile and emerging platforms

Five things you should do yourself

Be on Twitter

Have a Posterous or Tumblr

Make movies on an iPhone

Crowdsource something

Connect with five influential people you’ve never met in person

Hope these are useful.  What about you?  Got a list you want to share?

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For years the doomsayers have predicted – and in some cases even rooted for – the demise of the New York Times.  Print advertising revenues plummeted.  Ownership of and overpayment for papers like the Boston Globe drained resources. Endless digital real estate diminished the value of every online property’s available ad space.

But the Times isn’t doing all that badly at the moment. For the first time in a long time total ad revenues stayed flat rather than falling. In fact in its most recent quarter, digital ad revenue jumped 21 percent. Operating profit doubled and an improved cash situation gives the paper more time to plot a strategy for real growth. Given that the recent good news comes in a miserable economy, I’m betting the venerable paper pulls it off.

If you look at the Times from another perspective – that of partnerships, social media behavior, and content – the company’s actually a shining example of how to hold onto core values and evolve at the same time.

Here are four things it’s done that serve as examples for any traditional company, including advertising agencies.

Get over the not invented here syndrome

For more than a couple of years now the Times has offered up content from a number of new sources that in earlier days would never have justified an appearance under the masthead. But there they are: ReadWriteWeb, GigaOm and other blogs’ content front and center on the Technology page. Stop there once a day and you practically have a centralized source of content. Granted it’s filtered by the Times, but there’s only so much filtering you want to do on your own anyway.

Lesson:  There are plenty of great sources of content outside your walls and beyond that generated by your staff. Why not take advantage of it, whether it’s for your company blog, the blogs you maintain for clients, a YouTube channel, or any of the other places you need content?

Embrace change and new technology as fast as you can

OK, perhaps the Times hasn’t always been lightning speedy at this, but in the last couple of years they’ve done a pretty decent job. Case in point is their iPad app. Not only were they among the very first publications to have one, it was well thought out with a clean, simple interface and just the right amount of content for a pad. All the sharing you need is built in. And while its elegant lacquer-black type on the iPad’s white linen background presents the ideal screen experience, their standby iPhone app’s not bad either. I’ve read 5000 word magazine articles on the thing.

Lesson: Create utility. Make your brand available everywhere.  Consider the context in which the user is engaging.

Be social in every way possible

I like how the Times does this, too. Times People is what every brand with customers or subscribers should do: introduce them to each other. It’s a benefit to users. It helps to spread content around. And it gives readers an added reason to come back and share what they find. The Times also does a pretty good job on Twitter. They’ve created their own lists of writers by category, and even gathered recommended lists of other writers and bloggers by categories that include technology, the arts, opinion and more. They don’t always engage as much as they should, but it’s still a valuable feed to keep you informed. Need someone interesting to follow? Go grab a new list.

Lesson: Take advantage of all the social tools and tactics. Market your employees and their content. Gather your company’s social presence and make it easily accessible to customers and prospects.

Great content wins out in the end

Want to know the reason that properties like the Times along with other content creators of note (including great creative advertising agencies) will always prevail? Quality content. Not only does the Times continue to deliver stuff you want to read, they’ve done a damn good job covering the very topic we’re talking about right here: digital technology and social media. Consider two great examples from the last week alone. One on whether Twitter encourages a distortion of who we really are. A second on whether the digital age diminishes originality and encourages plagiarism. Great stuff that will keep you thinking.

Lesson:  Don’t abandon the core values that got you where you are.  Just bring them to life in new places and apply them to relevant subjects.

What do you think? Is the Times doing it right? Can you replicate any of their practices? Will the “paper” survive?

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