Washington Area is Key Destination for Strategic Communications

WASHINGTON, DC, January 6, 2012 – The DC Ad Club, metropolitan Washington’s chapter of the American Advertising Federation, announced yesterday that Teddi Alyce Segal is chairperson of Advertising Week DC 2012 scheduled for this September. Segal is vice president of marketing and business development at Alexandria, VA-based, Grafik, the creative agency for the event. Advertising Week DC attracts communications professionals to a four-day event engineered to keep practitioners current on all aspects of marketing communications. Although major metropolitan areas such as New York and Los Angeles have more employees in the advertising and marketing sector, the Washington area has the highest per capita among all the major metro areas in the nation.

According to IHS Global Insight and the Greater Washington Initiative studies, the Washington metropolitan area is home to over 300,000 advertising-related jobs and is the highest per capita employer in the advertising sector. Over 21% of the $489 billion economic output in the Washington area is attributable to advertising expenditures.

“The high concentration of communications professionals is indicative of the demand for top-notch, strategic talent in our region for a breadth of communications disciplines, including marketing, advertising, public relations, advocacy, digital media, social media, and more. Our program is developed to serve the needs of all marketing communications professionals,” said Segal.

Every fall since 2004, Advertising Week DC celebrates the best of the advertising, marketing, and media community with a week dedicated to networking, professional development, and education. It is the area’s largest professional and networking event for advertising, marketing, public relations, and media leaders. The Advertising Week DC Steering Committee is comprised of key players from companies in the Greater Washington advertising, marketing, and media industries. The event will feature nationally recognized marketing experts in an extensive program of discussions and presentations focused on best practices in the rapidly evolving field of marketing communications. The conference will be attractive to client- and agency-side junior talent and, of course, the mainstay of seasoned professionals, and those currently in college studying communications.

“Advertising Week DC is the place to listen, learn, contribute, and engage in lively discussion around our profession. Our objective this year is to raise national awareness that the Washington area is the “go-to” market for strategic communications because of the breadth of marketing work being performed in the region,” said Sherri Anne Green, president of the DC Ad Club. “We’re excited to have Teddi spearheading the effort.”

Segal served on the Advertising Week DC Steering Committee in 2010. She joined Grafik in October 2008 and is responsible for business development and marketing efforts, as well as all public relations and social media on behalf of the agency. She previously served on the American Marketing Association-DC Chapter Board of Directors and is currently serving on the DC Ad Club’s 2012 ADDY Award committee.

Prior to coming to DC, Segal was with several agencies in Miami, FL, including Zimmerman and HDC. Advertising Week DC is a mix of professional development and networking. Both events have taken place annually since 2004. Past speakers have included Joe Grimaldi, Chairman & CEO, Mullen; Shelly Lazarus, Chairman of Ogilvy & Mather; Liz Dolan, former Chief Marketing Officer of The Oprah Winfrey Network; Stuart Elliot, Advertising Columnist of The New York Times; and Miles Nadal, Founder, Chairman & CEO, MDC Partners.

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About The DC Ad Club

Since 1918, the DC Ad Club (a.k.a. the Advertising Club of Metropolitan Washington) has served as the premier industry organization for area advertising professionals. As a chapter of the American Advertising Federation (AAF), the DC Ad Club promotes integrity and excellence in advertising through professional development seminars, recognizes industry leaders andoutstanding work, and serves as the leading networking venue for the industry. The DC Ad Club membership represents all segments of the industry—clients, agencies, production companies and the media. Ad 2 DC, a subset of the DC Ad Club membership, represents and provides programming for young professionals (age 32 and under) in the industry.

The Smithsonian announced this weekend that they are launching a new brand line, “Seriously Amazing.” Before you read any further, in the interest of complete disclosure, you should know that Grafik has worked with the Smithsonian on many of their initiatives including the branding of the National Museum of the American Indian, and a brand exercise for the Smithsonian Institution’s Latino Center. And we have had a beef over the years, on behalf of all of the excellent branding firms in Washington, D.C., that we are never invited to the dance. So in the context of having a large chip on my shoulder, I have to say that the new tagline for the Smithsonian is really pretty good—excellent in fact. The firm called in for the assignment is a well-known branding agency in NYC, London, and Dubai Wolff Olins and branding museums and international institutions is their specialty.

A news item in the Washington Post on Sunday shows that Wolff Olins spent the time to research, and get input from many of the museum directors and board members. As a pre-eminently political beast it must have been a huge endeavor to interview all of the people necessary to build consensus for the new line—one that costs $1 million dollars. It seems they hit the nail right on the head, getting a huge round of applause when they launched the brand last week.

I personally like “Seriously Amazing” as it taps into the research as well as the vast store of treasures that are held by all of the museums making up the Institution. Known for years as the “Nation’s Attic,” the new tagline has a more forward direction. It remains to be seen how the mark will play out in future fundraising and the awareness building campaign.

Job well done, Wolff Olins! Oh, and a note to self: Every time the Smithsonian cries poor to our local D.C. agencies, we should think of the tagline’s million dollar price tag and refuse to do their work on a pro bono basis.

Algorithmic art

Algorithmic art is a subset of generative art that is the result of an algorithmic process—devised by an artist—usually using a random process to produce variation based on external inputs.

If that run-on sentence sounds like a bunch of gibberish, think of the algorithm as an elaborate recipe and the inputs as your assorted ingredients. Where it gets interesting, is that in this type of art you can generate an infinite number of results by using different “ingredients” based on the original recipe.  These inputs can be random number generators or some other source of data like frames from a movie.

I first became interested in algorithmic art back in 2006 through a project by BMW. BMW commissioned artist and designer, Joshua Davis, to develop an algorithm to generate a set of 500 limited edition prints, based on the forms found in the Z4 coupe that they were launching at the time. The pioneering aspect of Davis’ work was that each print was entirely unique and comprised on average of 120,0000 layers and 50,000 vectors, all generated by the algorithm. It was a highly complex process that required Davis to check countless iterations of his code to ensure that it would produce viable results. After months of intensive code refinement, his computer and printer begin to generate the artwork, as he supervised each output, print by print.

One of Artist Joshua Davis' algorithmic illustrations

Paul Krix is another artist who I recently discovered who uses algorithms to individually laser cut jewelry that is aesthetically informed by patterns in nature. The early seeds of his inspiration were planted when Krix read a paper that compared city street networks with common leaf vein patterns, concluding that pictures of either were indistinguishable to most people. Krix decided to use this research as a foundation to his modeling algorithm, and drew inspiration from various natural patterns and processes that are both beautiful and complex: crystal growth, moth wing patterns, leaf veins, tree growth, petals, and the zoological colorings/patterns.

Pieces from Paul Krix's jewelry line called Neat Objects

The idea of “one-of-a-kind” is something that is lost in this age of perfect digital copies and mass production. It’s fascinating to see how designers and artists are pushing  technology to create artwork that is entirely unique, and yet at the same time repeatable because it is digitally informed. This is where it’s worth emphasizing that the artist’s self-made algorithms are an integral part of the authorship, as well as being the medium through which the ideas are conveyed.

So if you’re inspired, learn a new programming language. Become your own factory. And start creating.

I was driving into work this week and almost plowed into a Mid States Oil truck. I was captivated by the ad on the back of the truck. It was yet another rip off of the famous, and wildly popular Got Milk? ad campaign that was launched in 1995 for the National Milk Processor Board. Someone somewhere in the marketing department at Mid States Oil thought it would be a good idea to show a sexy female with an oil mustache. What were they thinking?

Got Oil? Campaign

The Got Milk? campaign was, and is, nothing short of brilliant.

Goodby Silverstein & Partners has probably won every award in the book and according to their website there is a 90 percent awareness factor for the campaign—nothing short of astounding. The campaign has been going strong and is kept relevant by using popular stars such as Hugh Jackman, Taylor Swift, and even the Simpsons.

Taylor Swift posing for the Got Milk? Campaign

Hugh Jackman showing off more than his milk mustache

But along with fame comes imitation.

Got Milk? has been spun off to: Got balls?, Got Beignets?, Got Rice?, Got Mold?, Got Pancakes?, Got Junk?, even Got Pigeons? It turns out that they have created a wonderful website called “milking ‘got milk?‘” Here you can find lists of imitators—each one sillier than the next. Their photo gallery is open to new examples submitted by anyone who finds a Got fill-in-the-blank image and it is supported by a Twitter feed and Facebook page.

Do any of the submissions come anywhere close to the original—not even in the same galaxy. In fact, looking at the milk rip–offs, I have only two words that perfectly describe what I see: Got Poop?

A funny Got Milk? spin-off...Got Poop?

Illuminated LED on a MacBook Pro

I was watching TV the other week when the screen suddenly powered down and went blank. The status light that would normally be a solid red to indicate it was off, was flashing in a rapid, urgent succession, indicating to me that something grave had transpired.

Connected to the TV lay one of my Apple computers. The gentle, white, undulating light on the front reassuringly communicated to me that unlike its TV cousin—it was not dead—it was merely “sleeping.”

There are things we immediately, if subconsciously, find comforting or soothing and, in that moment, I found comfort in that little white light. In designing and engineering something as complicated as a computer, a status light seems like a minor detail in the grand scheme of things. But it’s details like this that can psychologically make a block of aluminum and silicon more communicative and more personal. And it took Apple two patents and hundreds of hours in R&D to make it happen.

In July 2002, Apple filed a patent for a “Breathing Status LED Indicator” (No. US 6,658,577 B2). The status light is intentionally designed to simulate sleep and the patent filing described it as a “blinking effect of the sleep-mode indicator in accordance with the present invention mimics the rhythm of breathing which is psychologically appealing.”

Prior to the patent filing, Apple carried out research into breathing rates during sleep and found that the average respiratory rate for adults is 12–20 breaths per minute. They used a rate of 12 cycles per minute (the low end of the scale) to derive a model for how the light should behave to create a feeling of calm and make the product seem more human.

But finding the right rate wasn’t enough, they needed the light to not just blink, but “breathe.” Most previous sleep LEDs were just driven directly from the system chipset and could only switch on or off and not have the gradual glow that Apple integrated into their devices. This meant going to the expense of creating a new controller chip which could drive the LED light and change its brightness when the main CPU was shut down, all without harming battery life.

On more recent machines, you’ll also notice that the status light is completely invisible from the surface when the computer is in use. There’s no transparent plastic or glass where the light emanates from. The light seems to glow straight off the surface of the aluminum and, in fact, that’s exactly what it’s doing.

This feat of engineering is achieved though Apple’s “Invisible, light-transmissive display” (No Us. 7,880,131). During the manufacturing process of the computer body, a CNC machine first thins out the aluminum. Then a laser drill creates small perforations for the LED light to shine through, creating the illusion of a seamless surface when the light is off.

Several years ago Dell decided to mimic Apple, and add a similar sleep status feature to their computers. They decided to use a rate of 40 cycles per minute for their indicator. Comically, this is the average respiratory rate for adults during strenuous exercise—not very indicative of sleep.

Attention to detail is what makes Apple products feel so impeccable. The team there doesn’t just pore over financial spreadsheets and personnel issues as most companies do. They don’t just think about design, they obsess over it to the smallest details. There are many companies that have the talent and the resources to potentially mimic Apple’s success, but without getting the details right, it ends up just looking like strenuous exercise—inelegant and labored.

Photo from @jennifercparker

What you get is a conversation about where the creative industry is, and where it is going. This week, DC chapter of AIGA, the American Association for Design, is holding DC’s Annual Design Week. A few of Grafik’s creatives attended their event last night, “Download” which consisted of a panelled discussion from some of the top winners of the AIGA 50’s contest last year. Panels included Jefferson Liu of AKQA, Karen Zuckerman of HZDG, Andrew McClellan of Fleishman-Hillard, and Stefan Poulos of Pappas Group. The panel was moderated by Bill Colgrove of Threespot.

The ongoing theme of the night was interactive design. The panelists presented design challenges their studio faced, and how they were able to solve the communication and format challenges. It was a presentation of iPads, motion graphics, videos, mobile apps, and many other components that make up the exciting field of interaction design. To hear from experienced designers and how they made the transition to interactive media was a testament to the versatility that designers must have.

Andrew McClellan of Fleishman-Hillard said, “Ideas drive technology.” This one simple statement sums up the challenges of the design industry today. As technology rapidly advances and things that were awesome yesterday become mundane today, it is imperative that concept remains at the forefront of the design profession. Concept will always be the staple of good design.

To read more of the discussions, check out #DCDesignWeek or follow @AIGA_DC.

Rest In Peace Steve

He changed the way we think, the way we work, and how we interact. Steve Jobs was a luminary of course, and a brilliant technologist, inventor, and thinker. But, he was also one of the most vocal champions of design. Steve showed the world over and over again that design matters.

I remember the first Macintosh that Grafik bought. At the time we thought it was only good to help render type. And our initial reasons for buying one were somewhat misguided. Not to mention the fact that the cost was astronomical for a small firm, all the components were sold separately and we could only afford to lease one. It cost about $12,000 and it was obsolete as soon as we paid for it. Over the years, I probably have easily purchased well over a hundred Apple computers of all sizes and shapes. Everyone knows that if you were a design shop Microsoft was the Evil Empire. And, we scoffed at the clunky world of PCs and the horrible interfaces and designs of any computer that was not an Apple product.

We loved our new toys, but what we loved almost as much was the packaging it came in—the clear simple instructions, and the well designed user manuals. No design detail was too small or overlooked. I know that I have always kept the packaging long after I have unpacked my many computers, iPods, iPhones, and my iPad. Who could throw out the beautiful white boxes?

Even the way Jobs dressed in his cool black turtle necks made the design community love him. He was one of us. He was not just any CEO—we felt like we could trust him to take our best interests to heart. And, he never disappointed us.

When Jobs stepped down as Apple’s CEO, like many others, I knew the end was near and I felt immense sadness. Tonight upon hearing of his death, I feel like I have lost a good friend and I know that the design community has lost a luminary that understood the power that design has to change the world.

Jobs’ first ad campaign was the brilliant “Think Different” series. And that is the challenge that he leaves all of us with: to continue to push the limits of design, to sweat the details because they matter, and to keep the faith that good design sells.

Steve, designers around the world thank you and will miss you.

Last week, Mark Zuckerberg announced a major redesign of the Facebook profile. To be rolling out in the coming weeks, the new profile called Timeline aims to paint a more accurate picture of who you are.

“Timeline is the story of your life,” said Mark Zuckerberg. “All your stories, all your apps, express who you are.”

Timeline will essentially take all your profile’s content—photos, comments, activities, events, apps, etc.—and reweave them into a timeline format that goes as far back as the day you were born. The Timeline highlights the most important content, with what seems to have a strong emphasis on photos, wherein your more recent activities are in detail and then becomes more summarized as you go further down the timeline. Think of it as the scrapbook of your life, but all in one single Facebook page.

As I watched Zuckerberg explain the new features onstage at the f8 developer conference, it made me realize my reliance on the social network to learn about new and existing friends—consequently, also the importance of the accuracy of the profile.

The look of my Facebook Timeline

When I meet someone and I generally get along with that person, it has become my instinct to look for that person on Facebook and add them as a friend. If I want to learn about that person I just met or catch up on what my other friends are doing lately, I turn to their Facebook profiles—that is if I don’t readily have the opportunity to catch up in person. Just as the name suggests, Facebook is essentially an online book resource of who you are. But, does it really reflect who you are? Your accomplishments, interests and what you do? I believe to some extent it does express your basic info and what you have been up to recently, but it does not depict a true picture of who you are—the important events, relationships, and experiences in your life. And Timeline aims to change that with the use of new social apps.

One of the first apps I installed was Spotify which shows on my Timeline the music I'm listening to as well as what my friends are listening to.

The new Open Graph Apps seamlessly integrate within your Timeline. Divided in different categories such as games, media, and lifestyle, apps are a new way of showing your interests and activities on your profile in a much more robust fashion than the simple “Like” button. One interesting facet about these apps is how easy they are to add and use boasting about the ridding of useless prompts after the initial add.

I was able to get the Timeline profile yesterday and have just barely scratched the surface on how rich Timeline and the apps truly are. Overall, it may take some getting used to, but I like this change. I was starting to feel like the Facebook interface was getting cluttered with small add ons here and there and this fresh, streamlined look is a lot more pleasing to the eye, at least to mine.

You can view your Facebook Places check-ins plotted on a map

What do you think about Timeline? Love it? Hate it? I would love to hear your thoughts. If your profile hasn’t converted yet, watch the short introduction video here.

And we couldn’t be happier! We have been searching for quite a while to find that special combination of talent, experience, and charisma to lead our interactive design team — and we have finally found it in Sun Yun — joining Grafik as our Interactive Creative Director.

Sun has experience in multi-disciplinary design including advertising, interactive/web design, user experience design, information architecture, as well as graphic design and consumer product development. In short,  Sun has participated in over 400 projects for over 150 different clients and 9 agencies over his career.

Some of those agencies? Saatchi & Saatchi, Ogilvy & Mather and Y&R to name just a few (plus several of our local competitors). Clients? The list is so long, but to name drop just a bit — Toyota, Johnson & Johnson, MetLife, Sun Microsystems, and the Washington Post. He’s a pretty impressive guy.

“Sun is just what we needed around Grafik as we are growing our interactive capabilities,” says VP of Interactive Greg Appler. “He is a strong talent; we look forward to the vision and leadership he will bring to our creative team.”

Welcome to Grafik.  We are mighty glad to have you!

I’ve a couple of friends who have changed their names as adults, but I must say I often find it difficult to embrace this without having some context around their reasoning. I often “forget,” or truthfully—even resist the change and call them by their former names until I know a bit more about why their old name wasn’t good enough. I find even if it’s none of my business, I still want some help adjusting.

Renaming an organization can often encounter similar challenges. Dedicated employees who have long worked for an organization in the midst of such a change, if not properly informed, might feel mislead. External audiences who have done business with a renamed organization might wonder what prompted the effort. And shareholders will, no doubt, wonder, ‘is it worth it?” But a change for the right reasons can often be a good business decision when an organization or its industry has evolved.

The Association of International Automobile Manufacturers, (AIAM) approached Grafik to rebrand their organization. Let’s start with some context. While the association members are some of the most respected and forward-thinking automobile manufacturers in the world, the association itself was often passed over by the media to weigh in on keyissues that effect the industry including policies on free trade, government mandates and more. The organization also suffered from dated, but nagging perceptions that the association was comprised of “foreign” manufacturers—this, in a time when just about every manufacturer collaborates across borders. Rebranding offered the organization an opportunity to update its image and better define their voice. The new effort would also allow them to improve their communications tools to members and the public.

Another factor, the timing was right. AIAM was planning to move their headquarters from Virginia closer into DC for a stronger physical presence near Capitol Hill. This meant they would need to develop new signage and change thier address on all past communcations tools.

Grafik began with a series of interviews to get a pulse on the organization’s goals, communication efforts to date and marketing resources. We knew that naming might be something to consider, but needed a deeper dive to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of such an effort.

Just as important, we knew if we were going to suggest a new name it had to be memorable—something easy to say, after spending years getting lost in Washington DC’s association acronym soup. We learned that even answering the phone for the organization was at times, challenging. “Hello, this is A-I-A-M.” Or, “Hi this is Aim.” If the front desk wasn’t comfortable saying their name consistently, how could they expect others to?

While considering the name, the show had to go on. Grafik reviewed their communications tools and competitive set to compare how like-minded organizations were communicating. The website, their primary marketing tool, was difficult to navigate and failed to surface the information that defines their industry leadership, innovations and investments in the U.S. market. In tandem with our rebranding strategy Grafik began an interactive discovery process to create the next generation website with new tools to publish content and get their message out as needed.

Still considering a name change we began exploring creative execution including the logo, brand thematic and voice of the organization. We developed “Ahead of the Curve” which captured the history of leadership and innovation that the association’s members have aspired to. Then, after brewing a witches’ potion and sacrificing a designer who unwittingly stayed late at Grafik, we proposed “Global Automakers” as the new name to move forward with.

Grafik developed the new integrated identity including the redesign of the recently launched website, and we continue to consult with Global Automakers regarding future needs.