Alex Bogusky came into Boulder Digital Works last week.
He’s part of a little shop in town called Crispin Porter + Bogusky. They’ve done work for car companies, food companies and software companies.
He came in to critique the final breakout session of the latest Boulder Digital Works 36 hour workshop. Each group in the workshop had about an hour to come up with a product and a digital ecosystem around the product. The products ranged from a self-guided lawn mower to a campaign based around a minor league baseball team. Each had some very cool ideas attached.
Bogusky listened to each presentation intently along with the workshop’s instructors. After each, he gave some constructive criticism.
Here is what it boiled down to.
1. What’s the big idea?
A lot of the groups got caught up in a flurry of multimedia concepts, but forgot to attach their product to a central idea.
2. Make the thing, the thing
Several of the groups had great ideas, but often forgot to relate them to the central product. As a result they strayed far from the basic concepts their product represented.
3. Present ideas not media plans
A couple of the groups presented plans for extensive strategies that encompassed everything from TV spots to augmented reality. However, many of these plans forgot to include the big idea. No big idea with a big media plan means a lot of money spent on nothing in particular.
4. What is the big thing you’re trying to overcome?
Bogusky encouraged each group to find the cultural tension in the lives of their customers and to figure out how their product or service could address that tension.
His ideas and feedback were right in line with a lot of what we’ve been talking about in BDW 60 Weeks. It’s not rocket science, but Bogusky’s comments show sometimes it’s easy to get caught up in technology and forget about your users or the central idea that reflect the main product or service. It’s great to hear one of the top dogs in the game reiterating the thoughts my classmates and I have been having over the past five weeks and change.
55 more weeks and we’ll be taking those ideas for a long walk in the big wide world.
Google and Les Paul Make Great Internet
Thursday, June 9th, 2011Today’s Google Doodle is great Internet. With an incredibly simple execution that let’s a user strum a guitar, record their music and share it with the world, Google put all that drives today’s Internet on display for the world to mess with.
Here’s why it’s great and what everyone who creates digital communication (myself included) should strive for.
1. It’s dead simple
You move your mouse up and down and it works. You press a button and it records. It gives you a link and you can share it. There’s not opt ins, no privacy concerns, no extraneous steps.
2. It let’s everyone be creative
So much of what we do online is about making, creating and mashing up. With a ridiculously low barrier to entry everyone can play.
3. Record and Share
So simple and absolute genius. As I was strumming I said to myself, “It would be cool to share what I’m doing and see what some real guitar players can do here.” Then I saw the button and was totally impressed. It turns this execution not just into a time waster, but a game to see what you can do and who can do better. Sharing is how the Internet works and it’s working perfectly here.
4. Automatic Distribution
It’s not like Google needs more traffic, but they guarantee themselves more on their homepage today though the sharing of the doodle. They made something awesome. People like it so they shout about it by sharing their work. Same as a great dish at a restaurant or a great band at a club. Do cool stuff that people can have fun with and they’ll tell their friends.
5. It doesn’t take itself to seriously
Google has fun with its logo all the time. That’s nothing new, but when it lets people actually play with it and mess around with its identity, it fully embodies the hacking spirit of the web. People like to make stuff and mess with hierarchy. You can do both with the Google Doodle. It shows that something that is serious business, Google and search, can be damn fun. It shows that Internet is serious business but we can have a very good time with it.
It’s phenomenal that something so simple can accomplish all this. I think it’s a new benchmark.
What do you think? What are some other examples of executions that embody the spirit of the web this well.
Tags: digital, Google, internet, sharing
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