Our local creative talent is quite a sight to behold when it’s out in full force, all in one place. I feel lucky to be part of a community where the KC ADDY Awards can be proud of the fact that it is the single largest local advertising awards competition in the United States.

And, I’ll admit, I’m exceedingly proud of the recognition my team received.

There are 10 more, with the other bellhop...

In all, B-R received a total of 19 Gold ADDYs, as well as Best of Student ADDY (for a project completed in partnership with University of Kansas); Best of Public Service for Salvation Army and Best of Show for Hostess Cupcakes. Obviously, I’ve featured some of the work on this blog prior.

In addition, we received 29 Silver ADDYs and 18 Bronze.

I’ll be posting more examples of the work as we celebrate with our clients this week!

Who doesn’t love Valentine’s Day, chocolate and social media savvy?

B-R recently teamed up with Christopher Elbow Chocolates to take advantage of the upcoming holiday by creating an experience called Love Letters. Now you, your friends and family can create a chocolate love letter to send to, well, friends, loved ones–even your enemies.

Check it out at www.elbowchocolates.com/loveletters

Let me say great work by Brent Anderson, copywriter; Brandon Wilson & Jordan Gray, design and animation; Chris Riebschlager, code and Jason Cooper, account management.

Enjoy.

When I originally saw the images in this posting, I was fascinated by how–in one static moment–they changed my perspective. I don’t claim to be all that familiar with Detroit. I’m not talking about my perception of the city, per se. I mean they made me realize that so many things are fleeting.

Heavy, I know.

Michigan Central Station.

But these images also impressed me with their ability to make me stop and take a second look, to see something relevant in what might at a glance be considered nothing special at all.

Ballroom of the Lee Plaza Hotel.

“The Ruins of Detroit” photographed by Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre will be published as a book by Steidl in 2010. For now, you can see more of their work here.

Fisher Body Plant.

I guess, too, that I’m a sucker for a good story. Each of these photos contains one.

Take it on the road and get people to try it.

Here’s a recent effort we put together for McDonald’s Angus Burger that did just that. It was a fun project as you can see.

C’mon, you can’t walk by one of those sledgehammer challenges without stopping to see what might happen, right?

A couple of guys in our interactive group wanted to try flexing some new muscles, like augmented reality and facial recognition technology–you know, simple, easy kinda stuff.

Before we knew it, there were holiday follicles for everyone! Check it out at StacheTheHalls.com.

All you need is a webcam and you, too, can get Stached. If you need to ease into the whole idea, watch the video.

C’mon, who doesn’t want to look like a real Santa Claus?

StacheTheHalls.com from Bernstein-Rein Interactive on Vimeo.

What better opportunity to bring to light what the Salvation Army does for those in need locally?

In partnership with MK-12, B-R and the Salvation Army decided to Deck the Halls this year, literally. The Halls Department Store building became the backdrop for a dramatic 3-D presentation of how the Salvation Army changes lives, bell ringer by bell ringer.

Each of the Salvation Army’s core missions were brought to life in the three-story-tall display using two 10,000-lumen projectors.

We were proud to be a part of it, and you can be, too. You can ring for change whether you’re in Kansas City or not.

Every time the video gets posted to a Facebook page, B-R will make a donation to the Salvation Army. Just go to the site here, and look for the Facebook link to post it on your profile.

Thanks for your support!

Resident B-R funny man, Tony Vinh, got a nice little blurb in the KC Star a few days ago. Yeah, yeah, I know the gig mentioned in the article is now after the fact, but you can find his current schedule on his MySpace page in the link above.

Here’s a re-post…

Case of the Mondays | Tony Vinh is ready for his socially acceptable pig-out

Just another peek into our world here at B-R, even if it’s not exactly the daily reality.

(The thumbnail photo? Well, after a few martinis, it might kinda look like me…)

Spend some time with KC’s own ‘Mad Men’ (and women)

By CINDY HOEDEL
The Kansas City Star

SCENE: INTERIOR BERNSTEIN-REIN, STAFF LOUNGE, NINTH FLOOR

Brent Anderson walks over to the stand-alone bar in the corner. He fills his mug with beer from a freshly tapped keg and walks over to Krista Masilionis.

BRENT: Cheers.

Brent and Krista clink mugs. A handful of employees crowds around the bar, where a prize drawing is being held. Krista’s name is called. She walks to the bar and comes back with an envelope.

KRISTA: Tickets to the Chiefs in the company suite.

BRENT: Nice.

Advertising — as a profession, an industry and an office culture — is glamorous again, thanks to AMC’s critically acclaimed series “Mad Men,” set in a fictional New York City advertising agency on Madison Avenue in the 1960s.

But how much have we “learned” about real-life ad agency culture by following the dramatic story lines and pirate ship crew at the fictional Sterling Cooper agency?

Which characters and recurring themes are spot on, and which preposterous? To find out, we decided to hang out with a single creative team from a prominent, longtime Kansas City ad agency, dropping in on its members at different times and in different situations over two weeks.

Two agencies clearly fill the bill: Barkley and Bernstein-Rein are the largest independent agencies in town, and both were founded in 1964, the era the show takes place in.

Of the two, Bernstein-Rein seemed the obvious choice because of its serendipitous address on Kansas City’s own Madison Avenue. How would our local Mad men (and women) stack up against the characters on the show? Is there a super-suave creative genius like Don Draper? A Cinderella story like secretary-turned-copywriter Peggy Olson? An eccentric founder like Bertram Cooper?

“Beer Friday” at Bernstein-Rein is evidence that drinking in the workplace still goes on, but it’s limited to the last hour of the work week, kicking off around 4 p.m. every Friday.

Compared to office parties at Sterling Cooper on the show, this is pretty tame stuff. No one is sitting on anyone’s lap, no one experiences loss of bladder control, no limbs are severed by tractor demonstrations gone awry.

“The smoking, the drinking, the carousing, I don’t see that going on at all,” says vice president/group account director Vernon Williams.

But the brashness and swagger associated with ad world inhabitants are easy enough to find. “Greed, ambition, confidence — you need a level of all that to be able to stand up in front of a client and sell an idea,” Williams says. “It can border on arrogance.”

Fashion is a huge theme on “Mad Men,” which just ended its third season. (The fourth is expected to begin in summer.) It’s also much in evidence inside the halls of Bernstein-Rein. Clothing is more casual than on the show, but you get the feeling everyone is very much dressing a part.

“We definitely enjoy the creative environment around us, and we dress to feed that,” project manager Amy Stafford says.

For the guys in the creative department, jeans and good-quality T-shirts or polo shirts are the uniform, with the odd necktie or rakish cap to add flair. The key, senior copywriter Brent Anderson says, is to project a relaxed office atmosphere without looking like you just walked in from mowing the lawn.

The women in the creative department wear a wider array of styles, from leggings to pencil skirts to flared trousers. Account execs dress more conservatively but still look chic.

For most, the dress code on any given day depends on the level of client contact. Anderson, for example, has tattoos on both upper arms, but when he meets with clients, he wears a shirt that covers them.

Design is also prominent on “Mad Men.” Interior scenes are shot from low angles so the architecture can be seen, and sets are perfectly propped with period furniture, lamps and barware.

The inside of Bernstein-Rein also has a period feel, but it’s the ’90s rather than the ’60s. Philippe Starck-like postmodern shapes and pure colors mash up with “Miami Vice” boxy black leather armchairs and sofas.

The main lobby on the 15th floor has a soaring atrium, panoramic Plaza views and a coffee bar with local and national newspapers and trade journals neatly laid out on the counter. Seating groups and planters offer an inviting refuge to guests and employees alike. It looks like a stylish urban café, and the gourmet coffee and teas are free.

The creative workspaces are more whimsically decorated than account areas, as one would expect. A pingpong table and a kooky Dr. Seuss-looking purple chair enliven the new-media corner. Desks are clumped in the center of the floor, leaving the perimeter with its big-window views open for communal gathering areas.

Only the executive floor, 16, has the old-fashioned layout of Sterling Cooper’s offices, with assistants’ desks in the center and offices ringing the perimeter.

The open physical layouts of the accounts and creative areas reflect their management structure. Everybody, regardless of rank, gets a little cubicle area on the inside — nobody has an office with a door.

“There are fewer walls, literally and figuratively,” Anderson says. “It’s less stiff. You could look at that show and go, they’re not stiff — they’re drinking. But roles are very strictly defined, there’s a lot of disrespect, and people can be fired just like that. There’s more camaraderie today. And especially in this economy, there’s a realization we’re all in this together.”

At Sterling Cooper, the bugaboo in the last two seasons has been the sale of the company to a British firm. At Bernstein-Rein, it’s the rotten economy. The company has downsized from around 350 employees two years ago to 240 today. The economy intensified the pain of losing two major accounts: Wal-Mart and United Services Automobile Association. And now the company has lost the Bayer Animal Health account.

Another blow came when plans to move into spectacular new 21st-century offices were scrapped when the West Edge development backed by Bernstein-Rein’s founder, Bob Bernstein, came apart and fell into bankruptcy.

“That was a letdown,” Anderson says. “This is nice, but the new workplace would have been state-of-the-art.”

INTERIOR BERNSTEIN-REIN — CONFERENCE AREA IN CREATIVE DEPARTMENT

Six writers, designers and art directors sit around a small coffee table. Krista Masilionis spreads out color printouts of logos, exterior signage, display cases and Web site pages.

KRISTA: The client has requested a campaign, but I think we should go in and do a small branding for them. Knock their socks off, and then get the billboards. That’s their largest advertising outlay.

Client pitches today are more complex than they were in the 1960s, when print, billboard, radio and television were the only types of advertising. Agencies have to take a much wider view of how to best reach potential consumers now that computers, cell phones and social networking sites such as Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook are in the mix.

Masilionis has called a creative team meeting to review ideas for an upcoming pitch to a jewelry client.

“I want to bring in five new ideas for promotions,” Masilionis says. Anderson says he would feel more comfortable looking at the client’s existing promotions and offering ways to do them better. Agencies today, much more than in the ’60s, grapple with the problem of how to prevent clients from trying to get work for free during the review process.

Masilionis says, “Well, we need to do both.” More discussion follows, and Anderson and Masilionis arrive at a compromise, agreeing to present new ideas, but not fully fleshed out.

They both remember a recent pitch for a national retailer that went bad. The agency spent more than $100,000 on a comprehensive review, only to have the client cancel the review meeting at its headquarters in another state as Masilionis and president Steve Bernstein were stepping off the plane.

“I’d love to walk in there with a couple of ideas of what their tagline could be,” Masilionis says. Some of the writers have generated suggestions, but Masilionis thinks the text needs to incorporate one of the key ideas that is important to the client.

“It’s going to be hard to get them away from ideas about generations and family history.” She suggests a tagline that incorporates one of the words the client likes and using the other new ideas as headline treatments.

Clients can get really hung up on a single word, Masilionis says. “If that word isn’t in there, they stop listening.”

Steve Bernstein has seen that happen, too. Like his favorite character on “Mad Men,” Roger Sterling, Bernstein is the second generation in the business his father founded. But he first experienced the agency as a client when he owned a group of Blockbuster video stores in the western U.S., and his father was running the agency.

Bernstein says one of his favorite lines from the show came from the Conrad Hilton character. Creative director Don Draper has delivered a seemingly brilliant pitch for print ads for Hilton hotels worldwide. (“How do you say ice water in Italian? Hilton. How do you say fresh towels in Farsi? Hilton. How do you say hamburger in Japanese? Hilton.”)

But Hilton, disappointed that Draper didn’t include the moon as a future location, says, “When I say I want the moon, I expect the moon.”

The show also illustrates how giving the client exactly what he asks for can be fraught with peril, says account supervisor Erik Drake. Drake related to an episode in which a client loved Ann-Margret singing “Bye Bye Birdie” and asked for a spot with a girl just like her singing about the company’s diet soft drink.

“They gave the client exactly that, and the client didn’t like it and couldn’t say why,” Drake says. “That happens. Sometimes you have to go all the way down a road before the client sees their original idea isn’t working.”

Another of Bernstein’s favorite scenes also touches on the complex agency-client relationship: Account executive Pete Campbell is getting chewed out by founding partner Bert Cooper after a client hates Campbell’s pitch. When Campbell protests he didn’t do anything wrong, Sterling comes to his defense, sort of, saying, “Sometimes in this business it just comes down to, I don’t like that guy.”

Bernstein says he wishes Sterling had expressed it in a more positive way, but the observation is true. “We’re in a big-idea business, but we’re also in a relationship business,” he says.

Even more than keeping clients happy, Bernstein says, his job is to motivate employees and “manage the highs and lows” of the emotional climate inside the agency. Another favorite Sterling line crystallizes that aspect of his job, he says.

The setup: account executive Ken Cosgrove drives a lawn tractor into the office to celebrate landing the John Deere account. A horrific accident ensues — a man loses a foot. Afterward some employees are sitting dumbstruck on a couch as a worker squeegees gore off the window behind them, and Sterling says, “Believe me, somewhere in this business, this has happened before.”

“I love that,” Bernstein says. “Because every day is completely different, and you just have to roll with it, whatever happens.”

Another familiar theme on the show is tension between people in “accounts” and “creative.” Everyone agrees that nothing has changed on that front.

“Creative, all they’re thinking is: my idea, my idea, my idea, without budgetary constraints,” Williams says. “I have to think of both.”

Graphic designers, art directors and copywriters want to protect creativity, and account execs want to protect the account.

“You want to believe you’re making art, but all the time you’re working for a client. It’s not art,” Bernstein says.

One thing accounts and creative have in common, and that never changes, is the long hours agency work demands.

Williams is married and has a 6-year-old son. He is often in the office from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. and travels almost every week for a day or two. He uses Skype so his son can see him when he’s away from home.

On “Mad Men,” Don Draper keeps a fresh shirt in his desk drawer. “When I see him do it, I think I should, too,” says Bernstein, who admits he has slept on his office couch at least once — by accident, not on purpose.

It’s hard to truly leave work when everyone in the office has your cell number and calls and texts you daily, Bernstein says. “Anybody who works in an agency has chosen that as a lifestyle,” he says.

Bernstein is going through a divorce but is devoted to his two kids, ages 9 and 4, he says. “That lifestyle can be difficult on a family.”

Although Anderson lives with his wife and two sons, 6 and 3, in a leafy suburb (Fairway) like Don Draper, the similarity ends there.

“When Draper comes home, between his wife and the housekeeper, everything is done. I have to contribute,” he says. “I want to be involved with my kids. I go to PTA meetings.” During crunch times when new business hits, he goes home at 6 p.m. and returns to the office later.

For Masilionis, juggling career, marriage and three children under age 5 leaves little room for hobbies or sports. “I invest in Spanx instead of a gym membership,” she says.

In 2007, Bernstein-Rein invested some time and money in itself. Following the departure of Wal-Mart, the agency underwent rebranding, in a campaign that won awards for the big-B-little-R-in-a-box logo and the slogan, “Be real.”

The rebranding left the agency better positioned to go after new retail business, which it could not do when it had the Wal-Mart account, Bernstein says. It also freshened the company’s image in the brave new digital world.

“In the show, TV had just come on the scene. There was excitement and fear about moving into that new frontier. It’s exactly the same today as we look at the digital age,” he says.

A lot of old rules are going out the door. For example, the rule that says brands can be built only through television. “Starbucks created a powerful brand without doing advertising,” Bernstein says.

Another rule that has bitten the dust: The argument to clients that they should not look for immediate return on their investment on brand advertising. “ ‘It builds trust, you can build it over time, we’ll drive sales with promotional advertising,’ we’d tell them. No more. Everyone wants immediate results.”

Like many agencies, Bernstein-Rein has created an analytics department solely to measure results.

Another sea change is that agencies are no longer the only influence on creative work. Businesses now have a chief marketing officer. There’s more of a balance of power. That creates a whole different dynamic.

“Sterling Cooper had much more authority than agencies today,” Bernstein says.

“Mad Men” writers have created fictional accounts of ad work for real brands including London Fog, John Deere, Hilton, Admiral and Aqua Net.

Some familiar brands Bernstein-Rein has done real work for recently include: launching 100-calorie packs for Hostess, launching McCafe in-store coffee counters and Angus Burgers for McDonald’s, the “Slow food is good food” slogan for Crock-Pot and a recently launched campaign for PetSmart.

INTERIOR BERNSTEIN-REIN — BOB BERNSTEIN’S OFFICE

At one end of a long office with windows on two sides is a small antique desk and an intimate seating group. Bob Bernstein walks toward the other end of the office, which is filled with display cases of collections, Duane Hanson sculptures that look like real human beings, primitive “motion sculptures,” a glowing video art installation, a giant steel ball maze mounted to the wall, and a jukebox. He picks up a red, hard-plastic drinking straw formed in the shape of an M, puts it to his lips and looks intently at his visitor.

BOB : I invented this!

Bob Bernstein’s office could not be more different from that of Bert Cooper, the founding partner on “Mad Men.” And yet, both reflect their respective founder’s personality and eccentricities.

On the show, visitors to Cooper’s office have to remove their shoes before entering the tasteful sanctuary furnished with Japanese art and antiques. Visitors to Bernstein’s office get to play with very expensive toys.

The senior Bernstein is still CEO of the company his son Steve now runs. He is also the only person in the building who lived the mad ad life in the ’60s.

Some of the cultural things on the show are dead-on, Bernstein says. “There was a lot of smoking and a lot of drinking, but mostly at night. You never saw a woman in a management position. Women were secretaries, and they were all grouped together in the middle of the room with the offices around the perimeter, just like on the show. That’s exactly how it was.”

The first hire Bernstein made was a woman named Ruth Burke, who turned out to be an even more successful version of Peggy Olson on the show. Burke started out as a combination secretary and receptionist, but eventually she was promoted to buyer and went on to open her own media company in Kansas City. But her story was the exception.

“You never saw a woman as a salesperson. A lot of talented women were held down in those days,” Bernstein says.

What he remembers most about the era wasn’t the work-hard, play-hard excess, but the youth movement. “After Kennedy, this young president, there was a sense that young people could be put in positions of great responsibility. Creative directors were in their early 20s, and by 27, they were done.”

One thing has changed in a good way, in Bernstein’s eyes. “In the late ’60s and early ’70s, everything was an expression of self, but today people are more responsible. Everyone respects everyone else. You work with people, not for people. Men are much more family-oriented. More men are taking baby leave today.”

Still, a little bit of magic has been lost. “There was a lot of showmanship in those days. Pitches were absolutely more emotional. Today it’s a science. There was more mystique back then.”

FADE OUT

Character he loves to hate: “Pete Campbell. He’s this smarmy account person who is such a little boy inside, so arrogant he thinks he can take on Don and his superiors, but at the end of the day you know his wife’s got him by the tail.”

Here’s a recent TV and radio commercial we did promoting the mother of all breakfast meats. There’s nothing quite as drool-inducing as the audio bed of that sizzle.

B-R has enjoyed a decade-and-a-half-long relationship with this client. Now you can enjoy these spots with your morning coffee.

How do you communicate 90 years of fun in a single page ad? Our Hostess team figured out how. Enjoy!!!

As you’ll remember from our last class, The Analog Age of advertising agencies is over.

What does that mean? What, exactly, has changed? Lots, in case you haven’t noticed.

In The Analog Age, the job of the agency was to create content to put within the context of Interruption. Ad folks happily disguised the reality that messages were designed to stop the flow of the consumer’s life by labeling the best of those Interruptions “suprising,” or as having “stopping power.”

In The Digital Age, an advertisement is not something meant to be viewed as much as it is, more often than not, meant to be used to gain an experience. You and I are no longer “consumers.” We are “users.” Users of information, users of technology to gain that information on our demand, users of that same technology to define what we want a brand to, in fact, be or become.

The people at Digital Reboot believe this shift happened with the advent of the Internet and it took an exponential upswing with the spread of broadband, specifically. Remember that symbiotic relationship between technological advancements and opportunities for ad agencies? The television became an important “screen” in our lives, but mobile devices today are arguably THE screen in our lives. Think about everything you do today on your “phone.” The point is not that mobile devices are the only thing moving forward, but that they are the best example of how Users experience the world of digitally-driven information.

What’s important to realize is that all Analog Agencies must now become–not “interactive” agencies, not “digital” agencies, per se, but–Digital Age Agencies.

The Digital Age agency realizes that Templated Work doesn’t work alone anymore. The User expects an interface-oriented experience to gain access to information and to interact with brands, even if he or she doesn’t necessarily realize it. Witness the fact that even when we choose a TV channel today, we do so through the interface of a cable company provider’s channel selector interface.

Singular Interruption has to become Multiple Facets of User Experience, and the Big Idea has to be developed with that end in mind.

When you create Multiple Facets of User Experience, it takes on the form of a Platform.

Is The Analog-Age Campaign part of this? YES! Analog versus Digital is not about an either/or result. It’s additive. You need to do both.

And that brings us to one of the biggest learnings of all: IF YOUR AGENCY IS STILL FOCUSED ON “360-DEGREE MEDIA SOLUTIONS” (how many times have we all heard that?), YOU ARE RUNNING BEHIND. YOU NEED TO BE FOCUSED ON 360-DEGREE LITERATE TALENT CAPABLE OF CREATING PLATFORM-ORIENTED SOLUTIONS.

And the Platform of Multiple Facets sets up the concept of Contexts, which we will discuss another time, class.

Dismissed.

It’s their dream, their passion, their baby. It’s a big deal.

This month, we’re helping Commerce Bank turn their branches into small business centers to demonstrate the brand’s appreciation of everything small businesses do for our communities and the economy–and to generate conversations about how Commerce Small Business Specialists can help them do it all more efficiently.

Through a series of executions including in-branch posters, on-site installations as well as mobile billboards, our goal was to help communicate that–although these businesses might be small–their big impact is felt and valued.

Even an office supply as common and business-like as a pencil is a big deal when it comes to Small Business Month at Commerce. This campaign included a cool way to disguise and message the event on the bumper guards in the branches’ drive-through lanes.

And easy customer-focused solutions like Commerce Small Business Options Checking account were featured. Small Business Options Checking allows Commerce customers to combine the balances in their personal and business accounts to save on bank fees, get premium rates on Business Money Market accounts, and earn better rates on loans. This direct mail piece outlined the details of the special account and played up the opportunity to not only grow your savings, but also get two airline tickets for the price of one, when you open an account by November 30th. Play the video below to see it in action.

One of the goals of this blog is to feature examples of creativity outside of advertising and share my thoughts about how they apply to my personal and professional world.

Often, when I get a chance to teach, I come back to a theme time and time again about creativity in general:

Unexpected things happen when you take a different route home.

When I was a college professor, I used to encourage my students to spend time and energy cultivating deliberately different ways of doing what they had come to think of as the routine. Easy things, like, mixing up your meals by eating spaghetti and meatballs for breakfast and waffles and bacon for dinner. Or, starting at Point A (in that case, Point A was the classroom in which we were sitting) and finding a completely different way to get to Point B (home, or to your job, or the Laundromat).

Why? At the most basic level, it’s because doing so forces a difference experience.  And that experience becomes part of who you are. And, in the end, personal experience is all we have to create from.

More varied personal experiences = a broader range of creative ideas to explore.

I believe it really is that simple. When you stop exploring, stop learning, stop experiencing the unexpected, it is then that your ability to create something worth exploring, worth learning about, capable of surprising, dies.

The video in this post is called “The Longest Way 1.0,” and it chronicles a year in the life of Christoph Rehage. I don’t know him personally. He’s just a guy whose story I ran across one day. He set out to travel on foot from China to Germany in the fall of 2007.

As you watch it, you’ll certainly notice that this example of “personal cinema” was achieved with very basic equipment. A point-and-shoot camera and a subject. But it all comes together in a compelling way that is pretty, well, cinematic. It tells a story. A story much more involving than the few minutes it takes to watch . See if your brain doesn’t fill in, between the gaps. You become involved in the narrative. No voiceover to explain. Not many words at all, really.

When you consider that this guy didn’t have a full-blown production entourage following him around, it’s more than kind of remarkable, isn’t it? This example also demonstrates another truth of creativity, in whatever form: commit to the “draft.” Stay with the process and have the discipline to keep returning to the craft of whatever it is that you do. Because the really inspired stuff comes out in the edit. Rehage obviously came to the camera every day, no matter what.

And in the process he demonstrated an extreme example of taking a different way home.

A persuasive yet believable message was created by advertising agency. Message was dispersed through mass media. Mass media machine chugged along until it ran out of client’s dollars or over-exposed itself to every consumer. Consumer was inundated with the message enough to cry “Uncle!” and try the product to see what all the (pre-manufactured, mass-produced) hype was all about. If the consumer liked the product, they’d talk it up with their friends. If they didn’t, then, the opposite.

Fast-forward to today:

Consumers create content about products on an ever-increasing scale. Media is less and less “mass.” Consumer is the medium. Clients’ dollars need to go the distance and, somehow, keep going. Word of mouth is word of keyboard. Still, a great product is worth talking about.

Our McDonald’s team recently proved all of the above to be true through an interweaving of digital technology, consumer-as-medium, outdoor, online, mobile and on-site. How?

A few weeks back, through well-placed billboards, Kansas City was told to prepare for Angus.

Angus teaser outdoor board--Before.

Angus reveal outdoor board--After.

Then, as the new Angus Third Pounders hit the grill, we continued to use traditional outdoor boards to further the launch, two words at a time.

For most agencies, this is where the story would end. But for our team, it was just the beginning.

Over the next month, people were encouraged to sing the burger’s praises by submitting a two-word slogan online at honorangus.com or by text on their mobile device. We called the initiative HONOR ANGUS.

Consumers experienced the burger, then visited the site...

...created their own headline honoring Angus...

Submissions were posted in the website’s gallery area.

...and joined the crowd. They could also vote for their favorites.

Then, on Thursday morning, September 24, all 13 digital billboards in Kansas City began to display the headlines written by Angus fans. The headlines, along with the names of their authors, cycled in 10-second increments during a 24-hour market-wide roadblock.

More than 6,000 slogans were submitted in all–the majority by unique visitors versus a small number of individual people making multiple submissions. This was achieved, in part, because word about the opportunity to have 10 seconds of fame spread quickly via social media.

And one of the most engaging things of all? The whole idea encouraged interaction with the brand AFTER purchase and trial.

This campaign was the first time that a brand has taken over all of Lamar Outdoor’s digitals in a market for a single day. Lamar used its year-old iSpot technology that relies on RSS feeds to “scrape” information from the Honor Angus website for broadcast on the billboards–it’s the same technology used to automatically send news headlines, sports scores and weather updates to digital billboards for other clients around the country.

Honor Angus made quite an impression, even outside of KC. Patrick Moorhead, director of emerging media for Razorfish says it better than I (through no prodding from B-R or our client, I might add):

“By essentially road blocking the market then inviting those that live in the market to develop the creative, McDonald’s has really capitalized on the place-based aspect of the inventory and the dynamic and measurable aspect of the digital signage. This is by far one of the coolest digital out-of-home executions I’ve seen for a mass brand.”

To see the billboards in time-lapse action, click below.

It all added up to a big day for Angus and the B-R team!

Are you Angus enough?

Big day!

Topics from digital ecosystems to mobile technology to touch-based interfaces to the motherlode of data that is Google were addressed.

All toward trying to answer one question: where are advertising agencies headed in this technologically-driven era?

Big question, huh? They didn’t necessarily provide definitive answers–who could? But there was a lot of great information that, when brought together, defines a path.

I’m going to do a series of posts here on the topics covered at Digital Reboot. The first is about how technology and advertising are irrevocably intertwined, and what “the digital revolution” means for the overwhelming majority of ad agencies today. Pardon me while I go into college professor mode…

Prior to the Internet and the advent of broadband, agencies functioned and succeeded in The Analog Age. And the media darling of The Analog Age was Television.

In The Analog Age, the job of the advertising agency was to create content to provide a Singular Moment of Interruption. Two things are important here: the idea of Singularity, and the experience of Interruption.

All Analog Age-oriented media is Singular in nature when it comes to the experience. Television, print, radio–you can do one thing with each of those media. Watch it, read it, listen to it.

As a result, the Interruption delivered via those media is Singular, too. I’m reading the newspaper and your ad is on the facing page. I’m watching TV, and a commercial diverts my attention away from what I was watching.

If you’ve worked in advertising for longer than, say, five years, how many times have you talked about being in pursuit of the “surprise” in an execution? The “memorability factor”? And you, and the industry, were rewarded for achieving that moment of Singular Interruption. Hell, advertising creative award shows are purely and wholly based on this concept.

The reality of this pursuit is that solutions became Templated. TV happens in 30-second increments. Radio in 60 seconds. Print is single-page. The execution of advertising became variations on a theme within a template. And multiple executions based on medium-specific Templates made up the Campaign. And the audience for those templated executions was waiting, in mass quantities, for that Campaign.

The Analog Age is over, folks.

And so is this post. We’ve reached the stopping point for our lecture today, students.

Come to class next time to learn why:

-Technology, as it relates to advertising, is no longer about the Interruption

-The audience should no longer be called a “Consumer”

-Campaigns of Templated work no longer comprise the Big Idea

-And Digital is no longer just a medium

Class dismissed.