Dentsu NYC Blog

Finally, the word is out. I’ve been holding Google’s secret for the past 4 months.

Dentsu sent me to attend the Google presentation of the work in Project Re:Brief in November at the New Museum in NYC.

I was at first impressed with the heavy hors d’oeuvres and fancy cocktails, but by the end of the presentation, it was the simple Coca-Cola that had us all really amazed. We enjoyed hearing from an impressive cast of advertising icons and some of the creative minds that originated the classic campaigns that were getting an overhaul. It’s amazing that ads were running before I was born are still quoted as normal conversation today, e.g., when I say “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing”, every day, after lunch.

One of the most exciting parts was seeing the World Coke vending machine in action. They had a working model in the auditorium. The speaker had someone record and send a message live. We watched the animation take off and the machine come to life with the video message we just saw recorded and an ice cold Coca-Cola. I was instantly thirsty and wanted to try it myself, sending it to everyone I know. Literally buying the world a Coke. Not bad.

It was actually amazing. To think this works around the world is pretty impressive and really touched a soft spot seeing the genuine excitement of the machine users who got to try it (watch the video here).

The concept behind the Google Re:Brief project is fantastic and can serve as an inspiration for the possibilities of any great piece of work. It was really fun to hear how the creatives of then worked with the creatives of today to make the past relevant to the world right now, despite their feelings of doubt and general feelings of out-of-the-loopedness.

These re-imagined campaigns prove that the medium is not the idea. The idea is the idea. And if it’s great, it can live anywhere, in any decade, on any device.

See Creativity Online’s write-up here

You are a robot. You stand beside a sealed door. In your hand, you hold a gun. A gun that doesn’t shoot bullets. Instead, it shoots…portals. Doorways that allow you to teleport, instantly, between two distant locations. You have to get through the sealed door. But how? When you flip that switch on the other side of the room, the door opens — but it closes by the time you can get to it. You sit and think. What if you shot a red portal on the wall next to the door, and a blue portal on the wall next to the switch? Then you could flip the switch without getting too far from the door. You try it. It works. You just beat Level 1.

Portal 2 is probably the best video game I’ve ever played. It didn’t just blow my mind. It changed my life. In case the rambling and incoherent paragraph above this one didn’t give you a good sense of the gameplay, feel free to watch this charming commercial for it: http://bit.ly/glKiuW. If that’s not enough, try this one: http://bit.ly/glKiuW. If you didn’t click either of those links, just read this: it’s a puzzle game. You use your “portal gun” to reason your way out of one sealed room and into another.

But describing what the game is doesn’t convey how it feels, and that’s the part that changed my life. In short, it makes you feel like a genius. Like a true, empirical, scientific genius — as if someone combined the brains of Einstein, Hawking, and Tesla and smushed it right into your skull. When you look around that sealed room and suddenly, it all clicks, and you know exactly how to point that laser at that mirror and refract it through those portals – you experience something transcendent.

The experience was particularly transcendent for me. I’ve been playing video games for a long time, but I’ve never bought a “puzzle game.” That’s because the left side of my brain has always been a little scrawny. High school math gave me posttraumatic stress disorder. I once asked my Dad how many quarters there were in a soccer game (which he politely pointed out was “idiotic on a number of levels.”) Needless to say, the idea of a “puzzle game” appeals to me about as much as the idea of a Phil Collins concert followed by back-to-back screenings of Notting Hill. If I ever played a game like Zelda or Resident Evil that unexpectedly had a puzzle in it, I’d just turn the controller over to my sister. She’d solve it in a matter of seconds, and then I could go back to blasting my way through the Zombie apocalypse.

Portal 2 changed all that. It wasn’t the dark humor, the voice acting, or the graphics, all of which have received extraordinary praise. It was the sense that only you could have devised that solution. Only you could have perfectly manipulated gravity, friction, and momentum to get through that sealed door. It wasn’t like other games. It wasn’t a puzzle in a world. It was world that was a puzzle.

For the first time ever, I was relishing an opportunity to flex my weakest neurological muscles. I learned to love something I’d always hated. Because I was good at it.

Moral of the story?

The best creative doesn’t make you think differently about things. It makes you think differently about you. And only one medium can really do that. We call it “digital.”

A brilliant idea and a beautiful execution by Tristan Perich, 1-Bit Symphony “is an electronic composition in five movements on a single microchip.” Nothing traditional about this. The CD jewel case itself houses the music on a microchip (that Tristan himself programmed), alongside a battery, an on/off switch, a volume control and a headphone jack. Nothing is recorded, it literally “performs” the composition when turned on. Check it out!

From Aram Bartholl – ‘Dead Drops’ is an anonymous, offline, peer to peer file-sharing network in public space. I am ‘injecting’ USB flash drives into walls, buildings and curbs accessable to anybody in public space. You are invited to go to these places (so far 5 in NYC) to drop or find files on a dead drop. Plug your laptop to a wall, house or pole to share your files and date. Each dead drop contains a readme.txt file explaining the project. ‘Dead Drops’ is still in progress, to be continued here and in more cities. More info here.

I’m really lovin’ AJ Fosik’s photostream. Thanks Brett!

A collection of interesting work, curated by Google Creative labs.

HTML5 apps, iPhone apps, visualization tools, 3D projections, art projects, creative YouTube videos, crowdsourcing services and more.

More great things from Best Made Company. Directed by Finn O’Hara

How happy does it make me that Comme des Garçons finally has a new website? This (____________) much!

Things just keep getting better and better for all of us in advertising. Google TV looks VERY promising. We can’t wait to start creating for this new medium. Love the way you can use your smart phone as a remote. And the TV design looks so slick! All we can do now is wait and see how this battle for the TV market will play out. Stay up-to-date here.

UNIQLO has announced the new tagline “MADE FOR ALL” to convey the company’s global brand philosophy. The phrase encapsulates both UNIQLO’s core ideals and hopes for the future. UNIQLO strives to provide clothing for everyone, transcending the divisions that separate people, such as nationality, age, occupation and gender.

UNIQLO is pleased to announce that actors Charlize Theron and Orlando Bloom have been signed to communicate the “MADE FOR ALL” philosophy to people throughout the world.

UNIQLO’s “MADE FOR ALL.” Philosophy
It doesn’t matter who you are or where you live, Uniqlo makes clothes that transcend all categories and social groups. Our clothes are made for all, going beyond age, gender, occupation, ethnicity and all the other ways that define people. Our clothes are simple and essential yet universal, so people can freely combine them with their own unique styles, in any way they choose, every day of the year. Everything we do is rooted deeply in Japanese origin, always aspiring to excellence in quality, design and technology. However, we will always ensure that our clothes are affordable and accessible to everyone. Uniqlo is a way of thinking that’s about constant change, diversity, and challenging conventional wisdom. At UNIQLO, we believe that everyone can benefit from simple, well-designed clothes. Because if all people can look and feel better every day, then maybe the world can be a little better too. Made For All.