Posted by BoB on Jan 22, 2012 in
Advertising,
Creativity I just returned from judging my first Addy Awards for the Lexington, KY chapter of the AAF. I was honored to be offer the chance to judge a few additional Addy competitions this year: Cape Girardeau, MO and Flint, MI, but I had to turn them down because of conflicts.
I must say the experience has changed my outlook on the competition, and really understand what makes work “award” material. I had the pleasure to share the judging with Diane Housemeyer, an Addy judge veteran, and DJ Trishler, another judge newbie like myself. All the members of the Addy committee were super nice and very welcoming. Partly why I chose the Lexington show to judge is my love of horse racing and bourbon, and the entries did not disappoint. We saw some really great work over the 12 hours of judging and I can’t wait to be able to share some of the award winning projects with you.
So be sure to check back in a few weeks when I can revel some of my top picks.
Posted by BoB on Jan 9, 2012 in
Advertising,
Creativity
While discussing fourth quarter plans, Shannon Woolsey (owner of Shannon Aleksandr’s Salon and Spa) agreed to give making a commercial to play only at Showplace Cinemas a go. At the same time salon manager, Chad Butler, mentioned they really wanted to have a App. My thought was, “let’s kill two birds with one stone” we will use the movie theater ad to promote the app, that gives us a tool to measure the effectiveness of the ad.
While I had no previous experience with building mobile apps, I had been wanting to try, so I was quite excited about the opportunity. Plus we get to film something to play on the “big screen”!
Now the first thing I need to discuss with the salon was, “Why do you want an App?” With the explosion of the smart phone, it seems like everyone has an app, and for the most part most people are just replicating their website, which doesn’t really offer much to the consumer. So that was my number one criteria for agreeing to take on the building of an app, it must offer the consumer something. We came up with having a button that delivers a special offer to the users phone.
Writing the spot for the theater was the easiest part of this whole process. Since we were paying a premium for the ad to be the last spot before the trailers start, we used this to our advantage. “Before you are asked to shut off your phone, download our free app…but be sure to wipe the butter off your fingers first!” We agreed upon a spokesperson to “star” in the ad and spent half a day shooting at the salon, which allowed us to update some other salon footage. Within days I had the spot finished and shipped off, well now I had to figure out how to build an app!
I picked up a helpful book about building mobile apps and I breezed through using HTML5 to do the layout, then came making the phone perform functions within the app. Downloading various programming products, I must have spent at least an entire week combing through various forums to troubleshoot getting driving directions and passing data from an external website. I finally got it working almost perfectly so then all I had to do is upload the app, should be easy right? I spent an entire weekend trying to figure out Xcode and Eclipse and how to properly sign the app, I still don’t entirely understand, but I got it to where the app would upload. Now here came the glaring differences between Android and iPhones. After sending the app to Apple I waited almost 2 weeks for the approval process and then it was rejected! It was a simple fix, after another few hours of research, and then it took another day to finally get an approved app in the store. As for the Android app, once I uploaded the file it went live immediately, no approval process, no wonder there are a ton of horrible apps out there.
It was quite a learning experience and I am very proud of teaching myself new things, but I am in no rush to repeat the process!
Posted by BoB on Dec 24, 2011 in
Music 1) Fitz and the Tantrums – Picking Up the Pieces
2) Wugazi – 13 Chambers
3) Jay-Z & Kanye West – Watch the Throne
4) Pharoahe Monch – W.A.R
5) Relient K – Is for Karaoke
Posted by BoB on Dec 23, 2011 in
Music 6) Adele – 21
7) Alkaline Trio – Damneisa
Cold War Kids – Mine is Yours
9) Jack’s Mannequin – People and Things
10) William Elliott Whitmore – Field Songs
