But we love random.

Random is a crucial part of the creative process. It is the step when you let your mind loosely associate with the accumulated facts and ephemera floating in your brain in the hopes that those random connections to random things will lead to magic.

As kids we are instinctively comfortable with free association/daydreaming. But later in life when there is more at stake, like in the workplace, randomness can seem pointless and wasteful. It’s no wonder we’re hesitant, when we’ve all had the habit of linear thinking beaten into us.

But as a result, “random” has no place in modern business culture. However, that is the same “business culture” that has put creativity on a (well-deserved) pedestal. And we would argue that true creativity can’t happen without a healthy dose of random.

Since our company lives or dies on our ability to come up with creative new ideas, we set about creating a tool that uses random stimulus to help make sure that happens.

After several iterations we have found our digital muse which we call The Thinkerbot. It is an app that pulls purely arbitrary content (we attempt to filter out the naughty stuff) from the web and displays it one piece at a time in 30 second increments. Each of the images in this post was a gift from The Thinkerbot.

It is a weirdly hypnotic experience. And we are sharing The Thinkerbot with the world for free because we think we could all use more weirdly hypnotic experiences. Spend a few minutes with The Thinkerbot, and if you’re not feeling more creative we’ll give you your money back!

It’s true, I did say out loud in 2008 that Obama was the candidate I’d most like to have dinner with. For the wrong reasons. Remember that youthful glow he had, the optimism, and that big toothy grin? Come on, now, I’m not the only one. Besides, next to Bush, Obama was a virtual supermodel. Plus, he could speak actual English without embarrassing himself or us.

This year, I’m going to miss Rick Perry. For the comedy. This is what I mean:
The real TV spot:

Whatever you think about Rick Perry, you’ve got to give him some credit for getting a Rebecca Blackian 700,000 “dislikes”.
But best of all this is the kind of stuff that inspires instant parodies. Here are a couple of excellent video parody replies:

And even some print from Dangerous Minds:

But, God bless the internet – now we can spread rumors faster than ever. But we can also criticize and analyze and foster dialogue better than ever. If we all are really only 4.73 degrees of separation from each other now, “we the people” should be able to influence the outcome of elections in ways that political strategists never had to worry about. I just hope we don’t waste the opportunity.

I don’t know about you… but I’m excited for the 2012 political branding sporting season: viral videos, comedy (intentional and otherwise), new memes every debate, oh yes, and picking the leader of the free world.

Anyway.

Back in ancient Greece some wise men wanted to understand how a pig works. Really understand. So they went to the market and bought a big, healthy pig and carefully took it apart. They diligently studied and documented every tiny detail of its various parts. When they had an exhaustive analysis of every tendon, muscle and capillary in the pig, they put all the pieces back together in precisely the same place they came from. Yet somehow how it wasn’t the same pig.

Because now it was a dead pig.

It reminds me a lot of how many brands approach some of the amazing user-generated content that gets discovered every day on the Internet. Of course it’s not unusual for marketers to try to co-opt anything that gets popular. Heck, we are busy trying to line up celebrity endorsements for a client right now.

But there are two ways I think marketers don’t understand the value of these Internet memes. First, a big hit on the web is not the same thing as a big hit in the real world. A monster hit on YouTube may gather five million views over the course of months. A re-run of “Two and a Half Men” gets that in one night.

Meanwhile, do you know how many YouTube videos have gotten a million or more views? Seriously. Do you know. The closest I could come to an answer was a guy on Quora who said there are over 1.2 million videos on there with over a million views. That sounds hard to believe, but it does support my hunch that there is simply an insane amount of content that has gone “viral”.

So counting on a mass audience to recognize and appreciate the web star you happened to rent is not wise. Most of your audience will have no idea who they are. This point was brought home to me this weekend when we were at a friends house and he said, “Man, you’ve got to see this video.” and he proceeded to show me the OK GO treadmill video from 2005. Over ten million views over six years and it still hadn’t made it onto the radar screen of this educated, connected, urban guy.

Second—and this relates to the pig story I recounted/made up—the qualities that make a piece of content blow up on the Internet are so subtle and quirky and often accidental, that is almost impossible to recreate them or bend them around an advertising message without destroying whatever it was that made them magic in the first place. In short, you end up killing the pig.

A great example of this is the Hyundai holiday campaign they’ve run the last couple of years that uses YouTube stars in commercials. My guess is that these have made no impression on you.

Last year they took the cute, catchy Pamplamoose duet that has quite a few million-view+ videos like this one:

Hyundai threw some money at them and had them make this commercial:

I don’t know about you, but I feel like they killed the pig. All the whimsy and charm seems to vaporize as soon as you make them dance and sing in and around a big shiny Elantra. But clearly Hyundai considered it enough of a success to do it again this year.

So this time they latched on to a video that was making the rounds a few months ago: “It’s getting Real in the Whole Foods Parking Lot.”

This is a funny, well-executed, pitch-perfect bit of self-deprecating satire. We liked it so much we used the director to edit a video we did for Vibram.

Hyundai obviously liked it as well. They got the same crew together and had them make this.

Did you find it funny? Did it even make any sense?

I suspect the folks at Hyundai and their agency are likely slapping themselves on the back; happily telling themselves that they are warming the brand in the glow of these viral sensations.

Me, I just think they’re killing pigs.

We are still in the earliest phases of the Internet. And it is still largely primordial soup. Almost by definition, the Internet has had no center. It has had popular sites and viral content. But generally it is atomized in a way no other media has been.

But I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I have started to feel the gravitational pull of Facebook on nearly every corner of the Internet.

Facebook: the black hole at the center of the Internet

The ubiquitous “Like” buttons on every blog post and article were just the beginning. Facebook has become the universal password. The brilliant commenting plug-in will serve up comments specifically for you on an article. The microsite is all but dead as even enormous brands are launching new products solely on Facebook.

Google+ is a desperate attempt by Google to keep access to the growing amount of data that exists solely in our password-protected social gardens. Google+ is really well done. But I think that ship may have already sailed. Hundreds of millions of people have invested thousands of hours of their lives into building their Facebook networks. And the Timeline feature that has been added is a brilliant realization that your random posts and pictures have quite by accident turned into a powerful and meaningful journal of your life.

I sincerely doubt Facebook users will walk away from all that because Google’s Circles feature is nifty.

You could argue that Facebook’s tendrils are well on their way to suffocating and monetizing the exhilarating, infinite anarchy that made the Internet into the transformational phenomenon it is: the web becomes Mark Zuckerberg’s mall.

Or you could argue that Facebook is re-orienting the infuriating, infinite anarchy of the Internet in a way that customizes it around each of our individual tastes and personal networks: the web curated just for you by your friends and family.

I find myself arguing both depending on whether I’m in a cynical, Occupy Facebook kind of mood or a hopeful, “the web will bring world peace” kind of mood. And you?

The spots have been well-received, but best of all now we have some scientific evidence that it will work. Researchers at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland have determined that women are more likely to remember things when told to them by a man with a deep voice.

Seriously, is it really that simple? Makes you wonder why we work so hard. Well, ladies. See for yourself. Listen to a couple of these spots and see if Jay’s deep baritone embeds itself deep in your brains.

“Power” Providence Journal :60 radio
“Someone” Providence Journal :60 radio

A client recently asked us for music recommendations and we wanted to feature some “locally grown” talent. Is there another city of 150,000 that can put together a line up like this?

THE BARR BROTHERS – Though based in Montreal, the Barr Brothers themselves were born and raised in Providence. (Fun Fact! Their dad is the dentist for several of us here at Nail.)

THE SLIP – they have a huge catalog and do everything from jazz to indie to rock, here are some links:

BROWN BIRD – a local couple, lovely music, featured here live on WRNI (R.I.’s NPR and one of our very favorite clients with a beautiful new web site that we designed).

DEER TICK – They formed in RI and have got some nice national attention recently. Nice fan-made video for the song “Ashamed.”

THE LOW ANTHEM – They’ve gotten big (relatively speaking) with a fancy record label and management and all that stuff. But beautiful, haunting music.

WHAT CHEER BRIGADE - Like your high school marching band only the total, awesome opposite of your high school marching band.

And a couple great bands that used-to-be-local bands that moved to Brooklyn. We forgive them and still consider them ours….

JAVELIN - Light, trippy, electro dance jazz. Or something.

FANG ISLAND – So authentic indie you get the sense they’re embarrassed by just how hooky their tunes are.

I know we haven’t got everybody and please share any blatant oversights in the comments. So come on Knoxville, Chattanooga, Grand Rapids… what’ve you got?

But one thing that gets lost in all the hand wringing and soul searching is just how much fun it all can be.

We have started working with a few clients on their social media in ways that are totally liberating. Our approach has been: let’s make cool stuff, let’s experiment, let’s do it fast and cheap and see where it goes.

For example, for Vibram we come to them with a steady stream of fun, quick ideas that they share with their community. We posted this yesterday.
It got a hundred “Likes”. In four minutes. Many hundreds more since. There have been scores of requests (and some are more like demands) to make it into a t-shirt. So we’re looking into it. Maybe we’ll do a follow up. Maybe someone in the community will. Maybe we’ll make a real saber tooth sculpture out of their shoes for retail locations. Maybe this will be part of the next ad campaign.

The point is we don’t know. And it’s exhilarating. It’s like being allowed to play improvisational jazz after years of strict classical training.

So how happy do you think the folks at TBWA/Chiat/Day were when they managed to get this beautiful spot produced for Nissan?

And then how depressed do you suppose they were when within days they saw this almost identical spot from Renault?

It happens all the time in our business that you come up with an idea only to see it somewhere else. I remember once handling a call from a recent ad school grad who was furious. A campaign we had created had been winning some awards and we claimed we had ripped the idea off him. None of us had ever heard of him or seen his portfolio, but when he sent me his campaign, I could see why he was pissed. They were pretty darn similar. But that’s how it goes, we both had the same idea for a similar client. We just happened to be lucky enough to get ours out into the public eye first.

So what about Nissan and Renault? Who got there first? Going back to the source YouTube videos, Nissan uploaded theirs on May 26, and Renault uploaded theirs on… May 26?

OK, that struck us as downright weird. The same idea? Sure. The same kind of execution? Yeah, we could see that. But the exact same date? No way.

So we asked our friend Google, and though we couldn’t find specifics on the advertising itself, we were reminded of the “Renault-Nissan Alliance” formed a few years ago. Apparently this alliance must include sharing advertising ideas between the companies and producing them separately. We’ve never heard of an arrangement like that, have you?