Renegade inspiration

Bracelets made out of old bicycle tires. “WTFWJD” bumper stickers. Musical hair. Old books with the middle carved out, the way you’d sneak a gun into a jail, but with the shape of an iphone carved into it to create a clever storage and carrying device for your iPhone.

These were few of the many wonderfully innovative items being displayed and sold at the Renegade Craft Fair on Division Street over the weekend. Renegade is based in Chicago and is also held "in urban epicenters of creative indie-entrepreneurship."

In Chicago, the entire fair is only a few blocks long but the vast amount of creative thinking they cram into several dozen small booths would put most other fairs to shame.

The items for sale go from playful to profane, beautifully crafted to simple but ingenious. And many just plain fun and smile-inducing, like the bookmarks made out of old book spines.

Beyond the items, the way they’re displayed and the way the booths are set-up are also given thought and made to feel different and a little special. Not your standard art-fair-in-a-mall exhibition.

If you’re even the slightest bit interested in being inspired, put it on your calendar now for next September. See how people are conjuring up fantastic things from old skateboards, books, bicycle parts. Putting the right sides of their brains to work and having a pretty gosh darn good time.

And if you want to feed your physical curiosity, try the brown rice sliders from Mana food bar. Tasty!

You can't always want what you get

I saw this blurb in my weekly Accounts on the Move email:

“SECRET WEAPON MARKETING WINS 1-800-DENTIST
Secret Weapon Marketing, the agency that handles only three clients at a time, filled the final slot in its three client roster with 1-800-DENTIST. Creative duties were previously handled in-house.”

I love Jerry McGuire, so I must love Secret Weapon.

I don’t know anyone there, although I’ve admired a lot of the Jack in the Box commercials over the years, all of them directed by Dick Sittig, the agency's founder and Creative Director.

Skeptics will scoff at their three-clients-only policy as a gimmick, or an excuse, or just a plain old money loser.

I say it’s genius. For one, it’s a great way to save time and money doing countless RFPs, which greatly increases employee's mental happiness. It allows them to focus on the business at hand, building client relationships, doing great work, and, heaven forbid, enjoying the work they do.

Plus, I would argue that it makes the agency more attractive to clients, regardless of how many clients SW takes. Every schoolboy who’s ever had a crush knows that some folks only want what they can’t have (at least that's how I explain my high school dating drought). For once, it’s the clients who should be nervous, with the possibility that they could lose their agency if another client comes along and steals them away.

And of course, it’s a different way of thinking about doing business. It changes the model. It’s twisted, and I love that.

One of my favorite quotes in one of my favorite movies is about the time and dedication that it takes to truly do a great job on behalf of another, and it can’t be underestimated. Secret Weapon understands this.

I just hope they're really really good at negotiating their fees.

Smell the book (or not)

Close your eyes and imagine you’re holding a book in your hands. What does it feel like? Smell like? Does it have years of dog-ears, coffee stains, worn edges? Now open it up. Are there annotations in the margins? Notes inside the front and back covers with phone numbers and lunch dates ?

If so, you’re crazy.

Books don’t look or feel anything like that, and they certainly don’t smell. That is, until someone creates a scratch n sniff app.

Well, ok, that might be a few years off, and I suppose some crazy antique book dealer in an alley in Evanston will make sure there will always be those things with pages that you turn and smell kind of dusty.

But as you well know, the digital book revolution is in full swing, and the latest reminder comes from Gregg and Evan Spiridellis, the guys who brought us JibJab. They have a new line of children’s books sold only on the ipad that allow you to customize a book and make yourself the star of the story.

This is what Gregg Spiridelli says about their new product:

"We see a huge opportunity to disrupt children's publishing and reinvent storytelling with new devices."

I love that. As much as I love the tactile experience of turning pages, I also love what the bros are doing. It’s smart and creative and makes reading more appealing for kids. It’s medicine inside a cupcake.

And if you’re wondering what the effect of tablet computers are on how kids are learning to read, according to USA Today, 47 of the top 50 iTunes book apps are kids’ titles.

Put that in your book and mark it.

I'll pay you not to like my product

This is kind of genius.

One way to get people to use your product is to get the people they admire to use your product. Hence, celebrity endorsers, product placement, league deals, sponsorships, etc. It enables even simple little products to dream of someday becoming the next George Foreman Grill.

But the field is getting more and more crowded, endorsements are becoming less and less meaningful, and consumer cynicism around celebrity endorsers grows daily. So I love this Twisted thinking.

It’s a brilliant way for Abercrombie to make clear who they are, by saying exactly what they’re not. Not only are they publicly disassociating from Jersey Shore, they feel so strongly about distancing themselves, they’ll pay to prove it!

And they do it in a way that their target can relate to. “I wouldn’t go out with Danny Schuman if you paid me.” A familiar-sounding high school refrain (and a little too close to home...). Point is, you have to really really not like something to pay money not to be connected to it.

It’s irrelevant whether Snooki or The Situation takes the dough. It’s the offer, and the clear meaning behind it, that counts (In fact, some are now saying it's a big back-to-school publicity stunt).

Either way, it's smart. Abercrombie thinks so little of the Jersey Shorers, they’d rather give them money than have the cast members wear their clothes. Fun, ballsy, stake-in-the-ground move. Makes the brand feel like it’s iconoclastic and trendy simply because they buck other trends.

Suicide-preventing pens!

I’ve been away from the blog for a while helping other people come up with great ideas, but in the words of Sir Isaac Newton, great ideas never take a vacation. Here’s the proof:

Who knew there’s a magical, lifesaving pen out there? A pen that has literally prevented people from killing themselves!

Actually, I don’t have any proof of this, but the last time I lost an entire notebook of notes and thoughts from crucial client meetings, the only thing that stopped me from killing myself was a bottle of Chianti and an Ally McBeal marathon.

So this pen is called the Echo smartpen from livescribe. First, you have to write on a special notepad. Then, when you connect it to your computer, your notes, scribbles, drawings, etc, are instantly and magically uploaded. And when you click back on your page, the pen tells you when you made that note or drawing.

I’m not doing justice to all the pen can do. Put it this way. For anyone who has taken notes and then forgot about…
--Where you put them
--When you had the conversation
--What the context or reason was for the conversation
--What the hell they mean !#$#$%@$%#!#
…this is technological manna from heaven. Gives your brain a break, your anger a breather, your sanity a refresh.

The single biggest question I had: Why didn’t Steve Jobs get there first with an ipen? The answer, of course, is that he was beaten to the punch. By a PC, no less. But like all things PC, it just doesn’t look as cool as the Mac version.

More on great ideas to come.

Please look up when you're talking to me. Or not.

This new development is definitely one of two things:

A brilliant idea that perfectly takes advantage of how things currently work, as well as a way to use new technology to get more kids involved at school.

Or a sad commentary on how unpersonal things will someday be.

I hate the idea of people “talking” to each other a few feet away while looking down at a screen, but I love the possibility of students finding new ways to interpret art.

It’ll be fascinating to see how the next generation is able to relate socially beyond their screens. I have no idea how it’ll turn out, but I’m pretty sure it’ll be good business for chiropracters.

How Social Media helps fuel great ideas

The best ideas come from the gut. They emerge from a feeling that what you’re creating is important.

They gestate for days or months or even years. Consciously or subconsciously, you’ve been collecting all that time and storing stuff up: Experiences you’ve endured or enjoyed, words you’ve heard, images your brain has captured.

You’ve been building empathy.

And then, one day, a ripped photograph shows up in your back yard.

You don’t know the people in the picture, but you know where it came from, because a few days before, tornadoes ripped through cities and towns that surrounded your own. And while your town, somehow, was spared, many, many more were not. Houses were destroyed, and priceless personal possessions were blown away. Some, for hundreds of miles.

The photograph in your hand, of a little girl in a cheerleading uniform, or grandparents on their wedding day, is a visceral reminder that it could have been you who lost everything.

This happened to Patty Bullion of Lester, Alabama. When she found a ripped picture of an older man and his dog, she posted it on Facebook, on a page that she created, titled simply, “Pictures and Documents found after the April 27, 2011 Tornadoes.” A woman 175 miles away posted almost immediately that the picture was of her grandfather, who had died in the tornadoes. You can only imagine how much the picture must have meant to the woman.

You can read about what happened from there in The New York Times, but as you can probably guess, many, many more items have since been posted, and many people have claimed them.

If you read some of the posts on the page, you’ll see the true genius of Social Media and how it gets people engaged, involved, and prompts them to do something. It certainly proves the power of people who care. That’s the first step in creating an idea that gets people to act.