The Lies We Tell For Love...

This fantastic infographic from Ryan Delafosse (@rdelafosse) and Katie Halpern (@katiehalpern) here in Draftfcb's strategy team takes personal ads to task by challenging commonly heard self-descriptions with actual facts. Is the person on the other end of your Love Connection who they really say they are?

Should A Good Brand Story Chart Like A Good Movie?

We owe this beautiful visualization of the story of "Pulp Fiction" to Robert McKee, the creative writing instructor known for his popular "Story Seminar". McKee is the author of Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting. 

Rather than simply handling mechanical aspects of fiction technique such as plot or dialogue taken individually, McKee examines the narrative structure of a work and what makes the story compelling or not. This could work equally as well as an analysis of any other genre or form of narrative, whether in screenplay or any other form, and could also encompass nonfiction works as long as they attempt to tell a story.

Much more about his approach and how it relates to charting a story through the visualization technique above -- simply called "Story Charting" -- can be found here: http://www.storycharts.ca/

I have absolutely fallen in love with Story Charting. And I can't help wonder if a brand's story can be visualized in the same way.

Some obvious questions arise when one tries apply Story Charting to brand work. For instance, good stories rely heavily on creative tension and while planned failures are okay for a movie storyline, not so much for a brand. What, then, is an acceptable substitution for the "Negative" space on the chart? And does a brand really aim to culminate in a climax, as plots in the Story Chart do? And does it really make sense for a brand have multiple plots operating at the same time? 

Stay tuned. I don't have answers yet, but this certainly is a worthwhile and fun venture to tackle.

What A Night!

Wednesday night at the Advertising Research Foundation annual awards ceremony, my team took home four ARF Ogilvy Awards -- three Golds and one Silver -- for innovative insights and analysis that drove exceptional advertising campaigns. I could not be more proud of them and the work we do.

Here's a link to a full article on our achievement: 

http://www.mnilive.com/2012/03/draftfcb-top-winner-at-2012-david-ogilvy-awards/

"What The London Riots Taught Us About Social Media" Audio

If you haven't (somehow) gotten enough of me talking about the London Riots and Social Media, you can actually hear MORE of me talking about the London Riots and Social Media.

The kind folks at South by Southwest have made available the audio from the presentation I did there last week. If you are so inclined, you can hear it by clicking the link below:

Audio from "What The London Riots Taught Us About Social Media" presented at SXSW

Putting A Wrap On SXSW 2012

I had a blast presenting "What The London Riots Taught Us About Social Media" today at SXSW. Even more fun than I had researching and writing the presentation. The audience was absolutely great, engaged and full of great questions after the show.

For those who were there (and, of course, for those who were not) I have linked a copy of the presentation below. Click on the link and download away. Should you have any questions at all about the sources, content, or ideas contained in the deck feel free to reach out to me any time @kevinhartman via Twitter.

 

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So What Is 2012 All About (and How Does It Compare To 2011)?

A quick analysis of event titles and descriptions reveals key topics discussed at this week's SXSWi festival in Austin, Texas. A look back at the same analysis last year shows just what has changed.

Again this year, the hot topic of the festival is "SOCIAL MEDIA". But notice how much more relevant "DATA" as become in 2012. As the development of "Big Data" and other topics continues, I would expect the relevance of data at SXSW to grow as well.

        2012

 

 

        2011

It's SXSW Week!

SXSW 2012 is just days away. I'm heading to Austin tomorrow morning and I'm very excited about all that this year's festival has in store. A quick perusal of the session guide reveals one thing: the number of sessions devoted to the topic of data (especially data visualization) has grown significantly.

Some of you may remember that my main complaint from SXSW 2011 was that the amount of time and attention devoted to data...well...sucked. For anyone interested in my argument, I have linked a small presentation I made last year upon my return. It was largely tongue-in-cheek (I had a GREAT time at SXSW 2011 and all the presenters I saw were top notch), but I was concerned about the treatment -- or lack thereof -- that data received. It seems that data may just claim a much more prominent role in this year's festival.

See you in Austin!

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