Tag Archives: Innovation Blogs
“I went to a talk that really inspired me today” was the sentence heard around Austin for the duration of the SxSW Interactive conference. Conversations overheard offered glimpses into the emotional rollercoaster of inspiration taking place. Dialogues turn philosophical when privacy or the implications of the great WWW on children are discussed and career paths are questioned. Outside of the philosophical, excitement is built in this really cool way when sentences start with, “What if I …” and end with a new idea.
I went to a talk that really inspired me the other day. The brains behind the3Six5, 6 Items or Less and Victors and Spoils held a panel on crowd-sourced projects that ask a community to be creative, but within the project’s parameters. I’ve been rolling a project like this over in my brain for about 5 months and came out feeling energized and excited. Inspiration is personal and can feel like you’re being pinged by the universe to do something awesome. The voices of the inspired rang throughout the conference locations, so I know I’m not alone.
On the way back to wherever we all came from, moving from inspiration into action is the tough part. My father, always quick on the draw with his words of wisdom, used to say, “It’s really easy to do nothing,” but why waste this kinetic conference energy on taking the easy road? Harness what’s making you tick, whether at SxSW or not, to help you get over the action-hump with a couple of intuitive, but useful tips.
1. Do something to put whatever it is you’re dreaming about into action immediately.
If your creative juices are flowing and nothing is there to catch them, you’ll likely lose your momentum. Do anything to move towards your goal and you’ll be closer than where you were before you were inspired. If you’re going to start a Web site that compiles Twitter photos with the same hashtag, buy the domain name. If you’re going to start a blog, register your Tumblr or Posterous. (By the way, is it P-oe-ster-us or P-ah-ster-us?) Make some sort of commitment to yourself via the Internet that you’re going to follow through.
David Fasullo | Critical Mass Toronto
Flash was only the beginning.
Today, if there’s one thing FITC is known for, it’s inspiration. In less than a decade since its first incarnation as a Toronto-based festival celebrating Flash, FITC has spread around the world and broadened its scope. Now, there’s something for everyone: writers, designers, developers, or creative explorers. It’s that spark of inspiration that unifies the speakers and attendees. I’d like to think it’s that same spark that inspired the entrepreneurs to create Flash (FutureSplash Animator, at the time), and possibly the same spark that inspired the first flock of flashy individuals to come together and create this event.
As if the speakers, networking and parties weren’t enough to bring people together, each year the event is centered on a theme. This year’s “Playground” theme was most evident in the speaker introductions. Each introduction was pre-recorded (and edited) by event creator, Shawn Pucknell’s young daughters. And while it would have been funny, I’m glad they didn’t do this introduction for the “Cool Shit Hour”. Alternatively, they could have just called it the “Cool Stuff Hour”. But that doesn’t seem to have the same impact.
The “Cool Shit” presenters included myself, Chris Allen (blog.ff9900.org), Didier Brun (@didierbyte), Joa Ebert (@joa), & Mikko Haapoja (@MikkoH). And in spite of some technical difficulties, great work was shown. Didier got the whole room singing “Hey Jude” with his great audio analysis prototypes, Joa live-coded a music visualizer with his notorious keyless keyboard. Mikko showed his devotion to creative development with a 3D painting app created using the Voxel Engine/Fancy Engine. And Chris demoed an awesome Star Wars Trench Run game for the iPhone. With each of the 5 presenters getting roughly 10 minutes each, I’m glad there wasn’t enough time for any Apple/iPhone remarks.
We all debate 
the true value of industry awards. We consider the cost. We lament the politics. We ponder the return. One consistent benefit that everyone seems to understand is the effect on employee morale. Winning an award is the ultimate satisfaction–justifying the greatness of your ideas, your abilities and your effort. That boost can solidify the bonds of a team and motivate them in their future work. But most importantly, that designation acts as a public celebration.
At Critical Mass, we love to celebrate. We celebrate our appreciation of one another through peer-nominated spot bonuses every month. We celebrate our appreciation of Fridays with bagels in the morning and beers in the afternoon. We celebrate our appreciation of our clients through crazy breakdancing videos sent as Christmas cards. Hell, we even celebrate our appreciation of bacon. But more than any of those, we know how important it is to celebrate our work. We even have our own award competition. We call them the CMMYs and we’re giving you a peek into the CMMY events of the past two weeks.
Here’s how it works:
Throughout the year, our executives are constantly evaluating our work. We hold ourselves to a standard of “extraordinary” and we don’t let ourselves slack. Then in March, our execs: Di, Chris, Neil, Lee, Darren, Scott, Antonio, Cam and John regroup and consider those pieces of work from the past year in accordance with our CMMY categories and select the winners–secretly. Each office proceeds to plan a kick-ass party, each aligned with the unique cultures of their location. All remote CMers far and wide are shipped into their “home” offices; this is not an optional event and no one is left out.
These parties are always epic and–with the help of the open bar–the anticipation rises to a fever pitch before our winners are announced. Each office has their own special way of delivering the news and celebrating, but there are a few common threads:
Beer
Shenanigans
Excitement
Pride
Team Bonding
…and, oh yes, more beer.
That excitement, pride and bonding is what makes it all so worthwhile. We boost each other up, celebrating the time we’ve spent and goals we’ve accomplished together. We’re so proud, we’d actually like to share our winning work with you too. So without further ado, here they are.
Best Brand Experience: Infiniti Global
Best Product Launch: Nissan Leaf
Best Site Redesign: Moen.com
Best Campaign: Rolex Reference Watches Media Campaign
Best New Biz Pitch: Harley Davidson eCommerce (a pitch we won, I might add!)
Best Distributed Experience: Vegas Bound Campaign
Best Mobile Experience: Gucci iPhone application
Best Return on Insight: Budweiser American Ale, Get Offline Campaign
Best Thought Leadership: i5 Summit for at&t
Best Internal Project: Chicago’s Prom (on a budget)
Best Community Building: Ella Nutella
Best Innovation: Nissan Leaf and Twitter Integration
Best in Show: Nissan Leaf
And very importantly, there are also two honors awarded to people.
The Rich Wilkins Award honors the late Rich Wilkins who truly embodies the spirit of Critical Mass. As the award outlines, “Richard had just the right combination of professionalism and lunacy to be a highly respected and greatly cherished leader, team member and friend.” For 2009, the CMer selected to receive this award was our universally liked, respected and appreciated…
Rebecca Bloom Geddes, Human Resources Director.
Secondly, the CMVP of the Year (we select one of these rock stars each month) was…
Shaina Boone, Group Marketing Science Director.
We have a whole post to share about how amazing Shaina is next week.
For now, we hope you enjoy the work we’ve shared as much as we’ve enjoyed creating it. There are some incredible products, services and even movements behind each and every one of these pieces of work and we are all humbled by the opportunity our clients give us everyday. With that, we’ll close because we are already off and running in 2010, motivated by the celebrations of last week to continue creating Extraordinary Experiences that make us all proud to be a part of Critical Mass.
Here are a few pictures we can share from these celebrations in Calgary, Chicago, Toronto and London. More will be coming soon!
Several weeks ago, our global leadership team converged at our Calgary headquarters, “the mothership” so to speak, for annual strategic planning meetings. One of the key themes of the week was “Moving at the Speed of Culture.”
Neil Clemmons, President, and Arif Hirani, Consumer Research Director.
We spent hours and numerous breakout sessions outlining the myriad obstacles that can prevent companies (ourselves included) from moving faster, more efficiently, and above all, more effectively. From noise to process to culture and tools, we mapped out the challenges and corresponding solutions to keep us on a path toward continual evolution, and to manage growth while remaining a nimble, innovation-focused culture.
Our lengthy discussions on this topic underscored a compelling point: no matter how steeped you are in digital expertise or “best practices”, whether you are a boutique hot shop or a leading established player, the pace of change—in the industry and culture at large—is mind-blowing. Seemingly everyday, the ground is shifting: new agency models, new technology players and platforms, new consumer behaviors that are rendering our tried and true marketing strategies utterly irrelevant.
So how do you remain competitive or, as we strive to do, continue to lead our clients and inspire our employees by “moving at the speed of culture”?
Our good friend over at Business Week, Bruce Nussbaum, penned a great post on “Cultivating Innovation and Creativity, Not Managing It.” In it, he alludes to a wonderful analogy made by Diego Rodriquez, partner at IDEO, about how “cultivating” a culture of innovation is much like a tending to a garden, as opposed to the traditional command-and-control model of “managing” from the top down.
Last week, we learned that Idea Aid, with not-for-profit partner Heifer International, selected its top five idea submissions. In a bit of unexpected news, one of the winners came from Critical Mass – submitted by this very blogger.
The goal of 2009’s Idea Aid (the first of hopefully many to come) was to generate new fundraising models to raise $1 billion annually. The weeklong brainstorm benefit, organized by Mensa Process, resulted in 585 ideas from participants in 66 countries including Argentina, Bangladesh, Belgium, Congo, Croatia, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Iran, and Iraq. Heifer International will share the winning ideas with other like-minded organizations – after all, when the goal is to eradicate global poverty, sharing the idea wealth is a must.
The five winners include ideas that emerged multiple times over the course of Idea Aid week. (“Great minds think alike” is cliché for a reason.)
1. “Rounding Up Around the World” has an approach alá Bank of America’s “Keep the Change,” where users enjoy automatic savings derived from rounding their check card transactions to the next dollar. Here, consumer transactions would round up for the benefit of charities. This idea came from Tomer Ram of Israel – and based on the results of our brainstorm breakouts, it was a popular theme. An added thought from this blogger: Just as BoA offers a 100% match for the first three months and a 5% match thereafter (with an annual cap) to help motivate sign-ups, a similar tactic should be used here – with the help of a generous third-party entity (anyone have Richard Branson’s or Bill Gates’s number?).
2. “A Penny Goes a Long Way,” from Dr. Christina Bautista of New Mexico, suggests that an extra penny from consumers’ credit and debit purchases go to charity. Though consumers would hardly feel these micro-transactions, money would accumulate to a significant charitable sum. This theme was another popular one – in fact, more than a handful of brainstorming CM’ers referenced Office Space as silver-screen proof.
3. “Gift Cards: The little bit that’s left” proposes that the little bit of extra on retailer gift cards be funneled to charity. It’s a no-brainer – consumers could lighten their wallet of those pesky remaining gift dollars, to benefit those who need it more. This idea, from Jay Bassett in Georgia, had at least one idea doppelganger in Critical Mass’s very own Duane Wheatcroft.
4. “Global Online Auction,” a winning idea from Ruth Parvin in Oregon, combines art, charity, and the global reach of the Internet. Artists would donate works to an online auction, with all proceeds going to charity. Ebay would be the first tree to bark up, as they have the global reach this idea would thrive on.
5. The final idea was a submission of mine – originally called “Beautiful Change,” revised to “Destinations for Donations.” In this idea, artists, sculptors and/or architects would create fun, interactive money-collecting structures to appear in cities that get significant tourist traffic. This idea was inspired by the Chicago cows, an irresistible coin-spinner I experienced as a kid (a donation mechanism itself), and a similar thought from a coworker of mine (Senior Copywriter Jamie Toal, who, during one of our office-wide brainstorms, asked, “Why can’t we just clear out the change from the fountains of the world?”)
Needless to say, my Critical Mass cohorts and I are thrilled to have contributed a fundraising idea worthy of the hope and confidence of Heifer International and the Idea Aid organizers. If you asked me, I’d say it’s a lovely way to close out the year. We’re excited to see what comes next.
