Our team came prepared. Having been supplied garbage pickers, garbage bags, and gloves from the City, we were ready to do our part. The sun was shining almost as if to say, “It’s the last day of summer; it’s the least I can do.”

We separated into three teams with one recorder per team. That was my job. I got to tick off on my data card every wrapper, bottle cap, plastic bag, cigarette butt — you name it. The park didn’t seem atrocious when we scoped it out, but it was amazing how much litter was lurking. It was mere minutes before I ran out of room trying to tick off the amount of wrappers I found. When we got to the one hundredth cigarette I realized just how many were there. Interesting finds included a raw fish fillet wrapped in plastic, a car fuse, two fireworks (one being the possible remnant of a homemade pipe bomb), and a fake fingernail. And a condom, but sadly that isn’t too unusual.

We got some odd looks by passersby. The bums on the bench kept to themselves but eventually we had to start picking up near them. I heard one guy say, “We’re surrounded.” They didn’t seem too enthused. Jan found a few dollars in coins not far from where they were sitting. He exclaimed, “I found money. But I don’t want to keep it.” At least that’s what I heard. So I said, “Give it to them,” meaning the bums. They were all ears and then when Jan said, “No I said I want to keep it” I felt like an idiot and the bums were disappointed. They asked if anyone in our office smoked and I said no, we’re all pretty healthy, and he said, “You can smoke and still be healthy.” Not in my books buddy.

In an hour and a half, we collected 1,032 cigarette butts, 362 wrappers/containers, 37 lids, 22 plastic bags, and an assortment of other rubbish. I’m still in shock at how much we did in such a short time. We kicked butt!

The video was a created by using long exposures which captured the iPads movement through space creating three-dimensional forms in light.

The process started by creating software models of three-dimensional typography, objects and animations. These were then rendered into cross sections, making a series of outlines like a virtual CAT scan. The cross sections were then played back as movies on the iPad and captured in long exposure photographs as it was dragged through the air to extrude shapes.  Each long exposure still is a single image in a composite stop frame animation.

Each frame is a long exposure photograph of 3-6 seconds. 5,500 photographs were taken and only half of these were used in the final edit.

Yes, I’m talking about “that” campaign. The one with the spokesperson that we just refer to as the Old Spice Guy. On the bandwagon so far we have several heavy hitters. The Cannes Lions judges awarded it the Grand Prix earlier this summer, making this the industry’s pick as the most groundbreaking work in 2010. Oprah liked it so much she had the star of the ads, Isaiah Mustafa, on her show as a guest. And, the Old Spice YouTube channel is now also the most viewed sponsored channel in YouTube history.

My creative instinct motivated me to write this after I saw opinions that panned the campaign as an over-indulgent art piece without a true sales message. I then subsequently read some similar articles on Bnet and Yahoo, and I felt that this couldn’t be further from the truth. The ads themselves are transforming a category, and helping to convert many males from traditional bar soap to liquid shower gels that many have oft-perceived as being too feminine. The campaign uses an ingenious mix of masculinity, thanks to the use of an ex-NFL wide receiver and “manly” activities such as carpentry, horseback riding, and motorcycling. It also has feminine appeal with a well spoken, rugged, and handsome spokesperson. It’s positioning Old Spice as the product that guys will like, and women will want their guys to have. It’s definitely not my grandfather’s product anymore.

In my world, we are challenged every day with trying to take our clients’ budgets and leverage the hell out of them to gain every possible competitive advantage available to us (Chuck Porter refers to this as making your clients Famous). PR, viral video views, and social media chatter are channels that can be influenced, but not purchased outright. You need to have ingenuity, timing, and of course entertainment factor in order to be successful.

Speaking of successful, I generally hear that getting a million views on YouTube is pretty good for a viral campaign. When a campaign hits 100 million views such as Old Spice has, then we should really sit back and think about the significance of that. For example, I live in Canada, a technically advanced, industrialized nation. The population of Canada is approximately 33.3 million people. By that math, the Old Spice Man has been viewed by the equivalent of every man, woman and child in our entire freakin’ country three times each. Staggering.

Now, I know, I know, that’s all really great but it doesn’t mean that it was a good investment. Advertising is intended to sell product after all, not entertain people, right?

Well, to that I say “yes” we are here to sell products, but if we could sell people something AND provide consumers with a bit of an emotional connection, like say a smile or a laugh at the same time, wouldn’t we be building a better long-term relationship? All too often initial sales numbers get skewed by promotional activities such as coupons or price cuts. Promotions are great, and highly necessary, but we can’t let short-term numbers cloud the long-term success of a deeply seeded viral campaign. Whereas traditional marketing campaign results could be reasonably measured in blocking charts of weeks and months, a viral campaign with 100,000,000 (and growing) followers could take decades to effectively measure as it is so deeply rooted in Internet culture that it will continue to bounce around the “Interwebs” long after the media budget is pulled and the last SKU for that fiscal is measured.

Campaigns with the level of viral reach achieved by the Old Spice Man have already proved that they are effective at drawing viewers. Lots of them. The fact that those videos will continue to propagate is a given. What’s not yet understood is the long term ROI around such an online following.

Before anyone starts throwing sales numbers around, and I have read decent articles covering some campaign metrics here, and here. I’d also like to remind any naysayers that body wash is a product with a relatively long shelf life. Depending on how you purchase it (single bottle vs. multi-packs for example) you could go anywhere from two to six months between purchases. That would dictate that even a highly successful brand campaign is going to take a while to show results at the cash register. And, as I suggested earlier, a campaign like this will likely be providing huge volumes of highly valuable brand impressions for years to come as the viral momentum is simply too great to fade away anytime soon.

So, for anyone out there with a bad case of creative-phobia, hear this: you cannot measure the ROI of a successful viral campaign in weeks or months. This isn’t a TV campaign that has an off switch. Using traditional media measurements to map out the ROI of a viral campaign is like comparing an airplane to a spaceship. In traditional media (the airplane) you only got carried as far as your budget could take you and then you came in for a landing. In the online world (spaceship) you need enough budget to break the stratosphere, and seed the campaign in the community—once you do that, your concept is free from the gravitational pulls of a traditional budget, and it starts to build its own momentum.

Facebook is widely lauded as one of the most successful websites of our time. It has approximately 500,000,000 stated users. For a campaign to reach an estimated 20% of those people online in under a year is amazing. To do it for a campaign selling soap is even more amazing. My hat is off to the team at W+K and the Old Spice Man for the amazing job they’ve done to date. Keep it up.

And hey, @oldspice, feel free to drop us a line at @HotTomali. Canadians like body wash too.

Things are Changing

For agencies these days, it’s all about digital, and it’s all about business. Any Creatives in the conference must have been muttering, “Where are the ads?” as speaker after speaker focused on the need for agencies to engage customers online. It’s not that the great creative idea doesn’t matter, but it is now inextricable within the online media capabilities. As Tom Martin of Converse Digital stated, “The industry needs people who speak advertising like a native yet are fluent in digital.” Social Media was front and centre; not in a buzz word way, but in successful examples that are grounding some new marketing principles. Eric Ryan, the founder of Method, had a great perspective on this: “Every brand in social media should have a social message.” And Michael McSunas recognized the spread of expertise that is evolving in social media marketing when he questioned, “Do young people understand how to market through social media? Or do they just understand how to use the platform?”

Agencies are now about the business. Literally. Eric Ryan had seven years of experience in advertising with high-end consumer brands before deciding he should apply his marketing excellence to his own brand, and started the incredibly successful Method home care products. Kenny Tomlin, founder and CEO of Rockfish (the winner of Ad Age 2009 Agency of the Year), has a goal of 50% of agency revenues coming from branded companies they create, marketing technology they licence to clients, and joint business ventures. This model of agencies marketing their own companies and systems really shows a client that the agency knows how to make business happen. We were particularly excited to see this model succeeding, as Hot Tomali has been developing its own products for years with the HotCMS content management system, our retail training platform, and our business partnership with Cientis in creating a physicians community for electronic medical records systems evaluation.

Things are Staying the Same

Agencies have always had a role in advancing their clients’ marketing knowledge. Not since Mad Men times, though, has this been so important with the shifts to digital marketing. As Tom Martin stated, “A small agency is there to guide clients through this new digital age.” And what hasn’t changed is the desire of agencies to play a bigger role in the strategy layer of marketing: “Too much tactics and we all turn into machines.”

Most significantly, the biggest thing not to change was agencies’ desire to do great work for their clients. It was an enriching experience to be in a room where job #1 is to help clients connect better with their customers. Through every speaker, and every discussion thread, this objective was obvious.

And in the end, it seems none of us could come up with a better moniker than “small agency” as Ad Age has defined it. “Independent”, “Nimble”, “Way Better”, were bandied about as replacement for “Small”, but we left with the creative challenge of branding ourselves. Regardless, I think we all agree with the conference lunch sponsor when they stated:

“Where is it written that brilliant ideas only come from big places? That’s right. Nowhere. And we know it. … We know that really great thinking can happen anywhere people have brains to think with. And since that’s just as likely to be your shop as it is any other, why shouldn’t you have the same shot at online success?”

I’ll raise a New Orleans Hurricane drink to that.

1. The guys at Hot Tomali have very ravenous appetites, and
2. Making two pans of lasagne in one go is a real pain in the ass.

At the end of October, I created a team and convinced the boys of Hot Tomali to grow moustaches in the name of prostate cancer. Movember is a movement started in Australia, challenging men around the globe to start clean-shaven on November 1st and collect donations for their best ‘stache attempts. Considering at the time we were elbows deep in a website launch promoting men’s health, it seemed a no-brainer for Hot Tomali to participate.

I’ve never been one to pound down doors in a fundraising attempt. As a girl in the choir and on sports teams, I hated the inevitable bake sale/bottle drive/chocolate-covered almond push that was required to raise money for our activities. But as an adult, I’ve come to learn that it’s pretty easy to whip up a plate of something tasty and sell it at the office for ten bucks a head. Last month, for the United Way, it was chili. For Movember, a good, hearty lasagne was in order.

My husband laughed at me as he saw me unloading the groceries. “THREE boxes of pasta? Are you kidding!??” He marvelled as he watched me layer not one, but two, casserole dishes with pasta, sauce, spinach, cheese, and more cheese, and questioned again how many I was feeding. Sure, it looked like a lot of lasagne—and maybe it was a bit excessive—but I didn’t want to be the gal who offered to cook for the team and then come up short. Besides, I thought I’d cooked way too much chili last month, and I watched that pot get licked clean.

My Italian creation was a huge success, despite a slightly overcooked crust. And, just as expected, both pans were quickly devoured. Perhaps it wasn’t the best idea to load up our developers on carbs and cheese and then expect them to hit their deadline four hours later—by 3 pm the air in the office was heavy and surprisingly quiet. But in the end, a few hundred dollars raised to further prostate cancer research is always worth a calorie-induced coma.

It’s not too late to donate to Hot Tomali’s Movember cause. If you would like to support our team, please visit our Movember page to make a donation to Prostate Cancer Canada. Any amount—no matter how large or small—is appreciated and has an impact.

Halloween is on its way, and we’ve been relentlessly searching the web for some great costume inspiration.

So far, we’ve found stuff like transformers.

TIE Fighters.

Crayons, if you have a horse.

iPhones!

Glow in the dark stickpeople.

Disabled superheroes.

Birth.

Controversial illegal aliens.

And animal cruelty.

But what about costumes designed for those in the marketing industry? Costumes for the social media enthusiasts, the account execs, and the web designers?

Don’t worry. We’ve decided to share some of our own ideas with you.

Anyone have any more suggestions? Let us know.

On Friday afternoon, as part of Hot Tomali’s commitment to United Way, we all took a break from work for an hour and converged as a team in the boardroom for some home-cooked chili. This, of course, meant that on Thursday night, while my husband cooked hot dogs for our dinner, I was up to my eyeballs in beans, peppers and sirloin.

The Before Shot

This is what my tiny kitchen counter looked like before I started prepping everything. That’s two cans of red kidney beans and one can of white; garbanzo beans, plum tomatoes and black-eyed peas; two onions and a whole head of garlic; two jalapeños; one poblano pepper and two bell peppers, as well as a can of chipotles; a 2 lb sirloin roast with an extra pound of lean ground; and a plethora of spices. One and a bit of the two bottles of chocolate stout made it into the pot, as did two cups of freshly brewed coffee and two squares of unsweetened baker’s chocolate. There’s a reason the base for this recipe (which I have modified greatly over the years), is known online as “The Best Chili You Will Ever Taste”. (For the record, the glass of wine on the edge of the shot didn’t go into the chili. That was just for me.)

The After Shot

I pulled everything together into the crock pot and started its cycle around 11:30 pm. When I woke in the morning, I had a perfect pot of goodness on my counter. Getting said perfect pot of goodness from the counter to the office across the city… this was going to be fun. MacGyver style, I taped the lid on, wrapped the whole thing in a bath towel, secured it all with heavy duty elastic bands, and away we went.

It didn’t take long for the smell to permeate the whole office. By lunchtime, all of us were tortured by the aroma calling to us from the kitchen. I knew the boys in the office had some mean appetites, but I honestly believed that I’d be packing up “to go” containers to get rid of the leftovers. Not so. I think just about everyone went back for seconds, and all I had to carry home was an empty crock pot.

Adding the $10 bowls to the other fundraising we did during our 2009 campaign, Hot Tomali raised more than $1,600 for United Way of the Lower Mainland. Knowing that such a small effort from me could make such a difference was heartwarming. Wait, maybe that warm feeling was just from the chili. At any rate, I’m currently trying to come up with excuses reasons to feed the team more often. Any ideas?

On June 15th Hot Tomali officially moved into our own building at 1441 E Pender St. This move was a big step for the little agency that I started in the living room of a one bedroom West End apartment in the summer of 1998. Since then, we’ve upgraded our work spaces a few times as necessitated by growth. The first big move came in October 2008 when I took a flying leap and hung out a shingle at Homer and Helmcken in Yaletown, above what used to be the swanky Century Grill (now the Blue Water Cafe). That 1,200 sq/ft space saw us hire our first employees, land our first big contract, and win our first awards. Ah, memories.

Three years later (2001) we were in the middle of the dot bomb crash and the once lucrative office space in Yaletown was now plentiful. Rather than renew the lease on our cozy little studio, we opted to move across the street into a bigger space that had previously been home to notable organizations such as Vancouver Film School and Stratford Internet (a big victim when the dot.com bubble burst). Things were good—we had high tech wiring, built in modular workstations, and air conditioning that “usually worked” in this amazing brick and beam construction office space that had been converted from an old warehouse. More contracts, employees and awards soon followed.

A couple of years later our neighbours, Network Productions (makers of the “Bell Making The Cut” reality series) moved out and we opted for further expansion. We blew through the wall and added more office space and a production facility with two HD editing bays. Our already bustling studio now felt like a real agency, with departments, separate offices, and even a kitchen sink.

Now you might ask, if times were good, and the space was great, then why move? Well, being the principal owner of Hot Tomali, I was always a little bit dismayed with the fact that we’d spent a great deal of money to work in all these trendy buildings over the course of a decade, yet aside from some great memories, we had nothing to show for it. We were also faced with the need to expand again, and I was reluctant to invest a huge sum of money into a space that we might outgrow in a couple of years.

I had been passively following the commercial real estate market for several years with a sense that when the time was right we would make a move. About a year ago there was all this inventory coming on the market and it was just sitting there, often dropping in price by hundreds of thousands of dollars, as anxious owners tried to instigate a sale in a stagnant market. The media was talking about the real estate bubble being burst, and everyone was speculating about where the bottom might be. As with any market downturn, you had your doom and gloom guys trying to scare the pants off of everyone by saying we faced a recession worse than the great depression. What were we to make of it?

Sub-prime mortgage crisis be damned, I wanted my own space! I ramped up my search efforts and we looked at several offices in Yaletown, Hot Tomali’s home for the last 10 years. The thing that held me back was mainly the fact that most available spaces for sale were the same size or smaller than what we were already in, and the only ones that were bigger had big strata fees to go with those big mortgage payments. It just didn’t feel right—I just couldn’t justify the commitment.

Working with our realtor, Mario Felicella over at Sutton, we started to venture out a bit. We checked out some live/work studios in Coal Harbour that were funky, but too impractical for a company of our size. We investigated some big lofts in Gastown and the Cambie area, which were super cool, but required a full on gutting and reno before they would be suitable for us. Then, we finally ventured over to the Commercial Drive area to check out this building on East Pender St. that I had found on the Internet.

It was love at first sight. Upon arriving to look at the building I was immediately impressed by the stunning and awe inspiring facade of the place. My initial thought was that the building almost seemed out of place—a structure of this nature would surely belong in a chic-modern European setting such as Copenhagen or Barcelona.

The building’s developer, and current occupant, Randy Lim of Revolution Designs met with us and gave us the tour. Randy’s appreciation for fine design is apparent in his passion for every detail in the space. Everything was custom fabricated—there are no Home Depot finishings to be found here.

The building exterior is comprised of structural concrete block that has been finished with expert precision. The facade is finished with galvanized, custom fabricated paneled soffits and downpipe, and custom exterior trim.

Arriving at the 11 foot tall entrance doors makes visitors feel as though they’ve arrived at the residence of some gigantic being. These towering doors provide a touch of grandiose in an otherwise minimalist modern design, and often times when entering through them I’m reminded of the feeling a child might have entering an intentionally oversized theme house at Disneyland.

The main office at the front of the building provides retail worthy storefront, with floor to ceiling windows and a fantastic concrete feature wall that runs up the entire height of the building. (This space is currently occupied by our tenants, Mango and Aloe Designs.)

The staircase to the second level is comprised of powder coated, checker plated metal stairs, a 15-foot feature wall, and railings with custom fabricated powder coated steel pickets and thick commercial glazing. These touches provide a futuristic design element that would be worthy of a setting in a Phillip K. Dick novel.

At the top of the stairs, visitors are greeted by a lush garden deck that houses a large bamboo planter. This cedar decked patio is surrounded by floor to ceiling glass on three sides, providing natural illumination to the second floor offices and the stairwell below.

The offices on the top floor are furnished with built-in millwork, consisting of white laminate storage and custom fabricated workstations with powder coated metal frames and larch counter tops. The view from the north side of the building provides a stunning view of the North Shore mountains and the Vancouver shipyards.

The backside of the building features a mezzanine level, which sits halfway between the ground level and the second floor of the building. This space overlooks an additional 1,000+ sq/ft of broadcast production and photo studio with 16+ foot ceilings.

Shortly after arriving on the top level of the building for the first time I said “this is it”. It was essentially a turn key solution that provided ample space for our staff, a great studio space for us to aggressively expand our production capabilities, and the entire building in itself was inspirational.

Although I had some hesitation to move away from Yaletown after 10 years, the Commercial Drive district is a thriving creative community with great amenities. With local hot spots like Stella’s, The Reef, and Havana Cafe all within blocks of the agency, there are a ton of options for lunches and client meetings.

All in all, the benefits of having a place to call our own simply outweighed sticking with the status quo and paying through the nose to lease for another 10 years. Some people cautioned that we were buying during a time of incredible uncertainty. I believe the best opportunities to be found are really only available when you’re willing to take a risk. This step in our evolution holds many similarities to that fateful “flying leap” I took 11 years ago when I leased our first office space. The difference this time around is that I jumped into something we can take pride in and call our own.

Ultimately, you can put the right creative people pretty much anywhere and have success. The space doesn’t define the agency so much as the agency defines the space. That being said, smart agencies are realizing that they need to make good business decisions to grow and prosper for the long haul. Wise investments provide valuable equity and resources for future expansion and growth. It’s not all about drawing pretty pictures, and making people laugh—it’s about setting goals and executing a plan to get you there.

As much as I love our new high-end digs, I will never forget the experiences I learned by bootstrapping an agency in my one bedroom apartment in 1998. Many agencies try to sell themselves as “new age” because they keep their overhead down by using IKEA furniture and buy their boardroom tables at garage sales. My question for them is what will you have to show for your leased office space 10 years from now?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuGaqLT-gO4

“MUTO is a short film by Blu. It is an animation in stop-motion painted on public walls. The movie was made in Buenos Aires and in Baden. Here the paintings are alive and invade the city. Blu’s characters are half human, half machine, half beast, and human elements such as limbs (tooth, hands, etc.) can live freely their autonomous life, a bit like insects.”

Think about this… every frame required Blu to cover the previous frame in white, repaint the entire character a few inches over in its next pose, go back to the camera, snap a picture, then repeat. Amazing.

When the oral surgeon said, “Out with the wisdom teeth!“, I decided it was as good a time as any to break the habit. I’m currently on Day 8, and it’s been surprisingly easy. A Quit Keeper that tracks my stats—including money saved—makes it that much easier. For the next few months, I will be chronicling how much money I’ve saved by showing you, dear reader, what I can purchase with my new-found savings.

For example, as of today I have saved $71.36. For this amount, I can purchase a pair of Nike Dunk black/grey/white hightops. Pretty sweet kicks, if I do say so myself… assuming I can fit my foot into a men’s size 8.

$71.36 is also the price of this classic Casio watch. Too bad I’m not a fan of the translucent Blue Band Mineral Crystal Quartz Movement. I might be interested if it came in Hot Tomali red.

Maybe I’ll just curl up with a good cup of cocoa and enjoy Rivers, Streams, Lakes and Ponds (Our Living World) – a hardcover book from Barbara Somervill aimed at educating elementary and middle-school readers about the world around us.

The opportunities are endless.