Art and Copy review

I remember trying to see this at Hot Docs last year and it was sold out, so I rented it a few weeks ago. For anybody who's interested in the advertising industry or communications more generally, Art & Copy is definitely worth watching. (view trailer)

It has great access to some of the legends of the business including Dan Weiden, Jeff Goodby and perhaps most interestingly George Lois.

The film does a great job illustrating that it is, in fact, the "creative" people that drive the world's most pervasive industry. It also shows that many of them aren't inherently creative or artistic people, rather just hard workers with the drive to see their ideas through. 

After getting stuck for ideas one day Dan Weiden came up with the now iconic "Fail Harder" wall at Weiden + Kennedy's Portland office. The wall was designed to impart the message that the only way to succeed is to fail harder. It took 100,000 push pins and 351 hours of work, and instead of creating the letters with the pins, they did it the hard way and filled in the whole wall around the letters:

If this kind of thinking appeals to you, or if you want some behind-the-scenes insight into some of the most famous ad campaigns of the last 30 years, check it out.

iPad is here, should communications pros be scared?

This is probably the best example I've seen of the type of experience the iPad can offer to the 'traditional' publishing industry.

All the content looks expandable and the interface appears to be fast and easy to use. 

Haven't we all wished at some point that the cover story of a magazine was as easy to find as just clicking on it?

While I'm excited about the iPad's potential, I have to say that the interactive advertising is perhaps the most interesting feature.  A quick look at this shows that while the iPad may bring sweeping changes to the publishing industry, ad agencies will see the challenge and profitability of being at the forefront of this shift as an exciting prospect.

The ads seem to include copy, video, audio, interactive images and links to specialized pages set up to support the product or service. The brief for one ad in this format could potentially read the same as a brief for an entire campaign using traditional media.

Although it hasn't been long enough yet (especially in Canada), it will be interesting to see where this format and others like it take public relations and advertising in the next few years. 

The only two things we know for sure: publishing companies will still find a way to charge (maybe more?) for space, and ad agencies aren't going to pass it up!

See the Wired article here