Give Credit Where Credit is Due

Just got the new AdAge special feature showcasing the winners from the most recent Obie Awards, a well respected show focused on Outdoor advertising media. And like always, the illustrators, photographers and other artists who contributed to much of the work being recognized were no where to be found in many of the credits. The credit oversight is one that has bothered me for years, and not just when it's one of our people who were left off the list. It's indicative of a lack of concern about or appreciation for the people who made the concepts come to life. It wouldn't be acceptable, but would be less irritating if commercial directors and production companies were treated the same way, but they NEVER seem to be left off! I've even seen the trade rags use a print execution to complement a story about multi-media campaigns where the director and production company are mentioned, but NOT the person who shot/illustrated the ad they used to reference the campaign! Sour grapes? Damn right!

Lippman Participates in Surfers Healing

Putting his surfing skills to philanthropic use again, Steven Lippman and a host of other accomplished surfer volunteers participated in the annual Surfers Healing event in Malibu several weekends ago. The event, organized by the Surfers Healing non-profit group, benefits children suffering from autism. But judging from the responses of the surfers and other supporters at the event, the kids weren't the only ones who got something from the event.

Lippman Creates Oceanic Charity Campaign

Called "The Blue Project", the creative collaboration between Steven Lippman, writer Jody Wilson and a host of celebrity, activist, athletic, and entrepreneurial talent with ties to a variety of oceanic-environmental organizations was a labor of love for all involved and resulted in a series of still images that will appear in a 20 page editorial feature in the June/July issue of Malibu magazine, and a viral video. Additional thanks to Jill Roy at 3 Star Productions, and producer Barbie Duarte, who produced the shoot, and Jed James Sean Newhouse and Molly MacDonald of Maneater Productions for their help with the video.
There are plans for a sponsored event to unveil the campaign and further support the environmental groups to which it is tied. For more information, click here.

Kolenko Shoots for Serial Cultura

Eva Kolenko shot a surrealistic, fairytale narrative showcasing the Serial Cultura clothing line for the designer's fall look book recently. Kolenko collaborated with Claire Mack for Props and Sets Styling, Sharon Maloney for Wardrobe, and Tamara Brown on Hair & Make-up for the project, which was shot in an abandoned warehouse in Oakland to give it the edgy, industrial look the brand desired. Here are a few from the series:

Lippman's KMS Work in Germany

KMS rocked it at their booth at the "Top Hair" trade show in Dusseldorf using images from the Hotel California campaign Steven Lippman shot for them recently. CD: Christianne Brooks. ....Now all we need is a building to wrap!!

Zachary Scott's Coke Zero Campaign Breaks

Finally! We've started seeing the TV portion of a outdoor campaign Zack shot awhile ago for Crispin Porter & Bogusky lately, which means we can start telling people about the work. AD: Dayoung Ewart

Here are a couple of the images:

Stillings' Bridge Project Garners Multiple Awards

Jamey Stillings' Hoover Dam Bypass Project images were recognized by several significant award shows this week, and the project continues to gain momentum and exposure among the fine art blogosphere. Two images were chosen for the American Photography 26 annual and tbe project won First Prize in the 2010 Editor's Choice Award from Center, out of 2,596 submissions. To quote from the jurors statement, "We gave the top prize to Jamey Stillings for his work on the Colorado River Bridge. These pictures are epic and poetic at the same time. Stillings recognized what a great visual story the building of this bridge could be and then committed to it, making lots of good photographic decisions along the way. These awe-inspiring images deliver the thing photography does best – a documentation of a moment in time that won’t be repeated." The series also received an Honorable Mention in Center's 2010 Curator's Choice Award and made it into the upcoming PDN Photo Annual. It will also appear as part of a special slide show presentation at The Annenburg Space for Photography in LA, April 22, in conjunction with the Annenburg's current exhibit, Water, Our Thirsty World. It's been quite a week already and it's only Wednesday!!

Ad Rags Becoming a Joke?

I feel sorry for the publishers, editors, art directors, writers and the rest of the people still trying to make AdWeek and BrandWeek look like legitimate trade publications. They've got so little "meat" on (in) them these days, they are more like newsletters with advertising. And Advertising Age isn't much better - especially if you take out the "Advertising Special Section" that's normally included. Our subscription to Adweek somehow lapsed (could have been that I got in the habit of ignoring the repeated mailings they sent trying to give us deals on renewing our subscription WAY before it was close to ending... I HATE that!), which we noticed after missing a few months' worth of paper. Decided to re-up and for some reason, added BrandWeek as well. BrandWeek arrived first and after getting the second copy containing only about 8 pages of editorial content, I canceled my subscription. Then AdWeek started arriving. The God-awful redesign was the first thing I noticed. And it's fashion model thinness. Apparently, they've also succumbed to the less is more trend afflicting almost every pub these days regarding the depth of editorial features, and are now serving up info in smaller bites that are more easily digested by us busy, distracted readers. If I see one more "By the Numbers" spread, I'm gonna, I'm gonna..... They even devote a page in the pub to printing comments from their blogs. If I wanted to read what people were saying online, I'd go THERE! Since the BrandWeeks have continued to roll in despite my canceling the subscription, I continue to spend the 5 minutes it takes to look at them, and am amazed how much content is the SAME in both pubs! I swear, sometimes it feels like they've just put a different (but similarly ugly) cover on the same damn magazine.
On the bright side, my subscription does provide access to the email news updates and AdWeek.com, which has been more useful. I wonder how long they will continue the charade of producing the printed version.

We've Got MOTION!

It's been a long time coming but we've finally arrived. Attentive visitors to our site in the last month or so may have noticed a change to our landing page: the addition of an entire new section called MOTION. It's actually a separate site we developed and incorporated within the existing site's navigation as the most cost effective approach to handling the change. Hopefully, it feels fairly seamless. Evolving in this direction was inevitable, as the markets for still and moving imagery are quickly merging. We've started with content from three of our artists, Steven Lippman, Anthony Redpath and Bryan Christie, and while we don't yet have a deep body of work to show, we will be adding more shortly. All three have productions they are working or that are coming up, and we hope opportunities arise soon for rest of our roster. The site was designed by Daniel Stromberg of The Creative Common Good, and developed by Thom Meredith and Michael Madgett

What Inspires YOU?

John Paul Mitchell Systems just launched a broadcast campaign directed by Steven Lippman featuring three, very different artists to make a statement about the JPMS professional hair care, color and styling products. The campaign consists of four :30 spots and uses BBoy Junior, one of the world's top break dancers, Cory Duffel, a rule-breaking rebel pro skater, and Takashi Yamamoto, celebrity hair stylist, to align the brand with the inspirational feats of the talent. Besides directing the spots, Lippman shared CD/AD duties with Christianne Brooks, a long-time collaborator. Post production and FX by Radium.

Lippman is NO KOOK!!

Lots of folks, apparently a lot of them photographers, over-inflate their surfing abilities. Steven Lippman lets his surfing do the talking, as he did at a highly-secret-if-I-tell-you-I'll-have-to-kill-you location in North LA county during the recent storm surge. Yowser... Photo: Dean Hotch

Zack Scott's HP Work Finally Out of the Closet

One of the challenges we have as reps is trying to keep current on the launch dates for campaigns/assignments our artists work on, so that when they go public, we are ready to get out there with our PR guns blazing and spread the word about their connection to the work. Dates are either tough to get, or move, or everyone has moved on to other things by the time the images appear, and we consistently seem to be behind the eight ball as a result.

Zachary Scott's campaign for HP's One-Touch printers is a good example. We only recently managed to round up all of the ads, even though we shot it early in the Fall - and that's NOT the fault of anyone being uncooperative at the agency. It's the nature of the beast. The campaign was a global initiative, and required around 50 days of work internally to prepare all of the materials so they could be accessed from anywhere in HP's universe. At this point, the production is a distant memory, but I do remember it requiring a Herculean effort from everyone involved to pull it off and meet the deadlines. Kudos and hugs to our friends at Goodby Silverstein & Partners who came up with and sold the work, ACD Brian Gunderson and GD Ryan Meis; the tireless team of GSP Art Buyers who juggled the multiple teams, the budget and the schedule to bring the images to fruition, Dan Southwick and Katie Borzcik; and our very own propmeister, John Robinson, who always manages to pull rabbits out of his shorts...er, uh, hat. Finally, Megan Sluiter did her usual magnificent managing of the production, keeping the client's happy and me out of harm's way...and, oh yea - Zack kicked ass as usual.

The "Touch" campaign was followed immediately with a smaller, but no less cooler effort supporting HP's toners, which you can see below.

Lippman Helps Brand James Perse

Steven Lippman collaborated with AD Marc Atlan of Marc Atlan Design to create imagery for clothing designer James Perse's Resort Collection for men and women. Known for his clean-line casual designs, Perse was a natural fit for Lippman, and based on the results from the initial two shoots, everyone is looking forward to more collaborations in 2010 and beyond.

Redpath Shoots Burnaby Tourism

Anthony Redpath teamed up recently with Publicis Vancouver AD Tana Koslyabong and CD Bill Downie to put a humorous spin on Burnaby, British Columbia's appeal as a destination for convention planners. The five-ad campaign shows the lengths to which people will go to get out of their meetings so they can enjoy the city. In case you are wondering or want to plan a trip there, Burnaby is BC's third largest city by population and is located just east of Vancouver. If it's THAT close, it's got to be nice. Just don't be surprised if you see people sneaking out of buildings while posing as plants.

Off and Stumbling

It's a new year. We arrived January 5, ready to take the world by the tail and shake it. Little did we know that with Mercury in retrograde (whatever the hell that means), EVERYTHING having to do with the technology we depend on is so crawling with bugs we might as well have taken another couple of weeks off! For the first few days, I blamed it all on Kelly, our new Jr. Associate. But after a week and a half of one step forward, three back, I'm ready to chuck all of our computers and go back to clay tablets. Email? Yeah sure... Just try to get out to the cyberworld without having to re-boot three times a day. Website? Why not have ALL of the portfolio imagery just randomly rearrange itself? THAT would be great. Don't worry about our internal database. Who needs estimates, contacts, invoices or any info on stock imagery? Oh yeah, don't count on surfing any site that gets over 3 visitors a day, 'cause your browser(s) will just spin and spin. It's not the web hosting company's fault. It's not the phone company's. Apple's? The modem? Router? Nah... It's Mercury's. I'm sure of it now.

To Buy or Not to Buy

Every year it's the same: It's the first week in December when we realize we're behind the 8-ball again with regards to our annual gifts for our professional friends and need to figure something out. Fast. I've never been a big fan of buying gifts for clients who have bestowed business on us over the year, for a couple of reasons. If we give them anything, I want it to be something meaningful, and while I know most of them well on a professional level, I don't know enough about their personal lives to do justice to a gift intended for that part of their world. Plus, once you buy something significant (and if it's not significant, it's not worth doing), clients will certainly remember you for it... and also notice when you quit doing it. It's a conundrum. We certainly appreciate our client relationships, and certainly, the business that they send our way. Our solution has been to give a little homemade something to those on our list. Something that is hopefully still edible by the time it arrives. This year it was jalapeno jelly. Why? I think it was because we fell in love with how we would package it, and before we'd chopped the first pepper, we'd committed to the silk screening and enough boxes and Ball jars to start a jelly business. Definitely not the way to go at it, in retrospect. Actually, "retrospect" started to set in about midway through the first of many batches we concocted in the S+A kitchen, but by that time, we were swimming in pectin and out of other options so there was no going back. The results were mixed, so clients got the ones that looked most like jelly, and the rest of the recipients got jalapeno "sauce". So far, we've not got any complaints from the health department so for now are considering it another successful season. Maybe next year we'll resort to one of those "a donation has been made in your name to..." gifts. Naa.

New Year, New Addition

We are very pleased to announce that we've hired Kelly Olsterholt as a Jr. Associate. Kelly, whose first day with S+A was today, is a former photography student at Brooks Institute with an undergrad degree in Telecommunications from Indiana University. She's been working on the production/studio side of the business most recently and was in event planning prior to that. She's going to make a great addition to our team and we're excited to have her aboard.