Tuesday!

After an amazing visit with Anomaly this morning, I wasn’t sure what to expect from special guest. Even after looking at their work and knowing that they are a very small agency, I still wasn’t expecting the talk to be much different from what we heard with Anomaly. I was very pleasantly surprised. The team at special guest explained that they view themselves as a plug in or asset to other brands and their existing ad agencies. Rather than trying to take over all creative work, they have realized that brands are trying to produce so much content that it makes sense for them to have their own in house agencies. Special Guest collaborates with these same agencies to help create really amazing and smart work. It was so interesting to hear this view from a much smaller team. They explained how important it is to be able to ebb and flow in order to make work that is really smart. This means that maybe they won’t understand the brand as deeply as a client, so instead of trying to re write the whole identity, they collaborate in order to make something that is true to the brand and also innovative. An interesting thought that came up during the presentation was about how ads will continue to evolve. The owner gave the example of how the LEGO movie is a 90 minute ad for LEGO, but it is also very entertaining. This is much different from how many people would describe what an ad is. I’m very glad to have heard from two very different places today, it has definitely changed my perceptions of what ad is and what it can be.
Raven