John Drake

Net Neutrality's Dress

I look forward to the Quartz Daily Brief each morning. On Saturdays it comes with a short letter. The Dress thing is meaningless alone. With others it becomes something. Interesting that it surfaced on the day the web became a public utility.

Buy This Book

 

Ian Luna: Much ink has been spilled in analyzing your approach, especially in comparison to the work of DJ Premier, Dr. Dre, J Dilla, Madlib, 9th Wonder, Just Blaze and RZA... Whose work did you find was the most compelling or challenging?

Pharrell Williams: Oh, all of the above.

IL: All of the above?

PW: Yeah, I mean because it's not a fabric when there's only one thread. You must consider all of the threads that make it up for it to be a fabric. And that's what we are. The music industry is really one big quilt...

IL: I want to commend you. That description of hip-hop music production is probably the most generous anybody's ever put it. 

PW: Well thank you.

The Good Feeling Of Classic Things

 

Found, what I think is, my old first-gen iPod touch. After fiddling around with it the option surfaced to change the wallpaper to some preloaded iPod artwork from that time...

I remember when this campaign seemed to surround me as I drove through the city. Creative work that's so simple, but so difficult to do.

It was cool to see it again.

Some things hold up in their own special way.

Like how Gatorade just re-mastered #BELIKEMIKE after 23 years.

Night Walk In Marseille

Getting lost in this was fun.

Awareness, Interest and Convincibility

When I'm in a grocery store, a good end-aisle display combats one of three things regarding my relationship to a product.

1. I'm not aware. A prominent design makes sure to alert me to something I wasn't aware of. Like the early pieces for Coke Zero did so well.

2. I'm not interested. A product that I don't regularly choose has done something interesting. Like how I had always skipped over purchasing Elysian beers (for no reason really), until I saw that they had a beer featuring Sub Pop Records. 

3. I'm not convinced. This is where I'm making a regular choice among a lot of competitors. Like a bottle of wine. Where a Wine Spectator 90+ ranking hanging off a bottle will surely help convince me to experiment with an unknown brand.

I wonder if the role of most in-store designs are considered in this way before they're built? Sometimes I bet they are. Other times, I wonder.

Favorite Super Bowl Ads

There are some key reasons to advertise on the Super Bowl. So that’s the first filter: does the media choice make some sense? I don’t think it does for things like toenail fungus treatment.

Then you kind of have to figure in the expectations. This is the grandest ad stage in the world. Is your ad good enough? WeatherTech?

Every year people say the ads are bad. That’s not true. Every year the expectations are extraordinary so everything seems to not level up.

But I loved Weight Watchers this year. Here’s the extended :60.

 

And I was just thinking the other day that there was no Liam Neeson movie to kick off the year like we've become used to. Seems he saved it for a great Super Bowl ad for Clash of Clans.

 

My favorite idea of 2014 was #LikeAGirl so I loved seeing it air during the game. Here's the original.

 

I think Mexico Avocados nailed it. Here’s the slightly funnier extended version.

 

And then I’d round stuff out with Carnival… With all the recent bad cruise news going straight to a love of the ocean was cool. Because it’s true. But if I put Carnival on here then I have to put Jeep on here, too. Because the ads are very similar—and Jeep was good.

 

And a special mention to McDonald's. Taking I’m Lovin’ It to this level was terrific. But even better than their ad was their Twitter presence throughout the game.