An award show is always a reminder that as creative agencies one of the things we are tasked with doing is making the intangible, tangible. We get provided with briefs, assignments, projects, goals and ideas from organizations with the direction to go and create a thing.
I was recently struck by another profession which does this: casting directors. The Guardian has a well-shared piece about Nina Gold who recently ascended to be one of the most sought-after people in casting. She’s cast Game of Thrones, The Crown and the recent Star Wars movies.
Scripts are abstract and Nina makes them living and breathing. Here’s my favorite bit:
“Done right, casting is an invisible act. The choice of an actor should seem obvious in retrospect. No one but Eddie Redmayne could have played Stephen Hawking. No one but Claire Foy could have played the young Queen.”
You could switch “actor” for “creative idea” and that bit isn’t too dissimilar from our craft. ‘Like a great act of casting, a great brand idea should seem obvious in retrospect.’
Looking back it’s now hard to consider that any other brand could have been created besides BTQ to represent the needs of Idaho teens so well. Cheers to the whole team at DC for Best In Show.
From John’s Pinboard:
- Loved this latest effort by The North Face. The agency is Sid Lee and they have long been a personal favorite of mine to keep up with. They are based out of Canada and have such things as an architecture discipline in-house.
- Two Spotify things: first this excerpt from their head of product discussing how Spotify is now the R&D arm of the music industry.
- Then, here’s a cool guerrilla piece for the Bowie exhibit in NY.
- Donatella Versace can describe her brand vividly and distinctly using no fancy marketing words or lingo: “The brand never breaks character. The clothes always radiate the same fantasy of f***-you money. There are hundreds of places to shop if you want to project intelligence or sophistication. But if you want to look rich, you go to Versace. The danger of looking like an idiot is significant. If you don’t inhabit your tiger-striped velvet with sufficient confidence, you will be severely defeated by your own clothes”
- Team Ponywolf, how are things going with Ludum Dare? Cool lookin’ stuff for that.
- Shonda Rhimes has some great moments in this piece talking about the hit scandal and how even when characters do bad things the audience still loves them.
- CVS is no longer adding photoshop to their ads. Here’s the first line of work out under that direction.
- Important moment on video by the two leaders of North and South Korea—which actually gives hope.
-I just love outdoor ads. Jeremy found this cool piece in NPR about how popular it still is.