BIG QUESTIONS
How would you assess the relative “creativity” of your company?
Creativity is commonly thought of as an attribute or skill of individuals, not entire groups. This is perhaps a massive missed opportunity for companies to differentiate and outperform their competitors – both in the marketplace and the talent marketplace. UK-based creative career site If You Could recently launched an award for Most Creative Companies and gave out 25 of them. The criteria?
CULTURE considers the environment, the ways that ownership, recognition, collaboration, and inclusion cultivate a team’s creativity.
CRAFT is all about the work, how creativity is valued, the pride teams take in the final outcome, and the impact of their ideas.
LEADERSHIP looks at the workplace structure, the impact of leadership to champion creativity, be transparent to foster cohesion, and purposeful in the direction for teams.
Does your company culture celebrate creative ideas? Do your teams? Is your company even organized in such a way that championing creativity is possible?
TOOL JOY
Namify helps you name your… things
Naming a company is a lot trickier than most realize. It’s a major project that can cost hundreds of thousands, or millions, of dollars. Then again, you could do what Google and Yahoo founders did and just name it yourself. Sometimes you get lucky. This little tool, Namify, is pretty fun to play with though, and it offers trademark and URL checks too. Side note: companies with the “action” + “ify” became cliche about 7 years ago, so not a great job on their part. If you need real-deal naming done, we recommend Bay Area-based 100 Monkeys and Vespertine.
DESIGN WE ❤️
Preferable future habitats
Are you suffering from AI fatigue? You’re not alone. Maybe you’re on the verge of writing it off completely, or disengaging from the frantic noise that the subject of AI seems to generate ad nauseam. But before you take that break, please check out some of the work created by Pascal Wicht, a Swiss designer, academic and futurist. His AI generated explorations of possible future habitats that don’t include civilizational collapse and extinction are beautiful and hopeful.
BEEP BOOP
They told us so: The 3 phases of AI that could play out this century. Prepare your mind to be blown.
Reason #273 to focus on brand: According to Pinwheel client Glassdoor, weak branding is one of the 10 reasons your employees resign. (Cough cough…we can help.)
Garbagai: The Internet is quickly filling up with “slop,” a new term used to describe sub-optimal writing generated by AI. Pigs like slop, not people.
Eye-roll-sprain warning: The World AI Creator Awards held a beauty pageant for women created by AI prompt engineers – each with their own Instagram profile and huge follower lists. “I am proud to receive this nomination after only existing for five months,” said one contestant. Barf.
On the bright side: Global advertising revenue is expected to grow by 7.8% in 2024. Why? China’s economic recovery, falling inflation, retail media/streaming platform growth, and of course, AI.
SPECIAL FEATURE
See, think, do: Uber’s VP of Marketing on strategy
You want to know how your marketing is working, so you dig into the metrics for clues. But that leaves out certain critical elements of brand marketing that defy measurement. Recently on the podcast “Think with Google,” Uber VP of Marketing David Mogensen discussed the “See-Think-Do” Model. “See” is your reach – how many people simply saw your marketing. “Think” covers things like awareness, likeability, and brand perception. “Do” is the business impact metrics – what action did they take as a result. Some marketers neglect “think” and focus exclusively on the other two because they’re more easily quantifiable. “Think” requires soft skills like human psychology and intuition. But what you make people think and feel creates the relationship – and THAT is your golden ticket in the bar of chocolate.
WHAT CLIENTS WANT
The state of video marketing in 2024
In our visual-obsessed culture, it’s unsurprising that video content is on the rise and all signs are pointing up. Some key indicators from Rev.com’s recent roundup:
- Blog posts that include videos attract 3X more inbound links than posts without.
- Ranking: 88% of videos ranking on Google are also ranking on YouTube.
- Company websites that include video content are 30X more likely to rank on Google.
- Brands that make video content earn 41% more web traffic from search than those that don’t.
So if you’re not doing video, the question is, “Why not?” If you want an overview of how Pinwheel takes on video projects, here’s a link to our recent lunch & learn on the topic.
WORD TO THE WISE
“The more you understand psychology, the less you tend to blame others for their actions.”
— Carl Jung
ICEBREAKER
Why do you do this thing that you do?
Todd: I’m the spawn of a trial attorney and a psychologist, so persuasion and human psychology were baked right into my DNA. Grew up at a dinner table where you had to prove your point. It’s this intersection that has obsessed me since I started.
Melissa: Multitasking is my superpower. What else does someone with a type A personality who can organize and multitask do… lead operations at an agency!
John: In my most charitable moments, I truly believe that designers can make the world a better, more functional and beautiful place. I love this quote by Irene Au: “Good design is like a refrigerator—when it works, no one notices, but when it doesn’t, it sure stinks”.
Laura: My fifth grade teacher, Miss O’Sullivan, picked me to read one of my “prose poems” at a schoolwide assembly and then gave me a thesaurus inscribed with the words “Laurie is such a beautiful writer.”
Peter: My interest in artsy stuff and subcultures + my sensible middle class upbringing = career in advertising.
Sarah: My dad was a freelance illustrator, airbrushing packaging for ET, Cabbage Patch Kids, and Candy Land. But in the mid 80s, he opened an ad agency and put me on “staff” – teaching me copywriting, design, photography, strategy, and account management. We basically lived at the shop, usually 60+ hours a week, so that’s where I did my homework, roller skated in the photo studio, and made all my school projects.
Marielle: My mom’s a writer/editor, and my dad’s an architect/painter. My love of language and all things beautiful comes from them, but my intensely pragmatic side is a reaction to their rejection of all things motivated by money.
FALLACIES, PARADOXES & THEORIES…OH MY
The 100th Monkey Effect
Between 1952 and 1953, researchers studying monkeys on Kōjima Island, Japan observed a young female monkey that began washing her sweet potatoes to remove sand. This practice spread through the island troop. Once a critical number of monkeys adopted the behavior (100), it mysteriously spread to monkeys on nearby islands – as if there was a sort of collective consciousness. This is connected to Rupert Sheldrake’s theory of morphogenetic fields holding that there are non-material fields containing information or patterns that shape and guide the form and behavior of systems at all levels of complexity, from molecules and crystals to organisms and societies. It’s a theory.
