This past weekend Organic sponsored the very first Michigan Flash Festival on the campus of Schoolcraft College. In attendance were over 100 local developers and students, as well as large delegations from the area's three Adobe user groups (SEMAFX, Detroit Adobe Usergroup and Flash Focused). We spoke to quite a few very talented designers and developers, I wouldn't be surprised if more than a few future Organics were in attendance.

We delivered the keynote on utilizing Flash to pull together pieces of functionality from divergent technologies. From conversations I had during and after the conference, it is clear we are being looked up to as a leader in spreading Flash content to newly emerging platforms. With the continual release of embedded Flash systems, like the Chumby and mobile phones, it appears that we'll have more opportunities in the near future to show off our Flash chops outside of the browser.

Slides from my talk are up at:

http://www.slideshare.net/jamesv/flash-as-bondo/

James

One of the things that most impressed me when I joined Organic was the commitment to defining processes and strategies as a way of ensuring that successful outcomes could be quantified.

So it was no surprise on my recent visit to the San Francisco office to see this excellent diagram outlining the proper usage of the expression “Aww snap.” As someone who has more than once blurted it in a group situation out only to be met with a puzzled silence, I appreciated that the criteria was clearly defined, as were the expected user responses — plus there’s a whole measure and redeploy component. I’m going to feel a lot more confident at parties and beer bashes, let me tell you.

Next up: a PowerPoint version, plus user flows for “Boo-ya!” and “THAT’S what I’m talkin’ about!”

Elliott Smith

Being a Camp Organic winner adds you to the eclectic group of Organics who can call themselves the proud owner of a pair of Camp O sneakers. These do not only look cool but are also super comfy. So when we wanted to create a few free-bees which we could give to folks in our Second Life Gallery (http://slurl.com/secondlife/future/89/101/28/) we thought how awesome a virtual pair of Camp O sneakers would be. This may just spark another thought! Winning a Camp Organic requires great ideas, solid team work, and the willingness to give up a full night of sleep. So we won't make it too easy to get a pair of virtual Camp O sneakers either.

If you want to know what's going on in our Gallery, just join our Organism Second Life Entourage Group (http://organism/groupdetails.aspx?id=16) to find out about the next event Chad's cooking up.

Sonja Scharrer

For our final project of the year, the ten interns were sent to “Summer Camp Organic” for one long challenging week.  Based on the real Camp Organic, the ten interns were split into two teams and were assigned a demographic profile around the Dodge Challenger.  The mission was to discover "the gift" for our target demographic.  We spent two days researching and investigating through interviews and two days pulling together our findings for the presentations.  We spent many long hours together and truly had a good time with it.  Summer Camp O culminated with a final presentation on Friday afternoon where the personas for “George McFly” and “Greg” really came to life. 

Paul Rossman
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Oh hey – you’re an Organic intern.

I walked by the Creative white board on my first day and stopped. Staring back at me was a schizophrenic ideation nightmare – a mind map somehow linking Superman to Dr. Phil to an ex-ed out Trevor Naud with the word “REVISE” blotting out his name. I was baffled, but knew that this window into the minds of other Organics meant that my summer was going to be void of boredom.

I think I write for all of us when I say this experience has been incredible. So often as a college student you hear internship woes of fellow classmates who spent their summers retrieving coffee or alphabetizing financial invoices.

Instead, we spent our summer working on real projects and watching them go live – something that has been unbelievably rewarding and encouraging.

We’ve taken part in lunch-and-learns, where we had the chance to learn about all aspects of Organic via great people and great food.

We’ve formed relationships with our mentors, who have so kindly taken us under their collective wings and introduced us into this quirky world known as web advertising.

And it’s all been fun. We’ve enjoyed Beer Bash Fridays; eaten bagels on Wednesday mornings; attended a Tiger’s game; and participated in an intern project that was enjoyable yet blindingly stressful. And, if I may speak personally, the Jeep team has produced some interesting experiences (I’ve had my desktop changed to Bryan Adams more times than I can remember).

So thank you everyone, for making the 2007 Summer Internship Program exceptional.

Josh Cyccone

On Wednesday I was extraordinarily fortunate to attend the San Francisco Organic Engagement Management offsite.

This was a day-long working session where everyone from our discipline gets together to share their experiences, to learn from each other and to chart our direction.

This was the second opportunity that SF has provided me and it has been something I have truly relished. The energy, enthusiasm and intelligence makes you feel like you are not alone but work within a larger group of people that are passionate about what they do, and eager to do things better.

There was one takeaway that I wanted to share from the exceptional experience.

How do you create a cultural shift within an organization? At Organic you start with asking yourself how can you not?

It was clear to me that what we were being challenged to do isn’t about a specific process or a list of checkboxes or a routine that needs to become codified. It’s about a way of thinking - that our challenges are actually an opportunity. Not in some Pollyanna way but in stopping and asking yourself, have I done enough to challenge my peers, have my peers been challenging me?

It is remarkable when a bunch of people start thinking the same way; and it’s a powerful feeling even as each of us approach things differently. I believe that everyone came away from the session refreshed, rejuvenated and focused on trying to maintain that momentum and sustain each other by working as a team.

I know that each of us will be trying to infuse this in our work in different ways, and I know that many of you will be affected by it, ideally each of us will be successful realistically some of us will be, but those successes are what each of us will be striving for and that is something special.

If you get a chance ask an EM in SF what they think about creating a “how culture”, I know that you will get to engage someone that is intelligent, committed, and ultimately is looking to embrace change with you. 

Special thanks to Ray Atkins, Bill Camp, Nicole Craine, Misha Cornes and Dawn Ferrell who added so much either by being there and/or by helping make it happen for us.

I can’t wait for next years!

Jeremy Adirim

Despite the many wonderful perks of being an interactive copywriter, my profession comes with a unique set of challenges. If a designer comes up with some off-the-wall cockamamie concept, I can spend a few minutes banging out copy towards it and be done. But if nobody loves my idea (even if I'm SURE it will revolutionize advertising), then there's not much chance of a designer taking several hours out of her busy schedule to comp it up.

It was with this in mind that I decided to spend part of my training budget on a Digital Design Basics course offered through SVA. On the first night of the 8-week class, we got a basic overview of the Photoshop tools palette, and were encouraged to play around with the different brushes. I made this:

When I showed my designer friends at work the next day, they laughed and put it up on the fridge in the kitchen. I felt like a kindergartener who had gotten her first gold star.

Over the next few weeks, I learned about such intricacies as gradients, Gaussian blurs and the dreaded pen tool. As I struggled with Photoshop and Illustrator, near tears because the program just would not do what I wanted it to, I gained a new respect for designers. No wonder they’re always chugging coffee and tearing their hair out...their jobs are HARD!

While the rest of my class toiled over artistic collages for the independent Photoshop project, I made this:

Yep, it’s a comp for a Bank of America banner. I may not be replacing any Art Directors anytime soon (note that one of my unicorns has 5 legs), but thanks to Organic training budgets I can now comp up my own ideas...even the ones that should probably never see the light of day.

Anna Hecker

Something special happens when a unique industry partner joins forces with professors that put students first.  This has certainly been evident over the past year, as the Seneca School of Communication Arts, and Organic Inc, a top online advertising and communications agency, have enjoyed a mutually beneficial relationship.

Make no mistake about it, Organic has seen tremendous growth in the past year, increasing in number and size of accounts serviced.  Such growth requires fresh talent to meet the increased demand.  This means opportunity for recent graduates.  In the past year and a half, 14 Seneca graduates have worked in some capacity at the Toronto studio of Organic, some part-time while pursuing studies, some contract, and roughly half moving into fulltime positions.  The reliable pool of talent has allowed the Canadian portion of the U.S. owned agency (with offices in Detroit, San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles) to grow into a valued support position for major American accounts such as DaimlerChrysler and Bank of America.

Far from being a silent partner, Organic actively seeks opportunity to lend support to the efforts of Seneca’s staff, sending guest-speakers, supporting events, and contributing on the board of advisors.  One such notable event is the well-named “DMA Ninja Pub Night”, the brainchild of Seneca’s Digital Media Arts program co-ordinator, Joe Bodick, along with Flash Instructors Andrew Tedford, and Gregg Frewin.

The DMA ninja pub night is a chance for current students of the program to connect with alumni, and to get their work seen by industry professionals.  What began as a handful of students has grown steadily in attendance and enthusiasm.  Designers, developers, artists and industry professionals attend and often present to the appreciative students.

Recently, Tim Willison (Interactive Developer), Jon Litwack (Information Architect) and Kam Edmunds (Interactive Designer) - three of Organic’s own - made the trek to the York campus to present on career development to a packed house. “I was utterly shocked to see how this event has grown” said Tim Willison, senior Interactive Developer, “I’d love for more people in the industry to know about this event” The atmosphere is casual, and students who attend here can get genuine advice that they might not find anywhere else as they seek to launch their careers.  The Organic employee, and Seneca alumni, goes on to talk about the ins and outs of life as a Digital Media Artist, discussing freelancing, agency work, and placement services, fielding questions as he goes. “Come down to Flash in T.O. next week”, he encourages the group, “we’ll be looking at Design Patterns, you’ll love it.”  “By now I’m seeing familiar faces” he says afterwards, “a number of these students attend various events around Toronto.  I think the DMA Ninja Pub Night does a lot to help them get their networks started while still in the program”

One example of such a student is Sheharzad Arshad, DMA graduate, who spent last summer creating online advertising for such prestigious accounts as FOX, Sprint, and Bank of America, while contributing to Organic’s successful production studio.  Now returned to the faculty for a major in Animation, he was happy to donate some time from his busy schedule to show new students the work he had done, when Organic organized a workshop.  “Let me show you something cool,” he says, taking a confident stance before the group, “this is what we worked on – Superman!  The tough part is the file size here, learn to optimize your images really well…here are some things we did…we also worked on stuff for the new Bond movie…”  It is evident that Sheharzad’s association with Organic has given him experience very difficult to find elsewhere.

Following this, Tim and Kam get down to business, demonstrating the persona-building process that Organic has become so well-known for, then follow up with some technical discussion on hacking word press for quickly making home-brew content management systems. 

More recently, Organic opened its doors and brought the students in for a chance to get a glimpse of the day-to-day process of a busy online agency.  The result was overwhelming – close to thirty enthusiastic graduating students filled the space at the downtown location.  Organized into groups, they were all given a chance to speak to experienced people from all areas of the industry – creative’s, developers, engagement and project managers, and resourcing staff.  Moving from station to station, the students feel free to ask questions and get opinions on their work, having come to see Organic as an organization they can be comfortable with.  Many seem enthusiastic to work with the agency that stresses “exceptional experiences”; this speaks well for the future of the partnership.  It will be interesting to see where this mutually beneficial relationship will go in the future.  It seems certain that demand for talented, diverse digital storytellers will only increase as new media moves into the driver’s seat for many large-scale advertising accounts.  The ability to locate and retain that talent is often a major dividing factor between successful growth and limitations.  With strong initiatives for promoting digital media programs at the college and university level, agencies like Organic are effectively ensuring their continued success, while simultaneously helping many start careers that are exceptional.

Tim Willison

Forrester held their first Forrester Marketing Forum conference in Miami last week. Organic was one of three Gold sponsors of the event and the only digital marketing agency on the roster.  We had an action-packed two day session and Organic certainly generated a lot of buzz. Here are a few highlights:

• We had our first "unbooth" booth that was designed as a persona room (comfy sofas and chairs, a coffee table, and our virtual fireplace). It was the perfect non-threatening venue to engage prospects in relaxed and informal dialog
• Many people, including some key Forrester analysts, said they are active readers of our Threeminds blog and kept asking to meet with Misha Cornes, our brilliant and prolific Threeminds editor-in-chief who ironically asked, "Blogging can make you famous?"
• We unveiled our Blindspot offering (futurecasting personas) at the event and Mark Kingdon and Chad Stoller gave a wonderful interactive presentation to a packed room of almost 200 people. We handed out laser pointers and Mark invited everyone to play the "Have you ever ..." game where people were asked to use their laser pointers to answer a bunch of "Yes" and "No" questions as a dynamic precursor to the futurecasting discussion.  It was awesome to see all those little red flying dots flying dots congregating on the "Yes" or "No" portion of the screen – a real time, interactive survey at its best
• The new Forrester Wave report was released at the event and, as you know, Organic has retained and advanced its leadership position
• On the final morning, Kerry Bodine, the author of the Forrester Wave, did a wonderful keynote presentation on, "How to Deliver a Great Customer Experience," and she showcased our process and the persona work that we did for Geek Squad; it was an incredible validation of our methodology and a powerful endorsement of Organic as a leader in customer-centric marketing.

Individually, each of these experience elements would have made the conference a success for me - combined they created a truly exceptional experience.  A special thanks to Forrester for delivering an EE and to Mark Kingdon, Chad Stoller, Tim Armitage, Amanda Van Nuys, Ann Freccero, Tracy Richards, James Kim and the rest of the Organic cast and crew. Organic ROCKS!

David Feldt

The North American International Auto Show is full of interesting stuff, but when the crowds are around for the assorted press conferences, it can be hard to get a good look, much less shoot any pix. But since we were there for like 15 hours a day, hanging out in Cobo Hall on the late night brought forth some cool photo ops. All in all, the auto show was kind of more fun when nobody was around. Even though we were busy as all get out, it made it possible to check things out on the quick fast between other responsibilities. As my time was split between longish periods of frenetic running around (during our shoots) and some waiting, during the waiting times I wandered. Some of the fruit from the waiting is below. First, some snapshots from the Mitsubishi booth and our shoot, and then some photos from the rest of the show.

Daniel Turman

The Mitsubishi Shoot

Best of Show

So, I got back from Detroit Rock City on Tuesday, toting a rip-snorting cold and a strong aversion to Southwest Airlines’ baggage-claim processes. Just the same I was also in possession of a thorough appreciation for all things automotive—even if I am as confused as ever by the business strategy being employed by certain domestic giants.

But alas, the North American International Auto Show is the big mamma jamma of all auto shows and this one didn’t disappoint. I was there to help with shooting and scripting a webcast; not just any webcast mind you, but Mitsubishi Motors’ world reveal of the next-generation 2008 Lancer and its high performance sibling the Lancer Evolution. All in all, it was a madcap production. We shot after the press had mostly left the building to preserve the secrecy, sandwiching our shoots in between rehearsals of the State of the Mitsu address and rolling tape into the small hours. I won’t pretend that the hardships—dude, seriously my luggage didn’t come for three days!—weren’t worth it, because it was good times for a gearhead like me. But the hours were long and the amount of pressure—the majority of the Japanese braintrust was most definitely in the house—was intense at times.

With all of that said, I humbly present the fruits of our labor and a picture of the lead Japanese and American designers savoring the moment of reveal. Matsuhara-san and Sims-san, take it away.

Daniel Turman

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

I’m fresh from a two-day Persona Summit in Detroit where a cross-network group of strategists, IAs, designers, content developers, and technologists from across the network looked at the state-of-the-art in persona development at Organic. Some of you might recall that a “Persona Posse” was informally created last January from among several persona-passionate Camp Organic attendees. Since then, the Posse has been prolifically producing personas and encouraging each other to try different approaches—and to take our process and outputs to the next level. In that time, we have created a plethora of personas that reflect some very powerful and clever thinking/techniques—and we agreed it was time to take stock of our yield and harvest our learning from the best of the crop.

For those of you who don’t know the difference between a persona and a profile, here’s the short answer: A profile (aka target segment) comprises fairly high-level demographic and psychographic data such as age, life stage, place of residence, household income and receptivity to select product categories, distribution channels, and service levels. A persona, on the other hand, includes first-person narratives (a person describing him/herself) based in large part on inputs we derive from observational and behavioral research. The result is a characterization of a “real” person: their motivations, dreams, frustrations, personality traits, goals, information needs, information/social network, brand footprint (the brands they currently have close affinities to) and information seeking behaviors. The result is a characterization of a person that you and I can relate to, empathize with, and whose success and satisfaction is within our power to enable and advocate through experience design and marketing communications. It’s a mouthful, but what can I say? I’ve drunk the Kool Aid.

The Detroit summit was dedicated to the following:

• Presenting our best work and key learning to each other

• Agreeing upon the essential elements of a strong persona

• Formalizing a persona development process and methodology

• Developing a “page one” template for every Organic persona

• Finessing Organic’s persona capabilities presentation

One big topic we discussed was: “What exactly are personas meant to inform?”

• Are they a vital development tool created primarily for us as experience designers?

• Are personas a consensus-building tool used to win the buy-in of clients around the people we are designing for?

• Are personas meant to directly inform use case scenarios, features and functionality, and task flows? Visual design? Technology solutions? Recommended emerging platforms?

• Are they a potential input to a host of activities outside experience design including product design, communications planning, channel marketing, and branding?

As you can imagine the answer to all of these questions was a resounding “ALL OF THE ABOVE!” Personas are evolving from their original use as a web dev instrument. We are beginning to see them as more than a cornerstone to site design and online campaign development. Personas can act as a “conversation starter” for many strategic problems that we as communications experts are in a position to attack and solve.

We also examined who should contribute to persona development and the best ways to socialize finished personas across the various Organic disciplines. We had amazing participation and I am including the list of attendees below. Each of these folks now has a clearer understanding of the value and applicability of personas and I encourage you to “ping” any of these folks when you want to learn more about their effective use.

Thanks go to Mark and the management team for investing in this tremendously valuable practice development think tank!

Tim Armitage

Last week, I had the pleasure of attending the Omma Awards with two of our clients from Sprint (one of whom is a 2006 Mediapost All Star) and several great Organics.  Organic had seven finalist entries in six categories and took home three Best-In-Category awards:

1. Best Flash or Rich Media Interstitial or Over-Page Unit -- 20th Century Fox -- "X-Men: The Last Stand"
2. Best Campaign in Social Networks -- 20th Century Fox -- "X-Men: The Last Stand"
3. Best Rich Media Campaign -- Warner Bros. International -- "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire"

It was nice to be recognized by our peers in the industry and fun to see old friends at the show.

Congratulations, Team Organic!

Mark Kingdon

This is Lola’s phone.

Lola is 25 and just moved from Chicago to Milwaukee with her husband Tom. You can call her at 773-469-1378.

Lola is one of four new personas recently created for a client. Like the successful persona rooms in Detroit, we wanted a way for our team and clients to stay in touch with Lola and her life – so in the Organic Experience Lab we created an entire bag for her with a wallet, keys, Ipod (fully loaded of course), Saltines (she’s just five months pregnant), lip gloss, a Netflix movie waiting to be returned and more…

Oh, and airport security lines are really great for in-depth persona research like this.

Rie Norregaard