whadif

[whadif]

Stick to the Crowd - Apple and the Creative Crowd

http://youtu.be/5DHYe4dhjXw

  It doesn’t take the brilliance of Neil deGrasse Tyson to know that Apple has a long and storied history of incredible advertising. They have used everything from dancing to hip wit in an effort to appeal to their audience. Their campaigns aim to empower the Apple user base as the cutting edge of technology and culture. The result is that Apple is synonymous with artists and the digital creative community.

  In their latest ad, Apple has reached out to their creative community for some help. This ad uses stickers designed for MacBooks to great effect in a stop motion style advertisement. The flow of one sticker to another is so well executed you would think Jan Švankmajer was the visual consultant. The stickers themselves range from Breaking Bad’s Heisenberg to abstract patterns, making the ad familiar yet original.

  Apple didn’t create these stickers. Every Macbook ships out with the same brushed aluminum clamshell with an Apple logo in the center. Nor are Apple users the first to sticker up their laptops. However, a quick Etsy search will illustrate the impressive cottage industry that has popped up around Macbook decals. It turns out that fostering a creative culture leads to inventive uses for your product.

  Apple was able to make this ad by embracing the creative power of the Apple crowd. Yet again, we are shown that crowdsourcing is not limited to funding or cut rate work. The creative crowd is capable of reinventing the world in real time. And brands stand to reap the spoils by engaging. It’s not enough to simply speculate based on limited data. A brand has to engage with their customer community and notice the little things, like Etsy stickers for their product. The wisdom is in the crowd. All one has to do is tune in.

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THE BIGGEST HURDLE TO EFFECTIVE AD CREATIVE IS WHAT WE THINK.

  Since the beginning of time, marketers, without knowing it, have been hogtied by one thing when it comes to getting the most from their advertising creative: What they personally think about the creative they are presented. In other words, their own personal bias, along with the political and institutional bias inherent in large organizations and in small groups, not only prevents them from accurately judging the creative they are exposed to, it potentially prevents them from generating the best ideas in the first place.

  Most Ads Aren't Apple's '1984'

To be fair, over the years there has been some great creative developed, but even that is a subjective statement. For instance, my own personal bias and the influence of other people I respect in the business has me believing that the Volkswagen Lemon print ad and Apple 1984 TV spot are two of the best pieces of advertising ever. And they were in a way. They were new, innovative, and unique for their time. They turned heads, got attention from the industry press and the public at large. They were held as the gold standard, and then subsequently mimicked and imitated. And as brand ads go, they were successful in this regard. But the same cannot always be said for most advertising. Even advertising vets like David Ogilvy believe that the vast majority of advertising is decidedly ineffective. Yet Brands continually spend millions of dollars each year paying Agencies to develop great ideas and execute creative that probably won’t achieve the objective. And that begs the questions: Does anyone really know how to make an effective ad? Why do we keep relying on the current agency creative team model and think we’ll get different results?

  The Carbon Monoxide of the industry

And therein lies what might be the biggest, most insidious problem facing the ad industry today. And it’s potentially the most dangerous one – effecting both brands and agencies alike. Creative subjectivity and the “creative committee of a few” is the carbon monoxide of the ad world. It’s a by-product of the very nature of the business. It’s odorless, tasteless and invisible. But it slowly, unrecognizably permeates every crack of every ad agency, every brand’s marketing department, every ad campaign ever conceived. As Ogilvy himself said, "Much of the messy advertising you see on television today is the product of committees. Committees can criticize advertisements, but they should never be allowed to create them." Yet that is mostly how it’s done. 

Worst of all, it’s accepted as part and parcel of the industry. Sure nowadays there are plenty of ways to test ads before and after they launch. Agencies and Brands alike spend millions every year testing ads in focus groups and online panels before they go to market. Once in market they are measuring click-throughs, downloads, and “engagement”. They are inventing new ways to measure ad effectiveness all the time. But often these measurements at best only tell part of the story, they provide no insight into the creative itself. At worst they are just as skewed as the individuals who are choosing what creative to put into them in the first place and come after the spend is made. Einstein’s great maxim has never seemed truer than in this context. "Much that matters cannot be measured and much that can be measured does not matter.”

  Or can it?

  Removing the subjective bias from creative selection

In fact there are ways to measure creative effectiveness as early as the concept stage with much less subjective bias. And there are ways to find more of those ideas to begin with. Crowdsourcing is known as the “C” word in advertising circles. It’s considered a race to the bottom, getting novices to work for free and devaluing the skills of the professional creative copywriter and art director team. They say the ideas can’t be better, that these people don’t “know” the brand and that they haven’t had as much experience with the industry. In fact, with what we now know about the “wisdom of the crowd” all those traits may actually work against creative thought.

  What some advertising people either fail to realize or refuse to admit, is that a good idea can come from anywhere at any time, especially if the brains creating them are removed from the institutional and political bias that envelopes all advertising agencies and brand marketing departments. That’s understandably a really scary thought to people whose entire careers have been spent trying to prove that they are experts. To be fair, it’s not that those people can’t come up with good ideas that are effective. They very well might have the best, most effective concepts in any given situation. But thinking you have it and knowing you do are two very different things.

  At Whadif, we believe that the key to increasing creative effectiveness is by utilizing the "wisdom of the crowd" in two ways.

1. Get more ideas from a more diverse, independent, and decentralized group of thinkers.

Instead of relying solely on a single creative team or two, removing subjective bias starts by increasing the number of concepts from as many different people as possible. They can be people inside or outside of the organization, but you need a lot of diverse opinions going in the top of the funnel in order to find the big idea. On average, Whadif solicits more than 100 concepts from 30 different members of our community for each project. That's like having 15 creative teams working on a single campaign. Most agencies don't have this many creative staffers in total, let alone working on any given project at once. In addition we always encourage clients to submit their own ideas. Remember that a good idea can come from anyone at any time. You never know what admin or c-level executive might actually have an idea that turns out to be effective. But don’t worry, you'll be able to prove later why the CEO's idea wasn't very good.

  2. Test all the concepts early and often with your own community (aka: your target market).


Any good agency applies some kind of pre-market testing. But few do it this early in the process. Plus the accepted methods of pre-execution testing often contain a lot of subjective bias. A focus group is one of the most biased situations that exists on the planet. They are not independent, or decentralized, and the opinions of the group’s members are often swayed by each other. So quality testing requires that you reduce the bias. To do this, apply the same requirements to the testing method that you've applied to the idea generation. Solicit more diverse opinions, allow them to compare and contrast the concepts, and ask them very specific questions that have themselves been tested over time. Our testing methodology is based on a surveying method that has been refined over years and includes both quantitative and qualitative questions, so we find not just the "what" but also the "why." And who knows better than the people who use your product or service all the time what is likely to resonate with them?

Also remember that the road between concept and execution is a long one that is fraught with bias, namely more subjective decision making by fewer and fewer people. So testing should be utilized at each stage of the development process. Every stage, storyboards, comps, rough cuts, etc, can and should be tested in the same way. In addition, we leave room at each stage for new ideas to be entered into the mix. You never know how one concept will spur another, an obvious key to successful brainstorming.

  Only open minds need apply


Crowdsourcing is not a dirty word. It can be a very symbiotic environment in which both brands and creatives can succeed and feel like their each getting something out of the deal. It is a useful tool that applied correctly can quickly and easily help brands and agencies alike find the most effective ideas. And together with more bias-free objective testing throughout the process can provide more insight and allow them to make more informed decisions on what creative is likely to work best. But it will take giving up a certain amount of false security and/or perceived control that the old process supplies in order to be effective. Don't be tempted to say you know what creative is good when you see it. You might be right, but you might be wrong, too. Allow the process to work and remember you can't end up any worse off than if you started with three ideas that weren't tested.

  Fail Faster

The other big benefit of this process is that is allows everyone to fail faster and prior to the big spend on production and distribution. Our standard ideation engagement lasts 5 days from start to finish, including testing. So we know very quickly where we stand and don’t waste valuable time chasing ideas that won’t work. When they fail early, it’s often the fault of the brief, an oft-overlooked piece of the creative development puzzle. Similarly, an entire video project might last 10 weeks to final cut, but since testing is imbedded all the way through we can constantly feedback and help refine the creative in-line without waiting until the end to know. Failing early is research, failing late is just failure.

  This is the wake-up call for brands and agencies.

It’s time for marketers of all stripes to admit there is a problem and to look for alternatives that will save precious marketing dollars and increase marketing creative ROI. The brands that are leading the pack when it comes to ad effectiveness are the ones that are truly thinking outside the box, not just when it comes to radical new tactics or new modes of after-the-fact measurement, these will only stem the tide for a while. No. The brands that will succeed long term in their advertising effectiveness are the brands that will change the way they source and select creative; the ones that will harness more smart, independent, decentralized creative people to give them more ideas at the beginning; the ones that will remove as much procedural and human bias as possible; the ones that will test those ideas at each stage in the development process with their target audience in a less biased, more meaningful manner; and the ones who will make their decisions based on these results and resist the temptation to think they know best. And if, as advertising futurist Jon Bond believes, advertising agencies will have to move towards more pay-for-performance models to stay alive, it will become a necessary life-saving shift in thinking as well.

  Effective advertising ideas are all around us. They can come from anyone at any time. We just have to be looking in the right places and stop standing in our own way.

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Tumblr is responsible for referring more average video starts than YouTube, Twitter and Reddit, so how can brands use it for their video marketing?

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Thank you all for submitting to WhadIf's launch campaigns. We learned a lot from the submissions, specifically the rough cuts.

First and foremost, we have learned that the best communication is sincere communication. We all need to remember that an advertisement is giving a voice to a product that has none. We all prefer for those in our life to speak from the heart. And our winners found the brand's heart and communicated that to the world.

Luckily for WhadIf, the submissions that lost were just as sincere as the winners. But some of our submissions did forget one of the most important rules of production; always shoot for your end delivery medium.

We received several submissions that would have made brilliant web ads. However, in this case, testers seemed to be looking for broadcast ready spots. So cameras that shot with compressed formats and stock lenses did not fare as well as the spots shot with top level, broadcast grade equipment. Your camera's codec does matter, as does the lens. The brand's customers who are being tested have watched ads their entire life. They can tell the difference between different grades of production, even if they cannot articulate those differences in the most technical of terms.

Most of our winners utilized outdoor lighting to a great extent with lenses and filters that gave them control over the situation. Remember, whereas the content is what you are attempting to communicate, the production is how you are trying to communicate it. The testing audience can see and discern the difference without knowing what a Zeiss Compact Prime is.

All of that said, every submission was special in its own way. We were all (honestly) stunned by the caliber of the submissions. Please let us know if you need advice when it comes to producing your spots. These campaigns showed that when we work with you the possibilities are endless. So let's push together and create some great work.

-Scott Locwick, Whadif Team

Photo credit: http://framediscreet.com/

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Behind the Scenes for Mt. Pleasant

By: 1st Prize Winner, Hugh Brownstone

Our Mt. Pleasant video began with a change of heart: while we loved coming up with concepts for the Mt. Pleasant Animal Shelter campaign and were excited that one of our concepts won, we hadn’t intended to go beyond that point. As a very small company with many other plates spinning, our thought was that we didn’t have room for pro bono work at that moment.

Yet we simply changed our minds at the last minute. We decided that we wanted the experience of moving through all of the phases of a production under tight deadlines, and figured we’d learn a great deal in a very short timeframe while promoting a worthy cause.

We did!

We took the storyboarding process that we’d applied in the NAPA campaign to plan out the shoot for a renegade concept we felt we could actually produce. We loved our Speed Dating concept, but we knew that it would simply require more planning, permission, time, equipment, staff, and budget than were available to us. The concept that we ran with — Pet Concierge — began with our fond memories of the movie THE PARENT TRAP. This quickly morphed into an homage to the Eloise books and was one that we’d brainstormed during the concept phase but forgot to submit!

Claudia and I batted ideas around script ideas like we always do, and it wasn’t long before we had our script — and were off and running.

But we then faced multiple, simultaneous challenges:

What hotel would let us bring in a dog, take over their lobby — and do so on such short notice?

Where are we find the right dog?

Where were we going to get the actors?

Who could help us with the actual shoot?

How would we shoot the opening sequence when it called for — but we didn't have access to — a stabilizer?

And how were we going to mic this when we only had one wireless lav set?

We were immediately fortunate that a dear friend of ours and filmmaker and photographer in his own right, Tom Hartmann, jumped at the opportunity to pitch in as our sound and lighting guy. He says he’s not a gearhead, but he’s in major denial — luckily for us!

The very next thing we did was contact a really beautiful hotel, The Hotel Monaco, in Philly. We’ve stayed in a number of Kimpton hotels and know they’re really stylish; staffed with really nice people; and are pet-friendly.

And we’d scouted it earlier for another project.

Yet they turned us down — nicely. After all, we were asking them to make this happen on very short notice, on one of the busiest weekends of the year — Memorial Day! They loved the idea and wanted to help, but they just couldn’t accommodate us.

And we hadn’t even found a dog or acting talent.

We thought “OK, we tried. But it really IS too much work; we don’t have any of the other pieces; so that’s that — let’s call it a day and plan on going to the beach.”

But….

We were walking our own dog later that same day (Sophie is way too big and…frenetic, shall we say?) when we bumped into a neighbor and we thought “wait, a minute, THEY have the PERFECT dog.” By that night, we'd firmed it up with Eileen Provost: she’d make her mini-Doberman mix, Bella, available for the shoot.

Now we reversed ourselves again. We reached out to a number of other local hotels, but they all — to varying degrees — had the same response: great cause, but not practical on such short notice at such a busy time of year.

Once again, we thought, “OK, we really tried, but it’s just not happening — and we don’t have the actors yet anyway.”

And again, but...

That’s when we got an email from a friend of a friend — a great guy named Steve — saying he’d be happy to play the role of concierge and oh, by the way, he had a daughter if we were still looking for a young girl.

Really?

OK, now we HAD to find a way to make this work.

We thought about the very reasonable objections the hotels couldn’t overcome, most especially inconveniencing guests as they were checking in or checking out.

And that’s when it hit us: what if we filmed at the hotel when the guests weren’t IN the lobby?

Like, say, 5:30 AM?

We went back to our first choice, the Hotel Monaco. Kristin Huxta, their area public relations manager, was fantastic — and with our new proposal, was able to get us to “yes.”

We were in! IF we could get Steve and his daughter Audrey — and Eileen with her Bella — at the hotel by, yep, 5:30AM.

The rest, as you now know, is history. Everyone was absolutely wonderful and eagerly contributed to the Mt. Pleasant Animal Shelter mission (Eileen actually came in the night before so that Bella would be well-rested and ready for her close-up). Steve and Audrey were troopers. And we wouldn’t have gotten the shots without Tom’s lighting (we’ve cut over to all LED’s now).

Finally, with all that, we were still packed up and out by 8:00AM!!

We learned so much in the process — and felt so good doing it — we’d do it again.

NOTE: The two people you don't see in these photos who were instrumental in making the spot are Hugh's partner Claudia Davis - who among many other things took these photos - and Kristin Huxta of the Hotel Monaco for pulling out the stops to make filming there possible.

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Armani Smith, of LA production company Live Art Love, was our top grand prize winner in the NAPA Auto Parts project. He and his sister, Tiffany Smith, wrote, directed and produced the 1st place version of Broken Down Marine. We caught up with Armani one sunny summer day to ask him how he does it – how THEY do it. As we found out, he and Tiffany are a team, a unit, and they do all of their projects together.

Going to school at Cal State Northridge for marketing, Armani knew he didn’t want to work for anyone. He’s always been a self-starter and loves taking on new challenges. After spending time working with friends at a bigger production company, Armani and Tiffany decided to see what they could do all on their own. They already had many of the skills to run a production company under their belts, but had to figure out the ins and outs of the business themselves. That was just three short years ago, and in that time, they’ve had great success with documentaries, interviews and (a big part of their work) commercials.

In fact, their video for NAPA is airing on national television this summer! How’s that for commercial success?

Something that we loved about Armani and Tiffany is how positive and optimistic they are. Even after working long, 12 hour days to get just the right shots, they are upbeat and happy – because doing film is what they love. It’s inspiring to hear that someone’s so passionate about their work that they can’t wait to get up and do it everyday, even on a day off.

When I asked Armani who he had been in a past life, he said, “A stubborn individual. If I had to be somebody, I would be somebody who doesn’t listen to logic. I’ve always been a dreamer. Anything anyone has told me that was impossible, I’ve wanted to do that.” Well, making the winning video for NAPA wasn’t necessarily impossible, but they didn’t know their chances going into the project, and they made it happen!

When Armani and Tiffany heard about Whadif, they immediately liked the testing aspect. They had ideas of their own, but when they saw what came back from the story board testing, they knew they’d be putting their own spin on one of the concepts that NAPA’s audience had already said they liked. Says Armani, “At the end of the day, if it works, it works. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. Sometimes clients don’t know what they want. And Whadif is about what the people want.”

When we asked Armani what “the best work wins” means to him and Tiffany, he said, “It means there’s no politics. There’s no room for subjectivity, people playing favorites or a client liking things because it reminds them of something else. When we make projects, we don’t make projects for brands, we make it for the people. You want the audience, the customers to love the commercial. It doesn’t matter if I think it’s the smartest in the world…if the people don’t like it, I’ve missed the mark. If the people like it, they like it. I like when it’s about the people.”

We are certainly about the people. The clients’ customers, and of course, great filmmakers like these two. We can’t wait to see what comes next for Live Art Love at Whadif!

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Mike Greenberg created the winning spot A Father's Legacy for our NAPA Auto Parts project. We met him late this spring at a Philadelphia film meetup at Impact Hub. Right away, we learned he had a long history as a filmmaker and even has his own production company in Philadelphia, Konspiracy Studios. Konspiracy Studios is a production + post boutique, currently focused on delivering Madison Avenue quality film to local businesses in Philly. They work specifically with startups, restaurants and other artisanal businesses. Connect with Mike for more info, or follow him on instagram: mikegreenbergtv

We sat down with Mike after we had announced his NAPA win to get inside his brain. Instead of telling you about Mike in our words, here’s our conversation:

Whadif: What is your preferred name?

Mike Greenberg: Mike.

W: Mike, you got it. So Mike, who are you pretty sure you were in a past life?

MG: Ron Swanson. Or maybe Andrew Jackson. Because I'm fiercely independent to a fault.

W: Where are you from?

MG: From DC suburbs with a pitstop in Baltimore and now in Philadelphia.

W: If you had 3 wishes, and couldn’t wish for more wishes, what would your 3rd and final wish be?

MG: The ability to look at a decision, and know (without all the details) which choice would make me happier.

W: That's a really good wish. Did you go to college? If so, where and what did you study?

MG: I spent my freshmen year at George Mason studying film, and then started freelancing. I had launched my production company when I was 17. So I just kept working!

W: Pretend you’re from early in the last century. What would you be most astounded by?

MG: Well, definitely the technical achievements and how marvelous they are. But also, the inefficiency of implementation of technology. We have so much food, but so much of it is unhealthy. We have phones in our pockets, but so many people can be unproductive.

W: It's a crazy world we live in. So, when did you start video production?

MG: I started shooting skating videos at age 12. And then I started answering phones at a post production facility at 16, and bought my first good camera after that.

W: So you started out young! In what aspect would you say your passion for video and film lies?

MG: I got into editing first. It’s something you can do all by yourself. The resources are minimal to get started. I learned all the technical skills before I began story telling. So, now I have the tools to make video, and I’m still honing the story telling part. That’s a life long journey. I started out wanting to make kick-ass images, but they mean nothing without a message behind them.

W: Right you are on that one. How about your production company. Tell me a little bit of the background.

MG: I bought a $4000 camera when I was 16 and paid it off shooting weddings. From there, I’ve gone on to cut shows for National Geographic, G4, Travel Channel, and commercials. Now, I’m being more precise and targeted in my project choices. I've worked with other contractors, but mostly run the show by myself.

W: Awesome! Now. Tell me your favorite drink.

MG: Rum Runner. On the beach.

W: Good answer. Wish we were there right now! So, tell me a little bit about how you planned your shoot for NAPA.

MG: I was flying by the seat of my pants at the last minute for everything. I shot that Sunday before the deadline, and the whole thing was completed in 19 or 20 hours. It was a quick shoot. I hired an actor and recruited my friend. With the exception of our production assistant, no one had camera experience. I had 5 people total that worked on the video.

W: Well it turned out great! Would you happen to be interested in the next Whadif project?

MG: Definitely! Give us a cool brief again and we’ll deliver.

W: What does "the best work wins" mean to you?

MG: The best work wins for me means no middle men. It’s about the ideas and the people viewing them that decide the winners. You’re not playing the cat and mouse game about what you think they’d want. You’re testing it and showing them what they decide they want.

W: Awesome answer, Mike. You definitely get it. We look forward to seeing what you come up with next!

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Hugh Brownstone and Claudia Davis created the second winning version of Broken Down Marine for the NAPA Auto Parts project. They're a dynamic pair that we met while visiting with some folks in the Philadelphia film scene at a Rough Cuts meetup when the NAPA project began. They've been with us every step of the way since they joined the Whadif community, submitting one of the winning NAPA concepts (Route 66), a winning concept for Mt. Pleasant Animal Shelter (Speed Dating) and now the top winning video in the Mt. Pleasant video phase (to be released soon!).

We sat down with Hugh and Claudia to find out a little bit more about who they are and how they came to be part of the Whadif family. Hugh is originally from Brooklyn, NY and started doing still photography at the age of 7. He has always loved story-telling, but didn't begin creating video to tell these stories until recently. Hugh worked in the fast paced world of New York business thinking he had to live hard and fast while he could. After life-saving open heart surgery, he gained a new perspective on what life could be and decided to dedicate himself to telling the stories he loved so much. Claudia is from Zurich, Switzerland, and after going to school for the visual arts, launched a successful career in makeup and production work in Europe.

Together, Hugh and Claudia started Three Blind Men and an Elephant Productions to fulfill their dreams and since then, have hit the ground running. Before Whadif, they shot and produced a piece for social impact organization North Light Community Center called Light in Manayunk. And they are eager to do more.

We love this team because of their commitment to truth in story telling and their passion for the process. Hugh says, "Our objective in everything we do is authenticity, humanity and wit. If you love something, you love the mistakes as well as the successes. We love the whole process. We loved Whadif's concept phase and story board phase, which led in turn to screenwriting, choice of colors, camera angles, and more. Everything about the creative process is like taking hits of pure oxygen for us. The way the world is today, the thing that we need more of is art."

Their NAPA shoot was no exception. They spent 2 days filming, after securing the cars, the location and the actors. To prepare for the production, they took their story board to the next level to truly map out in detail how and what they were going to shoot. Since they picked a public place for the location, they garnered lots of interest from passersby, in the form of waves, honks and even salutes. And it all made for a winning finished product.

At Whadif, we say the best work wins. When we asked Hugh and Claudia what that means to them, they said “For us, the best work is what is perceived to be the best by the people who count most. The best work – the work that won -- is what resonated most with the audience we created it for.” We look forward to seeing more work from these two as they grow as filmmakers and we add new projects to our arsenal.

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It all started out as a project brief we created for NAPA Auto Parts and a whole bunch of creative people who thought they might like to be a part of it. We wanted to see what you were capable of and we set out to make it as fun as possible.

Now, 12 weeks later, we've seen ideas, story boards and videos. We've tested with NAPA's target audience at all three stages and found out what made them tick when it came to a salute to the military. The client has been impressed at every stage of the game as we have presented your work.

We now have our top four video winners for you to view. Watch what has evolved from just words on a screen. Our team would like to invite ALL of our creators to take a bow. We could only award four spots, but everyone's work made this project take shape and we couldn't have done it without you!

So, head on over to the project page and view the rough cut winners - the finals will be ready in the next few weeks.

Remember to check look out for our testing findings, project wrap-up and more Whadif artist features! 

View the winners now.

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Following many rounds of testing, we have announced the next phase of the Mt. Pleasant project - video! We extend a big thanks to everyone who submitted in the idea phase and congratulate our three winners on submitting such great concepts!

We received lots of wonderful submissions - the creativity we saw in this phase was boundless. We didn’t know there were so many ways to feature a pet placement service, but you guys came through! Since we were only working with three top spots (unlike the 10 we had for NAPA), it would have been awfully tough to make the selection on our own.

After carefully constructing our ideation survey, we posed the series of questions about a random selection of concepts to hundreds of people in Mt. Pleasant’s demographic. Over the course of the test, we learned that this audience favored simple ideas over complex. They valued clarity over nuance. And the emotional impact of the spot - the feelings that could be elicited from a 256 character idea - was paramount.

We now open it back up to you to take one of the winning ideas - or even an idea that didn’t win that you believe in - and create a video for Mt. Pleasant. If you have questions or feedback about the project, let us know in the forum! And remember that all work for Mt. Pleasant can be claimed as a charitable donation on your 2014 taxes.

Whadif made this project with Mt. Pleasant happen because we support their mission to find safe, loving homes for dogs and cats. Check out the project page to learn more.

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We received 27 story boards for NAPA Auto Parts and embarked on our very first story board testing at the end of April. Each of the 10 concepts was represented with at least one board. Most received 2 or more. "A Father's Legacy," which was the top concept submission, received 7 boards! We also received 3 "Renegade" submissions with totally new concepts.

The boards submitted represented a wide variety of artistic skills. Some had stunning hand drawn illustrations. Others utilized photos from the web. We had many creatives submit with cartoon-like illustrations from a story board or comic generator service. 

We embarked on our qualitative testing once all of the submissions were in. We surveyed a national representation of NAPA's target audience and tallied up the votes on over 900 responses.

What we found we had not predicted, but made sense. 

The story board testing told us that the real weight was carried in the descriptions - the voiceover/dialogue and the action. The visuals acted as a companion, but could not carry the story. As with the ideas, the clear, concise stories did the best in the testing - ones that had a succinct setup, action and payoff at the end. The artwork definitely drew people to certain boards, but we found that once the testers read the script and action, the visuals mattered less. The story boards that performed the best had a script that read like a TV commercial. This allowed people to visualize and really "hear" the spot playing out in their imagination.

As you can see from the results, Broken Down Marine and A Father's Legacy were the clear winning concepts that resonated with NAPA's target audience. The more subtle and true of a story, the better the story board performed. Ideas that tried to be overly patriotic or seemed unreasonable did not connect with viewers. The military imagery and stories aligned with the target's perception of NAPA and spoke to them on an emotional level. We also found that the more involved the tester was with DIY repairs, the more attracted they were to concepts that showed military personnel in heroic roles.

Thanks for taking this ride with us as we move closer to the final product for NAPA - the videos! If you want to submit a video or check out the winning story boards, head on over to the project page. And if you have any questions, let us know!

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Here's a sneak peek into NAPA idea and story board winner, Joshua Clark's video shoot!

He is new to the video production world, but his creativity has been sparked by the Whadif process and fueled by his passion for the NAPA story-telling he's been involved in during this project. And he's even invested in his very first camera, the Nikon D3200.

Joshua's Whadif journey began with submitting four ideas to the NAPA project. His sunrise triumph, Morning Commute, was one of the top ten concepts. He then went on to submit four story boards based upon winning ideas. NAPA's audience responded so favorably to Josh's work, three of his story boards made it into the top five. He came into the project without any high hopes for winning, but on the heels of his story board success, he felt he just had to bring his vision to video. In these photos, he works on shooting A Father's Legacy.

Joshua has mobilized friends, colleagues and local professionals all over his hometown of Queensbury, NY to come together for his videos. He's secured locations, classic cars, military uniforms, volunteers, a cinematographer (Matthew Thomson, pictured) and actors (Kevin Driscoll and son Kellen, pictured).

Joshua's creativity and determination reflect the NAPA can-do spirit, as well as the Whadif way. We wish him - and all of our filmmakers - a successful shoot, speedy edits and a stunning final product.

Want to submit a video too? Check out the project page.

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Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines! Because we're racing to the finish line in the NAPA Auto Parts project beginning this week.

We're accepting rough cut video submissions until Monday, May 19th. If you want to get your slice of the $46,000 up for grabs in the video phase, check out the project page and get started!

http://whadif.com/NAPA/

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Marines reacting to Disney's Frozen. Just soak it in.

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From a simpler, less digital, less cloud-i-fied time when all of your video lived on shelves.

Hollis Brown Thornton

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We did it! Our first Story Board phase.

We couldn't be more proud of our community. The story board phase for NAPA Auto Parts was a success!

Each of the 10 winning concepts was represented with at least one board. Most received 2 or more. "A Father's Legacy", which was the top concept submission, received 7 boards! We also received 3 "Renegade" submissions with totally new concepts.

We're in the process of testing all of the submissions to see which ones resonate with NAPA's target audience the most. And we'll be back to share the results and invite the Whadif community to submit their rough cut videos very soon!

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A Whadif Story

I was introduced to the WhadIf concept over a fire pit in an extremely close friend’s backyard. Of course, the man introducing me to the idea was our esteemed design director. Though I barely knew him at the time, I was captivated by the ideas being put forth by this pleasantly bearded fellow. I understood at once that what he was proposing was big. Upon meeting the founder and the rest of the (unbelievable) team, I knew it would succeed.

In Los Angeles I had learned while working at MediaMax Online that to succeed on the web your company needs to be a bridge. Be neither the creator nor the receiver, be what connects the creator and the receiver. It’s profoundly simple to understand. I am passionate about Whadif because it is not just a bridge, it is an airport. Whadif is connecting brands with data, data with content, users with brands, and so on. This marriage of Big Data and Big Creative will change the creative process.

I only truly enjoy work that is meaningful. And our work means a lot to my industry. Clients will no longer be worried that their content will not connect because we have the data to prove it will connect. Creatives will be rewarded for great ideas even if their idea is not the final piece of content. Everyone wins. And that’s why I am proud, nay elated, to call myself a Whadifer.