Yes I watched Gossip Girl tonight. So what.

But panic not, since this post is not about the lives of fictional 17-year-old WASP Upper East Siders who behave, talk and think like 3o year olds.
It's just a segway to get into the new Yeah Yeah Yeahs album. Which I really liked. A mix between Siouxie (who Karen O has always emulated) and Blondie. That's what I like about the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, every album they've made has been so different from the other, and still good. The 1st one being post-punk, the 2nd one more acoustic and then this one being an homage to new wave.
But, parade your single in Gossip Girl? Really?
I've never had a problem with popular TV shows taking their soundtrack from good bands. The OC did it, Gossip Girl is doing it and many other shows have done it. I actually think it's great that more people out there are getting some good music from their TV shows. Now, that's one thing, there's a music supervisor, they pick your track, pay royalties, done.
At the end of today's episode the Yeah Yeah Yeah's newest single was playing in the back, and instead of cutting to titles we got to see a mini-ad telling us the music was provided by the mentioned band and the album was available. This is the Yeah Yeah Yeah's we're talking about. Not the Jonas Brothers. It's supposed to be punk. Not teen pop.

If bands are brands and you have to be careful what you surround your brand with, because it becomes part of it, this is definitely something to look out for.

This is only another sign that the term indie was not only manufactured but in fact has not existed in 20 years.

Sven.

Lo de ayer ya ni lo comentamos. 3-1 contra Honduras. Qué pena.

Pero me da más pena es que en México seguimos pensando que el técnico siempre tiene la culpa de lo mal que juega la selección. Vivimos en un engaño. ¿Nunca se han preguntado que puede ser culpa de un sistema que práctica la FMF y la prensa deportiva en México? Ésta última, que se dedica a inflar a jugadores mediocres. Y los equipos que dedican a pagarle demasiado a jugadores mediocres.

El resultado de un sistema mediocre es un equipo mediocre.

Nery Castillo es el ejemplo perfecto de un jugador que no se merece llevar la camiseta de la selección. Nunca estuve de acuerdo con lo que hacía Hugo cuando dirigía al Tri, pero ahora entiendo porqué estuvo peleado tanto tiempo con Nery y le costó tanto trabajo llamarlo. Hugo será muchas cosas, pero también es una persona que cree, practica y exige disciplina, y Nery no la tiene. Ayer entró en el segundo tiempo a cometer faltas, a pelearse con los Hondureños y hasta con sus propios compañeros. No pasa el balón a tiempo, todo lo quiere hacer solo. Este tipo no se merece la verde.
Así como Nery, muchos jugadores mexicanos viven en el conformismo y en la mediocridad porque al pensar que en México son héroes, están calificados para medirse ante cualquiera a nivel internacional. El caso de Omar Bravo, que llegó a España a hacer el ridículo para que luego lo regresaran con laureles a México, y seguramente más caro. Rafa Márquez, el Gran Capitán, que pierde la cabeza en los juegos más importantes. Leandro, que nadie sabe qué hace en la selección.
México ha mejorado en la exportación de jugadores. Márquez, Giovanni, Salcido y Vela son sólo algunos. Pero nos falta. Nos falta que nuestros jugadores se midan con equipos competitivos a nivel de liga, que "sufran" un poco y se vayan ganando un sueldo cada vez más alto.
Francia no ganó la copa del mundo hasta que logró tener un equipo lleno de jugadores que eran estrellas en las ligas más importantes de Europa (España, Italia, Inglaterra). ¿Cuánto más vamos a esperar para aprender la lección?

Aguirre.

Aguirre me gusta, siempre he dicho que la selección nunca ha vuelto a jugar el futbol que jugó con él. Tal vez era el equipo o las circunstancias. Pero el caso es que el entrenador importa. Importa la estrategia e importa la mentalidad. Ha quienes dicen que México acaba de dejar ir a uno de los diez mejores entrenadores el mundo (Sven), pero tal vez eso sea un hecho subjetivo de pensar que no todos los entrenadores están hechos para todos los equipos.
Aguirre es mexicano, ha lidiado con la selección mexicana, ha lididado con equipos mexicanos, sabe manejar al futbolista mexicano y viene de tener una carrera en España que seguramente lo ha hecho un mejor técnico. Esperemos que el Vasco cumpla.

The best time for creativity.

A few days ago, one of our professors surprisingly stated that working in advertising is not exciting enough to grab you like it did to him back in the day. I brutally disagree. I think (although it may be a cliché) that this is the most exciting time to work in anything that involves ideas and communication. Call it advertising, branding, content, production, entertainment, digital engagement. Whatever. With the economy being what it is and "consumers" loosing faith in spending, the game just turns more interesting; we have to be smarter about how much we spend in advertising and communications, but we also have tools we didn't have before that enhance messages that go directly to the people we're trying to reach. We have realized that it's not only advertising (what you say) that affects a brand, but the way it behaves (what you do) is as important. Packaging, logos, store displays, retail architecture and design, web design, events, these are all things that are open for creative companies to concept around with. Twenty years ago you made an ad and put it on TV or on a national magazine to reach a small percentage of people inside a much bigger audience. Millions of dollars where unnecesarily spent trying to reach people by the frequency system. Today, nobody wants to spend that much, so we carefully choose the media that's most adequate for the idea and the brand, we make the media part of our communication, it plays a bigger role. So we don't create headlines or TV ads, we create ideas that live anyhwere. Like John Hegarty said when he was here last year: "The best media is the one between someones ears." And today's world enables the use of the mind so much better. You can't get away with writing a great TV ad and walking away like a super-hero anymore. Maybe you'll get an award for it, but you will do a better job when you make that TV ad make sense inside a bigger integrated idea.
It's a more interesting world, more complex, more options, with more chaos and less money. This is the perfect place for a creative mind to work in. I read in Time magazine this morning an interesting article about how with the end of ER this week we close an era in entertainment when big networks with big shows, big ratings and big money ruled. But it opens a door to smaller shows in smaller networks and cable, and this means better quality and filtered content, where your TV options are not only the big names anymore but you have the option of choosing your entertainment by what interests you. Proof of this is not only TiVo, cable and digital TV, but websites like Hulu.
This is the world we are living in today, and it's an exciting time to come up with great ideas for everything that can touch people's hearts and minds. So yes, this is something you can be passionate about.

Hola, hablo español.

Después de haber vivido casi dos años fuera de México y haber escrito este blog completamente en inglés, y después de tomar la decisión de que a partir de este verano me convertiré una vez más en residente de la Gran Ciudad de México, este espacio se convertirá en uno bilingüe. Todavía habrá posts en inglés pero empezaré a incorporar algunos en español y con temas más mexicanos (si, la política es uno de esos temas, ¿qué chiste tendría hablar de México si no hablas de su chiste más grande?)

Por lo pronto, ojalá y gane la selección mañana.

Why CD's matter(ed)

Last Sunday I heard a Depeche Mode song I hadn't heard in years. It was Personal Jesus. Yeah, I know, the typical Depeche Mode song, but nonetheless a good one.
The song triggered a trip down my memories to remember how I got really into the band after buying a CD during a trip to Phoenix when I was about 15 years old (I'm talking about a compilation, the original song was included in "Violator", 1990.)
It got me thinking on how the CD culture, or the album culture, something we are losing if not lost already, was an enhancer of people appreciating and knowing about music. I wonder if generations who start getting into music today will be as musically savvy as past, since they always seem to get a surface glance at bands by downloading only the songs they like and missing out on the album experience.
It got me thinking about how when I listened to the song I instantly thought about that Phoenix trip. Maybe I can't remember when I and where I bought ever album I'd ever bought in my life, but there's not a chance that I could remember at least when I downloaded a certain song.
It got me thinking about how because I bought that album I got into the band and went back and bought their past albums.
I am guilty. Up to this point I have gone mostly digital. I uploaded a large part of my musical collection to my computer and that is now my musical source. But I have to say, the album experience was an essential part of my musical education. And it's something that we cannot afford to loose.

Curious Enough.

I finally went to see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Maybe a coincidence, that same morning I had a breakfast conversation with a friend about how it's fine for some movies to just entertain. Not all of them have to be extremely artistic and not all of them have to be groundbreaking. Some of them can just entertain. Which is the first thing any movie should do anyway.

In that spirit I went to see Benjamin Button, and I enjoyed it. There's an interesting story (about a man living life from old to young) and there's good acting. Some might say it's a bit long, I agree. But the movie keeps the viewer engaged for the most part.

SPOILER ALERT- If you have not seen the movie, stop reading.

Now there's one thing that the movie is missing. A good ending. Or a better one. It actually has that better ending embedded in the film, except that it's not the ending.
Generally a good ending is based on the fact that the pinnacle of the movie has just happened. After that all you need is a resolution, and that can be as quick as Casablanca or as long as The Return of the King.
I think the ending in this film came when the daughter is reading the postcards Benjamin sent after he left. That was the most emotional part of the film. She's reading the birthday cards and you're seeing the images of him traveling around the world. A good resolution after that could have been when he visits Daisy for the last time, narrated by Daisy herself and finally ending with the fact that they found a boys back pack with a book that had her name on it. And we never see him as a little boy. Actually, that's when the movie lost me, those last 10 minutes of seeing him go younger. We know that, we know he's going to die as a baby, we might as well not seen that and end the movie at the pinnacle. With the boy sequences the audience cools down from that emotional moment. You can even feel it inside the movie theater, the way people react by the end and the feeling in the ambient is not the same as when that emotional moment happens.
A good ending is hard to get, and most movies usually have it in there. It's all about editing or knowing when's a good time to stop.

What I learned from Super Bowl 43.

There's a funny thing about the Super Bowl, it's the moment in which everybody seems to like and care about advertising. Not only that, but it's the moment in which everyone turns into an ad critic.
I've never been a die-hard football fan, I used to follow football much more about 8 years ago, but I still watch the Super Bowl every year. The only difference now is that I actually get to see the "famous" commercials, since back in Mexico we don't get to see the same commercials.
This year I went to a Super Bowl party. But it was a non-ad people Super Bowl party, which I thought could be interesting. It was. I could see first-hand how people react to ads. Real people, real ads. No over-analyzing, no judging, no awards, just reactions that take a second, gut reactions, which I think are the ones that count the most.
This is a dangerous thing, to see what people really like, and maybe even disappointing. You realize that they don't like the same stuff ad-people like, and they like the stuff that we would right away condemn.
Last year, the Brandcenter brought the people from the USA Today Ad Meter to speak, we all realized (and they made it clear too) that comedy is mostly what works at a Super Bowl. And animals seem to work pretty good too. Maybe it's the Super Bowl's environment (friends, TV, beer, guacamole) that makes people pay more attention and hence react better to funny stuff. We would say, "it's the same kick in the groin joke", and it is, but funny enough the Ad Meter was topped by an ad featuring, yes, a groin joke, which by the way was consumer generated. Now, I don't really want to get into the whole "shit, consumer generated advertising is better than..." because it's a quick judgement and even the idea of having a contest to make consumer generated ads to go into the Super Bowl came from an agency.
It reminds me of that FedEx commercial that listed the top 10 things you need to have in a Super Bowl commercial, of course kick in the groin and animals where there (bonus points for dancing animals.)
Everyday we break our heads thinking how to make things different, and every time we see something like the stuff that people like in Super Bowl ads we say it's all been done before and that no one wants to see it again. But in the end we find out that people do want to see it again. And here lies a dilemma, and I don't think we should keep doing the same stuff over and over, but then you realize what people like and... well, are we speaking the same language?


Here's that FedEx commercial.