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Bryan Boettger is a Principle/Creative Buddy at The Buddy Group, an interactive creative agency. He oversees The Buddy Group's San Francisco office and works behind the scenes with national ad agencies to push the creative limits of interactive. He also believes strongly in the number six thus his monthly articles titled "List of Six." You can Buddy Up with Bryan at bryan@thebuddygroup.com.

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A Little Less Oedipus and a Little More Caligula

Written on
January 23rd 2006
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by Bryan Boettger  |
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It’s amazing how easy it is to find ourselves completely mired and buried in a subject until that’s all we allow ourselves to intellectually consume.

But, as online and interactive experts we need to rage against the dying of our offline life. Like any successful business or sector, it’s just so easy to focus on solely the opportunities, ground-breaks and innovations in the industry. As Creatives, we believe surrounding ourselves with subservient chickens and Chuck Norris facts is enough inspiration to give our clients amazing, inventive creative.

The problem is it’s just not true, especially when you consider the trendiest word of the last year: convergence. Look at television and the web. People are still heralding the coming-soon convergence of the two in WebTV. News flash — It’s not soon to come, it’s already here. It’s not happening on your television set, it’s happening on your computer screen. Lord help us if we don’t know the hottest television shows, the trends in programming, recent television writer’s guild gripes and et al when brainstorming interactive video programming.

Many people already get this and they are the ones succeeding in gaining audience share, sales, and accolades. Tobin Trevarthan, a VP at AOL in San Francisco, was telling me over lunch about a pitch his group made to one of their clients last month. Yes, it was using an interactive presentation, but the presentation was based off an old-school children’s memory book (you know, the one your mom put that first lock of hair in). The pitch told the life story of a girl through a video, audio and graphical memory book in interactive format. The presentation illustrated how that girl’s life — from birth to parenthood — progressed more fully through interaction with AOL and the client. The presentation was intuitive yet inventive — and it worked.

So let’s pause a moment. Take a deep breath. Look around.

But, let’s not just do it once. We do ourselves damage and restrict creativity when we don’t take time, every day, to step outside of the interactive and realize there is as much to learn from print, television, radio and, yes, unwired people.

Now it’s time for my obligatory allegory: Just this week I went to my favorite local noodle shop and was talking to the owner about how business was going for her. She responded with a complacent “okay” to which I asked if she had done any marketing like fliers or postcards locally. Her response: “Here’s the thing, Bryan (yes, she always remembers my name from the ONE time I mentioned it to her), there’s just so much stuff out there that everyone is being bombarded with. Fliers in every windshield and handed out at every corner, it’s just too much and people don’t pay attention anymore. The best way to help my business is through word of mouth.”



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