a creative brief for a real campaign

Last week I wrote my first creative brief for a real print and radio ad campaign. I've done a couple briefs for little projects, but this is the first one that will actually lead to ads in radio and print. And, best of all, it was for NewPoint, the renewable energy company.

On Friday, I got to participate in the first internal for the campaign. That's the meeting where creatives present all their initial concepting. I can't even imagine being on the creative side of that meeting, presenting all these ideas only to see most of them trashed. But there were lots of great ideas, so I'm sure the ads will turn out well. We've got another internal tomorrow, so it'll be interesting to see how the ads have developed.

So, if you live in Austin or Houston, start listening and looking for NewPoint ads around mid-December.

Thrill Me

While I'm on the topic of musicals...

I went to the Uptown Players production of "Thrill Me: The Leopold and Loeb Story" Saturday night not knowing what to expect. I'd studied "the thrill killers" in a psychology class in college and couldn't imagine what a musical about them might be like (in 1924, they killed a 14 year old boy for no reason). But I'd read the rave reviews of the Off-Broadway production and didn't want to miss my chance to see the show.

The show is really not about the crime so much as it's about the relationship between the killers, Nathan and Richard. Richard is the type of guy who can get just about anyone to do whatever he wants. Nathan describes his seductive personality in what is, perhaps, the best song of the show, "Everybody Wants Richard." Nathan seems to be a victim of Richard's charm. And, it's this relationship that makes the show so engaging.

The music is beautiful and completely haunting. It's relatively simple, with only two vocalists and a piano, but it's really been sticking with me a lot more than most musicals I've seen. "Everybody Wants Richard," "Nothing Like a Fire," and "Thrill Me" are my personal favorites.

Generally, when I see a musical I like, I get the cd and listen over and over again, singing along most of the time. As I watched this show, however, I found it hard to imagine repeatedly listening and singing along with songs based on the true story of two killers. But the music was so good, I couldn't leave the theatre without buying a copy. There's one song, "Plan," that I usually skip; it discusses the crime in more depth than I really care to think about. "Roadster," the song during which Nathan lures the victim to his car is perhaps even more haunting, but too good to skip everytime.

My last entry was about the failure of combining Nick Hornby with musical theatre, but this was an even more unlikely combination and it worked splendidly. It's truly amazing what talented artists can do with what seems like dreadful material.

High Fidelity musical

As most people who read this blog already know, I really enjoy theatre, especially musicals. Some of you also know that I was a huge fan of the book High Fidelity.

When I heard a while back that High Fidelity was being adapted for Broadway, I didn't know what to think of it. I've read plenty of books that have been made into movies; that can go either way. But have never seen a musical that was based on a book that I read, with the exception of Jekyll and Hyde. Jekyll and Hyde worked largely, because there was so little correlation between the musical and the original text, but I knew that wouldn't be the case for High Fidelity.

Today, I found the show's website and saw a music video that they're using for promotion. I laughed... but not in a good way. One of my favorite things about musicals is how everything is ridiculously over-the-top and cheesy. But when they do that with material I already like, it just makes me cringe.

The video did one thing for me. It helped me to understand something I've never quite grasped: why some people don't like musicals.

Fertilizer

Maybe I shouldn't admit it in such a public forum, but I was really disappointed when I was assigned to our new fertilizer client. Not only did it sound terribly boring, but it was hard for a treehugger like me to justify working for a client that produces chemicals for mass distribution and probably causes all kinds of pollution.

But I recently learned a lot more about the company. It's a huge company, and I don't know what all they do, but the part of the company that I work with is in a division of the industry known as controlled-release fertilizer (CRF). That means that their fertilizer products have a coating to prevent them from releasing their chemicals all at once. CRF requires fewer application (that means it requires less fuel) and produces less runoff. Increased environmental awareness and legislation actually drives demand for CRF, instead of reducing it.

So, I'm at peace with my job again. Yea!