Creativity doesn’t happen in a vacuum, but I bet sometimes creative directors and copy writers wished it would, like when a project forces them together with someone who’s not exactly like-minded.

This week’s DMNews features a Q&A on the creative process with Gary Scheiner, who is executive creative director at TBWA/Worldhealth and director of the John Caples International Awards. One comment that didn’t make it into the article was about how Scheiner is careful not hire “assholes.”

“I spend way too much time away from my wife and kids. I don’t want to spend it with people who piss me off,” he said.

His sentiment is probably shared by many. CNN reports that a recent MSN Zogby data poll shows 20% of workers say their co-workers have at least one habit that drives them crazy. According to the poll, 15% of workers find their co-workers’ constant complaining annoying and 13% are frustrated by colleagues passing off work. Other irritants included gossip, talking too much and eating smelly food.

-Chantal Todé

Times are hard, budgets are tight, yet the storied Cannes thoroughfare La Croisette is throbbing with DM creatives (among those of other channel persuasions) hotly debating the work up for contention.

The results are out for the Direct and Promo Lions; JWT Mumbai snapped up the former for the Times of India Newspaper entry “Lead India,” and New York’s BBDO triumphed in the latter for the HBO entry titled Voyeur Integrated Campaign. The Cyber Lions winners will be announced on Thursday.

Meanwhile, for local flavor, I highly recommend Matt Shirtcliffe’s blog. A judge at Cannes this year, Matt is the executive creative director of Proximity Canada – and a truly splendid fellow. Yes, the entries are funny, but there’s also some great insight about the state of creativity in various markets.

At this morning’s Rock the Digital World summit, hosted by Avenue A | Razorfish and its clients, I got a chance to see what Coors Brewing Company is up to in its marketing efforts. CMO Andy England gave a presentation spelling out how the brand has evolved over the past few years and made some observations as to how TV and digital advertising is changing.

One interesting point England made was that with one exception, there is no “appointment TV” anymore, meaning with the onslaught of DVRs, there are very few occasions to reschedule personal plans to be sure to catch a program live. The one exception, namely with Coors’s young male target demographic, is live sports. Therefore, the value of those time slots goes up for advertisers.

Coors has numerous campaigns running simultaneously including cable, banner, TV, social networking and viral video. They even have a female-targeted online campaign boasting that Coors Light has only 102 calories. Coors is also the official beer of the NFL and NASCAR.

The viral video on YouTube, which featured a 20-something man pouring the perfect glass of beer from unlikely heights can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSQD8Lk3ies. England noted that it had nearly 200,000 hits. A “response” video posted by a Coors Light fan has garnered over 63,000 hits: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jfwnFRQfjE&feature=related.

He also went on to say that you shouldn’t assume that your offline work doesn’t lead to online activity. Coors created numerous television ads integrating old footage of pro football coaches during press conferences spliced to look as if they’re answering questions about the beer. The most popular was with Jim Mora, former coach of the Indianapolis Colts which has received 495,000 hits on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdUr5hF0yGc. Amazingly, a college student’s response video using Mike Gundy, coach of the Oklahoma State Cowboys, has gotten 528,000 hits, far surpassing Coors’s own advertisement: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyTQUWEKx0o&feature=related.

England ended by saying that Draftfcb currently does Coors’s offline marketing, but wonders if an evolution toward “one-stop shop” agencies is coming soon.

About 1,000 people crammed into a function room at the Sheraton New York and Towers today for Avenue A | Razorfish’s 8th annual client summit. The summit’s theme was “rock the digital world” and that morning’s hot topic was the power of social media.

Charlene Li, VP and principal analyst for Forrester Research, touched upon a number of recent social media success stories including Tampax and Always’ girl power site, Beinggirl.com. The content-rich Web site has since launched in dozens of countries and assisted the brand in approaching a somewhat awkward subject for many young teens.

A post on the USA site by “cutieofnc” reads, “I am happy the marketing agent helped create this website it helps girls with there [sic] problems and periods and girl problems girls need the advice!”

Enough said.

Megan O’Connor, senior manager of internet marketing for Levi’s, later took the stage to talk about the company’s recent success with its Project 501 Design Challenge. The contest launched during an episode of “Project Runway.” The winner–a designer named “jehan”–will have his/her design (a jean jacket) produced and sold on levi.com. According to O’Connor, the contest helped the San Francisco-based jeans company tap into its target market: women ages 18-25.

The line up for day two of the summit includes presentations from the Coors Brewing Company, CNN and Microsoft.

I drove to Last week’s Direct Media Client Conference and Co-op conference in White Plains from my apartment in Brooklyn. I had printed out directions the night before, checked the route on a map, and I thought I was ready. Five blocks from my house, I missed a street sign and a simple right turn and ended up having to break the world land speed record to make it to the opening session on time.
Trying to get back home, I ditched my carefully researched directions, asked the doorman how he would get to the BQE, and decided to wing it from there.
Why did I just tell you a story about my driving incompetence? Because it perfectly high-lights some of the main lessons of the conference’s “How to Beat Your Control” session on circ marketing.
Paul Goldberg of PJ Promotions and Caroline Zimmerman of The Zimmerman Agency led the session, with interactive portions and a bevy of helpful tips. A selection from their top ten (and how they can be applied to other life decisions, like driving):
1) Don’t be a control freak: don’t have your mind made up in advance, and be open to new ideas. When it comes to controls in circ marketing, this means you have to be willing to give up that bright purple envelope or that funny tagline if it ends up looking horrible or not meshing with the rest of the package. Sure, you may have dreamed of it for weeks, but if it doesn’t work, it just doesn’t.
In the case of my driving, this means that, even when your directions say to take a right, if the right turn leads you into the bowels of Brooklyn instead of to the BQE, you have to give up the ghost and pull an illegal U-turn, even if it means going against the map you vowed to follow.
2) Double your chances for a winner: Always test two envelopes for every new package; make sure they are different concepts. Pretty straightforward for marketing. The driving parallel: trust your car-owning friend when he says there is a completely different way to reach the BQE; print both a map and written directions; try a different way home.
3) Put your package on a diet: Analyze the weak points of your package. Do LESS of it. For a marketer, this can mean anything, from nixing a size or color that is simply not going over well, to re-wording or cutting an unclear offer. For me, this means ditching the back road “shortcuts” that get you lost over and over again. It may also mean ditching a certain online mapping tool, or maybe it means I just shouldn’t drive anywhere. Ever.
Other tips for beating your control that I couldn’t think of a driving parallel for:
4) DO be a control freak: Know what you want and why.
5) Open the vault and back up the truck: Dish out old controls, new controls, past losers, etc. Don’t hold back on anything that might be important.
6) Build a better offer at no extra cost: Ask your creative team for ideas.
7) Put your package on steroids: Identify the “it” that drives the control. Do MORE of it.
Look for buried treasure: Look for the undeveloped pearl of an idea in your control, and build creative around it.
9) Save swipe — it’s better than a college degree: Save more than competitive samples; save good mail.
10) Use the sledgehammer technique and go for broke: The big wins come from taking big chances. Identify a daring concept that doesn’t dominate the current control.
And a bonus from Goldberg, “‘Free’ is still the strongest word in the English language when it comes to DM.” Now if only they would apply that concept to gas prices.

As I checked out the booths at the Direct Marketing Association’s Insert Media Day last week with my colleagues Cara and Sharon, the three of us pounced on the insert samples on each table. “This is what we’re talking about!” we kept saying to each other, as we once again wondered aloud why we don’t have more insert specialists and marketers sending us the fruits of their labor. All the great, varied inserts laid out in front of us was a tantalizing taste of work we’d love to see more of.

So let this be a call to action: We know there’s some great work out there, whether it’s a one-off statement insert or the fruits of a sophisticated, long-term marketing partnership with a cataloger. We want to see it! While we of course would like to be able to write about what we receive, we’re happy to (grudgingly) keep things just to ourselves if you request it. Why do we want to see work we can’t write about? It helps us see some of the trends in creative and offers that are going on.

Our mailing address is 114 W. 26th St. New York, NY 10001. Make our day, and send inserts our way!

Just a heads-up for our readers: I will be attending the National Trade Circulation Foundation Inc. (NTCFI) luncheon meeting on Wednesday, Feb. 6. If you’re attending too, I’d love to meet you,* so please e-mail me beforehand or find me there (I’ll be the one wearing the press badge).
DMNews is working to ramp up its circulation coverage, so please tell me what’s on your mind, what you’d like to see in the paper and where I should look for that next big scoop.

*I would also love to meet you if you’re not attending; feel free to send an e-mail or call either way.

Ad:tech is as crowded as last year, with tightly packed hallways and show floors at the Hilton New York. The mood is like other ad:Techs as people look once again to the future of advertising, this time in 3.0 versions. Television has been on the lips of many speakers and attendees, as firms like Google and NBC face the future of consumer viewing. Despite asking the questions, no one really seems to have the answers about the future of TV. If NBC were left in charge, consumers would find a new alternative to the TV set and not be so fragmented. If Google were left in charge, consumers will view across devices, with every step being measured. It seems like a new model needs to the way to look to TV 3.0. At ad:Tech San Francisco last April, Joost, the promising new online television network that combines big networks with small productions endlessly and brings it all to consumers with relevant advertising, spoke at a keynote and seemed to say more about the future of advertising on TV than I heard today.

However today did ring in a lot in the way of social advertising as Windows Live Hotmail announced a new application and Facebook, announced Facebook Ads, where businesses can create their own ad pages. Sounds like the latest in advertising is not on TV.

-Dianna Dilworth

Sunday October 14: Day one at the DMNews booth at DMA07.

Our conversations are being accompanied by the strains of the bagpipe music coming from the entrance to the exhibit hall. The mood is definitely reminiscent of a high school reunion, if your high school reunion hosted a few dozen blue-shirted handymen wheeling around carts of technical equipment, cleaning supplies, and duct tape.
There were, of course, plenty of opportunities for people to catch up with one another last night, with the assorted parties that were peppered around Chicago. I was at the DMEF dinner, sitting with the recipient of the corporate leadership award, Draftfcb. Howard Draft accepted the award on behalf of his agency, and spoke compellingly about the responsibility that he and his peers had to support educational initiatives and ensure that the talent pipeline that was flowing into the industry was not going to dry up.
While that was a worthy part of the evening, and the steak was delicious, the best part of the event was when Jon Roska of Roska Direct, kicked off the auction. As Matt Besler from Experian just now pointed out to me, it’s not that often that you’re sitting at an industry dinner and some guy gets onto the mic and starts hitting the attendees up for money. But with fantastic humor and energy, Roska gleefully shamed everyone into raising $500,000.
Of course, the competition was amusing, and while I won’t name names, I did hear a few instances of, “OK, they just pledged $5,000, so we’d better pledge $10,000.”
Just when the action was beginning to dry Knowledgebase Marketing ponied up $20,000, if the room could match it. Roska did so admirably.
There were some touching memorials made too, as well as enough pledges made in the name of Tim Litle’s wife (Litle received the Edward N. Mayer Educational Leadership Award) to make him feel like something of a second fiddle on his own special night. The video celebrating his work redressed that balance, and I think everyone attending felt that they were a little bit blessed to be in his presence. My colleague Chantal wrote more about this, also on our blog.
Foundation president Terri Bartlett rightly earned accolades for the evening, and while I failed quite spectacularly to locate any of the other parties happening afterwards, I turned in feeling like I’d already had as much fun as a person needed for one night.

- Posted by Elly Trickett

Chicago — Tim Litle, chairman and founder of Litle & Co. may have been the man of the evening at the Direct Marketing Education Foundation’s annual awards dinner and auction, held here Saturday, but his wife Joan got her fair share of attention, too.
During the program and scholarship auction, several people pledged donations in the names of their spouses. After one attendee made his donation in the name of Joan Litle, several others followed suit. Not to be outdone, during his acceptance speech for the 2007 DMEF Edward N. Mayer Jr. Award for Educational Leadership, Litle pledged $100,000 to the DMEF’s Litle Fund for a new pilot program and in the name of his wife.
The new program is intended to create a way for the DMEF to tap into donations made by college alumni to their alma maters and influence the direct marketing curriculum offered by schools.
Pledges for the program and scholarship auction exceeded the evening’s goal of $150,000 for a total of $163,000, not counting Litle’s donation.
During the live auction, the bidding was lively as representatives from many leading direct marketing firms competed for a trip to Machu Picchu and a day as a fighter pilot, among other prizes.
Also being honored Saturday night was Draftfcb, which received the 2007 DMEF Corporate Leadership Award.

–Posted by Chantal Todé