Presentations | Hot Tub Crime Machine

Screw your agenda

September 17, 2012 Leave a comment

I write a lot of presentations. Almost entirely using PowerPoint. A big part of being a planner is being able to tell a story. The story of the brand, the story of consumer, the story of the strategy we need to create against, the story of the strategy and why the work you are about to see is the best way to address the consumer problem/challenge.

I usually start out by talking about the problem that we are trying to solve. I make sure that we’re all on the same page regarding what we are supposed to be working against. Read more of this post

Filed under Account Planning, advertising, Presentations Tagged with Account Planning, advertising, Clients, planning, PowerPoint, presentation, Presentations, Strategy

The Intersection of Strategy and Design

June 5, 2012 Leave a comment

I recently had the privilege of presenting at the Big Design Conference in Addison, Texas with my colleague Tim Parcell. Since it was a design/UX focused event we decided to present on the way that we partner together to make the work better. We showed our different POVs on user wants/needs – mine, as a planner/strategist, tends to focus more on emotional needs, attitudes, and feelings. Tim, as an experience designer, tends to concentrate more on rational and functional needs and tasks to be completed.

We talked about the need to build better experiences for our customers and the crowded marketplace full of distractions and commodity products that makes the job of the advertiser considerably more difficult than it was in Don Draper‘s day.

And we talked about ways that designers can bring a strategic point of view to their work, whether it’s at an agency, or in-house on the client side.

Here’s the presentation we gave, I hope you enjoy it:

And for those of you who don’t like slide decks, one of the attendees live-sketched the presentation and shared her sketch with us:

Filed under Account Planning, advertising, Conferences, Presentations Tagged with Account Planning, advertising, Big Design, Big Design Conference, conferences, Free Scribbles, planning, Strategy, Tim Parcell

Inspirational quotes from PSFK 2012

April 9, 2012 14 Comments

Looking back over my notes from this year’s PSFK conference I’m not struck by as many obvious themes as last year. While the big overarching themes of creativity, inspiration, and entrepreneurship are there, the collection of speakers felt a little more random. Not to say there weren’t some great speakers (I’ll post my favorites as soon as they are available), but they didn’t feel as connected this year.

So until I get the videos, here are some quotes that jumped out at me from the day (they are pretty close to verbatim, but I can only write so fast):

“It’s hard to have original ideas when you are surrounded by people who all have the same experiences as you,” – Jonathan Harris, Cowbird
“I don’t open at 7:30am because I don’t like getting up early. And I don’t sell sandwiches because I don’t want the conversation to be about mustard,” – Todd Carmichael, La Colombe Torrefaction
“All technology extends a pre-existing urge that is already within us,” – Marshall McLuhan (no, he wasn’t at PSFK, someone had this quote in a presentation)
“People are at their best when they create,” – Georg Petschnigg, FiftyThree
“Don’t ever give into bad design. Be the dumbest person in the room. If you’re not helping get out. Be nice,” – Simon Collins, Parsons New School of Design
“If I find myself complaining about something over and over again, I do something about it or let it go,” – Tina Roth-Eisenberg, @swissmiss
“The best way to complain is to make things,” – LCD Soundsystem (also not in attendance, but the quote was used in a presentation)
“Do less, be more,” – Shantell Martin
“Valuable stories are ones that contain teachable moments, ” – Jonathan Harris, Cowbird
“To understand is to perceive patterns,” – Isaiah Berlin (used in a presentation)
“We’ve lost the meaning of the word ‘passion,'” – Todd Carmichael, La Colombe Torrefaction
“If your business plan is to be Steve Jobs, get a backup plan,” – Todd Carmichael, La Colombe Torrefaction
“Sometimes it’s not filling the balloon with helium but cutting off the sandbags that gets you aloft,” Clay Shirky, NYU ITP

I hope that you got some inspiration from these and if you noted any quotes you loved from the day, share them in the comments section below.

Filed under Account Planning, advertising, brands, Conferences, Presentations Tagged with advertising, brands, Clay Shirky, conferences, cowbird, georg petschnigg, Isaiah Berlin, Jonathan Harris, la colombe, LCD Soundsystem, Marshall McLuhan, NYU ITP, planning, psfk, shantell martin, Simon Collins, social media, Steve Jobs, Strategy, swissmiss, technology, tina roth-eisenberg, todd carmichael, trends

Want more Ezra?

February 8, 2012 Leave a comment

If you love what you read here and on Twitter, and want to see me speak live, I’ll be presenting at the Big (D)esign conference in Addison, Texas with my colleague Tim Parcell. We hope to see you there!

Session: Defining the New Partnership

Speaker: Ezra Englebardt
Speaker: Timothy Parcell

Track: Strategy

Day: Friday, June 1st, 2012

Time: 3:00pm

Length: 1 hour

For years, Art and Copy ruled the roost in the worlds of advertising and design. But as brand interactions shift from passive to active experiences, the way we connect to customers requires a new partnership. Sapientnitro believes that Brand Strategists and Experience Designers play an integral role in delivering the work that breaks through the noise.

This new partnership is critical during the initial stages of client engagement (discovery, defining) through completion (designing, developing, deploying). Whether we’re redesigning lenscrafters.com or building interactive menu boards for Dunkin’ Donuts, a strong partnership between strategy and experience design is at the foundation of all our work.

What You Will Learn:

How these two disciplines can partner together to deliver a better end result

How to get involved in the process/concepting sooner

How to stay involved longer and actually build things

How to position yourself, and this new partnership, within your company/agency

Filed under Account Planning, advertising, Conferences, Presentations Tagged with Account Planning, advertising, Advertising and Marketing, brands, conferences, planning, Strategy, trends

PSFK 2011 Conference Wrap-Up.

May 26, 2011 2 Comments

I finally presented my deck from the PSFK conference to the Planning department at work, so here it is for mass consumption:

I need to give a BIG thanks to Vanessa Carney and Avin Narasimhan for sharing notes with me (I lost my notebook after the conference). Without your notes and subsequent blogs posts I definitely wouldn’t have remembered half this stuff. And of course, a big thank you to all the speakers, presenters, and the staff at PSFK who made this all possible.

PSFK Conference 2011 (hottubcrimemachine.com)
Two of my Favorites from the PSFK Conference. (hottubcrimemachine.com)

Filed under Account Planning, advertising, Conferences, Mobile-Social, Presentations, Technology Tagged with Aaron Dignan, advertising, brands, conferences, creativity, culture, Joe Gebbia, justin gignac, kickstarter, Microsoft Tag, mobile tagging, planning, psfk, qr code, roomba, Strategy, technology, trends

[UPDATED] THREE of my Favorites from the PSFK Conference.

May 5, 2011 1 Comment

I know that I promised you my presentation from the PSFK conference but it hasn’t been shown to my department yet, so you have to wait. But I do want to share the videos of my ~~two~~ THREE favorite sessions of the day.

The first is Joe Gebbia, co-founder of Airbnb.com. His story of creativity, ingenuity and determination (to not become homeless) is truly inspiring.

The second is from Aaron Dignan, founding partner at Undercurrent. His presentation, entitled “Why the future of work is play” is a great breakdown of the future of how we learn and improve our skills, as well as a critique of other so-called “games.”

The third was just released the other day, hence the update. Justin Gignac, a recovering art director, entrepreneur, innovator and all around awesome guy talks about his creative process and includes great advice like “Don’t be an asshole.”

I’ll share my takeaways from the conference soon, I promise.

PSFK Conference 2011 (hottubcrimemachine.com)

Filed under Account Planning, advertising, brands, Conferences, Games, Presentations, Trends, videos Tagged with Aaron Dignan, Account Planning, advertising, AirBnB, brands, Game mechanics, games, Joe Gebbia, psfk, social media, Strategy, technology, Undercurrent, video

PSFK Conference 2011

April 6, 2011 2 Comments

This Friday I’ll be at the 2011 PSFK conference in NYC. As you may recall, I love conferences. But this one has especially won me over. Aside from the amazing line-up of speakers and topics, check out the agenda below:

FINAL AGENDA

9am Doors Open, Breakfast Served
9.30 Opening Remarks – With host and PSFK founder Piers Fawkes
9.40 Yancey Strickler, Kickstarter – Funding Creativity with Kickstarter
10.10 What’s Next? A Panel On The Future – Ayesha Khanna, Hybrid Reality Institute; Greg Lindsay, Journalist; Allison Mooney, Google; Katherine Moriwaki; Parsons The New School For Design; Moderated by Scott Lachut, PSFK
10.50 Coffee & More Coffee
11.20 Ben Lerer, Thrillist – Bridging Content + Commerce… In Style
11.50 Joe Gebbia, Airbnb.com – From Moleskine to Marketplace
12.10 Aaron Dignan, Undercurrent – Why The Future Of Work Is Play
12.30 Lunch & Conversation – A Conversation At Lunch Sponsored by Microsoft Tag
1.00 John Puterbaugh, Nellymoser – Adventures In Mobile Tagging
1.15 Future of Mobile Tagging Panel – Patrick Donnelly, QR Arts; Roger Marquis, 2D Barcode Strategy; Carlos Lamadrid, Woman’s Day Magazine; Robin Lanahan, Microsoft Tag. Moderated by Piers Fawkes, PSFK
1.45 Afternoon Talks Begin
1.50 Daniel Cherry III & Theresa Tran, The New York Cosmos – The New York Cosmos: Doing It Our Way
2.10 Eoin Billings & Duncan Jackson, Billings Jackson Design – Industrial Design: ID For The City
2.30 Rachel Sterne, City of New York – City As A Platform
2.50 Coffee & Cookies
3.10. Post-Good? A Panel On Responsible Creativity & Culture – Jill Fehrenbacher, Inhabitat; John Gerzema, Young & Rubicam; Phil Patton, Author; Timo Rissanen, Parsons The New School For Design. Moderated by Scott Lachut, PSFK
3.40 Justin Gignac – Doin’ It and Doin’ It and Doin’ It Well
4.00 John Bielenberg, COMMON – What Happens Next?
4.30 Closing Remarks – By PSFK founder Piers Fawkes
4.45 Screening of ‘Senna’ – Introduced by director Asif Kapadia
6.30 PSFK CONFERENCE NYC Afterparty Sponsored by Land Rover – At the Manhattan Classic Car Club, 250 Hudson Street (just north of Canal)

Do you see what I see? Almost every presentation is only 30 minutes long. Perfect for my ADD and also ensuring that I maximize my information intake. I only wish that Mitch Polatin could be there to experience it with me.

I’ll create a presentation on all the awesomeness of the conference and post it here sometime in the next week.

PSFK’s Future of Mobile Tagging (core77.com)

Filed under Account Planning, advertising, brands, Conferences, Mobile-Social, Presentations, social media, Technology, Trends Tagged with Account Planning, advertising, apps, Asif Kapadia, Ben Lerer, brands, ecommerce, facebook, foursquare, Greg Lindsay, John Puterbaugh, kickstarter, location-based, Microsoft Tag, mobile-social, Parsons The New School For Design, Piers Fawkes, psfk, PSFK conference, Senna, social media, Strategy, technology, Twitter, video

My Intro to Advertising Presentation @ Howard University

October 25, 2010 3 Comments

Recently I was given the privilege of speaking to an “Intro to Advertising” class at Howard University. My first thought was that I would just go in and wing it. Play a couple agency reels, show off some cool work and then take questions. Two days before the presentation it dawned on me that college undergrads can be notoriously quiet when it comes to asking questions of a guest speaker, especially at a 9am class on Monday morning.

Hot Tub Crime Machine

Screw your agenda

The Intersection of Strategy and Design

Want more Ezra?

Session: Defining the New Partnership

What You Will Learn:

My Intro to Advertising Presentation @ Howard University

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