The Pepperspective

During a press conference outside their Nashville headquarters, advertising agency redpepper announced its tribute video in support of National Lost Sock Day.  Tim McMullen, CEO of redpepper told reporters, “Lost socks are an epidemic that have affected a majority of the people on planet Earth.  The physical and emotional toll this takes on us as humans is incomprehensible, and more often than not, these wounds never properly heal.”  redpepper is hoping to encourage others to share their stories in an attempt to cope with the widespread loss in their community.

Manning the streets with a camera and a mission, redpepper interviewed the Nashville area about their experience with lost socks.  McMullen continued,  ”The first step is to raise awareness.  This is a common problem that people need to be talking about in order to fully recover.”  Local lost sock advocate Samara Anderson was happy to share her story with the camera crew, “Finally a company is taking a stand and giving a voice to those lost socks who will never again have one.  Today is a day of celebration.  Remembering the good times, cherishing the memories, and living your life to the fullest— just like your other half would have wanted.”  

It is widely known that Nashville is one of the worst cities in America for lone sock disposal.   When a sock goes missing many opt to throw away its other half.  Here at redpepper we want to put an end to this act of dismissal and celebrate your lone ranger.  ”No one is trying to dismiss your feelings of half emptiness,” McMullen said,”but we do want to remember the good times.  Remember when the three of you gracefully slid across the floor together in your Risky Business Halloween costume?  That is what we want to hear about.”

redpepper is asking its community to participate in the tribute by sponsoring a Vine contest.   Using 6-second Vine videos people are asked to share their memories of their lost partner.  The hashtag #lostsock will be a forum for families and loved ones to band together in unity exclaiming, “Gone, but not forgotten!”  redpepper will select the most creative contributor’s video and make a $100 gift card donation (to them directly) in the name of all lost socks.

A place where creativity thrives and benefits others. This is how we most often describe redpepper. Not only do we believe that everyone is uniquely creative, but we also believe that we can use this creativity to solve business and worldly problems. There’s no better example of putting that mantra to work than through our own hosting of CreateAthon each September.

Now hopefully if you’ve spent any time around redpepper, you’re familiar with CreateAthon, but, if not, make sure to check out the 2011 experience here. CreateAthon is a magical time here at redpepper. One when we close up the regular shop in order to spend 24, ahem, more like 36 solid hours donating our time, talents and marketing services to give back to area underdog nonprofits. There’s no time for anything else during these hours, not even sleep! Only dedication to seeing these deserving nonprofits succeed. And we love every second of it.

That’s why it makes us happy to announce that the 6th Annual CreateAthon event is set for September 20-21, 2012. Better yet, we’re now accepting applications from local nonprofits to become one of the CreateAthon clients this year. To apply, visit our Facebook page, here. But hurry, applications are due by July 6th.

Over the years redpepper has donated more than $450,000 worth of services to help more than 30 non-profits share their stories and effectively market their organizations, enabling them to raise contributions and community support. In efforts to further grow our impact and effectiveness, we are also increasing the muscle behind our own Land of Cause fund. CreateAthon is Land of Cause’s largest event, but after (and before) September, LOC continues the work to raise funds and create marketing tools for deserving nonprofits.

We admit that we have a few superheroes of our own, but we couldn’t have CreateAthon without a full community of superheroes. That includes you. If you’d like to help out by donating supplies (i.e. paper, printing, media space, food, extra hands) for our creative blitz this year, please contact Joni at redpepperland dot com. For any other questions regarding CreateAthon, feel free to give Caroline (at redpepperland dot com) a shout.

There’s a day between the Ides of March and St. Patrick’s Day, an unassuming little box on the calendar that usually gets short shrift in terms of attention.

 As lifelong fans of the underdog, we pinpointed that day (March 16th), gave it its own holiday name (DragonMaid Day), and have now focused an enormous amount of energy to making it a day we’ll never forget. 

Here’s the plan: we’ve divided the whole company into six special task forces, each commissioned to gain major headway on a heretofore secret project by DragonMaid Day. 

Confession time. I’m a foodie and a Travel Channel junkie. And when I’m not marveling at Andrew Richman’s magnanimous, meat masticating “Man vs. Food”, drooling over a deluge of “Diners, Drive-ins & Dives” with Fieri as my “Guy-d”, or blenching at the unflinching bravery of Bizarre Foods’ Andrew Zimmern, I’m riveted to the ardent, bohemian rantings of Anthony Bourdain’s “No Reservations.”

Those who know “No Reservations” know that it is, in simple terms, nothing short of food porn. Which is to say that Anthony, or “Tony” as his crew calls him, travels the globe enjoying the kind of gastronomic experiences about which most folks merely fantasize. And it’s all captured on video, edited, scored and played back for my hedonic, voyeuristic enjoyment in gratuitous sixty-minute segments.

Sure, there are nods to the cultural aspects of the places Tony visits, along with plenty of nods from Tony to himself. Which is part of the show’s appeal. But mostly it’s about the food. Which is probably why the inaugural episode featured the comestible wonders of Paris, France. 

A hundred episodes later, Tony and the crew returned to Paris to find that something strange and wonderful was going on. Change. And not just any change. A change in the way Parisians think about, prepare and consume food. While watching, I couldn’t help but notice how this change is reflective of the shifting way in which we Americans think about, prepare and consume media.

An article in a recent issue of Advertising Age quotes Glenn Murphy, CEO of Gap Inc. as saying he was “disappointed” with marketing efforts for Old Navy, the company’s largest brand.

Later on in the article, Groupon’s CEO was quoted as saying, “…you can’t rely on anyone else to control and maintain your own brand.” This comment was in reference to the Tibetan ads that ran during the most recent Superbowl and the notion that he had placed too much trust in the agency who created the ads.

According to neuroscience, when it comes to making choices and taking action, the unconscious mind is in the driver’s seat. That doesn’t mean that our conscious mind doesn’t matter. Or that we shouldn’t take responsibility for our actions. It just means that by the time we make what we believe to be a conscious decision, a tsunami of activity has already transpired on an unconscious level, and there’s little that can be done to convince us that anything else, right or wrong, is a better idea.

If your biggest goal is to make award-winning advertising content, you’ll never do it.*

Why? For the same reason that you’ll never write a brilliant article by focusing on writing a brilliant article. You’ll end up regurgitating stale ideas in a pretentious way.

But if you want to write an article about, say, how to give good feedback, it might just turn out to be brilliant.

You’ve probably never heard of the Universal Law of Awesomeness, but it goes something like this:  If you want to be awesome at something, there are only two steps you must take.

1.  Learn all the rules.
2.  Play the game better than anyone else.

If your game is advertising, you might be tempted to argue that there aren’t rules to it anymore. Or at least that the good players break those rules all the time.

It’s a seductive argument, and it’s dead wrong. 

In the old days of advertising, one good advertising agency was all it took to create advertising that weighed heavy enough on the hearts and minds of consumers to influence their purchase behavior. These days, it takes a lot more than just a good ad created by one agency to influence consumers. It takes a village, literally.

Here’s one for ya. Your brain’s functional capability is no more developed than that of a newborn baby. Really. A newborn’s brain is as fully formed as an adult’s brain in terms of its ability to absorb and process information. And the implications of this recent discovery are of great consequence to people in the advertising industry.

It’s no secret, the stresses of daily life can, indeed, poke a hole in your happiness tank.

In 1988 recording artist Bobby McFerrin told the world “Don’t Worry, Be Happy. ‘Cause when you worry your face will frown, and that will bring everybody down.”

Fly forward a couple of decades, paying close attention to what whizzes by along the way, and you’ll find plenty of evidence that suggests people got the message. All aboard? Here we go.

“Yeah, it was a good game. What did you think of the Best Buy spot?”
“What Best Buy spot?”
“The one with Ozzy and Justin Bieber.”
“Oh, that was a Best Buy ad? I thought it was stupid.”