A fun short little movie about the brand and design development for the San Francisco chocolate company, TCHO . I love how they chose to represent their brand through the visuals of currency.

SPOILER ALERT: You can always improve on something great!

We’re now in our third year of The Barbarian Group’s collaboration with Kashi. We’re calling this release a refresh rather than a redesign. To clarify, think about the project as a house. When you do a redesign, it’s like tearing down a home to its foundation and starting fresh. That’s not what was needed here, for our foundation was already stable, our website was already successful. Think of this release like remodeling a kitchen, it’s an improvement of what was working, and an optimization of what wasn’t. So we put on our thinking caps and many months later, we’ve surprised ourselves yet again!

The countless improvements to the site are too many to list, but some of our favorites include: a redesigned navigation system, a dynamic footer showing the current community activity, a vastly improved commenting system, a simplified sign up and log in system, an improved look and feel, and of course, a ton of IA and UX refinements. And that’s just what the user see’s. The site is faster, more enjoyable, easier to use, and most importantly, easier to find what you are looking for and more likely to discover things you didn’t know were here. On top of this, we are already working on a number awesome super secret features and updates to be launched soon, so stay tuned for those in the coming months!

We love this client, and we hope you enjoy the site!

Next up in Rick’s ad travels we have Coachella!

So: this is an interesting one. I wrote about sponsorship opportunities at SXSW this year, and we did a partnership with the gang at C3 Presents and Lollapalooza last year for Adobe (I’ll be writing more about Lollapalooza, Austin City Limits and other festivals as they get closer). But Coachella, one does not really think of as an advertising venue. Unlike the other major festivals, Coachella is not “sponsored by” or “powered by” anyone, and the stages have names like “Gobi,” “Mojave” and “Sahara” rather than “intel” or “AT&T.” AEG/Goldenvoice also puts on a bunch of other festivals, and the sponsorship opportunities are notably less in-your-face at Coachella than, say Stagecoach (powered by Toyota, also sponsored by ABC, Bud, Sony, Home Depot and BootBarn) or Bumbershoot (Powered by Samsung). This article from the Creator’s Syndicate sums it up nicely:

It’s this low-key nature of the sponsorships at Coachella, though, that I think give them some interesting potential. State Farm had a very well-received DJ/Mixing booth (air conditioning, of course, helps), and Sony’s Playstation tent was very well-attended. The sponsorship opportunities @ Coachella invite more hands-on participation.

Another factor, I think, that really adds to it is the installation artwork all around Coachella. This is one of Coachella’s unheralded benefits – and they’ve really expanded and enhanced the art in the five years I’ve been going there. There’s an amazing array of ten to twenty mammoth digital, interactive, mechanical and fire-based pieces of art there.

These two factors, I think, give Coachella some potential that no one’s really exploited yet. As I walked around the festival, occasionally my interactive agency guy would come out and I’d envision that no sponsor has really nailed doing something truly awesome at Coachella yet. Maybe not in a tent. Maybe sponsor something awesome – like commission some amazing piece of interactive art. The crowd here is notoriously brand-cynical, of course, but I think taking this approach could be analagous to Benjamin and Johnny’s Branded Utility theory – a brand being a good citizen in the whole enterprise, sponsoring some amazing art that no one else could afford.

The potential, I think, is pretty great. Something like about 150,000 people attend Coachella, and they are almost all in the 18-24 range, disposable cash (otherwise how are they paying $300 a pop for a ticket + camping, etc), and trendy, etc (many of the bands on during the day at Coachella go on to be huge). I don’t know the sponsorship feels of Coachella, though I imagine they’re comparable to the equally-great-potential Lollapalooza. But I’ll bet a financial case can be made.

There’s probably a lot of politicking and cajoling and whatnot that would have to go on to get some truly great brand thing not in a tent on the side, but with the right art, the right client, and the right execution, I would think it’s doable. I think it could be really great, and I’m going to be keeping an eye out for a partner for it. Any volunteers?

I got one of those Pepsi Throwback sodas that was just recently released. It was down right delicious! I like this trend! The packaging leaves something to be desired though. This design looks much nicer I think. Anyway this stuff is definitely worth checking out if you are a regular consumer of cola type sodas.

Awesome article in AdAge from Freddie Laker about the recent Microsoft ads and the internet population’s rapid takedown of the inauthentic premise

Authenticity is an interesting thing. I think the challenge for most brands is that it forces them to take a stand, with the good and the bad. That you have to say “this is what’s good about us, this is what’s bad, it’s a balance, but we think, on the whole, we offer something useful and good.” That’s scary for a lot of people. It puts the end judgement in the consumer’s hands. Which seems scary, except, of course, that it’s already the case. So perhaps it’s best to be more honest about it.

What’s weird to me is that Microsoft has yet to be all like “look. It’s a good OS. Almost everyone uses it. Is it perfect? No. Is it the cheapest? No. But it’s not the most expensive either. It’s workaday. It’s mainstream. It’s a good choice.”

Pfeffer was standing at my desk a few moments ago, eating a box of Sun Maid Raisins. I vaguely recalled having a conversation recently about the Sun Maid Raisin lady, though I now forget who with and why. So I asked to see her out of curiosity.

As it turns out, she looks a lot like Pfeffer. Maillet drew some facial hair to illustrate the point:

It’s uncanny, really.

Something strange has been happening to my friends, both online and off. It goes something like this:

OK, so that might not seem so strange to you, but I know Justin. Justin is a killer photographer who loves track bikes and drinking Lone Star and going to see shows. Justin isn’t the type of person to be Twittering about the Fiesta Bowl. Justin, I would wager, has never worn burnt orange.

But there it is, clear as day. And you have noticed it too…the indie friends and D&D gamers that you know, the ones who eschewed sports and jockiness as a general defining characteristic, have suddenly started debating Teixiera going to the Yankees and Matt Cassel’s free agency situation. They have become informed, engaged, well…fans.

I can’t claim to be any different. Anyone who knew me in college would be aghast at my fandom these days. I follow the Red Sox like I have money on the games. I got up at 6am last spring to watch the exhibition games in Tokyo. I even follow the Globe Sports section on Twitter so I can be the first to know when Varitek re-signs (please re-sign!).

Why has this happened? I think it has to do with the quest for meaning. The quest, that is, for Authenticity.

My favorite blog in the entire internet, Hipster Runoff, has made it a central mission to define this desire for authenticism, the science of explaining what it means for something to be authentic, and why things that are authentic appeal so strongly to those of us who are constantly searching for what’s next. And it goes something like this:

In an increasingly scripted, focus grouped and branded existence, the true things, the authentic experiences, are becoming harder and harder to find. We feel starved for something familiar and worthwhile. Sports provides this, not only because it’s the only thing left on television that is almost always unpredictable in its outcome, but because it is a classic thing to participate in. It is a pastime.

It’s trite to say we’re all searching for something true, but I’ll say it anyway: We are all searching for something true. We want to be connected participants of things that are genuine, that aren’t trying to trick us. It’s why we constantly hunt for vintage Belstaff Trialmaster jackets on eBay, why we listen to Merle Haggard on vinyl rcords played on vintage turntables and tube amps.

You know this to be true. It’s why we got into Lone Star and track bikes to begin with, isn’t it? Both, in their way, connect us to something that has its roots in our collective culture. Lone Star becomes a vessel for us to connect a simple, more honest (and nostaglic) time, and track bikes allow us to be part of a niche, specialized and purely functional sport. Jack Daniels, despite its being featured at TGI Friday’s, is still the de facto whisky. Polaroid, despite becoming a watered down brand for second tier TVs, is still equated with precious, poorly-exposed topless photos.

These things are all genuine, even if the way we experience them is not.

And it’s not just sports and beer. Recently I’ve noticed a lot of my friends, including fellow Barbarians, are genuinely getting into guns (or, for those of us in NYC, the idea of guns). In fact, I called that as the breakout trend for 2009 on my Twitter. It would seem that as our cultural history gets more and more strip-mined of authentic totems, we have to dig deeper. We have to go to the most honest, the most pure, the most authentic. And in doing so, we have to betray the old definitions on what it meant to be alt.

Mainstream is the new alt.

The Internet may not have begun this race to authenticity, but it certainly sped it up. Suddenly, anyone with a decent internet connection can be as alt as anyone else. Trends used to be born geograhically- cities were the epicenter of cool, and eventually it trickled along the highways to middle America. Now hipness is a science, one that can be learned, studied, and challenged. The Internet allows trends to be born, thoroughly researched, surface, and die at an alarming rate, effectively speeding up the evolution of the culture. Alt culture has up til now been a self-referential snake eating its own tail, and suddenly it finds itself gnawing at the back of its head.

Of course, there is one deeper, more authentic and traditional trend that has yet to be embraced: Religion. If that happens; if you start seeing alt-beards at Sunday Mass…well, you heard it here first.

Really interesting article over at WSJ on the Wassup guys, whom were made infamous from their Budweiser commercials of the late ‘90s. The interesting thing to me, is not that the actors all got together again to make this updated political statement, but rather, that this is a case of a film maker who licensed his idea to a major brand for a set period of time, and now since the licensing deal has been expired for the past 3 years, that film maker is able to feed off of the fame it already produced for him. Its a very smart way to work.

It has me thinking, what if our brands of yester year were always licensed like this? What if Tony the Tiger’s contract was up and then he moved on to promote the green party to help conservation of our natural resources and wildlife? Or imagine the Country Crock couple endorsing their religiously motivated family planning issue? To me, this is opening a whole new space for consumerism to turn into activism. And maybe that is a good thing right now.