Tom Kelly and Jim Bizier just scored Best of Show at the 2010 Hatch Awards for their print campaign for the Boston Breakers (check the work after the brief).

Tom Kelly is a CD/Copywriter at Brand Content. He’s been there for about a year and half. Before that, he served two tours at Mullen and in between, spent 6 years at the late, great Clarke Goward. He began his career at what is now Digitas when he moved to Boston in 1995. He went to Portfolio Center and Purdue and will gladly discuss the Boilermakers Final Four potential. His awards include One Show, CA, Hatch, The Show in Minneapolis and the Costello’s All-Sports Camp 9-year Old Boxing Champ. Tom is married with 3 kids, and when he’s not writing about himself in the third person, he likes golf, hoops, traveling and movies.

Jim is an ACD/Art Director at Brand Content. He was BC’s first hire in 2003, and 23rd in 2009. In-between, he worked at Arnold. In 1998, he landed his first agency job at Donovan Group, which was a great agency that no longer exists. Before that, he did freelance and in-house work as a graphic designer, designing everything from logos to company websites. Along the way he’s picked up some awards, most recently for the Boston Breakers, Keurig and FootJoy. He’s a graduate of Plymouth State University and spent some time learning the internets at BU. When not working, you can find Jim enjoying his time with his wife and 2 boys.

You guys just won Best of Show this year at Hatch, one of the most coveted awards within the Boston creative community. Who would you like to thank and who would you like to flip off?

JIM: Thank - Andy and team at the Breakers, the entire agency (those are our people and kids in the shots), and especially the photographer, Michael Prince, who was committed as we were. Oh, and the academy.

TOM: Flip off – Yeah, we’ll pass on burning any bridges. It’s a small town. Although I would like to flip off Jim’s Mom for something totally unrelated.

Your winning entry was a print campaign for Boston women’s professional soccer team, the Boston Breakers. Is there anything about this project that stood out to you early on that made it feel different?

TOM: Early on we said, “If we use the athletes, we’ll be competing with Nike. And we’ll lose.” We’re just not that good. The client sensed that.

JIM: Tom made me cry like a little bitch with his headlines. I don’t usually cry, so I knew we were on to something.

Was the win a total surprise? We understand you walked away with quite a bit of additional hardware that night. What were your expectations headed into the show?

TOM: It’s my first Hatch at Brand Content. 14 bowls for 5 different clients and Best of Show basically means there’s nowhere to go but down. If you told me a newspaper campaign would win Best of Show, I would’ve tweeted about what an idiot you were.

JIM: A friend got his hands on the Hatch book and told us we won. It was a long hour or so waiting for the announcement, and the bar being closed made it even longer.

What was some of the other work from Hatch this year that you really admired? Anything that you think was under-recognized?

JIM: The Olympus work Mullen did with the lobster pot/ bowling alley/etc. And the Timberland Pro spots. Both were really smart visual ways to communicate. Under-recognized: Bob Steele’s Butterfly work – not even a merit this year.

TOM: “Don’t text and Drive” for Liberty Mutual that Hill did was perfect. The McDonald’s french fry stuff made me laugh out loud. (I will totally steal that idea one day.) KSV print was cool.

What do you feel are some of the greatest hurdles in producing great creative work? How do you get over those hurdles?

JIM: Hurdles- A bad creative brief and not having enough concept time. It’s a deadly combo.

TOM: Get over hurdles - Keep punching. Hope you get lucky and find a client who wants to do great work.

Is there anything about Brand Content that you find particularly conducive to your creative process or getting good work out the door?

JIM: It’s really the collaboration. We don’t have all the layers of a bigger agency, and that helps us stay focused. We think of ourselves as a small family who share ideas. We don’t care who comes up with the idea. Everyone gets credit. The bottom line is about getting the best idea in front of the client.

TOM: We had a good year. We’re committed to doing good work. But we can do better.

Where do you think the advantages lie in being at a smaller agency?

TOM: At any agency, the creatives all compete for the best assignments. All of our creatives fit in my car. So there’s that.

JIM: You have a car? Can I get a ride home after this?

What’s your opinion of the Boston creative community these days? Do you think it’s bouncing back? Do you see creative standards being raised? Or do you see a lot of room for improvement?

JIM: It will be interesting to see if any of the Hatch work will make it to bigger shows. That’s usually a good sign. And there’s always room for improvement – you’re only as good as your last campaign.

TOM: Bouncing back? How dare you sir! Not every year is going to be VW, Swiss Army, Monster, Dunkin and Ragged Mountain all over CA, but it’s all subjective. I’m not going to contribute to the inferiority complex.

If you weren't in advertising, then what?

TOM: Jim will say playing pro baseball. He’s delusional. I would probably be bartending, having failed as a novelist, screenwriter and shepherd.

JIM: Playing pro baseball.

What are three pieces of advice you’d give any creative?

TOM: I think creatives are inherently jaded and distrustful, so I don’t think it will matter. I wouldn’t listen to me either.

JIM: Yeah, I totally tuned you out somewhere around question 4.

In almost 7 years as a Creative Director and someone in charge of hiring talent for our team, I've had some amazing interviews and some impressive train-wrecks. I’ve always tried to strip away the cliché interview experience and make the person comfortable, able to talk about who they are and just be themselves.

Despite meeting and talking with mostly great people, every so often, I get the rare encounter with the ultimate interview fail. An experience so bad it would boggle my mind for hours. In reflecting on the rare but memorable examples of interviews gone bad, I've compiled a seemingly obvious list of things to avoid if you actually want to land that design gig. It seems that most of these instances are based on an assumption that being “creative” is a hall pass to break (or ignore) elementary social and professional interview norms.

You only get one chance at a first impression (so they say), so here are three things to avoid:

#3: Showing Up Empty-Handed

I once had a talented designer apply via email for a position we had available. After reviewing her work and resume, I felt like she might be a good fit. So I replied to her email, set-up a time for her to come by, and politely asked her to bring in her work to discuss. After arriving 45 minutes late due to traffic (which, by the way, is not an excuse in Atlanta), we proceeded to make small talk for a while until I realized she was empty-handed. After I inquired about her portfolio, she seemed shocked and surprised I would want to see anything other than her website. Embarrassed and flushed, she fumbled through reasoning and I did my best to avoid the storm of awkwardness with superfluous small talk about her boyfriend’s band.

#2: Appearing as if you are allergic to bathing

For some reason, cleanliness and hygiene seem optional in the creative world. Unfortunately, it isn’t. Interviews are all about perceptions and managing the interviewers perception of you. So, If you smell like stale beer and week old pop tarts, then just know that is the perception you are creating. Likewise, if you have side burns like a runaway freight train connecting to your chest hair, you should know that perception only works at a train depot.

#1: Dropping F-Bombs

This is the ultimate deal-breaker. People want to hire talented, intelligent, and driven creatives who they can put in front of clients, and language is huge. Despite the personal vocabulary someone chooses, dropping F-bombs in a casual, yet job-related conversation is a risky and potentially disrespectful assumption. For me, interviews are a test run of how you might interact with the team and our clients (you know, the ones that would pay your potential salary). Regardless of how you talk in normal life, you’ve got to remember this is an F’ing interview after all.

On the flip side, here are three quicks you can do to help form the right perception.

Be sure to focus on the hellos and the goodbyes. Make good eye contact when meeting the interviewer, give a firm hand shake, say your name with confidence, then repeat when leaving (besides saying your name again, that would be just weird).

Research the company and their culture. Then do your best to dress accordingly. There is nothing worse than be under dressed, but sometimes being over dressed is just as uncomfortable. What you wear is a huge part of the overall message you’re sending.

Be yourself. Several times the interviewer is just as nervous as you are. Relax and be confident in your skill set and your talents. Be honest in responses. In the long run if you lie your way into a job it will be worse than not getting the job in the first place. Authenticity and confidence go along way in the world of personal perceptions and are drop dead gorgeous qualities for most employers.

Blake Howard is Co-founder, Creative Director, and Principal Interrogator for Matchstic as well as regular consigliere for The Atlanta Egotist. We asked him to write an editorial for us and he said yes. Mr. Howard is also a redhead and likes wakeboarding. His next office will have a fire pole in it. Seriously. Blake blogs regularly over at the Matchstic blog.

Originally posted on The Atlanta Egotist.

I rarely venture into politics in my column, for a few reasons. First, it’s usually something that gives me an enormous headache. Second, it bores most people to tears. And finally, most of the time, we can’t do a thing about it.

When Obama won the election, he did it on the back of a very well crafted campaign that inspired everyone from Shepherd Fairey to the Hollywood elite to make a creative contribution. The HOPE message, and those iconic posters, were all part of the ethos. The nation, indeed, the whole world, was caught up in it. It was a well-executed and well-supported ad campaign. It had headlines. It had viral videos. It had guerrilla marketing. It should have won a One Show award, to be honest.

And now, a few years later, with the Obama posters fading almost as quickly as his battered public image, we are presented with a new ad campaign. This time, it’s for the Tea Party. And make no mistake, this is just as much of an ad campaign as the one Obama used. Only this time, the message is quite different. Now, it’s FEAR that is the root of all of this.

Glenn Beck is, in my humble opinion, a smart guy. And dangerous. I have watched and listened carefully to his rhetoric over the last few years and saw exactly what he was doing. Every tear, every outburst, every outraged scream, it was all carefully planned.

It’s easy to write him off as an idiot, but that would imply that he doesn’t know what he’s doing or thinking. He does. The fact that I’m even writing his name here is playing into his strategy. He wants to be hated. He wants people to despise him. His crocodile tears work on millions of people, too. Because when you polarize people in that way, you create powerful supporters. The Tea Party movement being one such offshoot of his rants and raves.

Then there’s Sarah Palin. She entered the scene during the election and refused to go away. The fact that she backed down as governor proved to me that she also knew exactly what she was doing, and what she wanted. It was all about money and power. And being governor of Alaska brings neither – not when you look at where the real money and power actually is. Her speaking engagements, books, Fox News appearances and work with the Tea Party is netting her millions of dollars and putting her right back in the spotlight. Some people think she should be president!

So, how do you turn someone as innocuous and pointless as Sarah Palin into a potential presidential candidate? How do you elevate a loud-mouthed talk show host to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, on the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s historic speech? How do you motivate millions of people to wave signs of protest? How do you make people believe that the beliefs of the Tea Party are completely different to the old GOP beliefs, when they are in fact identical? And how do you convince people that an organization is grass roots when it’s funded by big corporate interests and backed by even bigger media outlets?

It’s all down to advertising. Clever, strategic, creative advertising. Adolf Hitler once said, “All propaganda has to be popular and has to accommodate itself to the comprehension of the least intelligent of those whom it seeks to reach.” He also said, “if you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.” And the HBO show The Wire commented, “Americans are stupid people by and large. We pretty much believe whatever we are told.”

Look at the O’Reilly Factor, for instance. Bill calls his show “the no spin zone.” That’s like calling KFC "health food" (which they tried to do, and failed, with Kitchen Fresh Chicken). Now I don’t like O’Reilly for many reasons, not just political, but I don’t give a crap about his content. It’s an opinion show, like Rush Limbaugh, Hannity, Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow and all the other pundits out there. But watch a few episodes of “the no spin zone” and tell me it’s not bashing liberals and coming out favorably for the right. That is spin. Pure and simple.

Fox News itself says it is “fair and balanced” which is also bunk. And yet, people believe it. I think CNN is slanted too, but it’s the Fox News tagline that bugs me. Come on. Keep it real. Somehow though, if you say it, then it must be true.

So, keep it simple, and say what people want to hear. People are upset about the economy? Exploit it. People are paranoid about losing their homes or jobs? Jump on it. People hate paying taxes? Tell them they’ll pay more, regardless of the truth.

I’m not saying that the Tea Party movement is just a complete pack of lies. But I am saying that exaggeration, and misdirection, plays a key role in its rise. Just like we dramatize or exaggerate a benefit in an ad campaign, so the Tea Party exaggerates and dramatizes the main messages. Fear is the key. I would not be surprised if there was a creative brief for the Tea Party campaign that said something like “without the Tea Party, you have everything to fear and everything to lose.”

The Tea Party wants to take back the country and reduce the size of government. They want lower taxes and a reduction in wasteful spending. They want to reduce the national debt. These are all points that previous Republicans have preached, almost word for word, but the economic disaster that hit the country was under the watch of a Republican. The elephant has tainted the message.

This is where advertising comes in, again. It’s time to rebrand. It’s time to create something radically new and different, even though it’s essentially the exact same product. The Tea Party is the product of that thinking. It’s a repackaging. It’s “hey, high fructose corn syrup sucks. We know that. But have you tried new corn sugar? It’s great. It’s sugar. And you all want sugar now!”

This mentality makes it very easy for a movement like the Tea Party to gain traction. They are nothing more than a rebranding of the Republican party, with a few new bells and whistles and some catchy new taglines. It is advertising, at its best or worst, that has done this. It’s strategic, it’s planned, and it’s working. Hopefully, enough people sniff out the smoke and mirrors and avoid falling for the hype. But I doubt it.

Felix Unger is a site contributor, ranter and curmudgeon for The Denver Egotist. He's been in the ad game a long time, but he's still young enough to know he doesn't know everything. He'll give his opinion, you can take it or leave it. If he uses the f-bomb from time-to-time, forgive him. Sometimes, when you're ranting, no other word will do. In his spare time, he does not torture small animals. He has been known, on occasion, to drink alcohol by the gallon. Do as he says, not as he does. Email him at [email protected].

Originally posted on The Denver Egotist.

Steve Kolander, Executive VP & Creative Director at Small Army, is a former recording artist for Polygram Records, ex-Creative Director of JWT/Atlanta, cabinetmaker, world traveler and storyteller.

In fact, Steve doesn’t seem himself as an ad guy. Instead, he sees himself as a storyteller of brands. When he was writing songs for himself, the Dixie Chicks and R&B artist, Carmichael, he told stories in 3-minutes (often with his Gretsch White Falcon guitar in tow). As a marketer, he and his teams tell provocative stories in 30 seconds. Or 140 characters. Or as an experience in a place where you don’t expect it. He and his teams’ shenanigans have ended up on CNN news and the cover of Adweek. And as Steve puts it, “When your ads make the news, you’re no longer creating just advertising. Your clients are becoming part of the cultural landscape. That’s where it’s at!”

How would you rate the creative scene in Boston these days?

I went to SoWa this weekend and the creativity was outstanding. The music scene has plenty to offer with Berklee College of Music in the heart of Boston and plenty of other damn good bands and musicians that will rock your socks off. As far as advertising is concerned, is there a ‘scene’?

How does Small Army take advantage of the creativity that the city naturally produces?

We hire a lot of college grads oozing with creativity from the local universities. They turn the rest of us onto what’s cool. And I pretend that I understand exactly what they’re talking about. Then go home and have a drink and tell my wife I’m getting old.

What specific kinds of things does Small Army do to foster creativity?

For starters, we check out the web for those great nuggets out there. With 1,966,514,816 internet users, someone somewhere at any given moment is coming up with an amazing idea that makes you say, “Now why didn’t I think of that?” Also, we all have Kindles. (It’s standard issue at Small Army.) We read a lot and pass the books onto each other so we’re well read and well versed in many disciplines. We also encourage everyone to watch lots of foreign movies. They give us a different perspective on life and cinema than our own. And we try not to think in terms of advertising but in terms of storytelling. This makes us think of our clients in completely different ways. And when you think differently, you create fresh ideas.

Do you have a philosophy on creating great work?

Yes, stay busy living life. We draw upon our own experiences to think of our clients in ways they may never see themselves. And as stated above, we think in terms of storytelling. This helps us solve problems in ways that marketing classes never taught us. And the results are much fresher and more imaginative.

Where do you think the advantages lie in being a smaller agency?

Small agencies have the advantage of being able to change so much quicker than a well-established, large agency. Large agencies pride themselves in their tried and true processes. But these processes are from a bygone era and those large agencies are holding on to what has made them great. Obviously, not all agencies are this way. Edward Boches, the creative director at Mullen in Boston has really immersed himself in social media and has taken his agency into this frontier as a leader, not a follower.

What are some of your favorite projects you’re working on right now?

I have an interesting project that stand out at this time; it is an interactive webisode series for our client, SolidWorks. The series is about a guy who designs one-of-a-kind products on camera and at regular intervals, asks the global 3D community to help him decide what direction to take next. The global community votes via social media such as Tweets discussion forums. It’s extremely effective and very hard to pull off since social media has never been used to this degree before. It’s like reality TV for engineers but the whole world gets to vote!

What are some of the characteristics you want to see in great art directors or copywriters?

Fresh thinking. Breaking rules, but first understanding what rules they are breaking and then doing it anyway. I’m looking for creative people who don’t think like advertisers so they stop creating advertising and start creating stories about companies and their products.

We can all come up with a million ways technology has positively affected creativity. But are there ways it’s affected it negatively?

Technology has come so far that many tools once left to the professionals are now available to the masses; video cameras, digital cameras, garageband, dreamweaver, etc… Now many clients don’t want to pay the prices that were once reserved for professionals. They want a video shot for $5,000. A photo for $100. Original music for free. And a website for $2,000. It’s difficult to see that the tools aren’t the end all. The thinking behind the tools was always important and still is. But technology advances makes it appear that the creativity and thinking is easier, too. It’s not.

How do you sell interesting new technologies to clients who probably don’t understand them or see the possibilities?

It’s not about selling technologies, it’s about selling stories. Technology has nothing to do with it. Technology is simply the means to an end. When you go to a restaurant, you don’t care if they have a technologically advanced espresso machine, you just want your espresso to taste delicious. I never sell technology. I sell what the technology will do to the story we’re telling.

Favorite campaign of 2010 so far? Why? Care to offer up your least favorite?

I like the Old Spice Man’s tweets. Breakthrough stuff. It’s not about technology, but about ways the Old Spice Man could talk to the average Joe. Just happens that new technology was the answer. I also kinda like the “Never Say No to Panda” campaign, from Egypt of all places. If you don’t eat Panda cheese, a Panda with an attitude will show up and kick your butt. It’s really bizarre. But I like it. And from a very unlikely country.

What are three pieces of advice you’d give any creative?

Learn your craft really well so that you can break all the rules you just learned.

Don’t sit at home and watch TV, but get out in the real world and live. All the ideas for your stories in the office are out there beyond the four walls.

Find a mentor and study that person well. They will teach you things you can’t find in books. And if you read them in books, it would take so long to find the nuggets that you’d be old by the time you learned them. Stand on the shoulders of those you respect. Life goes by freaking fast and you don’t have any time to waste.