by The Chicago Egotist / February 28, 2018 / Just Daab, President of Magnani, a Chicago Experience design and Strategy agency writes about the need for agencies to evolve their models. We all know that disruption is the new normal. In fact, it is predicted that only half of companies listed on the S&P 500 today will remain there ten years from now*. But it’s not just the big guys in the S&P who should worry. Agencies need to take a[Read More]
by Egotist / August 3, 2017 / Originally published in the St. Louis Egotist: Thoughts on agency convergence, data-driven decisions, and the role of creativity in a world-gone-quant. In March 2017, Barkley, an independent advertising agency in Kansas City, acquired a small human-centered design & management consultancy called XperienceLab. This is the reverse of a trend you may have noticed over recent years, that of[Read More]
by The Chicago Egotist / January 17, 2017 / Rahul Roy, Head of Client Business at hot Chicago agency O'Keefe Reinhard & Paul talks about the importance of working well with partners. His insight reflects OKRP's agility to bring clients ideas that are not always advertising-centric but still build brands. His thoughts on 2016 and insight for success in 2017 are below: My one word for the year = Collaboration. In today’s ever-chan[Read More]
by The Chicago Egotist / December 21, 2016 / In the first of a series, The Chicago Egotist connected with Azher Ahmed, EVP and Director of Digital at DDB Chicago to find out what big trends, ideas and challenges he sees ahead for 2017. He has a lot of interesting and inspiring thoughts. Read below: Q: When you look back at 2016, what marketing initiative most impressed you - most made you think, "I wish I did that." And why? Ahmed: [Read More]
by Egotist / March 6, 2014 / *Originally posted on the Need/Want blog.* The below painting of a cat as Napoleon Bonaparte helped me get my startup team acquired, become a partner at MetaLab, and meet Jon to start Need/Want together (which produces SmartBedding, Mod Notebooks, and more). There’s a million books on how to “network” and meet cool people. I think they’re all mostly garbage. The singl[Read More]
by Egotist / February 21, 2014 / Naming a project is always an awful experience. An earworm that won’t stop tapping your skull from the inside. A tenacious pop jingle with teeth and a paycheck. As a freelance designer, I do a fair amount of this for clients. Generally, my process has been a garble of notes and trips to thesaurus.com, but lately I’ve noticed a fairly simple pattern emerging, a 3-step framework for cuttin[Read More]
by Egotist / September 9, 2013 / Originally posted on Atomicdust's blog. “I really like it.” Probably one of the most important things I learned in design school, and subsequently in the working world, is that “liking” a design is not sufficient enough. That’s what separates art and design; art is subjective, design is communicative. It’s also, like Atomicdust Creative Director Mike Spakowski often says, disposable.[Read More]
by Egotist / August 19, 2013 / In 20 words or less, what's your creative philosophy? What a great question that surely would generate some very creative responses. The SF Egotist first took to asking San Francisco based creatives that very question, the response was a wonderful glimpse into the thought process of some very talented creatives. We decided to take the very same question to Toronto creatives, in 20 words or less, [Read More]
