Genius gives birth, talent delivers.
Jack Kerouac
I read an article about the Coen brothers, in which they discussed that by using the same team on all of their movies, they are able to achieve greater production values and make higher quality movies. Because of their familiarity with each other, every member of the team contributes and knows how to grow each other’s ideas.
This article made me think about our recent experience creating the Super Bowl commercial for Jovia Financial Credit Union and our partners Sebastian Curi—illustrator/animator—and Planet Pre Pro—live action. Their experience and leadership helped us pull off this project in an incredibly short time frame, without sacrificing quality.
We work with Sebastian and Richard consistently, so we know that we can trust each other completely. In fact, the depth of our relationships allows us to shape and realize our ideas. On all of our branding projects we tap into our network of experts, who inform and execute our plans at the highest level. Every member of our team are the best people we know at what they do and are committed to the outcome of the project.
I wrote a post about Playing it Wrong on Purpose, the only way you can push the envelope, is when you have team members who have the chops to not only execute but elevate your ideas.
This year we were asked to create a Super Bowl commercial for Jovia Financial Credit Union. As many of you know we created and have managed this brand for the last five years, so reaching this point is literally an honor for us. Having said that, the one thing we knew for sure was that it could not and would not suck.
The brief was a tough one. The benchmark was set by one request: make it edgy, even shocking. Traditionally shocking means a.) high tech, b.) dark, c.) sexual, or d.) all out crazy!, none of which are appropriate for a trusted financial institution.
Two days before the presentation we reviewed our concepts as a team. Although we had a number of visually arresting approaches, we felt that we had not completely captured the power of not-for-profit banking. That night, Hope and I went to see Janelle Monáe at Radio City. During the show we kept thinking, what would Janelle do?
She is both mainstream and edgy. Janelle wouldn’t just say it, she would perform it. So what would happen if your money grew? Your life would improve. Your wallet would get fat, your purse would expand, your home would grow. What would you call this phenomenon? Jovia-itis!!!!
That night we wrote the concept and a day later presented it. “Jovia-itis is a symptom of not-for-profit banking and causes an inflammation of money and happiness.” Through the verbal description alone, we had everyone on the executive team roaring. It was a unanimous decision.
So what is the takeaway here? How do you turn a seemingly crazy idea into a broad, all encompassing concept? I guess it is a few things: listen to your clients carefully, make sure your strategy is right, keep your mind open to possibilities, and never stop until you know you’ve nailed it!
I saw a band recently that I hadn’t seen since 1984. That’s right – 37 years ago. I was excited to see them again but wondered…would still have the same wildly creative spirit?
To me, NRBQ is one of those bands that plays it wrong on purpose, i.e., it is too easy and boring to play it straight, so they push it and stretch it into something more interesting and much more memorable. Well, the good news is that after 50 years in existence and the addition of several younger musicians, the band still plays a different set every night. They make up songs on the spot. They switch instruments throughout the show and continually ask the band and the audience what they should play next. Most importantly, they still have a lot of fun being creative.
I thought about this show over the next few days and realized that all of our heroes at OTTO are people who “play it wrong on purpose”. There’s Tom Waits for example. He has explored music so deeply that he started to make his own instruments to achieve the unique sound he was looking for. There’s Thelonious Monk, the Modernist Jazz composer, who would reduce 10 notes down to one. Todd Rundgren writes, plays, produces and directs everything from rock & roll, to a Broadway musical with Joseph Papp. The Velvet Underground, The Beatles, Picasso. Robert Rauschenberg and the great Paul Rand, a designer who would conceive, write, direct and orchestrate huge global brand projects—ABC, IBM, UPS, Next etc—the list goes on.
The idea of being different is not the point here, although it certainly has its advantages. The point is to master the skills and understand the rules in order to break them. In our world, it takes a team of like-minded individuals who all have the ability to see beyond the notes on the manuscript and envision truly unique possibilities, and have the chops to pull it off. Those who cannot see just the obvious.
Because it turns out that life is pretty interesting. Training your mind and focusing your talents on looking at what is and imagining what could be… and then out of those infinite possibilities calling into being the one that best achieves your goals… that’s a life worth living.
This all reminds me Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, the book by Robert M. Pirsig (required reading in the CMU Design program). There was a scene in which our protagonist is explaining to his son that everyone takes the same path to the top of the mountain but, in reality, there are thousands of routes to the top of any mountain, and thousands of mountains.
Life can be pretty interesting. To focus your talents and train your mind to look at what is, and then imagine what could be, and out of all the infinite possibilities call into being the one that best achieves your goals… that’s when life becomes exhilarating.
This mix was made from the music that we played from March, 15 2020 through March 2021. It started out as a way to help a friend who had been through a lot and was isolated overseas, away from her family and friends. To help lift her spirits and let her know that we were thinking about her, we sent her a new song everyday.
Going into this we knew it would be a challenge to come up with a new song every single day. First of all the songs had to be good. To make it even more challenging we wanted to share songs that were created during the pandemic. We saw it as an act of art as well as an act of friendship. Plus, we knew that the rigor of doing it everyday would lead to something interesting.
Working through our various themes was a challenge. We wanted to have some sort of flow through the mix—not just chronology, although it does act as a timeline also. It was important for us to represent our people and what they were experiencing during this time—eg: Masks, Lysol, TP crisis; Black lives Matter; Tom, our head of IT, playing Todd’s Just One Victory every Sunday for strength; Grace Potter Concert @ Highway Drive-In (first pandemic concert in NY); The Election; Isolation, Escapism; Hope; and last but not least OTTO’s newest baby Reina’s birth.
In the end the Pandemic Mixes represent our collective voyage from the start of the pandemic to the release of the vaccines. With help from Lenny and the gang at WDST, we created a K-Tel style, Ear Candy feast that stands as a testament to our shared experience. When I listen to it now a flood of memories take me right back to that time. At first it seemed that we would never make it though but in the end we achieved a lot of great things. Enjoy : )
Following are links to the OTTO Heavy Rotation mixes. Enjoy!
Every problem presents an opportunity for a creative solution.
Case in point. A few years back we made the move to digital mixes as apposed to cds or—excuse my age—cassette tapes! The convenience of not having to carry a stack of music with you has obvious benefits. On the flip side this presented a new dilemma.
One day Kimberly (my wife) was searching our plethora of playlists looking for the one she heard the other day and loved. After listening to several playlists all she heard, in her words, was “crazy weooo, weooo jazz” or screaming death metal. Not what she was looking for. To solve this problem we created the OTTO Heavy Rotation Rating System (OHRRS) which enables anyone to find the appropriate mix for their mood.
OHRRS was inspired by the sandpaper rating system which measures the grits of sandpaper in an ascending order, with the finest grit getting the highest number and coarser grits having lower numbers. Since our more adventurous mixes seem to grate on my wife’s nerves, this was a natural fit. Now when Kimberly sees a 220 mix she knows she will be a happy listener : )
So how does it work?
Following is a quick reference:
Following is a test guide of OTTO Heavy Rotation mixes. Enjoy!
Feel free to apply this system to your own music library. Stay tuned for the sticker system for your albums, cds and other musical plectrum.
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The perfect soul and jazz mix to help you deal with those end of the summer blues.
Tracklist
In honor of our San Francisco summer, here's some gloomy dark-wave, with just a sparkle of hopefulness to it. And an ultimate guilty pleasure.
Feeding Tony’s Yacht Rock jones we are featuring a special streaming summer mix.
Featuring:
“whatever you wanna call it… It’s smooth as hell and makes me smile.”
-Shawn Lee
We love our neighborhood block! Thanks to Abracadabra NYC for the rad space suit!
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