Breaking In: Advice from 100 Advertising Rockstars

Phoenix from the ashes of advertising, or what the big idea has to do with collaboration.

It’s a tumultuous and uncertain age for many industries and cultural facets as we grapple with difficult questions about the future of publishing, education, art and many other aspects of humanity. Media and advertising are among the industries most deeply unsettled by “the digital age” and all the new modalities of social communication. But if the industry itself is shaken by a profound identity crisis, unsure of what creative merit means anymore, what’s left for those hungry and wide-eyed young guns looking for a dream job in that industry? That’s exactly what Breaking In, an ambitious new anthology by William Burks Spencer, explores through over 100 interviews with advertising insiders, who share experience-tested, credibility-stamped insights on building an exceptional portfolio that will get you hired.

The project took over four years to complete and, though certainly a boys’ club, features a formidable roster of agency rockstars the likes of Dan Wieden, Gerry Graf, David Droga, Bob Greenberg, and Ari Merkin.

What a lot of people are looking for these days is 360-degree thinking. So I’m looking for someone who is not bound by medium but bound by the idea, and media is there to support that idea.” ~ Ji Lee, Creative Director, Google Creative Lab, New York

If the writing is absolutely brilliant, people will forgive anything. We all hear stories of this great guy that was discovered by writing concepts on a napkin, and I think that’s awesome. I actually know that great guy. But that’s probably in keeping with the rest of his or her personality, naturally. It can happen, but if you’re one of those people you probably already know it, and you’re not reading this.” ~ Monica Taylor, Creative Director, Wieden+Kennedy, Portland

It’s an interesting time. The industry has changed so much, but clearly, the principles in the industry are still very much the same. But there are so many different influences now. We can influence so many different industries and collaborate with more industries. I think it makes it more exciting.” ~ David Droga, Founder & Creative Chairman, Droga5, New York

Ideas are really important, but the way that the traditional side of the business values “the big idea” is completely out of balance with the way that you actually produce work in the digital space. I say all the time, ‘The Greatest idea in the world, unproduced, has no value whatsoever. A mediocre idea, produced, has some incremental value.’ So why is the value always placed on the big idea when getting this into the world is so important?” ~ Michael Lebowitz, Founder & CEO, Big Spaceship, New York

(Sound familiar?)

These are strange days for our business. Massive shifts are taking place and nobody is entirely sure what the agency of the future will look like. I imagine there’s a ton of pressure on students to demonstrate their ability to keep up with everything new. But proceed with caution here. Sometimes, the best idea isn’t about new media, it’s simply a new idea. There’s no substitute for a smart human insight.” ~ Ari Merkin, Executive Creative Director, Crispin Porter + Bogusky, Miami

Breaking In comes with a fantastic companion site, where interview excerpts and award-winning work by the interviewees are being posted daily.

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Enchantment: Guy Kawasaki’s Guide to Success

De-fluffing authenticity, or why your cause is your only yellow brick road to success.

Why is it that we caress our iPhones so tenderly? What is it about putting on a pair of Nikes that makes us run faster and jump higher? How come merely seeing Facebook’s blue logo gives us a rush of connectedness and belonging? Business guru Guy Kawasaki may be equally celebrated and reviled for his unique brand of media entrepreneurship, but one thing is certain: The former Chief Evangelist at Apple knows a thing or two about stirring passion and building cults around it. That’s precisely what he captures in his new book, Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions — an essential handbook for making ideas resonate, sitting at the intersection of business, creativity and persuasion.

It causes voluntary change of hearts and minds and therefore actions. It is more than manipulating people to help you get your way. It transforms situations and relationships. It converts hostility into civility. It reshapes civility into affinity. It changes skeptics and cynics into believers.” ~ Guy Kawasaki

Kawasaki offers a thoughtful guide to transforming both personal and professional interactions from transactional what’s-in-it-for-me’s into lasting, trusting, meaningful connections. Ultimately, he makes a case for what we all intuitively believe — that success is the product of, above all, being a good person — but wraps this ethos in grounded case studies and examples from some of the world’s most passion-driven brands.

Enchantment of others, or yourself, is a process, not an event. It’s like fitness: you don’t stay fit without continuous effort. Maybe it’s an Asian thing: simple to learn but a lifetime to master. The best way to keep yourself enchanted is to enjoy the process. We had a saying in the Macintosh Division: “The journey is the reward.” If you can embrace this attitude, you’ll be enchanted and enchant others for a long, long time.” ~ Guy Kawasaki

We couldn’t help but find Kawasaki’s thinking remarkably similar to the ethos of Polaroid inventor Edwin Land circa 1942, perhaps bespeaking an essential ingredient of entrepreneurship.

The 99% has an excellent interview with Kawasaki. Still not convinced you actually need to read it? Take Guy’s Realistic Enchantment Aptitude Test — a 23-question self-exam that tests just how masterful your enchantment skills are and where you may need help.

The pillars of enchantment are likeability, trustworthiness, and greatness. Greatness refers to the quality of your product, service, idea — in other words, your cause. Sharing your dream is a key part of enchantment.” ~ Guy Kawasaki

Enchantment is out this month and is already shortlisted for our selection of the best business books of 2011.

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TED 2011: The Rediscovery of Wonder, Day 3

Embracing chaos, 57 things Google knows about you, and how to 3D-print a kidney.

This week, we’re reporting live from TED 2011: The Rediscovery of Wonder. So far, we warmed up with 5 must-read books by some of this year’s speakers, synthesized highlights from Day 1 and Day 2, and spotlighted an inspired urban intervention by designer and TED Fellow Candy Chang. Today, we’re back — on the brink of our sleep budged — with highlights, photos and notable soundbites from Day 3 — dig in.

Historian Edward Tenner

Culture and technology historian Edward Tenner showed statistical evidence that the greatest time for game-changing innovation in modern history was actually The Great Depression, which had a paradoxically stimulating effect on creativity. He argued that one of the grand questions of our time is how to close the gap between our capabilities and our foresight.

Our ability to innovate is increasing geometrically but our capacity to model those innovations is linear.” ~ Edward Tenner

Tenner’s excellent 1997 book, Why Things Bite Back: Technology & the Revenge of Unintended Consequences, will change the way you think about adversity, opportunity and innovation.

Chris Anderson presenting the winners of the Ads Worth Spreading contest.

Image credit: James Duncan Davidson / TED

TED announced the 10 winners of the inaugural Ads Worth Spreading contest, seeking to reframe commercial communication from an interruption to inspiration.

Eli Pariser of MoveOn.org fame, author of the excellent forthcoming The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You, delivered a stride-stopping and timely curtain-pull on our modern information diet and what we’re being force-fed by the powers of the Internet. Google, apparently, looks at 57 data points to serve us personally tailored search results.

We’ve moved to an age where the Internet is showing us what it thinks we want to see, but not necessarily what we need to see.” ~ Eli Pariser

Which raises the question of responsibility: Is the responsibility of those who serve information to give us more of what we already like and believe, or to open our eyes to new perspectives? And if it’s all algorithmically driven, is there even a place for such responsibility? Our key takeaway from Pariser’s talk, one particularly relevant to our own credo, is that human information curators will have an increasingly important role as moral mitigators of algorithmic personalization efficiency.

Eli Pariser 'We need the new information gatekeepers to encode a sense of civic responsibility into algorithms.'

Image credit: James Duncan Davidson / TED

We need the Internet to introduce us to different ideas and different perspectives.” ~ Eli Pariser

Virginia Tech’s Dennis Hong is building the world’s first vehicle for the visually-impaired. and recently made history with the Blind Driver Challenge.

Dennis Hong 'We need the new information gatekeepers to encode a sense of civic responsibility into algorithms.'

Image credit: James Duncan Davidson / TED

High-functioning autistic savant Daniel Tammet opened the door to his fascinating view of the world. He used synesthesia, the strange neurological crossing of the senses, as an example of how the world is often richer than we think it to be.

Daniel Tammet shows us the world through the eyes of an autistic savant.

Image credit: James Duncan Davidson / TED

Tammet’s Born On A Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant is one of the most fascinating perspective shifts you’ll ever read.

Google's Sebastian Thrun 'We took a driverless car from San Francisco to LA, and no one even noticed there was no driver.'

Image credit: James Duncan Davidson / TED

The idea behind the Stuxnet worm is quite simple: We don’t want Iran to get the bomb.” ~ Ralph Langner

Security consultant Ralph Langner 'Mossad is responsible for Stuxnet. But the real force behind that is not Israel, it is the only cyber force: The U.S.'

Image credit: James Duncan Davidson / TED

In one of the day’s most jaw-dropping demos, the kind that restores one’s faith in humanity, Berkley Bionics‘ Eythor Bender showcased the incredible eLEGS exoskeletons, which enable the paralyzed to walk again, and HULC, which enables ordinary people to carry up to 200 lbs. Bender was joined onstage by a soldier, who demoed HULC, and a paralyzed woman who walked for the first time in 18 years thanks to eLEGS.

Eythor Bender on stage with paraplegic Amanda Boxtel, ecstatic in her new non-invasive exoskeleton legs.

Image credit: James Duncan Davidson / TED

Biomedical engineer Fiorenzo Omenetto is developing amazing non-invasive implants made of silicon and silk.

Fiorenzo Omenetto shows a disposable cup made of silk, a biodegradable, biocompatible alternative to the highly unsustainable styrofoam.

Image credit: James Duncan Davidson / TED

There was no shortage of astounding demos today. Anthony Atala, whose work in 3D organ printing is an unbelievable next frontier in medicine, literally “printed” a kidney on the TED stage as 1,700 of the world’s smartest people gasped in awe, speechless.

Anthony Atala 'prints' a kidney to a collective gasp.

Image credit: James Duncan Davidson / TED

The remarkable papercut artist Béatrice Coron, whose stunning artwork we’ve spotted on the New York subway, echoed some of our own beliefs about combinatorial creativity:

I’m influenced by everything I read, everything I see. In life and in paper cutting, everything is connected: One story leads to another.” ~ Beatrice Coron

Watch Coron’s creative process and swoon like we did:

Keep an eye on our live Twitter coverage and come back here tomorrow evening for highlights from the final day.

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