RIPE Creative - Ad Ramblings

Man, I Love Logos!

2011-05-18T16:11:00.000-07:00

The good people over at Man, I Love Films recently launched their brand new website. For the launch, they also needed a clean new logo. Check it out.

Our 1 Minute 14 Seconds of Fame

2011-05-09T17:57:00.000-07:00

A while back we'd mentioned that RIPE Creative is a finalist for the 2011 BBB of Greater Arizona Business Ethics Awards. Today, the nice folks at BBB posted the video they took as part of the interview process. Check it out ...

Stay tuned! Five winners will be announced on May 26 at the 10th annual event.

Added Bonus: We were also interviewed about being finalists on the Business for Breakfast show by the good folks at the Money Radio 1510. (Our portion is at the 3/4 mark on the archived audio clip.)

It's official, RIPE is a 2011 finalist for the BBB of Greater Arizona Business Ethics Awards!!

2011-04-13T16:34:00.000-07:00

Our company was honored to be nominated back in February, we then took the proper steps to submit our information to the BBB of Greater Arizona and complete the interview process. We're now officially one of three finalists in the category of one to ten employees!

We're really honored to be on the "short list" with so many great companies. Stay tuned ... on May 26th we'll find out if we're a BIG winner in our category.

Click here to read the full article from the Business Journal.

RIPE Judges

2011-04-08T12:45:00.000-07:00

April 2011 – RIPE Creative Principal, Susannah Fields, headed off to sunny California to judge the AAF ADDY Competition for District 15. The district includes Los Angeles, Orange County, San Diego, Las Vegas, Palm Springs, Santa Barbara and other locations.

Susannah is looking forward to reviewing the great work from such a diverse district.

We're Six!

2011-04-06T10:09:00.000-07:00

RIPE Creative turned six on April 5th. It’s that time again to reflect on the past and look toward the future.

We’re still going strong here at RIPE and we've had the pleasure of working with some great people over the years. Some of our new clients this year include Renewal Technologies and East Valley Adult Resources. And now we can officially say we have a global client base with our Luxembourgian friends at SOS Animaux.

Check out the sidebar for additional links > >

Arizona Artists Make a Statement

2010-08-09T16:41:00.000-07:00

Mark’s been busy again, this time with a paintbrush instead of a computer mouse. He answered the call-to-artists for the Arizona Latino Arts & Cultural Center “SB1070: An Artist's Point of View” exhibit and his painting was selected for inclusion in the show. The traveling exhibit provides an environment for discussion about the civil and human rights movement in Arizona; it is not a protest show.

Descoloracion de Esperanza/Fading of Hope
The issue of immigration has long been debated in our state, to both extremes. Mark chose to show a Latin figure near the infamous border wall dressed in a fading Arizona flag to suggest that the state is no longer a place of “color”. Immigrant hope is now bleeding away like the colors of the flag.

The story was recently featured on CNN. See photo 4 for Mark’s submission.

You can see the Exhibition from July 21 to August 4, 2010 at the Arizona Latino Arts & Cultural Center located at 147 East Adams St. in Phoenix, AZ. The show will then travel to the Arizona cities of Tucson, Yuma, Flagstaff and Kingman, then on to San Antonio, TX; Santa Fe, NM; Los Angeles, CA; Chicago, IL; and then return to Phoenix.

To find out more about Arizona Latino Arts & Cultural Center, go to The FUSION Foundation web site.

Hot off the press!

2010-08-02T15:44:00.000-07:00

Geesh, it’s been a while since we’ve posted anything. Sorry about that, we’ve just been busy creating.

One of the cool projects we’ve been working on is developing book covers for the nice folks over at the American Bar Association. There are some great new titles for those in the legal profession.

Check ‘em out:

Social Media for Lawyers: The Next Frontier
Google for Lawyers: Essential Search Tips and Productivity Tools

We're Five!

2010-04-05T10:08:00.000-07:00

RIPE Creative turns five on April 5th. It’s that time again to reflect on the past and look toward the future.

Over the years we've had the pleasure of working with some great people. Some of our new clients this year include The Thomson Group, AIR Marketing, Atticus Books, and the American Bar Association. And now we can officially say we have a global client base with our new Luxembourgian friends at SOS Animaux. Check out the sidebar for additional links >>

Looking ahead: We’re still going strong here at RIPE. Although we’ve given up on the idea for that second studio in Dubai, we are hoping to move out of the “hood” and into a sweet downtown space.

We’ve always felt like little cowboys here in the wild-wild west and look forward to lassoing a couple more big clients.

This Year's BIG Winners

2010-03-31T13:34:00.000-07:00

Those who bagged a beast were announced at the 25th Annual ADDY Awards. The gala theme honored the community’s “creative beasts”. This year, AAF Metro Phoenix received an almost-record-breaking 723 entries in 147 categories, from 74 companies throughout the Phoenix metro area.

Top awards went to:

Best Of Show: Mindspace, Inc. self-promotion calendar
Art Directors of the Year: Stewart West and John Johnson from TunnelBravo
Special Judges Award: Riester for the American Lung Association’s “Lungs” tee and poster entries
Ad Person of the Year: Park Howell, President of Park&Co

RIPE Creative was also honored again this year, with a Silver award in the Ad Club Promotion category for the 2009 ADDY gala collateral. Check it out ...

Awesome Advertising - Old Spice

2010-03-26T13:24:00.001-07:00

The folks at Old Spice know how to get some attention. Great ad ...

American Psycho: Business Card Scene

2010-03-24T17:12:00.000-07:00

The business card scene from American Psycho is the utmost in type/print geekdom. A classic!

"I can't believe that Bryce prefers Van Patten's card to mine.
Look at that subtle off-white coloring.
The tasteful thickness of it.
Oh, my God.
It even has a watermark."

RIPE Principal to Judge NSAC District Competition

2010-02-04T12:01:00.000-08:00

Susannah Fields, one of RIPE's principals and co-founders, has been honored with a request to judge the District 6 National Student Advertising Competition (NSAC) in Southfield, MI in April.

Each year, a corporate sponsor provides an assignment or case study outlining the history of its product and current advertising situation. Students research the product and its competition, identify potential problem areas and develop a completely integrated communications campaign for the client. Each student team then "pitches" its campaign to a panel of judges.

Susannah is looking forward to seeing all the great work from this mega-district of 21 schools.

The competition is governed by the Education Services division and the American Advertising Federation. Click here for more information on the competition.

Five Great Movie Opening Credits

2009-11-08T01:35:00.000-08:00

Below is a re-post of a guest column I did a while back for Fletch at Blog Cabins:

Upon receiving the assignment of guest blogger, I was a bit overwhelmed. I’m not a movie blogger, nor nearly the film geek that Fletch is. Then I remembered, write about what you know. So the topic of today’s rant is about good … no … make that great design in opening movie credits. These are the (mostly) unsung graphic heroes who create the coolest movie credits, but are lucky to have their name listed in them, really tiny, at the end.

5. Casino Royale
by Pauline Hume

Fractal geometric patterns of flowing playing cards, lyrics sung by Chris Cornell is a nice bonus too.

4.5. Fight Club
by Custom Film Effects

These folks also did the fantastic effects for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Watch Fight Club : opening title sequence in Entertainment | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Bonus video: typography!

4.25. One Hour Photo

by Imaginary Forces

A beautifully delicate treatment of flash bulbs and film — stark and antiseptic, just like the movie. Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be video available for this one on the interwebs, so the poster will have to suffice.

4. Se7en
by Kyle Cooper

A scratchy, twisted glimpse into the mind of a serial killer.

3. Around the World in 80 Days

by Saul Bass

Simplicity at it’s best. Considered a master title designer, Saul Bass is one of few truly famous designers in this genre.

http://www.notcoming.com/saulbass/caps_around80days.php

2. Thank You for Smoking
by Shadow Play Studio

The credits are set up like old-style cigarette packs, complete with the little tax stamps. Very cool. Great music too.

1. Catch Me if You Can
by Olivier Kuntzel and Florence Deygas

Nexus Productions must have cloned a modern-day Saul Bass.

It might be time to add a few more movies to your NetFlix queue.

Open Records Request Reveals a Shocking $2 Million Price Tag for State of Wisconsin Web Site

2009-10-08T15:25:00.000-07:00

There's some interesting news coming out of Wisconsin about state government contracts. It appears some web peeps were charging a bit more than usual for their services. To the tune of about $2 million dollars.

The state of Wisconsin didn't seem to bat an eye at the price tag, and for that kind of money it could at least have been a well-designed site, but no. They didn't even choose a company from their own state ... it seems they'd rather spend their money in Connecticut.

The author, Dan Cody of "Left on the Lake", was nice enough to allow us to reprint a portion of his article:

February 3rd, 2009 by Dan Cody

In late December of 2008, the Journal Sentinel carried a somewhat frivolous story about the new Campaign Finance Information System (CFIS) web site developed for the Government Accountability Board (GAB) which had a picture of the Minneapolis skyline instead of the Madison skyline on it’s front page. It was a somewhat embarrassing snafu by caught by State Senator Jeff Plale of Milwaukee, summarily mocked, and everyone moved on.

However, after reading in the story that the CFIS web site had cost Wisconsin residents “nearly a million dollars” to build, I decided to dig a big deeper and found out that the company who ended up getting the CFIS contract, PCC Technology Group, resided in Connecticut. As someone who works in the tech industry and has several close friends and many acquaintances in the web development industry, I expressed concern that 1.) such a large amount of money was spent on a web site with what appeared to be very limited functionality and 2.) that a firm outside of Wisconsin had been chosen to do the work, despite a large number of qualified local firms.

So in early January I filed an open records request with the GAB to find out the details of the Request for Proposals (RFP) the GAB put out and just how they came to chose the eventual winner of the contact for the CFIS, PCC Technology Group of Connecticut. In late January I received a response to my open records request from the GAB and was surprised to find that the total cost of the CFIS web site - again, a site that myself and other industry experts have pointed out is limited in functionality and complexity - wasn’t $1 million as originally reported in the original Journal Sentinel article, but double that!

A $2 million price tag for the web site that first gained attention because it had a picture of the wrong city’s skyline.

To say $2 million is a ridiculous price for a web site that has less functionality than my weblog is an understatement. After spending a considerable amount of time going over the documents I got from the GAB in response to my open records request, it became clear to me that PCC Technology Group was, to put it mildly, fleecing the people of Wisconsin.

Read the full article here >>

Word of the Day, "Volvelle"

2009-08-13T15:39:00.000-07:00

After searching Google high and low for "circle chart" and "wheel chart", we finally found the proper term for the little bugger... "volvelle".

Some of the more standard examples are those less-than-thrilling engineering dials that are full of numbers and formulas. But we also found some absolutely beautiful examples dating back to the 1300's. Some other great images and historical info can be found on the Eclectica blog.

A volvelle template is pretty tough to set up. You've gotta be sure it all lines up right when you spin the little dial, or everything can get messy real quick. Can you imagine what people had to go through to make a detailed astrological dial before the days of computers? Makes me love my Mac even more.

Thanks to Google and all the information on the interwebs, our volvelle is now spinning happily.

Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

It's Official, We're "Good People"

2009-07-29T20:35:00.000-07:00

They've checked us out, and we're squeaky clean. RIPE Creative is now accredited by the Better Business Bureau! In a nutshell, this means the BBB has determined we meet their principles of creating and maintaining trust in business.

Until we looked into it, we didn't even know that they also offer a lot of great resources for small businesses, including:
• Tips on protecting your customer's personal information
• Business tax resources
• Weekly newsletter with info to help small businesses build trust with their clients

• Plus, lots of great programs and events

Membership also gives added peace of mind to existing and potential clients that they're working with a reputable company.

If you'd like to learn more about the Arizona chapter, check out the Better Business Bureau of Central, Northern & Western Arizona.

Hardees Ad -vs- Franchisee

2009-07-23T11:20:00.000-07:00

Looks like Hardees is also trying the humor route with a commercial for their new "biscuit holes", and one of their franchisees isn't too happy about it.

What's your take? Personally, I don't think it's in the same league as the offensive BK ads (see the BK post below). The humor is a little rough around the edges, but I think it's pretty funny for what it is. Also, the spots only air after 9pm, so the kiddies aren't getting much of a chance to see it.

The Hardees campaign also includes an online presence at NameOurHoles.com. You can find out which kind of hole people really do prefer.

Is Burger King pissing people off ... on purpose?

2009-07-09T11:06:00.000-07:00

It looks like the people at Ad Age are on to something... a conspiracy of sorts. It seems Burger King might just be happy about all the negative PR they've been getting from some of their recent ad campaigns.

Why should we think they're OK with it? Because they keep doing it.

First they pissed off Mexicans, then got a little too sexy with their new "7-incher" ad in Singapore, and now have moved on to disrespect the Hindu religion. Their latest ad shows a Hindu goddess sitting on a ham sandwich with a caption that reads "a snack that is sacred".

Check out the full article: Burger King's MO: Offend, Earn Media, Apologize, Repeat (and some really good feedback comments) on Advertising Age's Global News.

The new iPhones are here, maybe.

2009-06-08T09:49:00.000-07:00

Rumor has it a new iPhone will be announced at today's Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco.

• Will we finally be able to copy/paste?
• Will Flash finally work?
• Maybe a better camera?
• The plot thickens...

For more info, check out CNN's article.

We're Four

2009-04-13T15:51:00.001-07:00

My how time flies! It seems like just yesterday we were playing with crayons. Here we are, four years later – STILL playing with crayons.

RIPE Creative turns four this April, so we figured it was high time to reflect on the past and look toward the future. Over the years we've had the pleasure of working with some great clients, large and small, and look forward to continuing to do so. Check out the sidebar for links >>

Looking ahead: We're really hoping to land the account for launching Apple's yet-to-be-invented iCar, and maybe open a second studio in Dubai. Have you seen the hotels there? And who else has an indoor ski slope?

Anyway, we're darned proud to do what we do. Kinda makes us feel like little superheroes ... though we promise not to wear our capes and super-jammies to any client meetings.

Award-Winning TPS Report!

2009-03-30T10:43:00.000-07:00

Now that awards season has passed, it got me to thinking ... actors get awards, musicians, visual artists, authors, poets and copywriters too. What about the forgotten masses, tucked into their cubicles with little or no recognition?

There should be awards for the more mundane tasks in the business world. So we decided to come up with a list of "un-official" award categories:

Best use of color in Excel
Most creative use of Word (non-text category)
Most didactic formula for Access
Most comprehensive Operations manual (over 1,000 employees)
Most comprehensive Operations manual (less than 1,000 employees)
Most profound depth of information in a single PowerPoint chart
Most attractive data merge (over 500,000 characters)
Most accomplished secret-surfer
Most creative boss-avoidance techniques
Best multiple uses of the phrase "ROI" in a meeting.

To all those unsung heroes out there who make a damned-fine TPS report; hurrah, and a gold star for you!

And the Envelope Please …

2009-03-17T11:27:00.000-07:00

The winners were announced last weekend at the 24th Annual ADDY Awards Gala held Saturday, March 14 at the Hotel Valley Ho. A total of 57 Gold ADDYS, 78 Silver, 62 Bronze, 2 Student Gold ADDYS, and 2 Silver ADDYS were awarded.

Top awards went to:
Best Of Show: The Santy Agency, TCB 'Blank' Campaign
Art Director Of The Year: Matthew Wilson, Knoodle, Grand Canyon Summer Games
Special Judges Award: Nomadic, Grohe Dreamspray Technology Rich Media Banner
Copywriter Of The Year: Jim Clark, Blind Society, Phoenix Coyotes Viral Videos
Ad Person Of The Year: Fran Mallace, Cox Media

RIPE Creative was also honored this year with a Silver ADDY for our self-promotion cards and magnets. The entry also won a Bronze ADDY at the AAF District 12 Regional Competition. Ooh, it's so shiny!

The über-hip Hotel Valley Ho was the perfect venue for the “Creative Smackdown”. The luchador-themed soirée was well received; complete with luchador masks, illustrated banners and a wrestling ring – perfect for any disputes that needed resolving. The indie, rock-a-billy, butt-shaking band, Acapulco Five-O had everyone up and dancing under the stars. The big winners of the night even took home actual wrestling belts, which were engraved (I’m sure we’ll be seeing them sporting them around town, or at least in all their client meetings).

It was a lot of fun, and tons of volunteers helped to make the event one of the best.

Props to all the winners!!!

What's your Opinion? Shepard Fairey – "Obama" Artist

2009-02-09T14:31:00.000-08:00

We're on the fence about the latest copyright issue over the Obama image, but the interesting comparisons of Shepard Fairey's work at art-for-a-change.com tackle some pretty bold issues. Read on...
Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

And Now for Something Completely Different

2009-02-02T13:53:00.000-08:00

We've been known to do things a little differently here at RIPE Creative, but this oddity is one for the blog. Check out our "horned" tomato! Susannah's latest crop has a funky twist.

Be sure to stay tuned! In a week or two we'll let you know how it tasted.

THE Commercials

2009-02-02T08:40:00.000-08:00

The big game is over, but you can still check out some of the best (and certainly most expensive) advertising right here.

There's also another interesting story on that page about the Doritos ad concept ... it was submitted to an online contest by two unemployed brothers from Indiana.

Mac Attack

2009-01-26T15:23:00.000-08:00

Yahoo Tech announced yesterday that a nasty malware is targeted for Macs. To find out more, and to get a tool to remove the malware, click here.

Addy Judging

2009-01-22T09:51:00.000-08:00

Last weekend was judging for AAF Metro-Phoenix 24th Annual ADDY Awards. Mark, the other half of RIPE Creative, is the Addy co-chair this year so he had his hands pretty full during the weekend. I volunteered for a shift, so we both headed off to the über-hip Hotel Valley Ho for the judging.

We had another banner year for entries even with the sluggish economy, 749 to be exact. And a whopping 900% increase in student entrees (well, last year we only had one entry). Many of the student entries were on par with work from top local agencies.

The judging went smoothly and 70-degree weather made for some pretty happy judges. The ADDY Committee is tasked each year with securing judges that represent a diverse selection of advertising disciplines. The talented guys who served as the official judges this year fit the bill to a tee! One super-cool judge we met was from Minnesota (minus 58 degrees the day he flew out to AZ) ... his name is Glen Wachowiak. He does some great work; you can check it out here.

We're looking forward to announcing this year's ADDY winners. The big event will be held at Hotel Valley Ho in Scottsdale, Arizona on March 14, 2009 at 6 pm. See you there!

Advertising Gone Wrong

2009-01-21T14:26:00.000-08:00

OMG, look at this ad for Suburban Propane ... this is a real ad from today’s Arizona Republic. WHAT were they thinking? They've certainly risked alienating an entire population of prospective customers – including me.