…if there is any political group in America that has a right to be outraged, it is the Progressives. They bought into Obama’s message of change and hope, believed that the criminals of the Bush dictatorship would have to answer for their crimes, and naively dreamed that America’s respect for peace, justice and human rights would be restored.

But, as Wikileaks and the antics of Obama’s “Justice” Department have shown, the Progressives were deceived. Yet, as in the past, they are forced to be supportive of Obama’s duplicity because the alternative is worse.

I want to believe that the Wikileaks documents will change America for the better. But what undoubtedly will happen is a repetition of the past: those who expose government crimes and cover-ups will be prosecuted or branded as criminals; new laws will be passed to silence dissent; new Liebermans will arise to intimidate the corporate-controlled media; and new ways will be found to conceal the truth.

via Valerie Plame, YES! Wikileaks, NO! – English pravda.ru.

June 30, 2009

Statement on receiving Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival Grand Prix Titanium and Integrated Campaign Awards:

“The Obama Media Team is honored to accept these amazing awards in recognition of the outstanding work done by so many people at the Campaign, in particular the New Media Group, alongside the multi-agency consulting team led by AKPD Message and Media and GMMB.

“The communications agency roster includes: Dixon Davis Media Group, Murphy Putnam Media, Shorr Johnson Magnus, Squier Knapp Dunn Communications, Message, Audience and Presentation, FUSE, Blue State Digital and The Strategy Group. Research firms include: Benenson Strategy Group, Anzelone-Liszt Research, Bendixen and Associates, Bennett, Petts and Blumenthal, Brilliant Corners, David Binder Research and Harstad Research. All of these firms and the Obama for America staff share in this incredible honor.

“But we couldn’t have done it without all those volunteers, who knocked on doors, hosted events, made phone calls, contributed whatever they could afford and stood in line on Election Day to make their voice heard. Most of all, we must thank President Barack Obama, the best client anyone could ever hope to have.

“It is humbling to receive this recognition among so many groundbreaking campaigns around the world.”

In addition to being the highest profile political campaign ever awarded at Cannes, it is likely the most collaborative. I count 19 communications and research firms sharing the Lion, at least the ones that were mentioned on the email I got. Maybe the trophies will travel around like the Stanley Cup to each partner company, but if I were running a political communications, design or research agency, it would be worth the €1999.00 to get advertising’s highest honor for the office shelf¹.

Someone may have left Chicago’s Mode Project off the list, though–according to Mode’s website it had a pretty big role: “[Mode Project was] one of the main creative partners in the campaign, assisting its longtime client and the lead agency, AKPD Message and Media. Mode Project oversaw the design of the now famous Obama logo and produced more than 200 broadcast commercials and additional digital content during the course of the primary and general election.” You may remember them from this space previously, as they commissioned one Aaron Draplin to collaborate on some recovery logos.

It’s a conspicuous absence, and maybe strikes at the heart of the creative-versus-rational debate Bob Garfield gets into here when the cool, interesting company that designed the logo is left out of the celebratory dogpile: “the messaging was as creatively barren as it was tactically brilliant. There was no ‘Morning in America’ in this campaign. No ‘Daisy.’ No any single thing that stood out. Cannes has just awarded two Grand Prix to a back office.”

Well, a very talented back office, with political geniuses David Axelrod and David Plouffe running the show, but still one that required the iconic ‘O’ (that ironically headed the email as you see here, yet whose creators weren’t given any dap). Mode Project even produced the video that introduced David Plouffe’s Cannes appearance, made possible by Omnicom’s DDB (watch it at the studio’s site). The Guardian’s Mark Sweney reports here Plouffe dispelled the myth the campaign was 2.0–Plouffee called it “old school,” surely one for which a logo is integral.

So, I’ve asked the spokesperson from GMMB (also an Omnicom agency) a couple more questions about its Cannes strategy and will see if the Mode snub is just an oversight. Maybe it is. Hopefully this isn’t this year’s BBDO-Big Spaceship credit fracas; it would be a shame to ruin the further celebration of optimism and choice with squabbling and politics.

Funnily enough, in the course of dashing off this post things seem to have developed. A colleague received an emailed release from Mode just a few minutes after I received the release from GMMB:

OBAMA FOR AMERICA CAMPAIGN WINS TOP PRIZES IN CANNES
Mode Project, Creative Partner to AKPD Message and Media, Part of the Winning Media Team

Chicago, IL – (June 29, 2009) — The advertising and marketing campaign that helped propel Barack Obama into the White House has been honored with the two top prizes — the Titanium Grand Prix and the Integrated Grand Prix — from the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival.

Chicago-based Mode Project was one of the main creative partners in the campaign, assisting its longtime client and the lead agency, AKPD Message and Media. Mode Project oversaw the design of the now famous Obama logo and produced more than 200 broadcast commercials and additional digital content during the course of the primary and general election.

Of the Cannes win for Obama for America, Mode Project’s Colin Carter says, “We were honored to be a part of the Obama for America campaign and congratulate everyone on the Obama Media Team in this historic, game-changing endeavor. The Cannes honor is the highest in advertising and knowing we contributed to the successes of the campaign gives us a sense of accomplishment, second only to the election’s outcome.”

Mode Project (http://www.modeproject.com/) is a Chicago-based creative production studio providing motion design, production, editorial and interactive solutions to agencies and brands such as AT&T, ecko unltd, Obama for America, Sunsilk, Tropicana, Kellogg’s, Gatorade since 2002.

So, got any info as to why different agencies and companies involved in the historic campaign may be playing politics in the wake of the Cannes awards? Or is this just an innocent, simple oversight where the email I got was the one that forgot to give praise to the creative parts of the campaign, reserving that for another PR list? Let me know…

1. maybe that’ll help the Lions keep the lights on after this year’s fest was reportedly off some 40%, but surely they had some cash salted away

A funny thing happened on the way to this Talent profile of Aaron “All-American” Draplin that ran in March’s Creativity.

The piece had been done for a few months, and had gotten pushed to the March issue because it had certain evergreen qualities.

It was laid out, on the page, being proofed and minutes away from being sent to the printer when it was revealed Draplin, along with Chris Glass, another designer, worked with Chicago’s Mode Project creative director Steve Juras to develop logos for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) projects and the U.S. Department of Transportation’s TIGER (Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery) team (seen here), which were unveiled by Big Boss Barack Obama in early March.

This was, as they go, a tiny bundle of candy placed into our lap by the great magazine fairy in the sky. And those are pretty few and far-between at the moment, so it was nice to savor. (The super-relevant photo, by the way, was taken by Mark Welsh from Nitro Snowboards back before Thanksgiving!)

We took around half an hour to rework it and a nice evergreen became much more timely and interesting.

Anyway, Draplin’s one to keep an eye on. Know how to do that? Via his kickass blog.

It was so staggering, actions were forced.

The note, laden in artistic pronouncements and full-of-itselfness, begged for an extension; a dramatic reading was considered, but it turned out only a full video could to the thing justice. After all, a 1500-word yearly update email sent to dozens of people deserves the highest degree of satire you can muster.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m an earnest man. But even sincerity, in extreme, is funny as hell. (Viz. Kenneth on 30 Rock.)

Who was the sender? An unknown personage, but clearly a modern-day Benjamin Franklin, part writer, part political organizer, all full of Brooklyn potential and privilege and so indicative of our generation’s rampaging self-importance.

We christened him Eric Anton Schechter-Oblomov; this is his yearly update, verbatim, brought to life as best we could.

A Letter From Brooklyn from Eric Anton Schechter-Oblomov on Vimeo.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Friends,

I’m writing you with the warmest wishes on this, just another winter’s day in New York. I figured this was as good a time as any to write, in the shadow of the depression, in the afterglow of yes we can, and in what has become a season of creative stimulus, though it be a global winter of our discontent. To write you, not with a plea for your protest or your donation or your time for this or that campaign, no—to write you just to say hello. It has, as it always has, been too long.

I’m writing these words to you in my new home, an ancient apartment in my ancestral homeland of Brooklyn, New York—Prospect-Lefferts, to be precise—where you can find me most nights, at the end of long days, at my typewriter or notebook, or in the streets organizing amid the crisis.

Soon you will find me in other places, places like Guatemala, where I will live as an expat writer; like Israel and Palestine, where I hope to put in some work amid the wreckage with human rights organizations on the ground; like Eastern Europe, where, somewhere in the ashes, I hope to unearth some roots. All while working to finish my novel before I hit grad school in the fall, which will be either here in NYC or in Berkeley.

Before I leave this March on the latest road where solitude meets solidarity, I would love to see you again, if you are around to be seen, and catch up on the life we’ve each of us lived since the last time we sat down together. And if you are not in the vicinity of NYC or Boston and you have a minute, write me back and let me know how you’ve been, where you’ve been, where you’re going, what moves you or excites you these days. Looking forward to sharing stories, stanzas, tunes, ideas, and whatever it is we are doing.

To those of you I haven’t spoken to in a while and are wondering where I’ve been all this time, I’ve been trying my hand at this and that. I’ve been a freelance journalist. I’ve been a photojournalist. I’ve been an organizer. I worked on what they call The Campaign for a minute (yes, that one). I was a human rights observer in rebel territory in Mexico, working and translating for three delegations to Chiapas and Oaxaca with Solidarity Without Borders.

I have also been other places this year. For instance, I have been to the abyss and back. I was a lucky man—not everyone we know made it back. One year ago this month, I faced off with death in a New York City subway station. Death lost, and I lived to tell the tale (a hell of a tale if you ever want to hear it). My mother went on to win her own bout with breast cancer. For me and my family, it was a year of victory for life over death—and, as it was for the rest of America, for change over stasis.

What followed this encounter was a personal renaissance, a revival of the writer, artist, and musician in me. I wrote every day. I wrote, not just with ink, but with the rest of me, a new story. I learned to see with new eyes. I started to take lots of pictures. I learned to listen with new ears. I picked up my fiddle and started playing again with the bands. And I learned, once again, that it was not just the world, writ large, that needed remaking—it was the stuff of everyday life.

And it was a long time coming, as Sam Cooke would say, but a change did come to the life of this country, one so unaccustomed to change so profound. Neither November 4 nor January 20 changed everything—hardly—but they surely changed the air, the climate, the horizon. And these things, in turn, change how we walk, how we talk, how we feel. The Bush years were eight long, hard, angry years of our youth. The world was on fire. I fought fire with fire. This fire burned me out. But now there was the promise of something else. Something else that was elected, inaugurated this year—not in one man so much as in the people.

And now, in spite of my eternal skepticism, I find myself filled with what Antonio Gramsci called “optimism of the will, pessimism of the intellect.”

So here I am, once again, a starving artist in these brother-can-you-spare-a-dime times, emerging from years of writer’s block, honing my fiction and poetry while tutoring and freelancing to support myself and send myself to more places. I’ve rededicated myself to the work of writing this novel, the third, the one that’s been waiting for me to write it all these years. It’s a story of many stories—New York stories, of course—told from the perspective of an aging tenement building on the eve of its demolition. Some of you are in it (under other names, of course).

This month I will be breaking out of this fortress of solitude so that I can see each of you before we set out on other roads. Let me know when and where you can be found. I’d also like to invite you to the following events:

1. An epic Brooklyn birthday party/benefit party/live show/reading on Thursday, March 5, celebrating my 24th year in this world – as well as our imminent departure for points south and points east.
2. Appearances at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe and at Bar 13 – also the first week of March.
3. Live show with my string band at The Annex on the Lower East Side (date and time TBA). Also coming soon: Open Jam with two ex-members of Shadowbox!

Hope to see you there, or here, or anywhere. I know I’m no good at keeping in touch, I’m working on it, but in the meantime, know that I carry your friendship and share your fire wherever I go. Be in touch.

Love,
Eric

PS: Many of you have asked me to see my work. The novel remains under wraps. But linked here you can find a few articles and photos, and if you want to see more, let me know and it’s yours. Others have asked for book and music recommendations, so here, too, is a brief list of what I’ve been reading and tuning into.

PPS: I want to give a shoutout to those greatest of writers and musicians who have left us this past year: Studs Terkel, Kurt Vonnegut, Norman Mailer, John Updike, George Carlin, Utah Phillips – and our dear, dear friend, Clarel Antoine.

Poems and short stories: On request. Just ask if you want to see them.

What I’ve been reading lately:

Novels:
The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon
The Savage Detectives & 2666 by Roberto Bolaño
The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem
A Mercy by Toni Morrison
Indignation by Philip Roth
Rereading: Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino

Poetry:
The People Yes by Carl Sandburg
Good Morning, Revolution: Uncollected Writings by Langston Hughes
Las Palabras Andantes by Eduardo Galeano
Unfortunately, It Was Paradise by Mahmoud Darwish
The School Among the Ruins by Adrienne Rich

Nonfiction:
Armageddon in Retrospect by Kurt Vonnegut
New York Calling: From Blackout to Bloomberg ed. Berman & Berger
Prophets Outcast: A Century of Dissident Jewish Writing ed. Shatz
Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination by Robin D.G. Kelley
The Family of Man (Photography) ed. Edward Steichen

What I’ve been listening to lately:

Avett Brothers, Emotionalism
Bread and Roses, Deep River Day
Blue Scholars, Blue Scholars
Classic Bluegrass (Smithsonian Folkways)
Calle 13, Los de Atras Vienen Conmigo
The Clash, Live at Shea Stadium
Gil Scott Heron, Evolution and Flashback
Gogol Bordello, Super Taranta
Immortal Technique, The Third World
John Coltrane, Coltrane: The Story of a Sound
Johnny Cash, Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison
Manu Chao, La Radiolina
MIA, Kala & Slumdog Millionaire Soundtrack
Mischief Brew, Smash the Windows
Nas, Untitled
New Yiddish Chorale, In Love and In Struggle
Nina Simone, Feeling Good
Notorious BIG, Life After Death
Old Crow Medicine Show, OCMS
Paul Robeson, Songs of Free Men
Peter Tosh, The Ultimate Peter Tosh
Ratatat, LP3 & Remixes
Saul Williams, The Dead Emcee Scrolls
Sam Cooke, Portrait of a Legend
Santogold, Santogold
This Bike Is a Pipe Bomb, Front Seat Solidarity
TV on the Radio, Dear Science
Utah Phillips, We Have Fed You All a Thousand Years
Wolfe Tones, At Their Very Best: Live
Woody Guthrie, The Asch Recordings

Michigan Central

I’m not usually in the position of emphatically recommending anything on the cover of the Weekly Standard, but this story on Detroit is too important to pass up, if only because it’s able give a high-altitude view of the staggering failures that continue to define this once-majestic place.

Yeah, you’ve got to put up with a bit of Scott Templeton under-the-bridge stuff but Matt Labash does a really good job of sussing out some of the complexities of Charlie LeDuff, one of the best guys in the business, whose personality seems to be between the gentle inquisitiveness of a Jon Ronson and the advocacy of someone like Muntadhar al-Zaidi (not the best comparison, but the latter is close at mind, give me a break).

If Detroit has a future it’s with the LeDuffs of the world, the sparking, idea-oriented tied to this place who can bring some of the ingenuity and passion back. Whether they’ll be attracted by the blank canvas decades from now when the city is little but a sterile downtown surrounded by desolate blocks or will come sooner, when there are still things worth saving, is the big question.

(Check out the map at the bottom of this article to get a sense of the city’s scale, Boston, San Francisco and Manhattan can fit into the city limits, 30% of which is now estimated to be vacant.)

Hope in the Jungle

Early last month, as the historic nature of our presidential election set in and the national night light grew a little brighter, images and stories of people celebrating all over the globe flooded in. I got to wondering.

How many people around the world DON’T know Barack Obama was elected president of the United States?

Finding out who’s remote enough to miss big news was not as easy as I’d hoped. Turns out, the fellows pictured above in our photo composite above aren’t the only ones cut off from regular news, despite a prevalence of communications methods and information dissemination capabilities unheralded in the history of human civilization.

Some groups, like scientific surveys in our far reaches, may make contact weekly or monthly; they’ll eventually hear. Some, such as the religious devout, are cloistered from such information and may not have access. Would a monk who’s granted ten minutes of contact with an outsider once a year ask for current events updates, or just look for a dump of monastery-relevant information? Some, exceedingly rural peasants on the other side of the globe in China, for example, probably concentrate what attention they can spare on local news, things that affect them more directly. I wouldn’t count, for example, a Russian living in Arizona who was unable to speak English among those that we’ll call Newsless, though–context clues speak volumes. And any social contact, however small, goes a long way.

It seems like you can classify the newsless into a few different groups.

I’d call The Removed those living in North Korea or other repressive or dysfunctional areas, like the four scoring in the 90s on the very bottom of this list. In fact, North Korea’s state media website has over a thousand mentions of Bush but not a single Barack Obama reference. Together with Eritrea, Turkmenistan and Burma, that’s around 80 million people

For our purposes The Indigenous are those whose traditional cultures aren’t concerned with matters of media, however large or small. Tiny tribes, nomads, people speaking rapidly dying languages–you’d imagine information like the Senator’s triumph has no bearing in their lives, no relevance or no way
of making it through the filter of translation. The International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs estimates at least 350 million to be of their ilk.

The Remote are people who, socially, belong to an established ethnic group that has developed its own media yet are out of radio range, without satellite TV, etc. The largest majority are probably simply
living in places that are extraordinarily impoverished. I’d count cloistered religious and the
willfully ignorant among them

Remotes are probably the most difficult to classify, and it doesn’t look like too much work has been put into it. However, there are some interesting surprises. Such as, household television penetration in China is 95%. That leaves some 66,000,000, give or take, “media-dark,” a term the people who study this stuff have applied, mostly to the Indian subcontinent. (Like Bangladesh, where, as Shahab Enam Khan of Jahangirnagar University estimates “28.5 percent of all Bangladeshis have no access to regular media.”) That’s 37.5 million people. Unfortunately Mr. Khan’s terminology hasn’t been extended wholly to other nation-states; it’s tough to figure out what to call the extra-media, or whatever you’d like to term people like them. Another interesting component to this is Africa. Turns out, Vijay Mahajan’s Africa Rising says the continent isn’t media dark, as many would believe. Given the particular gravity to the Obama news for all Africans, that one of her sons has ascended to such heights, it’d be safe to rank Africa higher in this instance than you normally would for news from the States.

So, a really, really rough number, based mainly on indigenous populations and The Removed would give you around 430 million; adding the figures we see for China and Bangladesh, the former probably fuzzier  gives you just over half a billion, 13% of the world’s population. Despite personally wanting the Hope Dope to spread to as many possible and the whole world to know about what’s happened here, in my gut it seems like a more accurate measure would be closer to 30%. If you’ve got any leads or know of anyone who’s studied stuff like this with some degree of knowledge and rigor, please speak up.

At any rate, it wasn’t too surprising to see the large majority of information available on the web, studies and such, were conducted by advertising entities. As in, let’s figure out how many people in the world aren’t being advertised to so we can get them buying the right kind of toothpaste.

Speaking of advertising involving folks not normally invited to the party, Burger King’s forthcoming Whopper Virgins stunt campaign (a taste test among people “who have no word for burger”) puts a crass point on all of this thought, for me. I’m glad a few have already voiced their objections, however muddled they seem.

It’s poignant that everyone seems to agree this is “wrong”, but telling they can’t explain exactly why. Maybe that’s why no one spoke up against this during the entire costly production process–they simply didn’t have the words beyond “Hey, guys, wait–is this right?”

Well, it feels wrong largely because we’ve long since realized the idea of a Noble Savage is outmoded and incorrect. In the early 1700′s Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury in Soliloquy, or Advice to an Author wrote would-be authors should look for the “simplicity of manners, and innocence of behaviour, which has been often known among mere savages; ere they were corrupted by our commerce.” That’s precisely what Crispin, Porter + Bogusky is going for in this; they’re looking for an uncorrupted mouth to taste the product. Problem is, this doctrine, that those untouched and unstricken by our society are somehow in a vaunted moral position is in the very least entirely incorrect, and at worst the soft racism of consumer culture.

‘Sir, may I recommend the 1989 Leflaive Chevalier Montrachet?’
new guinea man 04, originally uploaded by FriskoDude.

Someone who’s never had a burger doesn’t make a better judge of a burger. Imagine if you’d asked a member of the Hagahai tribe from Papua New Guinea to choose your wines at Per Se. The gentlemen of Village X who’ve been fed on a diet far from fast food have no compass by which to judge the quality of a Big Mac or Whopper. Plain and simple. Conceivably that leaves coercion and selective editing as the primary persuasive forces in a situation like this.

Either way, like the GOP, things like this serve to “energize the base”–BK’s target young male demographic, which will actively comment on blogs and vent adolescent frustration in the form of abusive comments (eg “BK rulez fuk u hippy fagets”) as the most vile element of social media. And, of course, the more brain time we devote to this, and the bigger piece of the newshole your local telecast gives it,  the more we’re wondering where the closest Whopper depot is for some flame-broiled deliciousness.

she's got mommy's lifeless eyes

Thanks to a new web promo for Volkswagen minivans, we can see what little America Obama-Palin would look like. Talk about working across the aisle. Anyone care to do a McCain-Biden mixup?

Up North, things are particularly bleak. In the town where my parents stay, Boyne City, 95 people started Labor Day weekend with a pink slip, as LexaMar, one of the biggest corporations in the town of 3500 laid them off on Friday. It made small talk everywhere, downtown, strolling past the classic cars on display, at the police-sponsored drag race at the city airstrip, another midsized manufacturer slicing off jobs as the economy expels another ragged breath.

The one point of light in a state with its biggest industry, automobiles, breaking down, is film production. It’s exceptionally cheap to shoot anything in Michigan right now, and that has ushered in the closest thing to a business renaissance the region has seen in years, at least the latest Band-Aid to create an economic buffer around the doomed car business, like Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson’s Automation Alley plan that began about a decade ago.

A combination of tax credits for production and infrastructure development and job creation, investment loans, job training incentives, free use of state property and more are putting up to fifty cents on the dollar back into film production companies’ pockets. It’s having huge effects throughout the commercials industry; I’ve personally chatted with five different people or groups who’ve shot spots in and around Detroit, and there are a bevy of Hollywood productions that have moved through the state.

To second-hand a quote from the Freep, “More than 50 films have been approved since the advent of the film incentives, according to Tony Wenson of the Michigan Film Office.”

That’s all well and good, and it’s a huge source of state pride in addition to the reassuring sound of at least a few thin dimes rattling in the piggy bank, but I’m inclined to think the State and specifically the office of Bill Huizenga, the sponsor of the bill, weren’t forward-thinking enough when it comes to digital production.

See, here’s the problem: the Big Three spend millions of dollars a year on marketing, and Michigan’s plan might be bringing some of that money back to Michigan for film shoots, but the digital production is getting done offshore, at what, with the rebate and incentive conditions, are probably comparable rates to having it done in Michigan (if the hazy incentives rules cover things that are getting outsourced, like banner ads).

It’s entirely up to their advertising agencies where that money goes when it comes to production, and what communities benefit from a shoot (and there’s a big benefit, even for a two-day spot shoot, in trucking, craft services, rentals, you name it). But the biggest marketers in Michigan, the automakers, aren’t doing the bulk of their digital production in Michigan, they’re doing it in places like Costa Rica. Those dollars that go to digital production become websites, banner ads, films that play on the Internet, etc. And while the latter of those is covered in the Michigan Film Incentives plan, websites are explicitly excluded. Incentives in digital are in place for interactive games, internet video, internet programming, video games and digital animation but not interactive websites “that are primarily used for institutional, private, industrial, retail or wholesale marketing or promotional purposes.” Here’s a PDF of the application; maybe banners could be described as ‘digital animation’ or ‘internet programming’ but I’d imagine they’re excluded if not explicitly named, I’m not entirely sure.

Interactive Websites need not apply!

I’ve recently been looking quite a bit at offshore digital production, and the trend where agencies and marketing holding companies make it easier for mass-production of digital assets like banners by shops in places like Costa Rica. In the past, if your client wanted 300 different banners for a new pickup launch, for example, each customized to a different region or for a different nuanced demographic, you might quote the client a specific dollar amount and then send the project offshore; you pocket the difference. But now clients are getting wise to the pass-off, and networks think it’s smarter to own up to the business realities up front, explaining to the client the mass-production work will be done offshore and the savings will be passed along to them. The savings are great, according to the players involved, and several major holding companies are consolidating their business to make it easier to get these things done cheaper in developing nations. Read my interview with the CEO of WPP’s new venture Deliver to get a sense of where that’s going.

A great article from the Wall Street Journal shed more light on this movement, including General Motors’ involvement with Prodigious, Publicis Groupe’s offshore coordinator:

GM says that the number of variations of the ads it uses for campaigns is now several times greater than it was just two years ago. For instance, a consumer might notice 10 to 15 different ads promoting GM’s Chevy Malibu sedan online, says Mike Devereux, executive director of digital marketing for GM. But each of these ads can have up to a couple hundred variants, ranging from the background color to the text highlighting things like the car’s gasoline mileage or horse power.

GM used to work with multiple ad agencies and each had a different process for producing the ads. “It was inefficient. We never would have been able to scale,” Mr. Devereux says. Now, GM meets in Detroit with teams from Prodigious and the carmaker’s ad agencies to manage the digital production of its online advertising.

So, GM dollars funnel out through Publicis to places like Costa Rica, Bulgaria, the Ukraine, where savings occur because of lower overhead. But with these tax rebates, I’d argue it’s just as cheap to do production at present in Michigan.

Wouldn’t it make more sense for GM to take advantage of production incentives and do its part to help the local economy? It would at least soften the local economic blow when the giant ultimately topples. And wouldn’t it make more sense for the film incentives office to include potentially lucrative markets and make sure they were within range of the economic sprinkler?

Again, I have no idea why certain aspects of digital production are barred from the incentives. One argument is it would alienate present operators, but screw it, give the company that’s been making banners in downtown Detroit for the past five years the rebates too–film production companies that are already established can apply for the rebates.

Part of this argument feels like an updated, creative economy version of the old ’80s and ’90s calls against Michiganders buying foreign cars, but the shift in thinking is different than that. By clarifying the wording and specifically opening up the Incentives structure to a greater range of digital production forms, the Michigan Film Incentives office has the potential to turn the state into a center for a highly creative discipline. I can think of a few people pursuing digital startup options who, given the availability of real estate in downtown Detroit, would strongly consider a fat tax rebate on their bigger productions to be the deciding factor in their decision to open up a boutique in Michigan.

I’ll see if the Film Incentives office has any answers about what sort of digital stuff is covered. Who knows, maybe Michael Moore, yeah, that guy who used to be concerned with the Michigan economy, will want to press on the rest of his colleagues for the benefit of the next generation of communications, the good old Internet. He’s on the Michigan Film Office’s Advisory Council.

Meanwhile, Michiganders, don’t just look at the stars and the glitz when you read about the incentives, think about the how the state’s economy could look to the less fancy aspects of production and help everyone flourish.

On the set of Prayers for Bobby, a Sigourney Weaver vehicle shot in Michigan, originally uploaded by annethelibrarian.

This came in over the email transom today from a friend of a friend…I haven’t asked around to follow up yet, but comes through a pretty reliable source and is interesting either way.

Apparently, this gentleman, who worked in politics, encountered scandal-collecting Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick in Reagan National in D.C. and had some words with hizzoner. Read on.

“I have, quite possibly, one of the best stories ever. It will take a bit of effort for me to properly relay it but it happened yesterday afternoon at the NWA terminal at Reagan National Airport. Here ya go.

I’m leaving the bathroom and get a text message from [redacted] that reads, “holy sh-t look who is on our plane!” So, I’m looking for a mid-level celebrity or maybe Sen. Stabenow’s fat sloppy ass when BAM – there he is. Kwame. F-cking. Kilpatrick! Being unable to resist the urge and knowing if I was successful I could get a reaction out of him I call out “Resign” as I walk past his entourage consisting of the Playa, his tax dodging chief of staff and a security officer. Didn’t hear anything in respone and wasn’t sure if he had heard me so I continued on to where we were sitting and we proceeded to laugh about what a piece of shit he is and how pathetic the citizens of Detroit are for standing by him… yada yada yada.

About 15 minutes later, I look up and the Playa is about 10 feet away TEXT MESSAGING on his phone. I couldn’t believe my good luck! With just him and his security guy around, I knew my voice would be heard. “Who ya texting Kwame… is that Christine… is that your girl Beatty?” I could see the rage filling in his face and when he turned around towards me, I gave him the thumbs down. Being unable to help himself from responding like a true gangsta that he so wishes to be (and probably is, think dead stripper from Manoogian party) he says to me in ghetto Kwame twang, “that’s how I feel about you too man.” My response: “at least I didn’t cheat on my wife and cost the city $9 million.” This got a look that showed he was REALLY wanting to punch me in the face. He then sat down and took a phone call with his back to me and Amy. At this point, we were loving life having gotten a fantastic rise out of Coleman A. Young, Jr. But it wasn’t over!! After he finished his phone call, he again couldn’t resist and my smirk must have been too much to ignore. “Keep talking white boy, keep talking” said the supposed savior of Detroit. Said I, “white boy? white boy! you pathetic racist. Why do you have to bring my race into this conversation?” I think this startled him that I wouldn’t back down and I really wanted him to make a scene or maybe even hit me. And I’m pretty sure that if his security guy wouldn’t have gotten between us, he would have. Keep in mind, I was sitting calmly and smirking at him as he charged towards me saying, “I don’t feel nothin towards you, I don’t feel nothin. You’re just a hater… you just hate… feel the hate, take it all in,” while taking his hand and pumping it over his heart. (I thought it was funny that he would claim to feel nothing towards me when he was berating me and showing everyone around us what a racist he is). “You got a bidness card I could have, I’d love to get back to you about this, I’d love to continue this another time,” he shouted as he moved closer to me. So I sat up in my chair (thinking, of course, that the last thing I’m gonna do is give this ghetto-fabalous f-ckstick a way to track me down and have me Tamara Greened) and said, “You’re getting nothing from me but my disdain. You are a pathetic disgrace and a lying, cheating racist.” Again, he came back with the clever, “keep talking white boy!” My final rejoinder, “you’re going to prison PUNK!” At this point, his security guy who never said a single word during the whole affair escorted him away from me where he went to steam with Kandia. They eyeballed me for another 5-10 minutes and as we got onto the plane I blew him a kiss.

It was the most fun I’ve ever had at an airport.”

There you have it. Apparently, KK’s down but not out–heckling dude lost his job a few days later. Whether that was by Kilpatrick’s hand or not, who can say? More details TK as they arrive…

Disclaimer: I’m more of a letter writer than a shout-across-the-airport kinda guy, especially when it comes to wounded-dog politicians, but from what I hear about Kilpatrick’s imposing physical nature and general bout-it-bout-it-ness this took some measure of sac.