andy grayson

long time, no blog

Sorry. But I've been just incredibly busy the last few months. It's terrible, I know. But Kristen is pregnant, we moved apartments in the city, and work has been insano.

Right now I'm in Denver. Miserable.

It's not Denver, don't get me wrong. But you see, normally when we travel in the ad world, it's pretty nice. You get to ride first class I'd say 25% of the time, and you stay in some pretty nice swank hotels. And I travel a lot. Especially lately. That being the case, it becomes not so jetset after awhile. You get to your hotel and you just want to check in fast, and get up to your nice room.

I flew into SF last night at 1am. Went into work early today, and flew to Denver this evening. Getting here at 1am. And I'm miserable because some jerky-nut decided to make this random boutique hotel in downtown Denver into a @#$% nightclub on Friday & Saturday nights.

My room is literally humping & thumping right now. I feel like I'm back in my college dorm. 

When I walked into the lobby, I had to show a douche bag bouncer my luggage so that he would believe I was staying here. I mean, that's what jerky-nut did... he basically took this little hotel that could be kind of cool (with some work + taste) and turned the entire lobby area into a dance floor. I had to literally bump and shove my way through the dancing denver nightlife to get to the reception desk. I'm still just a little stunned at how stupendously stupid this person is. He needs to have "square peg in round hole" tattooed on his face because instead of trying to turn his fledgling hotel into a tasteful, on point, unique place for the creative community to stay in Denver, he's basically done the opposite, turning off his actual paying, repeat clientele force fitting one money-making endeavor into another to create a terribly awkward combination – that ultimately caters to a population who will never stay here, ever.

Don't stay at the Jet Hotel in Denver.

I can't believe I made this my first post back. Sorry, I hate complaino bloggers. I promise I won't do this much.

Guest Blog: Erin

Since I'm (a) Andy's favorite sister, and (b) enjoy hearing about strategic planning in advertising, I wanted to share some info on what urban planners talk about, think about, and lose sleep over.

I attended the American Planning Association Conference this past week in Philadelphia (here are some pics),

and I managed to have a great time despite the Nor'Easter on Sun, Mon, and Tues. The pictures below are of a fabulous market near the convention center. The food in Philly was top notch, and now I know why it is often called the "City of Brotherly Love Handles".

About 5,000 planners from across the U.S. attend this annual conference to share ideas on how to make cities, suburbs and rural areas better places to live and work. Here are some of the things that I betcha didn't know:

- 2/3 of the American population will live in urban areas by the year 2030.

- On average, people spend 19% of their income on transportation. People who are auto-dependent spend approximately 25% of their income on it adn those who live in "transit rich" areas (w/ bikeways, more than 1 mode of mass transit available) spend only 9% of their income on transportation. Savings on transportation could free up a lot of money for a mortgage payment.

- Increasing density (which people are usually opposed to) in an area can actually bring prices down (increase supply, decrease demand and lower prices result).

- A planner from a suburb of Sydney, Australia shared some aerial photography and Sydney is actually experiencing sprawl that looks identical to that in the U.S., meaning 2-7 acre lots with large houses on the metro fringe. So we're not alone...

- It costs between $18,000 and $25,000 to construct 1 parking spot in a parking garage.

- The Dutch lead the way in street design. Europeans are decades ahead of the U.S. in their implementation of "Home Zone" street design. Streets in the Netherlands, Germany, England, etc. are designed so that pedestrians and cars share the street and there is no differentiation between sidewalk and street. Just think about walking down streets in Europe –- people ultimately feel their property extends into the street; cars park half on the street, half on the sidewalk area. Pedestrians are the best tool for traffic calming! (The picture below is from a website  about this and I highly recommend checking it out.)

Looking forward to guest blogging again. - Erin

home

I finally made it back to SF after a week of brain (and blame) storming, client glad-handing, and some strategery chatter for good measure. My flight back West was alright, despite some seriously bumpy stretches over the rockies. I don't know how people fly in & out of Denver. It seems like your flights would always be half full of turbulence.

When I got to SFO, a really friendly cabbie drove me back to the city, but I had to keep myself from laughing because he drove like an 82 year-old. He hugged the steering wheel so close that I wasn't quite sure how he turned it. The pic below doesn't quite do it justice.

He told me that he was from China and I thought it was cool that he was already excited for the Olympics, which China is hosting next year. He had these stickers on both windows.

The city looked good and sunny as usual.

pics of the day – Disney World, 4.16.07

Here are corn camp we're staying in Disney World's Contemporary Resort. To be honest, there isn't much that I'd consider contemporary. The lobby is cheesy and the halls are dingy, but the rooms are suprisingly nice. You wouldn't ever guess that you were at Disney World from looking out from my room (bottom pic). I think you need that if you're an adult here without kids. But looking at all the kids today, and the looks on their faces, made me excited to be a dad.

pic of the day – IKEA

Kristen caught a sneaky pic of Chris and me lounging in IKEA on Saturday. Chris bought that chair and I'm jealous. It's comfy!

adadf

LA

So we were in Los Angeles today. First things first, we're at the Mondrian Hotel – which is quite nice. Very LA.

Chris showed me Supreme, Flight Club, and The Hundreds – all sneaker/clothing boutiques in LA.

The Hundreds

Flight Club

Supreme

bet you didn't know # 22

This is my first video "bet you didn't know". But it's a good one.
In an earlier post I used a Frank Gehry quote to illustrate how creative inspiration can come from anywhere. Jenna made a brilliant post on her blog about very much the same thing using this video of Tinker Hatfield, the nike shoe designer who was inspired by the exposed guts of a modern Paris building resulting in the creation of the first exposed air bubble in a shoe.

So this thought – closed loop marketing – has been rummaging around in my head for a while. Because I think a lot of brands and marketers are guilty of creating it. And oddly thinking that they're doing something revolutionary.

Reading Russell's spot on post, "Blurry, Interesting, Useful, Always in Beta" , I started to think about the industry's bad habit of talking about the new era of marketing, or marketing 2.0, as an era of the two-way conversation. But two-way conversations are meaningless if it is a closed loop. The conversation doesn't go anywhere. It's just a system set up to let the audience respond in a pre-defined way.  That's nothing new. Hardly revolutionary.

If we think in open loops, however, we get to something much more interesting. We go somewhere. How can we allow marketing conversations to stay open? (yes, "open loop" is any oxymoron, but hopefully you get what I'm saying)

Russell makes the point that brands might take a cue from web 2.0 and enlist the community to add more complexity, richness, and meaning to our communications. And I think that's the right starting place for thinking about how we make more open loops – where our audience can co-create much of the meaning and all of a sudden brands, conversations, communications, and relationships get a lot more interesting.

Year of the Pig

Jenna & Chris were generous enough to give me a front row ticket to this year's Chinese New Year Parade. Amazing. I thought I'd share with a quick video here, but I have to admit, the moment of the night wasn't caught on film. Gavin Newsom, now our slightly infamous SF Mayor, was strolling by and Chris & Jenna put him on the spot for a handshake.

crazy pong -- definitely worth watching

Everybody has these crazy facts or stories that just don't get told unless they are in the right situation, at the right time. Well, my dad was a ping-pong wiz kid back in the day. That's one of those facts/stories I've got that just stays bottled up. In the spirit of my pops, check out the video below at youtube.com .