Replies to post #116555 on NeoMedia Technologies, Inc (NEOM)

[Saint Andrew]

You're one of a kind SOG...

[beam11]

Sog - Do you not have much to do? Time on your hands? :-)

[Drmyke3]

SOG, could you please repeat that?
tia ;-)
Dr. Mike

[lesnshawn]

SOG: What? :) lns eom

[sonofgodzilla]

Flashback Sunday NY Times on a Wednesday or Thursday Evening (depending upon where you are located in the universe) Reading For Drmyke3:

PARTY ON DUDE;)

February 12, 2006
Madison Avenue's 30-Second Spot Remover
By TIMOTHY L. O'BRIEN
Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes - the ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules and they have no respect for the status quo. You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them, disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing that you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things."
- Apple Computer ad, 1997

FOR sci-fi movie fans, the opening titles of "Alien," Ridley Scott's 1979 voyage through interstellar dread, perfectly evoke the film's ensuing themes. As a series of white rectangles gradually align to form the movie's title, the camera pans across the expanse of an enormous planet floating in the numbing, ominous, infinite void of outer space.

For visual effects aficionados, Coca-Cola's 1992 television commercial featuring Paula Abdul hoofing it with digitally inserted film clips of Groucho Marx and Gene Kelly presaged time-traveling lures of later award-winning works like the movie "Forrest Gump," in which Tom Hanks was digitally transported into the Kennedy White House.

And for contemporary digital interaction buffs, Nike explored fresh marketing and communications terrain last year when it deployed a towering electronic billboard in Times Square that allowed shoppers to dial commands from their cellphones to customize footwear appearing on the giant screen above them.

The creative thread linking all these efforts — these kindlings of mood, persuasion and pitch — takes shape in Robert M. Greenberg, a 57-year-old with the spectacles and visage of Benjamin Franklin; the eclectic, Renaissance interests of Leonardo da Vinci; the fashion sense of a well-turned-out ninja; the obsessive tics and serpentine conversational habits of Woody Allen; and the legerdemain of a hands-on businessman whose first job was running his uncle's mirror factory in Chicago.

Nestled for almost 30 years in the Manhattan neighborhood called Hell's Kitchen, Mr. Greenberg's advertising and communications agency, R/GA, makes its home in a rambling, spare Bauhaus nest set far back from the curb on West 39th Street. Mr. Greenberg's journey — from titlemeister of "Alien" to Ms. Abdul's digital choreographer to Nike's Times Square showoff — has been a mixture of wandering curiosity and professional reinvention. He now oversees a diverse team of about 450 people trying to wed design and marketing in groundbreaking ways.

The background music in Mr. Greenberg's little symphony is, of course, the Internet and other technological leaps like the cellphone, which are upending the advertising and marketing industries in much the same way that they have begun to turn businesses as varied as media, entertainment, retail and communications on their heads.

"I think technology is going to wreak havoc on the agency business," Mr. Greenberg predicts of an industry that plans to give him its most prestigious award, a Clio for lifetime achievement, in May. "Because of advances in technology and communication, we're surrounded by information we see and hear. Overload is a huge issue.

"I think things are going to get infinitely more complex," he adds, "and the challenge is about taking things that are infinitely complex and making them simpler and more understandable."

Consumers are so swamped by pitches that many simply tune them out. And the more affluent among them exercise enough control over how, where and what they shop for that, with the flick of their fingers, they can bypass unwanted advertising. Mr. Greenberg, the chairman and chief executive of R/GA, wants to engage them in digital conversations that are so entertaining, involving and valuable that they won't want to ignore them.

Many in the communications industry are aware that consumers are turning their backs. "The old approach of marketing saturation has created a clutter environment that people are now resisting, in an era when people feel they have less time in their lives for all the things they want to do," said J. Walker Smith, president of Yankelovich Inc., a marketing research firm. "People are willing to give up sleep at night to get time back into their lives and the question I ask advertisers is, 'Do you think people are willing to give up sleep to look at your ads?' And the answer is no."

MR. GREENBERG'S response is that in order to cut through the clutter, advertising needs to be shaken up, and shaken up immediately. All of the corporations, agencies and marketing professionals who jointly hone and fire off a fusillade of messages across the commercial landscape each day, he says, need to overhaul both their organizational structures and how they relate to consumers — particularly the 20-something buyers called "millennials."

"It's not about linear communication, and the millennials understand that; it's about symbols and icons and you click here and you click there and you control it," he says. "Corporations have to create products that people want and customers are going to help them make that decision — and that means quality, imagination and transparency."

Mr. Greenberg offers his thoughts gently, even sweetly, giving them the care of an academic and the deliberation of a visionary. But he also prides himself on being an iconoclast and a troublemaker in an industry that is flashy and kinetic on the outside but which has grown conservative and risk-averse at its core. (The language and imagery of "Think Different," Apple's 1997 ad campaign, is one of Mr. Greenberg's mantras, but it is also an ad, alas, in which he did not have a hand.)

It has become fashionable, and maybe largely accurate, to look at advertising of the last several decades as an opiate to help brainwash Americans into becoming avid, mindless shoppers. Mr. Greenberg's new equation offers a brighter insight: Technology has put consumers in the driver's seat by giving them a vast array of new choices and better information — and corporations and agencies that want to succeed had better get on board.

This new dawn in consumer power is consoling, perhaps, but a nagging existential devil remains. Does all of the spinning and coaxing that surrounds America's love affair with buying and selling — our carnival of consumption — really matter? Does it make us better people?

Well, yes, Mr. Greenberg says, it does.

"It's not just that the interactivity and creativity is about commercials, TV and advertising," he replies. "The development that comes out of it all is about how people interact and communicate. It's about how they learn."

"If you've had a freakish education, use it.... An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's." J. D. Salinger,

"Franny and Zooey"

In addition to working and living in Hell's Kitchen, Mr. Greenberg owns a weekend getaway in a Fire Island community called Lonelyville. A few years ago, he considered buying property in Death Valley in California. The sole purpose, he says, was so that the letterhead at the top of his personal stationery would read: Hell's Kitchen/Lonelyville/Death Valley.

He never secured his Death Valley parcel, but Mr. Greenberg still considers himself to be on the outside looking in. He clearly recalls his high school teacher warning his mother that her son was "never going to amount to anything," an evaluation unencumbered by the knowledge that Mr. Greenberg was struggling then, as now, with dyslexia.

But, he says, he doesn't think that dyslexia ultimately held him back. "Dyslexia may be one of the key elements of creativity, if you overcome it, for people in art, architecture, filmmaking and other creative fields," he says. "I'm not an expert, but I think dyslexia can give you enormous powers to previsualize things."

Influenced by sources as diverse as the novelist J. D. Salinger, the pianist Glenn Gould and the film director Sergei M. Eisenstein, he also eventually became an avid collector of "outsider art" — paintings and other works by artists without formal training who thrived outside the artistic establishment.

"The connection between becoming an artist and people who are outside the mainstream is important, particularly for people who are self-taught — like me," Mr. Greenberg says, noting that he loves outsider art because he feels that it is the "most individual and unmediated creative response to the world."

His friends say he thrives on the fringe. "Bob's always been exploring something new and educating himself about whatever is 'next,' " says Jon Kamen, co-owner of @radical.media, an entertainment and media company, who has known Mr. Greenberg for about 30 years. "It's a constant sense of curiosity, and his pursuit of being on the edge is everywhere — in his work, in the neighborhood he lives in, in the art he collects."

Despite his passion for the ethereal, Mr. Greenberg says he shocked his parents when, unable to find a job after college, he took over the mirror factory. He first became acquainted with computers while running the factory, and he says his experience there gave him a lifelong fascination with both technology and plain-vanilla industrial and corporate processes. It also made him comfortable navigating between corporate and creative spheres, and, unlike many creative souls, comfortable in serving the needs of corporate America.

In 1977, Mr. Greenberg's brother, Richard, an animator, coaxed him to New York to start a business together: R/Greenberg Associates (later renamed R/GA). Richard was the start-up's designer, Robert was the cameraman and producer, and the brothers began experimenting with computerized special effects when such efforts were still in their infancy. The brothers wanted to open a design shop that developed newfangled motion graphics as well as films and videos, and they succeeded handsomely. A year after hanging out their shingle, they developed innovative, three-dimensional "flying titles" that rushed from the screen toward the audience for the box-office hit "Superman." Though Richard left the business in the late 1980's, Mr. Greenberg describes him as a pivotal influence, and the two remain close.

R/GA's work on "Alien" followed shortly thereafter. Later came special effects or titles wizardry on such films as "The World According to Garp," "Zelig," "Predator" and "Seven." Along the way, Mr. Greenberg and his brother scooped up an Oscar in 1986 for their contributions to computer-assisted filmmaking. As the company's film business grew, Mr. Greenberg took R/GA through one of its periodic reinventions, expanding into feature film work, commercials and print campaigns.

As the nature of computer-assisted filmmaking changed, Mr. Greenberg eventually scaled back that side of his business and adopted yet another organizational model that he is still refining today: a "multiplatform" agency that makes use of databases and online interaction, as well as integrated teams of techies, software developers, strategists and project managers, to develop advertising and marketing campaigns linked to new technologies and products.

Mr. Greenberg says he was a devotee of the Web well before the Internet rage began accelerating into full throttle in the mid-1990's, and he adds that he remained a true believer even after the dot-com bubble burst several years ago. "The Web is not a one-trick pony," he says. "The Internet is a new language because it's not linear. The novel is linear, film is linear, but the Web is not."

Others agree that Mr. Greenberg was an early adopter who, even after the dot-com meltdown, stayed the course. Now, they say, he is reaping the fruits of his commitment.

"He's someone who saw the potential in this digital space much earlier than most other people," said Rick Boyko, the former chief creative officer at Ogilvy & Mather who is now the managing director of the VCU Adcenter, a graduate program in advertising at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. "He's probably the best versed in the country right now in the digital space that he plays in."

Among the companies that Mr. Greenberg has invited into his digital sandbox are Subaru, Target, Verizon and Nokia. For Target, R/GA developed a Web site rich in product details and embroidered with the company's buoyant personality.

After R/GA got its hands on a Nokia Web site that promoted a lineup of new cellphones, it turned it into a pulsing exercise in montage and product "stories." Subaru's Web site lets car buyers immerse themselves in product details and "build" a car from scratch after navigating panes of shivering, shimmering images.

Even more traditional companies have used R/GA. I.B.M., which operates one of the world's most sprawling corporate Web sites, used the agency to refine and distill some 4.5 million separate Web pages into a more seamless encounter that R/GA says is intended to "help users help themselves without resorting to excessive searching or, worse yet, abandoning their online purchases."

Johnson & Johnson, one of the country's largest media buyers, criticized traditional agencies last year for failing to explore new forms of marketing. J.& J. recently turned to R/GA to devise some new advertising approaches that it declines to discuss until it unveils them.

"The media landscape around the world, and the marketing landscape in particular, are radically changing," said Brian D. Perkins, Johnson & Johnson's vice president for corporate affairs. "Bob and his gang at R/GA have helped bring a vision of what the future is and what the possibilities are in reaching our patients and our customers."

On Wednesday, John Stratton, the chief marketing officer for Verizon, another R/GA client, offered a withering assessment of traditional advertising, warning agencies that they were failing to grapple with the realities of alternative media.

"Major money is going to be in motion in the next decade and yet no one really understands exactly where it will land, or even if it will land, or just disappear altogether," he said at an Advertising Age conference in Beverly Hills, Calif. "Your clients are in trouble. They are looking to you to save them."

BUT authentically new approaches are in short supply, Mr. Stratton added, saying that the advertising models that have taken shape over the last 50 years "no longer work."

Consumers would seem to agree.

A Yankelovich study in 2004 of about 600 people aged 16 or older found that "clutter, competition and fragmentation have steadily chipped away at the productivity of marketing" and have undermined the powers of branding. Among the study's respondents, 70 percent indicated that "they tune out advertising more than they did just a few years ago."

More easily said than done, Mr. Greenberg says. Too many agencies, he believes, are tethered to a "30-second TV spot" mentality because "agencies get paid based on 30-second spots and that financial incentive keeps them from changing their model." Whip up those spiffy Super Bowl ads and those catchy print ads as much as you like, he says, but their impact is fossilizing and the companies that foot advertising bills are increasingly aware of it.

Direct mail remains the most heavily used advertising medium because its impact is clearer and more response-oriented than most print, TV and radio ads. Spending on Internet advertising still amounts to a small fraction of that for other media, but it has measurable impact. And digital interactions can be tailored in an infinite number of ways.

Other marketing frontiers are arising, and Mr. Greenberg is happy to tick off some examples: quick response codes embedded on movie posters that allow trailers to be downloaded directly onto cellphones placed near them; billboards used by companies like Dove that let consumers vote on themes or messages by cellphone; instant messaging and ads streamed through game consoles like Xbox or online gaming networks; and wireless services like Dodgeball that help people find peers at bars and restaurants within a 10-block radius after they pinpoint their own location by sending a short text message to the service.

Mr. Greenberg ideates and germinates through collaboration, and he likens R/GA to a campus where people embrace what is new rather than feel afraid of or betrayed by change. "I think of our company as a university — people come in and go out and they spread the knowledge," he said.

Dawn Winchester, 38, R/GA's manager of client services, describes herself as a "refugee" from other agencies stuck in formulaic approaches to problem-solving. "Bob didn't agree to be defined by the language and the concepts already out there in the marketing and advertising industry, and that was very attractive to me," she said, an assessment shared by some of her other colleagues.

THE Interpublic Group of Companies bought R/GA six years ago and folded the company into its unwieldy stable of marketing and communications businesses. Although Interpublic has been rocked in recent years with financial and managerial woes, Mr. Greenberg said R/GA had been able to steer its own course because it remains "substantially profitable." He declined to break out the company's financial results. Advertising Age ranked R/GA 11th on its 2005 list of the country's largest interactive agencies, with revenue of about $112 million, up about 40 percent from $80 million the year before.

As Mr. Greenberg continues to engage with what he calls "a new world of ubiquitous content on demand," he says he has no desire to abandon Hell's Kitchen (lest that also leave him too far from Lonelyville).

In the meantime, the outsider appears to have found something of a home. He's built his own inner circle.

"It's all about one thing: creative problem-solving sponsored by corporations to get the story out," Mr. Greenberg says. "What I'm doing is working with teams of people who all know a lot more about certain things than me. I'm there in a conductor-like way."


sog ps: This 22 inch widescreen with automated thinking is too wild for me...lol...a fourth screen if you will;)

GODSPEED!

All the best,