We recently caught up with Frederick Lowe, Varitalk’s senior executive and sole remaining co-founder, to understand his ideas about the direction of the advertising industry & mobile marketing.

How has advertising’s shifting landscape changed what Varitalk does, in the time since your campaign for New Line Cinema’s “Snakes on A Plane”?

When we did “Snakes,” TV still mattered, mobile was heating up, and social wasn’t a significant consideration for us.  Now social and mobile are the dominant topics of conversation on every pitch.  Literally everything we do, from our technology to our business plan, has been retooled to fit with social and mobile.

Your company was early to the game in mobile.  Did you see Social coming?

In some cases yes, in some cases no.

I worked for a few months with Duc Chau on a separate mobile project in 2002.  When that project fizzled out and Duc went to MySpace as its platform lead, I stayed in touch with him.  Even though MySpace didn’t have much appeal to me, it was clear to me that others would want to use it.  Until Facebook, every other social network I saw looked like a MySpace knockoff to me.

With Twitter, my crystal ball was useless.  Gene Keenan, a longtime colleague and SVP at Isobar, showed it to me in early 2007, before the first big wave of uptake following SXSW that year.  If I recall correctly Twitter had only a handful users at the time.  Gene was as excited by Twitter as I had ever seen him.  I was totally underwhelmed by it.  I have since concluded that Gene’s crystal ball is never, ever, broken.

Where do you stand on Social’s evolution as an ad platform?

The value of metrics like @mentions, #hashtags, and “Like”s is a mystery to every thinking person I know in our industry.  At Varitalk, we see them as distinct but potentially meaningless measures of engagement.  When a consumer interacts with a brand using these metrics, we know we have their attention for the few moments required to click a button or tap out a few bytes – nothing more.

Some people would disagree with you on that point.  What makes you believe you are right?

Tom Wasserman of Mashable has a recent article on the subject.  In it, he quotes David Baser, Facebook’s Product Manager for Pages Insights, who states: “Likes” are an “expression of identity” and “a user saying that I have a relationship with this brand”.  My interpretation of those statements is that Varitalk’s position is precisely aligned with Facebook’s: Despite its loaded meaning, a “Like” is a statement of relationship that doesn’t say anything about the quality of the relationship.  Still, there are some “social experts” who actively promote the idea that a “Like” represents affinity; they encourage advertising tactics to drive up that metric in particular.

Why would anyone “Like” a brand they’re not a fan of?

I’ll give you an example: a colleague of mine recently related that he was having trouble with his broadband service.  He heard their social response was quick, so he visited his provider’s Facebook page where he encountered a “Like” gate: he was required to “Like” the Company’s page before he could interact with the social response feature.  He doesn’t like his broadband provider in the affinity sense of the word, but he wanted support, so he clicked the Like button.

And your objection is?

You have to play the scenario out a bit to see it.

Somewhere out there, an agency or social consultant conceptualized the interaction I just mentioned, and advised a client to buy it.  Somewhere a client agreed.  The agency will create a case study on how successful social integration produces brand lift.  The client press release will tout the increase in “Like”s as proof of improved service.  Because of the assumption of affinity, both statements will be totally disingenuous, but because of the apparent success of the tactic, more advertisers will emulate it.  It’s already happening: “Like” gates have become prevalent overnight.

If the end result is that the brand got what they wanted: more Facebook Likes, where’s the harm?

First, “Like” gates and so-called “Sponsored Trends” are a kind of dishonesty – some would say coercion – that is very frustrating for users.  My colleague, a normally mellow guy, was bothered enough about having to “Like” his broadband provider to mention it days afterwards.  Consider whether an experience like his will make someone more likely or less likely to engage with that brand – or any brand – in a social media setting, and you may come to the conclusion that “Like” gates are a tactic that will diminish consumer interest.

Second, it’s fraud.  “Like” counts make great press, but stakeholders have to hold their noses when they talk about affinity they’ve “earned” using a “Like” gate.  That should tell everyone in the value chain that ad spend is being wasted on executions that don’t deliver value.  Eventually, that revelation may drive brands away from social, not because social is a poor choice, but because unimaginative practices will make it seem like it is.

You obviously don’t like “Like” gates or Sponsored Trends.  But is it really that serious?

It is.  More than a hundred billion dollars of ad spend – budget that was flowing to steadily declining sources of audience – is trying to find a new home.  As those dollars flow away from TV advertising, radio, and newspapers, the logical destination for them should be social – that’s where the audience is.   For now, interactive display and mobile advertising have absorbed some of that spend, but in the long-term the engagement metrics of those forms are too weak to hold it.

I am passionate about it because I see agencies pushing low-value tactics on the greatest reach platforms ever created; I see them threatening the industry itself.  Instead of striving to create actual value, we’re focused on creating the appearance of value.  It’s senseless behavior that will eventually shrink the pie.  We’re supposed to help our clients do better.  We can do better.

So are you optimistic or pessimistic about social advertising?

On the one hand, I think the potential for change is limitless.  The same Mashable article I mentioned says Baser’s group is in the process of introducing new tools – Facebook Gestures – tools that may provide deeper insight for advertisers.  Logically, new metrics will drive changes to existing social advertising technology inline with the interpreted meaning of those metrics.

As far as new platforms, Google+ has finally given us a glimpse of a fresh vision for social – one that will eventually seamlessly integrate all of the Google services we already use.  Similarly, Facebook’s recent graph innovations enable the creation of entire new platforms that empower shared real life experiences, rather than just content and games.

New platforms that integrate shared experiences and advertise products should create value in those spaces.  It’s wide open for companies with the right stuff.  Spotify comes to mind.  It’s amazing.

You said “on the one hand”.  Is there another hand?

Sure.  It goes like this: committing very large amounts of overhead and/or ad spend for long-term projects on social networks, without thorough consideration and acceptance of the risks to your brand’s goals, is the worst idea ever.

That sounds like hyperbole and a half.  How do you justify it?

I justify it by admitting something I’m not always comfortable with: 100% of effective advertising is intrusive.  Great technology and great creative can make ads tolerable — even fun — but no matter what, we only score a win for our clients when we derail a consumer’s train of thought.

In an on-demand world, people only tolerate intrusion under a very specific set of circumstances: (a) they can’t skip the intrusion (b) they can’t get the thing on the other side of the intrusion without tolerating it, and (c) the value of what’s on the other side of the intrusion exceeds the inconvenience of the intrusion.

More concretely: I’ll put up with the 15-second ad in front of Katy Perry’s “Firework” on Vevo, because (a) I can’t make the ads go away, (b) there is no other legal streaming source for the video in 1080p, and (c) there is almost nothing I’d rather watch than Katy Perry singing and dancing while pyrotechnics shoot out of her.  Seriously.

Okay…  How does that line of thinking apply to Social?

Social – and let’s face it, we’re talking about Facebook, Google+, and Twitter here – social is a different animal.  People on social networks aren’t there to interact with your brand.   They may do so voluntarily if the interaction provides value, but as a group, social network users have a very low tolerance for intrusion.  This should be uncontested fact at this point, with MySpace and Zynga as definitive case studies.

Care to summarize why you think those are definitive?

Sure.  MySpace had millions of loyal users with posts, playlists, photo albums, and content – users with too much invested to jump ship.  When it got big enough, MySpace gained a host of new features: takeover ads that covered the entire home page.  Expandable ads you almost always expanded, and then almost always accidentally clicked trying to get them closed.  Huge, pervasive, intrusive ads, served with no regard for users, beyond their value as data used to justify the stunning publishing rates MySpace commanded – until their users left for Facebook.

With Zynga, our feeds were stuffed with Farmville, Mafia Wars, and Zynga Poker notifications.  Gratefully, Facebook disabled notifications in early 2010, ending the spam.  Zynga, developer of these and other successful social games, tried to make the issue about them: about Facebook credits, about Facebook-specific feature integration in their games, and about purported promises by Facebook, broken in the face of Zynga’s contribution to Facebook’s growth.  Lawyers were hired.  Statements were made.

Facebook turned the feature off anyway.  If the gravity of Facebook’s decision is lost on the reader, a little research into Zynga’s revenue should illuminate what Facebook walked away from to preserve its relationship with its users.

These case studies are definitive because they show how quickly intrusive advertising can destroy a social network’s relationships its users, and demonstrative because they show that if your social app upsets enough users of the social network it lives on, you can count on being shut down.  It will happen, and it will not matter how much time or money you’ve invested.

Still, Facebook and Twitter allow a lot of advertising. 

Yes, and one is doing it right and one is doing it wrong.

I think Twitter is doing it wrong.  They’re selling ‘Promoted Tweets’, ‘Promoted Trends’ and ‘Promoted Accounts’.    These are core features of their platform used to denote the relevance of a missive, topic, or entity.  That’s a terrible practice, and it has the potential to eventually undermine the sense of user trust and democracy of their platform.  I get that Twitter needs to monetize, but there have to be better ways of doing that than selling their platform’s credibility.

I realize Facebook has a lot of detractors, but the company has demonstrated extraordinary, consistent responsiveness to users’ sensibilities about ads.  Considering the potential for short-term gain that would come with a less user-centric posture, Facebook’s continued sensitivity may be hard to fathom for some.  But their behavior makes sense when you consider that the network’s early growth was partially fueled by News Corps’ unrelenting exploitation of MySpace as a source of ad revenue.

So what’s the “end game” implication for advertisers?

Successful advertising is intrusive.  Social network users don’t want intrusion.  By extension any “hugely successful” ad campaign on a social network has the potential to generate user complaints that will subject it to scrutiny and mid-flight termination it wouldn’t face in other channels.  If agencies and brands are honest with themselves and each other, and work hard to build apps within established guidelines, it’s probably fine.  Some people hike in active volcanoes.  The risk is pretty low if you observe the rules.  But it’s real.

So would you discourage social media advertising?

No.  But I sense the ready availability of audience on social networks is the dull side of a double-edged sword.  Successful advertising’s inherent incompatibility with the goals of social network operators is the other.

Can you summarize what you mean by a “double-edged sword”?

Every single negative user experience increases the risk of attrition, and like growth, attrition has tipping points.  I don’t know Mark Zuckerberg, but if Facebook’s past behavior with intrusive applications is a reliable predictor of the future, Facebook will never become commercial in a way that drives even a tiny fraction of its users to that tipping point while he is at the helm.

Any closing thoughts?

For now, social has leveled the playing field to an extent: a hard-working, vigilant boutique ad shop can have as much or more competency than a huge agency when the landscape is in constant shift; a Junior Account Exec who thoroughly understands a social network’s zeitgeist can be a more valuable contributor to a social pitch than a Creative Director with 20 or 30 years of experience.

For technology companies, media companies, and agencies serving the ad space, the time is coming to ask whether the best opportunity arises in a future where they merge.  I see an era of generalist agencies – broadly competent small to mid-size, firms that can continuously adapt in the face of constant change, and which vertically integrate almost every service they sell.

ANDREAS: The brief was to launch Pause’s new custom made sound systems, which is a kind of multi room, all media solution. Since the tech savvy target group is hard to impress, there was no easy way, no cheating, but a “show don’t tell” strategy. We combined a talented inventor (Johan Albrektsson), a great digital partner (From Stockholm With Love), and a client hungry for success. Together we invented the GutPod™ a music device streaming from your Spotify, playing your songs, in the CEO’s stomach. We figured that was as custom made as you could do it.

TOMORROW: What’s the most innovative work you’ve seen around lately?

ANDREAS: As the Swede I am, I must say the Converse Canvas by Perfect Fools. It’s a mix of many impressive things really, but a really nice thing with it, is that they didn’t only do it once in a remote location, they are moving it around stores and events, making it more than a one shot PR-stunt. We have done a lot of PR-stunts at the agency, and I know how hard it is to make something reusable.

TOMORROW: How do you think work from Sweden is different from the rest of the world?

ANDREAS: Creatively, I think that we are early adopters. I think the early adoption has everything to do with us being kind of hard working, and working close to the client. Inventing something, trusting the campaign budget with it, and producing it is a lot harder with something unknown. It takes not only hard work, but also you working together with your client, not for your client.

TOMORROW: What will you be looking for in the Tomorrow Awards submissions?

ANDREAS: Ideas that make me really jealous.

TOMORROW: If you could do one illegal thing during your trip to New York for judging, what would it be?

ANDREAS: Break into our honored Chairman’s head and tell him to only work with Åkestam.holst from now on.

STEVE: Huh? There’s no mystery. The camera didn’t have a “red-eye reduction” feature…red-eye appears in the eyes of humans, and animals, that have no tapetum lucidum. But I digress. Are you saying I look like a monster? Isn’t that the point?

TOMORROW: What’s one innovation in advertising you’d like to invent?

STEVE: An idea I’ve tossed around involves something I call “molecular branding” You simply place a familiar corporate logo, say Pepsi, on a molecule of air. When a person breathes in those branded molecules, they suddenly have a craving for the product. “Wow, I feel like a Pepsi and I have no idea why.”

TOMORROW: Other than work TAXI has done, what’s impressed you the most over the past year?

STEVE: This is going to look like I’m sucking up to Robert (Wong), but I actually really like Google’s “What Do You Love” search engine (wdyl.com). It’s kinda under the radar, and a bit creepy actually, but it reminds me of what it felt like when we were exposed to the fist graphic interface. For those who aren’t familiar with it, you simply type in a term of anything you want to know about in a search box, click on the “heart” icon, and Google almost instantly serves up a mini-portal page chock full of information. The search results are aggregated from other Google services — Youtube, Maps, Trends, etc. — and presented visually in a gridded series of boxes. Try it.

I f#@king love the United States of Design app from Fast Company. It’s just cool and it made me whistle “Dixie”.

TOMORROW: When you’re looking at the Tomorrow Awards shortlist, what are you going to be looking for?

STEVE: That’s easy. Really big ideas that make me scream ‘” wish I thought of that!” This show foreshadows the future. The proof is that everything that wins here goes on to win at Cannes.

TOMORROW: If you could travel through time, where would you go?

STEVE: To the garage where the two Steve’s (Jobs/Wozniak) started out. I’d walk up and say “Hey, you guys need a hand?”

Montreal, Canada (September 15, 2011) The Tomorrow Awards – the global celebration of the future of advertising, is proud to announce the Monster Jury for the Summer 2011 Semester.

Led by Chairman Robert Wong, Executive Creative Director of Google Creative Lab, the Monster Jury will select the five most innovative entries from a shortlist created by the industry at large that best represent the future thinking moving the industry forward today.

The Monster Jury includes:

• Michael Lebowitz, Founder & CEO, Big Spaceship
• PJ Pereira, Founder & Chief Creative Officer, Pereira & O’Dell
• Sergio Mugnaini, Creative Director, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners
• Andreas Ullenius, Executive Creative Director, Åkestam Holst
• Steve Mykolyn, Chief Creative Officer, TAXI
• Masako Okamura, Creative Director, Dentsu Tokyo

“We are very excited about the Monster Jury for the latest Semester,” says Ignacio Oreamuno, Tomorrow Awards President. “Robert Wong was the ideal person to chair this group, as someone who has won three Tomorrow Awards in our short history. And for the rest of our jury, I don’t think you could ask for a better collection of forward thinking individuals who know that the marriage of creativity and technology isn’t about using ‘the next big thing’, it’s about harnessing the right big thing to encourage and inspire action.”

All are welcome to become Industry Judges or enter their work by October 3, 2011 at www.tomorrowawards.com. The winners will be announced at an Amsterdam Gala in mid-November.

The Tomorrow Awards are a category-free celebration of innovation in brand communications held twice annually, with a mandate to help the industry navigate through cultural and technological change by showcasing the world’s best new thinking.

ABOUT TOMORROW AWARDS

Founded in 2010, the Tomorrow Awards is the first international award show dedicated to discovering, showcasing and awarding advertising creativity that pushes new technological boundaries. Since the very best examples of such work are those that defy standard award show categories, the Tomorrow Awards is category-neutral; all entries are judged together, and only the very best ideas shine brightest. An Industry Jury of all who wish to participate selects the shortlist, which is presented to a Monster Jury that selects 5 winners in each round.

The Tomorrow Awards thrives with the support of Global Partners including Adobe, Casale Media, Creative Niche and iStockphoto.

Tomorrow: You’ve been a judge at a lot of award shows, what did you find different about Tomorrow Awards?

Rei: The biggest difference is that Tomorrow Awards has no categories. When Ignacio first asked me to Chair the inaugural year for Tomorrow Awards, I accepted on one condition: get rid of the categories.

Tomorrow: The Judges often talk about the “Tomorrow Factor” and everyone has a somewhat different take on it, what do you think it is?

Rei: Something that wasn’t possible five years ago.

Tomorrow: If you could pick one entry from the last round that would have won a 6th award, what would it have been?

Rei: I think it’d have been the interactive music video called “Mirror” for the Japanese band Sour. I felt strongly about that one, not so much about the end product, but the process by which the creators of this work went about. They used Kickstarter to raise the budget and I thought that was such a 21st century thing to do.

We’ll see more and more work being done this way – definitely a high Tomorrow Factor.

Tomorrow: Advertising has been in a state of disruption for years, do you think it will ever go away, or is this the new normal?

Rei: I recently tweeted: “Advertising needs to stop disrupting and start attracting.”

I’m sure disruptive advertising will continue to be around but personally, I despise it. I’d rather create experience and content that people get attracted rather than avoid.

Tomorrow: What gets you excited about the future?

Rei: The fact we have no idea what will happen the day after Tomorrow.

TOMORROW: Mind-Machine interface seems to be the next logical step after gestural and voice interface, but both of those technologies are still in their relative infancy. How would you characterize the current state of thought-interface technology?

TREVOR: The technology is today where voice recognition was in the 1990s. It’s finally reached a level where it’s becoming accessible for consumer applications. And while it’s not perfect, it’s good enough to enable the first generation of new experiences and interactions that will drive widespread awareness and acceptance of the technology.

TOMORROW: How many years do you think it will take for the technology to become both effective and mainstream, and what does the world look like when that occurs?

TREVOR: Lets look at voice recognition as a model for a second: in the 1970s, it was only theoretically possible, but over the course of the 80s it got better to the point where the first commercial applications became available in the 1990s. Now, it’s included by default in every cellphone. So I’d say that in 15 to 20 years, brainwave-based technologies will be as common as voice dialling is today.

What that looks like in terms of everyday use is people tagging music, videos and pictures with their emotions on Facebook. With social networking and dating sites matching people based on their emotional responses to movies and music. It’s technology that understands how stressed you are and offers help or manages distractions. Cars that know if the driver is falling asleep. These are just a few of the types of human-computer interactions that will be possible. But just like the person who invented the mouse could never have imagined something as intensely complicated as Photoshop, many of the greatest and most compelling applications of this technology we can’t even imagine today.

TOMORROW: What does the currently available technology provide as inputs for control?

TREVOR: Consumer-level EEG systems allow for the measurement of attention and relaxation (beta and alpha waves.) Basically, the more focused your mind is the higher your beta waves and the more relaxed your mind is, the more alpha waves your brain generates. This can be read from a single sensor placed somewhere on the head. Usually on the forehead.

Consumer systems with more electrodes do exist, and with those you can get some rudimentary directional control (forward, back, up, down) but they tend to get correct readings only around 70% of the time, which, don’t get me wrong, is amazing, but has a high enough error rate to make it feel like its not working.

In the laboratory, EEG systems have been used to navigate a wheelchair around an obstacle course quite successfully, and directional control is actually quite good. So I’m sure that the state of the art in the consumer market will improve quite quickly.

When you look at invasive systems, the level of control is unbelievable, but it will be a long time yet before those systems are approved for even medical use, and even longer before the risk of invasive brain surgery is outweighed by the benefits.

TOMORROW: The marketing and experiential opportunities seem endless – can you give some examples of applications that agencies and brands should be exploring?

TREVOR: This technology allows you to show consumers something about themselves that they don’t know yet. You can, with EEG technology show them what’s happening inside themselves. Connecting that kind of experience to the right brand allows for incredibly powerful experiences.

When people are having an experience that is as entirely new as controlling something just with their thoughts, their mind is opened, and they are in a state where everything seems possible. The first time that people try our technology, almost universally, they tell us “I am so full of ideas right now!” because they’re imagining a whole future full of things they had always imagined to be impossible, but that now seem very real and very achievable. I can’t imagine why a brand wouldn’t want to be associated with that moment of excitement and imagination.

TOMORROW: Is there a fun advertising idea you’ve had that still needs to find a home?

TREVOR: Oh thousands! I’ve always thought that connecting our brainwave system to the engine of a car would be amazing. People already feel that their cars are extensions of themselves. I’ve always thought that an engine that you can rev with your thoughts would be such a great symbol for how the car anticipates and understands you. Of course, as a NASCAR fan, I’d love it to be an 800hp engine with no muffler, but a luxury sedan could work too I guess.

TOMORROW: From work you’ve completed – commercial or artistic – what’s your favorite project?

TREVOR: This is like picking one of your children over another! I think, obviously, the activation we ran during the olympics where we let people control the lights on the CN Tower, Niagara Falls and the Parliament Buildings is always going to be a sentimental favorite because of the scale and the fact that it was our first project. But the 5 Gum Chew Off we did with Wrigley’s and GMR is probably my favorite to date. I thought that we achieved a perfect alignment of the technology and the goals of the campaign. Also watching people chew as fast as they can is hilarious, so we had a lot of fun testing that experience in the office.

TOMORROW: You’re moving quickly into the realm of what was once science fiction – is there anything from pop culture that you’ve found inspiring or parallel in your work?

TREVOR: Well we did once make a thought-controlled version of the game from Star Trek: The Next Generation, which is about as direct a parallel as you’re going to get.

Science Fiction depictions of brain-computer interfaces are kind of a double edged sword for us. On the plus side they definitely help get people excited and give us some easy cultural touchstones when we’re first communicating with people. On the downside though, many of the depictions in science fiction are based on flawed understandings of how the brain works, or what is actually possible with any technology, so they create a lot of unfounded fears in people. That’s one of the reasons we work so hard to make our interactions intuitive, friendly and understandable. And we strive to communicate clearly about how the technology works, and what it can or can’t do. Once we reassure people that we can’t read words or pictures from their mind, they breathe a lot easier.

TOMORROW: What’s next for InteraXon over the coming year?

TREVOR: Well we have some amazing pitches out to clients right now, with a couple of agencies that we met with in New York, and we’ll be really excited to get started on those once we hear back. We’re going into a fundraising cycle to raise some capital to begin work on our own consumer product which we’re aiming to release in 2013. And of course, we’ll be making good use of our thought-controlled beer tap when we work weekends.

Thankfully, Gartner regularly releases what’s called the Hype Cycle. Plotted against the axis of visibility vs time, technologies are introduced with the trigger, the initial introduction of Augmented Reality technology for example. As anyone who’s worked on an advertising campaign is aware, the next stage is the Peak of Inflated Expectations, where the hype reaches a crescendo. Every campaign suddenly needs QR Codes. And 3D printing is the wave of the future.

Cue the sad trombone sound effect, because here the cycle takes its dip into the Trough of Disillusionment. The technology is buggy, or no one has the equipment to use it. Over time, however, the kinks get worked out and platforms for using the technologies become better, cheaper and more widespread. In the Peak of Enlightenment, the tools are developed properly, leading to the Plateau of Productivity, where things like smartphones, printers and HD TV now reside.

So, what does this have to do with inspiration in creative development?

Technology is the new creative canvas. One of the Winter 2011 Shortlist, The Human Jukebox (http://ourwork.se/thehumanjukebox/) by Åkestam Holst for Pause Home Entertainment involved creating a tiny, ingestible stereo that was swallowed by the client CEO. Consumers could create the playlist through social media that could be heard playing from his stomach. On the Hype Cycle, this would fall under Human Augmentation – a technology trend just leaving the trigger stage. Clearly, the majority of brands aren’t going to have much use for human augmentation in a promotional campaign (Enhanced Taste Buds by Coke, anyone?), but this just represents a single example of a non-traditional technology being leveraged for novelty.

So, forgetting the “big idea” for a moment, start from the other end. Not only does the Hype Cycle provide a ready list of new canvases to apply in brainstorming, but it provides a context of their general uptake in the market with all the buzz factored out.

Mainly, its a great starting point for exploring what’s coming next, and what might be more noise than signal.

To learn more, there are hundreds of blog posts examining tech trends through its lens, and Gartner’s book is an older (2008) but valuable resource.

Tim Geoghegan: Well, just about every creative I know walks around and jots down notes and ideas that they have but never actually develop.  About a year ago, I was going through a scanner at an airport, and you had to take your shoes off before passing through. I was standing there, looking down at the socks on my feet, and I thought “that would be a great place to put the 4th Amendment”, not as a protest really, but as just a statement.  So that was just an idea that I had drawn out in my own notebook.

When the TSA started implementing their full-body scanners and they became a major news story, I was working with Matt, and I had told him about that idea I had.

Matt Ryan: Yeah, the whole TSA thing was a media storm, all over the news. And whenever we talked about the idea, it always just came back to the socks. We thought it could be quite cool if we could actually use the technology that they’ve been installing to somehow try and get messages on there. And then it evolved into “okay, these scanners are checking for metallic content, and that’s what shows up on the monitors.” Then it all evolved into several days of development and coming up with metallic ink.

TOMORROW: How much of a challenge was it to get that ink just right?

Tim: Well at first we envisioned it to be some kind of foil thing, where we’d use foil print.

Matt: It took a lot of research, a lot of phone calls, including to the actual technicians who built the TSA scanning machines. We needed to work out how much metal content was required to actually show up clearly on the scanners. Then we needed to locate the right kinds of metals and have them ground down and formulated into the ink. Then it was a matter of doing sample tests with screen printers to see if it was actually going to hold up and be workable as a T-shirt.

Tim: It took a number of attempts to get the formula right, but when we finally got a really clear image back and we were pretty excited about that.

TOMORROW: Did you ever do any field tests, so to speak?

Matt: We were basically doing it ourselves to start with; I had quite a few of the shirts through hand luggage one day, but nothing too bad. (laughs) We never got pulled aside or anything like that.

TOMORROW: What about getting the message out?  Obviously, it’s not like you can do a multi-million dollar TV campaign.

Matt: No, we didn’t have much of a budget at all with any of this. We started off by using social media, a few Facebook ads, and we tried to get some PR behind it. We targeted bloggers, prominent political activists, we’re talking about a very, very select group of people.  But it all happened pretty much instantly. We put it up one night, and the next day there was this huge reaction that happened with it.

It was quite mind-blowing actually, because in no time at all we were hearing from Good Morning America, CNN, Fox News and many others. Everyone was extremely interested in what we created.

TOMORROW: What has been the response from the TSA?

Tim: Well, you know, the TSA has never really done anything.  We were pretty afraid, and I was thinking “That’s it, I’m going to get body cavity checks for the rest of my life.” But one thing about 4^th Amendment Wear is that we weren’t trying to undermine the professional jobs that these people at the TSA are doing. It would be a different story if we were trying to obstruct the machinery, but we weren’t out to battle the system, we wanted to make a message and encourage discussion and debate. Personally I’m fully supportive of safety measures that keep people safe when travelling, it’s just that when it gets to a level that could possibly infringe on people’s rights that it becomes troublesome. It’s something that we all need to consider and think about.

TOMORROW: One of the criteria that the Tomorrow Awards judges use to select the winners from the shortlist is something that called  “the Tomorrow Factor” which is basically the likelihood that a particular entry will pave the way for similar cool things that agencies can do.  Where do you see this idea?

Matt: Well, the main lesson to be learned here — and I know it might sound cliché — is that anything is possible. If you have a good idea that you strongly believe in, and you get some momentum behind you, there’s absolutely nothing stopping you from getting the attention of all the major news networks, major publications, the major blogs everywhere and everyone talking about this with a budget of absolutely nothing coming from nowhere.  It truly does make you feel like anything is possible.

Tim: What originally brought me into the advertising business was the fact that you can reach millions of people with some truly brilliant artists, writers, photographers, technologists and so on. But whereas before you needed to have deep pockets to attain that kind of reach, today with tools and technology like YouTube and Twitter, you have everything you need to reach millions of people all on your own.  You don’t really need the infrastructure of agencies and clients.  You can go out there and get your own clients, or even be your own client. It will still be hard work, but you end up building your own thing.

When the Tomorrow Awards were first conceived, the intention was not to have a formal award show, much less a traveling caravan on future trends. But we quickly realized that social media is no substitute for an inspiring speaker, or the 2am conversations over cocktails that can give birth to new ideas and friendships.

So with the support of Adobe, the company that provides the canvas for much of the work presented, we set out to spark some real-world conversations on the future of advertising in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York.

In visiting agencies around North America, doing what I would affectionately refer to as the dog and pony show, we learned something pretty quickly. The less formal the room, the better the conversation was.

Far before the events, at Euro RSCG in Chicago, we had an especially great meeting. Lisa Leone, one of Euro’s new Creative Directors, plopped herself on the floor while Jason Peterson lowered what appeared to be a giant iron blast door between our room of creatives and the world outside. And we just talked about innovation for a few hours. That’s what we wanted to capture with the After Tomorrow events.

In Los Angeles, we took over the Foundation Room at House of Blues. Will Pomerantz, VP of Special Operations for Virgin Galactic presented their company’s vision for transforming space into a place that only 400 have gone in human history, to a place that – ultimately – we’ll all be able to experience. When the price drops a bit more, that is.

Tomorrow Award winners Mitsubishi and 180LA presented Live Drive – and the incredible story behind it. Not the least of which was that at 10PM, like clockwork, the behaviour of the online drivers controlling the live vehicle changed somewhat, as those coming home from a few pints began to take over.

What followed was several hours of open conversation, with sadly about 100 brownies left over.

Our next stop was Chicago, where we once again took over the Foundation Room at House of Blues. This time starting a little later, which led to a conversation-stimulating trend of everyone, speakers included, enjoying a few drinks before the event got rolling.

Noha Edell from Adobe gave us a crash course in becoming iPad Magazine Publishing Magnates after our screening of the Tomorrow Award winning entries before Matt Marcus, ECD of R/GA Chicago, took it back to the old school with a lively discussion on Bauhaus and the evolution of design innovation that lead to some Nike+ GPS goodness.

Arriving in New York, we’re about ready to have a nap. But two great speakers kept us going. Without our favorite LA & Chicago locales, we stormed Katwalk with Robert Wong, ECD of Google Creative Lab, and Sam Ewen, CEO of Interference, Inc.

Sam, who Fast Company once called the Best Guerrilla Marketer in America, walked through a dizzying array of technologies that blended experiential and digital marketing.

Robert, deftly controlling a crowd of advertising creatives with access to an open bar, opened our eyes to the the incredible range of work going on at Google.

Once again, the evening never really “ended”, as conversations on mind-machine interfaces went on until the bar closed, and the last stragglers were forced to trek for a round of late night karaoke.

What did we learn from Round 1 of After Tomorrow? Carmageddon was a well executed marketing campaign. There is an inverse relationship between time of night and ideal presentation length. Neural Interface Computing is probably a trend to watch. It’s really easy to make iPad Magazine Apps. We can learn more by looking outside of our own industry to the innovation occurring elsewhere (Aerospace, Automotive, Search). It’s important to spend time examining previous patterns of innovation. Big thinking is the best thinking. Also, Darth Vader came to our LA planning meeting and is hiring for his new startup.

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