Ok, so I stole the “collaboration is the new competition” hook from Alex Bogusky, a true sage of our industry. You can read about his interpretations of this phrase on his site, but let me take a moment to explain how it affects my business operationally and one way I think it effects everyone involved in marketing today.

I’ve written a lot here about the rapid change in technology our industry is experiencing right now. I’ve also written a lot about how smaller to midsized advertising agencies are finding it hard to staff with enough talented people. And how marketing departments struggle just to keep up with their workload in their downsized departments. Everyone is stressed these days just to keep up with the work while business leaders are looking for strategies to stay profitable in the new economy.

Fortunately social technology has enabled new ways of working, connecting, and collaborating that, when leveraged correctly, can have real benefits to the cost and effectiveness of providing services to clients. How so?

One example is Basecamp that enables project management and collaboration with no regard for proximity or even brick and mortar. The cloud has freed us from the need for large and narrowly structured organizations to complete complex projects.

This means my business and even a group of freelancers can function within your project just as if we’re an integrated part or your organization. Suddenly, collaboration isn’t pain in the butt for a project manager but a chance to bring in expertise and fresh thinking from anywhere on the globe.

It also allows business to add expertise and services without having to take on the significant costs of moving to a bigger space and hiring more people. Because collaboration is so much easier these days, my business can integrate with your business in the cloud on a project by project basis. Imagine the flexibility and the cost advantages you suddenly have.

Collaboration make you competitive. It can turn men into giants. And give small businesses the reach of mega corporations. Now each project you touch can be so much more effective and drive more ROI. Truly, collaboration is the new competition. How will you use collaboration to become more effective?

Most single-media projects I’ve worked on in the last few years have included an afterthought. “Wouldn’t it be great to use this ______.” Fortunately I tend to over shoot things and have had the creative ability to find solutions for these afterthoughts. But the average commercial production these days usually has little budget for getting extraneous footage beyond the 30 second cut.

What’s a marketer, an agency, or a content producer do? Discuss maximizing the production before the cameras roll or even the script is finished. A small investment in a longer shoot day or an extra shoot day can yield a campaign that works on four screens instead of one. On a television, YouTube, iPad, mobile device. One that works on a homepage and not just as a 30 second spot.

Making great content for an iPad isn’t just encoding an mp4 of your TV spot. Consideration should be given to the media in the creative process.

Things to keep in mind:

Wide shots feel epic on a 50 inch plasma but just small on a mobile screen. Get lots of footage at various focal lengths and consider using multiple cameras to maximize your production time.

You often have longer to tell a story online, so make sure you get longer takes and give your actors time to breathe. It’s often more convincing in the end too.

Your brand’s engagement most likely isn’t an interruption if it’s on YouTube or your home page. Treat your audience with respect and make sure the content is actually entertaining.

The online environment has so many different platforms it can confuse even the oldest hats. Make sure you work with people who know a codec for a file container.

A study by Cisco VNI states that by 2014 90% of web traffic will be video. You might want to read that again. And no, it’s not a typo.

This is probably one of the more shocking numbers on the rise of video on the Web but maybe not the only one that will amaze you:

Did you know that Netflix accounts for 30% of internet traffic.

Or that iPad users watch three times more video?

Or that video traffic will exceed 50% of mobile traffic this year?

I don’t need to flog the newspapers. We know that printed word has lost its dominance. Video content has established itself as the primary form of mass communication. And web distribution is quickly becoming the best way to reach diverse audiences on their own terms. And as connected devices including tablets, smartphones and set top boxes become more important that computer desktops, Web video will not only be important but essential to a brand’s success.

Your audience no longer just has a lean in, “interactive”, work relationship with the web. Today it’s also social, relaxed, playful and fluid. It goes where she goes. And you have to too. That’s where Fluid Films comes in.

A year ago I began a journey that started at my former employer. My job transitioned from being simply a writer to a video content creator. Not only did I love this new role, I discovered I had a real passion for it.

I also believed in what I was doing. It was the right thing for the clients.

This passion birthed a business plan. One that I feel very strongly about and that I had hoped to execute with my former employer. But that didn’t happen.

When others don’t act you can sit around and complain or you can harness your passion, work with others that feel the same way, and do something creative. The world today is a tough place but it’s up to creative people to make the most of it and create opportunity for us and others.

So today, my business partner, Jason Gorbett and I are officially announcing the founding of Fluid Films. Over the next several days, I’ll be sharing our vision for a transmedia company and how what we’re doing is the right thing for companies and institutions. Please stay tuned.

A recent article I wrote for my former employer’s blog:

Studios are reporting the biggest Memorial Day weekend ever.  Why is this important? The advertising industry is consumed these days with articles about the “changing” media landscape, detailing why it will never be the same. While it’s important that we keep up with the advancement of media technology, it’s also important to recognize that we’re not experiencing a rapid, wholesale transformation of an entire society’s media consumption habits. People still love to go to the movies, watch cable television, and, gasp, read the occasional newspaper.

What we’re experiencing is more of an evolution. Some people are quickly adopting  new technology – but not everyone. And many of the adopters aren’t necessarily dumping the old media but rather adding another way to consume media to their diet. Here are nine statistics that might surprise you if you’ve spent too much time reading and listening to the gurus.

• While every social media expert may own an iPhone, most Americans still don’t own any smartphone at all.
• Unlike me, most people aren’t dumping cable for Internet TV. More people than ever are subscribing to broadband Internet and cable TV.  Only 3.9 percent have broadband.
• 45 percent of all ads recorded on DVRs are actually viewed.
• Only 10 percent of Americans have devices that connect their TVs to the Web.
• The top bandwidth hog for mobile is e-mail, not social networking.
• Pop stars are still selling millions of singles.
• E-book sales may be skyrocketing, but only 5 percent of people own a dedicated device to read one on.
• People are using iPads with TV, not instead of it.
• Most people are not interested in owning a 3-D television. In fact, most don’t even own an HD set yet.

So what’s the takeaway for a marketer who wants to make the most out of the latest technology? Know your customer, learn her habits, and you’ll find it easy to speak to her where she is.

Back in the 50s, cutting edge advertising was inspired by science and research. Agencies like Ted Bates studied consumer behavior and attempted to manipulate consumers consumers into buying products with science rather than inspiring them thoughtful communication.

Fortunately Bill Bernbach and the creative revolution came along and showed us a better way in where the consumer was treated as an intelligent human being who appreciated entertaining and thoughtful communication.

Not only have we seen a rise of technology in the marketing industry, there’s been serious discussion whether technology is now more important than creative. In fact, I’ve have read columns and articles positing that ad agencies should be run more like software companies.

The idea probably comes from a belief is that technology is now king  in our industry like it already is in many others. That today the real ideas in advertising are technological.

Trouble is people don’t really interact with technology. They interact with each other and maybe sometimes the media in which the interact is considered tech.

Understanding technology is crucial to success these days.  And it’s unbelievable how many senior executives still don’t understand how many social technologies work. But the only thing that’s going to make the tech compelling to an individual is creativity employed in making it compelling. Example of this would be the Old Spice campaign that uses social technology including YouTube.

OK. You still don’t believe me. Let’s look at popular technology. One could argue that iPhone and iPad were technological breakthroughs. Wrong. They were creative breakthroughs. The difference between them and what was developed elsewhere is that at Apple the designers are in charge.

The designers took mostly existing technology, even bought parts from other manufacturers,  assembled them together, created a great user interface to made something beautiful, compelling, and even groundbreaking. That’s what creative people do – not technologists.

And that’s also exactly what your advertising should do.

Back in the 90s I was on a list serve (remember those?) on the convergence of media. The thinking back then was that sooner or later television would no longer be bound to the living room and that the Web wouldn’t be bound to the desktop. They would converge.

If content could be delivered at high-speed, (this was back when everyone had dial-up at home) via the internet, people would no longer be content to watch Baywatch in their living room.  Heck, they could watch it on their desktop. This was mainly perceived as a technical problem at the time. Everyone thought people really wanted TV on the world wide web delivered to the personal computer. And also that TV viewing would be better if it were more interactive.

We now  have Hulu, YouTube, and even smart phones that can stream content. Yet the vast majority of video is still consumed in the living room passively. Especially entertainment media.

Conversely, the internet has been making inroads into our family room. Google TV, officially launched today, Apple TV, Boxee, set-top boxes, and even some televisions now deliver the web to our TV.

Only most people don’t want to actually look at the Web on their TV or really want to “lean in” to their PC to watch their favorite sit-com. The computer is work. The TV is passive relaxation.

However there is software that’s started to change this work/play separation. You guessed it, iOS (and Android). The iPhone brings our work email and our entertainment together. The iPad has our reading material and our spreadsheets on the same device and also provides a wonderful screen for watching that sit-com. But they don’t do it at the same time.

iOS and Android don’t require you to watch TV on a computer. They morph  a Droid, iPhone or iPad into a video playback device and then later morph it into a book and then into a calender to schedule a business meeting.

There are no windows, mice, keyboards reminding you to you’re on a computer — it’s a seamless transformation from one device to another. The operating system truly changes the entire function of the device from one app to the next. Apple and Google have put their amazing software  into Apple TV and now Google TV.

In the end, the Web hasn’t converged with TV, rather the TV now has the power to be transformed into countless devices that leverages the internet.

While at first Steve’s “hobby” and Google’s low-profile launch don’t look all that earth shattering, consider the tiny computing power of a Droid, an iPhone or iPad and consider how profoundly they’ve changed the way we look at what a phone or a tablet computer can and should be.

While the pundits are arguing that Steve Jobs is just trying to sell more from his iTunes store and Google is just trying to sell more ad space, Apple TV and Google TV, through the power of their app driven software, will transform your TV, in the near future, into whatever open-source community thinks it should be. That might mean a giant cook book, a weather monitoring station, a spreadsheet, a giant drawing tablet, a virtual conference room, or musical instrument. And get ready for touch-screen TVs.

This presents some amazing opportunities for advertisers and some scary times for media outlets. Yes, TV man, Google wants more of your advertising dollars.

There’s been a lot of discussion lately about what the future’s creative department should look like and who it should be headed by. Do traditional shops need to get rid of their old guard and make way for leaders and practitioners steeped in the traditions of the digital shops?

Surely they need to get rid of dated thinking. Kick out folks who can’t code, tag, and develop an app. And there’s no one who understands how to make use of the new tools available than someone with a digital background. Right?

But what about all that brand stuff? Is a techno creative really better equipped to communicate the client’s brand story than someone who’s been focused on it their entire career? Aren’t the truly great communicators capable of doing their job in more than old-school traditional media?

Digital creatives are getting dinged for lack of branding and planning experience. While traditional creatives apparently can’t grasp the internet. But are either of these characterizations fair?

I think people are getting too caught up on resumes and not focused enough on real skills. For example, I work at a traditional agency yet the majority of the work I do lives online. Some of the work I do is even social media marketing — imagine that. Does this make me a traditional creative or a digital creative. I suspect in the eyes of many recruiters who can’t get past a resume it makes me a traditionalist. But I just see myself as being current.

Marketers need professionals that can tell their story and engage their customers in all media. Be it on Twitter or on a billboard. And that is best done by a media neutral creative, working off a media neutral brief, for a media neutral media buy.

I don’t think the best creative comes from a digital or a traditional background. What is important is their grasp of  today’s tool, the future, and the client’s business.

Quick, how many copy points can you fit into a 60 second radio spot? The answer should be one.

But many ads that really suck the big one are about two or three things – maybe even more. This is real easy to observe in a print ad. Just open your local newspaper (if you still have one). You’re bound to find on the first couple pages an ad with something nebulous resembling a headline and, beneath that, five to fifteen bullet points describing everything the company does under the sun. These “ads” are more like a business plan than effective marketing communication.

News flash business plan publishers – your potential customers don’t care about your plans to make a mint from them. They don’t care how you make money. And frankly, they don’t even care if you do make money.

They’ll only care about you if you can make their life better. And confusing them with a bunch of pointless information won’t do that. It will just annoy them and make them want to buy something from your competitor instead.

Besides being strategically wrong, these ads are supremely flawed in execution. Now imagine you are at the hardware store and you need to buy something to cut steel. Would you buy something that also sawed wood, picked your teeth, had a magnifying glass on it and also promised to file your finger nails? A Swiss Army knife is good for a lot of things but it’s not a great knife (especially for cutting steel).

Now picture of single reinforced blade without any tricky gizoms. Just a long narrow piece of forged steel attached to an elegantly designed handle. It does just one thing and does it brilliantly: it cuts through the bullshit.

To keep from sucking, that’s what your advertising must do. Cut through all the clutter and bullshit while making a single minded case for purchasing your product.

There’s been a lot of hand wringing lately about what an advertising is and what it should be in the digital age. That conversation should not muddy this water. Because when you strip away all the discussion about technology, advertising needs to engage a customer and inform them about a product or a service. Simple, uncomplicated, well-executed messages in whatever medium will do that. Ugly, complicated, poorly-executed messages won’t. Period.

Watching my two and four-year-old daughters learn about life can be a little disconcerting at times. They fall down trying to do something new, cry because they’re frustrated with a difficult task, or they try to get mommy to do it because it’s hard.

As adults, we forget how painful real learning can be. (A two hour professional development seminar ain’t real learning folks, no matter how painful it feels at the time.) And we also forget how valuable falling down can be. Painful situations are usually avoided by adults simply because of the hurt and embarrassment they can cause.

Learning can feel especially dangerous in professional situations. But it’s really more dangerous not to try something new. Because while you may look like an ass trying to figure something new out, you’ll be made more valuable by the knowledge you’ve acquired.