Skoda, Fallon Make Striking the Right Tone Look Like a Piece of Cake.
In the face of a changing media and advertising climate, brand keepers have explored an array of emerging platforms and techniques to foster more meaningful communications -- making hay out of consumers' innate desire to share and connect with social media, optimizing search-engine tactics, exploiting technologies that create ever-narrower addressability and wider consumer choice, and anticipating place shifting with mobile applications. So where do we go from here? One word: cake.

By tiezzi@adage.com(Teressa Iezzi).

Looser Intellectual Property Rules Are Good for You and the Economy.
Copyright issues grow thornier everyday in this new age of the digital remix. The same technology that's allowed your consumer to engage with your brand allowed her to get all up in everyone's IP and has spawned new genres of art. So are current copyright laws a protector of artists' rights or an enemy of artistic innovation?

By tiezzi@adage.com(Teressa Iezzi).

Award Season Is Over, but There's Plenty of Creativity to Be Found.
Award season is over. Where will you get your creative inspiration? Lucky for you, this column may relax its standards over the summer, but it's still here providing whole-brain fodder. Here, a seasonal creative roundup.

By tiezzi@adage.com(Teressa Iezzi).

With New Game, Shark Week Campaign Evolves Into Killer App.
What it is about Shark Week? The Discovery staple just celebrated its 20th anniversary and enjoyed some of its highest ratings ever. Sure, there are harder things to sell than primal fear, but the channel has had a deft hand with the marketing of the franchise and has successfully made Shark Week a cultural event.

By tiezzi@adage.com(Teressa Iezzi).

A Bit of Procrastination Leads to Feature Film About UFOs.
For a while there last month, the world was under siege -- again. Based on miles-long discussion threads, it wasn't certain if the scourge was an invasion from another galaxy or from the marketing world. It was neither, exactly. It was a bit of advance marketing for a film that didn't exist -- marketing that itself brought about the film it was, in the end, promoting. It's like Heisenberg for marketing, only not.

By tiezzi@creativity-online.com(Teressa Iezzi).

Nike, Xbox Show the Power of Great Ideas and Stellar Production.
Not that hand-held DIY-style video hasn't done its part for the ad industry, but let us now bid a hearty welcome back to production values, returning with a furious vengeance in two recent visual stunners for Nike and Xbox. Never exactly shrinking violets on the great-big-ad issue, both brands got downright mythical on our asses in these most recent outings.

By tiezzi@crain.com(Teressa Iezzi).

How to Be a More Creative Marketer in Four Easy Steps.
So what's a creative marketer? Our list over the past few years has included communications success stories, certainly, but more and more the companies that land on the list seem to be less about advertising and more about whole-brand identity.

By tiezzi@adage.com(Teressa Iezzi).

Droga Seeks to Give King Content a Throne With Honeyshed Launch.
But what the hell is it? That was the question etching furrows into the foreheads of ad watchers who had heard portents of Honeyshed, the online-content venture percolating at New York start-up Droga5. Early information suggested the site would bring something new to the branded-content arena. But what? What?!

By tiezzi@creativity-online.com(Teressa Iezzi).

Building a Better Ballot.
Just how big a function can be sorted with thoughtful form? Well, how about democracy by design?

By tiezzi@creativity-online.com(Teressa Iezzi).

But Wait, There's More: Eight Great Creative Moments of '07.
Thorough as it was, Ad Age's Book of Tens just couldn't accommodate the many moments of creative excellence that gave 2007 its texture. Here, some creative highlights that may have been missed among the lists of lists.

By tiezzi@adage.com(Teressa Iezzi).

Gondry's Movie Captures DIY's Impact on Professional Creativity.
The release of a Michel Gondry film is always cause for giddy anticipation in certain circles. For Gondry's coming film, "Be Kind Rewind," those circles likely will be much wider than usual.

By tiezzi@creativity-online.com(Teressa Iezzi).

Not So Super? The Bowl Ads and New Creative From Wendy's.
In the past few years, the hype around Super Bowl commercials has grown in inverse proportion to the super-ness of the spots in the game. There were a few bright spots -- a refreshingly hard edge made Wieden's CareerBuilder ads stand out. But as a body of work, the ads were, once again, anti-climactic.

By tiezzi@creativity-online.com(Teressa Iezzi).

Subservient Chicks Mark Progress in Online Shopping.
Couldn't there be a better way of assisting potential buyers in evaluating items online than still photos of those items pinned and posed on a very tall person? A seemingly small but interesting advance in online shopping comes from an unlikely category -- lingerie -- and an unlikely site -- KnickerPicker.com

By tiezzi@adage.com(Teressa Iezzi).

Nomis and Agency Aim to Put a Stone in the Big Guys' Shoes.
If you're an ambitious, results-oriented creative type, could there be a sweeter assignment than Nike or Adidas? How about this: helping a relatively tiny competitor tackle those masters of the sports universe.

By tiezzi@creativity-online.com(Teressa Iezzi).

What's Sweden's Creative Secret?.
Immersing oneself in another country's ad scene is always instructive. This is especially so in the case of smoking hot (creatively speaking) Sweden.

By tiezzi@creativity-online.com(Teressa Iezzi).

What Top Creative Minds Are Doing With Their New Websites.
Looking to redesign your website? Well, what could be more instructive than examining the newly redesigned sites of a handful of brand creativity companies -- companies whose very purpose is to communicate effectively (online or anywhere) and who, theoretically, have the best talent and the best ideas on such matters.

By tiezzi@creativity-online.com(Teressa Iezzi).

Creative Is Better Than It Used to Be, and That's Good Business.
We're not announcing the winners of the second-annual Creativity Awards until May 13. So, I'll make do with a few observations -- my own and our awards jurors' -- that came out of the awards process and speak to the general state of creativity now.

By tiezzi@adage.com(Teressa Iezzi).

CPU: A Unit of Measurement for Both Creatives and Marketers.
ROI-obsessed marketers buy into all kinds of made-up metrics; this one is at least a less arbitrary indicator of business success, and it's one that both shrewd advertisers and creative types can get behind.

By tiezzi@adage.com(Teressa Iezzi).

Why Sustainability Should Be at the Heart of the Creative Process.
Solutions have to have a green ethos, but they also have to just be good. So how much of this long-term, sustainable thinking is incorporated into design process in the brand world?

By tiezzi@creativity-online.com(Teressa Iezzi).

If Creativity Were the Jury.
Here, Creativity's picks. Mix and match them, and they'll probably represent a good chunk of the winners at Cannes this year.

By tiezzi@creativity-online.com(Teressa Iezzi).

Like Good Advertising, Winning Design Cuts Through the Clutter.
Especially now, as it becomes more and more difficult to craft a unified communications message, design is the core emotional bridge.

By tiezzi@creativity-online.com(Teressa Iezzi).

Sid Lee Shows It Takes Time to Build a Truly Integrated Shop.
It's rare today that an agency winning a major chunk of business for a significant brand elicits the reaction, "Who?"

By tiezzi@creativity-online.com(Teressa Iezzi).

Incredibly Creative Efforts Get Us Through Dog Days of Summer.
The streets are pungent and people scarce, yet there's lots of creative action afoot. That can only mean one thing -- summer-roundup time!

By tiezzi@creativity-online.com(Teressa Iezzi).

Creatives and Producers Grapple With a New Era of Production.
Genuine collaboration is often necessary to bring a big, platform-spanning idea to life, and that collaboration means it's often harder to determine the line between creation and execution.

By tiezzi@creativity-online.com(Teressa Iezzi).

Now That Summer's Over, It's Time for a Homework Assignment.
Early September just can't help but feel like early January. What it lacks in despair and salt stains it makes up for in back-to-it gravitas. It means stock taking, which can be a bit daunting. So, along with buying your pencil case and new cords, here are a few things to do to ease yourself into the serious season.

By tiezzi@creativity-online.com(Teressa Iezzi).

How Creativity Can Carry Your Business Through a Recession.
In these pages, we've read about the ways in which this sort of environment affects ad spending. But what happens to creativity in times like these?

By tiezzi@creativity-online.com(Teressa Iezzi).

Jewish Group Uses Creativity, Comedy to Fight Politics as Usual.
A recent campaign from Droga5, New York, encourages Jewish Obama supporters to drop some facts on Bubby and Zaidy down in that hottest of election battlegrounds, Florida.

By tiezzi@creativity-online.com(Teressa Iezzi).

Creativity and Procreation Don't Have to Be Mutually Exclusive.
Hands off your keyboard. Can you name five female artists?

By tiezzi@creativity-online.com(Teressa Iezzi).

J&J's Green-Packaging Rebirth Proves Power of Smart Design.
J&J's new design discipline (which includes working with outside designers) has resulted in a number of successful product rebirths and a new focus on sustainability for the company.

By tiezzi@creativity-online.com(Teressa Iezzi).

Amazon One-Ups Santa Claus With Frustration-Free Packaging.
Amazon shoppers are now able to purchase a selection of toys and electronics packaged in plain, easy-to-open, recyclable boxes.

By tiezzi@creativity-online.com(Teressa Iezzi).