Des Temps

The only blog you’ll ever need.

  • Heart of the City

    What if Kanye West met Lord of the Rings…?

    we don't just dream of flying...
    we don’t just dream of flying…

    The Story
    Our transmedia story Heart of the City is a narrative set in the surreal world of urban teens, rife with mischief, rabbit holes and romance. The storyworld encompasses a web series, ARGs, original products and a feature film.

    magic hides infront of eyes
    magic hides infront of eyes

    It all begins one hot day in Brooklyn when our two heroes, Jai and Sash, buy a dusty talisman from the back wall of their local bodega, thinking it might hang nicely from Jai’s chain. But when they discover that it has the power to unlock daydreams – turning them into flashes of reality – the boys find their lives and their path forever changed.

    In their mind’s eye and on our screen, they now skate with Tony Hawk, smooch Santogold and freestyle with Pharrell. New York City morphs into a vast playground as Jai and Sash explore its nooks and secrets, joined by a purple sasquatch-dragon and bold fashionistas.

    But something’s missing.

    They must find the meaning of the talisman – what are its rules, how can it help them, how long will this magic last?

    Just as heroes before them have learned, from Dorothy Gale to Peter Parker, with great power, comes great responsibility. Time is fleeting. Evil lurks. And so begins their quest.

    mischief in the man and the dog
    mischief in the man and the dog

    The Market
    At Desedo HQ, we are excited. (we just won the Pixel Pitch:))

    In creating Heart of the City, we wanted to make new heroes for a massive, multiracial audience. Jai and Sash are from the optimistic youth of the Obama generation, from a new era in American history.

    These teens are at the vanguard of digital, mobile and gaming. It’s a group whose hobbies include comic books, skateboarding, and fashion. And they were weaned on hip-hop.

    As we wrote in Ad Age, most advertising and entertainment that targets this audience does not reflect their many interests. It overlooks both their depth and digital smarts. Yet in a shrinking economy, these minority markets are growing in both size and spending power. It’s a demographic we see reflected and refracted in spaces like Grey’s Anatomy and Kanye West’s collaboration with Takashi Murakami, Disney’s Cheetah Girls and our 44th president.

    Heart of the City is the first transmedia property built to engage multiple minority markets. Our heroes and our audience hail from the same world of early adopters, one encompassing Black Nerds, Asian BBoys and Wassup Rockers.

    As our characters plumb the city for adventures, our audience sees itself reflected in values and style, in language and in attitude. Jai and Sash are the heroes they’ve been waiting to see onscreen.

    Heart of the City is the new hero narrative for this generation.

    —
    Photos by Jason Lewis and The Brink

  • Pixel Pitch

    here comes HOTC!
    OMFG! We just got selected by Power to the Pixel to pitch our transmedia series Heart of the City at their conference in October. London bound, we be!

  • The Alice Bond Bag

    Alice AwaitsEarlier this summer, MHB worked with fashion designer Rachel Nasvik and creative strategist Biba Milioto on a project called The Alice Bond Bag.

    The challenge was: How can a small company with lovely customers and a valued product increase brand awareness?

    The answer was to make a limited-edition of 96 bags and create a citywide scavenger hunt for them using the tools of social media. They were surreptitiously left in bars, bookstores and phone booths. They were sold by hotdog vendors, ice cream men and Canal Street bootleggers.

    When the dust cleared 10 days after launch, the project had become a media darling: covered by 50+ blogs and followed by 1000+ people on Twitter. Mainstream outlets like NBC New York, Vogue, Nylon and MSNBC’s Your Business all took note.

    Most importantly of all, it was fully embraced by Rachel’s fans – once we tweeted about the location of a bag, within 10 minutes, women were on the scene looking for it. And those who couldn’t make it, often sent boyfriends in their stead.

    It increased interest and sales in Rachel’s brand, reinvigorating past connections and creating new ones.
    And was some of the most fun ever had playing with social media.

  • Asian Efficiency

    Digitizing Race

    One of the best books I’ve read in ’09 is Digitizing Race by Lisa Nakamura. In her essay The Social Optics of Race, she writes that

    the racio-visual logic of…science fiction films that depict interface use set up distinct roles for particular races, and distinct ways of conceptualizing the racialized body as informational property… [and that] Asians and Asian-Americans function as the material base for technologies of digitized vision….

    I was reminded of it when seeing this Palm Pre commercial from Modernista! in which masses of Asian bodies signify supreme technology. While I doubt that this was overtly outlined as such, I do think it is a product of Western subconscious.

    1ywUwca8tSY
    HT:Sociological Images for the clip and Erin Lamberty for noting it.

  • ABC News: The Alice Bond Bag

    where the night takes you (take me too?)
    where the night takes you (take me too?)

    ABC just included the Alice Bond Bag in their roundup of ‘Crazy & Creative Advertising’

  • MSNBC: The Alice Bond Bag

    learn to dance with your partner.
    learn to dance with your partner.

    MSNBC’s Your Business featured The Alice Bond Bag in an episode called Learning From the Pirates. The thesis of the piece is that businesses can use the marketplace of piracy as an asset if engaged intelligently.

  • Jamaica

    Rockthehouse
    Raafi is down in Jamaica with DP Bradford Young and super producer Karin Chien working on a film and education project for the Rockhouse Foundation. Directing, teaching and, uh, lying on the beach. Topless Raaf pics to follow shortly.