The only blog you’ll ever need.

  • 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.

  • The Casual Dining Club

    Applebees + Times Square =I’ve been wondering about the differences between the wildly successful casual dining restaurants.

    Houlihan’s vs. Applebee’s vs. TGIFriday’s.

    And so we’ve started a supperclub to find out.

    The Casual Dining Club will eat its first meal this Thurday, 7pm at Applebee’s in Times Square.

    You should join us – email or tweet @michaelhb to RSVP.