HASHTAG

Berlin Cameron United is a boutique creative ad agency known for building brand cultures for its clients. It's also the global hub of United, a micro-network of eight boutique agencies in key cities across the globe.  We launched HASHTAG to give our POV on culture, share our influences, and showcase our creative collaborations.

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Matt Ryan joins Berlin Cameron and The United Network as global CEO.

Martin Sorrell, WPP's CEO states, "Part of our armory at WPP is to have networks with various structures and various appeals. There’s a segment of the market where clients want smaller networks, micro-networks, mini-networks. It makes sense for us to have a network like this.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/17/business/a-giant-aims-to-give-new-life-to-its-smallest-network.html?smid=tw-share

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#firstleap with #leampmotion @berlincameron

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We are intrigued by the lean startup approach, Steve Blank describes it in the following way in a recent article in the Harvard Business Review. 'It’s a methodology called the “lean start-up,” and it favors experimentation over elaborate planning, customer feedback over intuition, and iterative design over traditional “big design up front” development.'

BCU had the pleasure to interview Steve Blank where we discussed startups and the concept of pivoting.

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Leap Motion + Google Earth

Hand gestures to control Google Earth...looking forward to receiving our Leap Motion

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The Berlin Cameron Brand Culture Scroll 

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The seemingly endless expanse of dry, salt-cracked earth is a favorite spot for shooting movie scenes, car commercials, and meth labs. After shooting a spot there for Gilt.com (check out AdAge article), Berlin Cameron United can share this Top-Ten list:

Top 10 things you can stumble upon at El Mirage:

Salt

Water

Tire tracks from KITT circa 1985

Shia LaBeouf

Bits and pieces of Maverick’s plane from the filming of Top Gun (RIP Goose!)

Poisonous wildlife

A single strand of Mel Gibson’s hair from the Mad Max:Thunderdome shoot

The Southern California Timing Association, testing the top speed of the Mclaren F1

Meth labs

Two gorgeous models facing off at high noon over a pair of peep-toe pumps by Casadei: You can shop all the looks on Gilt.com.

On balance, we strongly recommend you check out the area any chance you get - the mind-blowing terrain and otherworldly feel of El Mirage is a great escape from the familiar.

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Cool Hunting is one of our daily destinations for inspiration; a site that publishes stories and videos that highlight creativity and innovation in design, technology, style, culture, food and travel. We had the opportunity to speak with Josh Rubin, one of the founders of Cool Hunting to hear how the site started and how it has evolved.

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The talented team from B-Reel came to visit the BCU offices this week to show us some of their awesome work. One piece that we were especially inspired by was the Mind Scaletrix, a R&D project utilizing innovative technologies that lets people race together using their minds, YES their minds. Take a look.

And thanks again to Oscar Tillman, Max Ahlborn of B-Reel and Nicole Salm of Simpatico for stopping by and for inspiring us.

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ING DIRECT and Berlin Cameron have teamed up to win three 2012 Stevie Awards! 

The Awards Include One Gold and Two Silver 

GOLD:

MONEY Pre-Reg Facebook Page won Gold for Small-Budget Marketing Campaign of the Year (<$3 million) 

SILVER:

Electric Orange Fee vs. Free won Silver for Marketing Campaign of the Year - Banking Category 

Gift of Saving for Kids won Silver for Retail/Merchandising Marketing Campaign of the Year 

Congratulations to all ING DIRECT & Berlin Cameron team members and  other award recipients  ! 

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'Jabari Presents' Season 2: Kickstarter Campaign

Please help show your support for our good friend, Jabari Johnson, as he prepares to launch the second season of his show, Jabari Presents. His show features interviews with influential artists, athletes and entertainers. Wiz Khalifa and Diggy Simmons are just a couple examples of people interviewed in season one.

The show has grown and maintained a faithful audience, however, major networks still don't share Jabari's vision. He's decided to launch the second season of Jabari Presents on the internet and continue the project on his own. If you believe in chasing what you love and creating a career for yourself, check out his video above. The project has 22 days left to go and ends on June 30th. Click here for his Kickstarter page and more information about the project.

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How Much Would You Pay For HBOGO?

When designer, Jake Caputo, quietly launched TakeMyMoneyHBO last night, no one would have guessed what was to follow.

The premise to his site was simple: answer how much would you pay for a HBOGO streaming service per month and then tweet it out to your friends. Beyond that, it unintentionally revealed that most of us are willing to pay a fair price for HBOGO, rather than stick to a traditional expensive cable package.

I decided $15 would be a fair enough price but quickly wondered what others would pay. Dominic Balsuryia beat me to it by leveraging Twitter's API to see what the average cost was for every 1,500 tweets (it was $12).

It's not likely that HBO will soon offer a stand alone service, but Caputo's site achieved something greater - it started a conversation. In about a day, his site has racked up 100k+ visits, countless tweets, and hundreds of stories on blogs all over the web. It's really inspiring to know that a single individual can shake up years of age old business practices with a few spare minutes and a great idea.

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Creative Morning With Jonathan Harris

This morning a few of us went to Creative Mornings at the Galapagos art space in DUMBO to listen to Internet anthropologist, JonathanHarris. Upon entering we were given icebreaker tags that asked for our name, Twitter handle, and our definition of magic - perhaps because we were about to witness magic right in front of us.

Jonathan Harris has made several impacting projects that give new light to how we communicate with technology and how technology communicates with us. His most recent project, Cowbird, is an online collection of stories about human experiences in the form of writing, sound, and imagery by anyone and everyone. Although Cowbird has grown in popularity, Harris said, “we are going to keep Cowbird as a small labor of love, not a big business. No ads, no selling data.”

During his talk, Harris covered four trends in online culture:

·      Compression of communication: This means everything from phone calls to e-mails, to chats and tweets - with each new method our communication becomes faster.

·      Disposability of information: We, as individuals, put out information into the world with such ease that it becomes lost in waves of new fresh information.

·      Curation: How people are evolving the way they are collecting and sharing things that they find interesting.

·      Self-promotion: The tendency that we have to self-advertise ourselves is unhealthy in our culture, because we are consistently comparing ourselves with others, which can lead to insecurity.

Lastly big thanks to MailChimp and Freshbooks for breakfast! We'll post a Vimeo link to the talk as soon as it becomes available.

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Soho Snapshot: Week 1

The streets of Soho have been pretty lively with all this warm weather, so we thought we'd share what we're seeing with you all. We'll post up pictures, videos, and stories about the people we meet and the things we see in a weekly series called Soho Snapshot.

We ran into Preston (top picture) on our way back from lunch at the Hudson Square Food Truck Park. Preston is currently partnering with VFiles to create a web series called Model Files.

VFILES is a spin off of V Magazine that will soon be "home to a web-based collaborative image bank, database of publications, and social application for creatives to share their work and inspiration with a larger community. [It will be curated by] editors, photographers, designers, artists, art directors, models, enthusiasts and friends. It is a source of inspiration, entertainment, and nonstop unfiltered vision." You can sign up for an account here.

Click the YouTube clip below to watch the pilot episode for Preston's VFILES web series.

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Jason Silva: An Introduction

A couple of days ago, we had the pleasure of having futurist and filmmaker, Jason Silva, drop by our office for a visit. For most of us, this was the first time meeting Silva. His visit was an overwhelming experience, and we mean that in the best way possible.

Silva's true talent lies in his personality. His energy and optimism for the future are impossible to ignore. Most describe him as, "a Digital DJ, a re-vitalizer and remixer of optimism, and above all, a curator: of ideas, of inspiration, and of awe (...) he jams, riffs and rhapsodizes through a tumbling thicket of ideas with such a sharp and vital alacrity that it can take the breath away.”

The majority of his films focus on the coevolution of humans and technology, more commonly known as singularity. What sets Silva's work apart from others explaining singularity is his use of sound and visuals to create a more stimulating effect rather than the usual dull academic packaging.

Feel free to visit his site if you'd like to learn more about Silva's work, singularity, or see more of his videos: ThisIsJasonSilva.com

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Berlin Cameron Agency Fun 

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"do original things, don't just talk about being original" Ewen Cameron

Ewen featured in Ad Age's article on Stoli's new brand campaign that we created

http://adage.com/article/news/stoli-vodka-parts-ways-hef-biz-stone/233847/