What’s going on behind mono’s blue door? A lot, actually.
About 100 advertising professionals and students joined Ad2 on Thursday March 22 to hear about the latest goings-on at the agency and to mingle with the teams who dreamt up and executed projects like MSNBC’s “Lean Forward” campaign and Blue Cross Blue Shield’s “The Human Doing.”
Many were happy to see people we hadn’t seen in awhile. Mono served yummy food, especially the cupcakes; The layout of mono is very dynamic; streamlined and functional, but without the distracting clutter. It was easy to see the many gracious and friendly people at mono; and it’s very clear there is a lot of creativity that comes out of the agency.
In one corner of mono’s office, creative co-chair Paula Biondich presented Blu Dot’s “Real Good Experiment”, a project that capitalized on Manhattan’s “curb mining” pastime and outfitted 25 chairs with GPS tracking units in order to spread the word about the grand opening of the company’s flagship store in New York’s SoHo.
In another corner, creative co-chair Travis Olson offered insight into the SoundAffects experiment for Parsons The New School for Design. “We asked, ‘what if we changed the way we look at our cities … and listen instead?’” Olson said, describing the ideation process for the project. What began as a task to “start a conversation about design today” for Parsons turned into a social experiment to learn how musical composition reacts to its surrounding environment.
The Human Doing, which won Best in Show from Ad Fed’s The Show, was presented by creative co-chair Troy Longie. For this campaign, mono put a man in a glass apartment at Mall of America for a month, dependent on community votes of support to get him healthier. And creative director Larry Olson provided an animated account of mono’s campaign for Virgin Unite called “Do Whatever It Takes,” which asked Millennials to literally pledge to do whatever it takes to raise money and end youth homelessness in a digital social good campaign.
While the conversations about mono’s work were interesting, what made the evening truly fascinating was the candor surrounding the agency’s approach to the experimental solutions for clients it has come to be known for. “The conversation we have at the wall is, how are we going to change this business?” Olson explained when a visitor asked about mono’s process, “We ask, what would be interesting? What would be cool? And then we try to do that in our own way.”
For more Ad Fed events, click here.
To view all event photos from Ad2’s event at mono, go to Ad Fed’s facebook page.
