Brand Experience Agency - Groove 11 - GrooveLab

What Matters Now: Our First Submission

Photo: Kira Elischer

As some of you already know, Groove 11 has embarked on a new project called What Matters Now. The idea is to invite emerging artists to show at Groove HQ, bringing with them new ideas and in general just helping us to mix it up. We received our first submission last week and we are very excited about the direction things are taking.

Photographer Kira Elischer, whose lush work looks at poverty and what constitutes true or "relative" happiness outside of material affluence, is exactly the kind of thinking we're looking forward to sharing more of. The Happy Planet Index shows us that at a certain level of material security, a society's "happiness" number stabilizes and beyond a certain level, in some instances, may decrease. Kira's investigation is great visual evidence that functions as a kind of true emotional data visualization, supporting much current happiness research which recognizes connection, family, and purpose as the core of the good life.

We're looking forward to more soon.

What Matters Now

As a brand experience agency with wall space, Groove 11 is embarking on a creative, art-ful journey we're really excited about. We're starting an ongoing 2D visual arts series right here in our San Rafael office called Twenty Ten: What Matters Now.

We see it as an opportunity for artists to share their ideas with us, our clients, our vendors, visitors and the general public – a vision and a viewpoint on the state of things [any thing]. It makes sense to do this since the Groove vision is to humanize the way businesses interact with people and our goal is always to inspire audiences to feel, learn, do, or be something. Art is an excellent way to do that. With What Matters Now we also intend to give emerging artists an opportunity to speak to a new/expanded audience and to create dialog in the greater creative community. Of course, it's also an opportunity for participating artists to sell their work.

For our part, we'll be holding that dialog right here on our blog, on Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr, and in the real world. This latter element will come in the form of Opening Night receptions for each show we mount. The first one will be held in a few months [details to come]. In the meantime, the call is out to artists via schools and organizations throughout the Bay Area.

So look for these artists' stories, pictures of their work, and their voices across Groove's social media presence in the coming months. We invite you to post comments and opinions, to join the conversation, and to celebrate artistic vision in all its forms. Get into it with us!

On Learning to See

Sunday afternoon, and in my ongoing quest for deeper inspiration I've just spent some juicy time with my new favorite book, Sparks of Genius, The 13 Thinking Tools of the World's Most Creative People, by Robert and Michele Root-Bernstein. This book is a thought provoking investigation of the practices of creative thinkers as shared by scientists, artists, writers and musicians alike. From my perspective the book is also further proof that what I once worried was my own predilection toward ADD (attention deficit disorder, or in other words wide-ranging, seemingly unrelated interests) is really a practice shared by many successful creative people across diverse disciplines. This week's quote comes from the painter Georgia O'Keeffe, famous for her stunning abstractions filtered through her keen observations of plants, objects and landscapes. O'Keeffe makes her appearance in the chapter on "observing," and reminds us how hard it is to really see outside the lens of our preconceived expectations, but more importantly how rich the rewards of truly seeing are. So here's to waking up and seeing the everyday with fresh eyes.

Suspense, Intrigue and The Art of The Steal

There are usually a couple of good staples I like talking about at parties: politics, art, art history, and movies – with a sweet tooth for film noir types of movies dealing with great robberies and the like. Well, much to my delight, it looks like The Art of The Steal has them all wrapped up in one passionate film by director Don Argott.

The film deals with the highly controversial subject of the moving of the Barnes Foundation, a jewel-box of a place located in an area of Lower Merion in Pennsylvania, to a public museum in downtown Philadelphia. For those of you not familiar with the Barnes Foundation, it is, to put it in in simple terms, one of the largest single collections of post-impressionistic paintings - in the world! And, it's not in a museum. Plus, it's here - in the U.S. The Barnes (as it is called locally) houses 69 Cézannes, 181 Renoirs, 60 Matisses, 44 Picassos and seven Van Goghs (not to mention vast quantities of African and Native American art, plus boxes of Rembrandt etchings) just to name a few.

Our Teachers

Image: Kelly Sultan

I learned last night that Bay Area photographer Larry Sultan passed away on Sunday at age 63. He was an internationally successful artist whose work explored various facets of California culture, from the suburbs of the 70s to the strange netherworld of southern California porn sets. Larry was also, lucky for me, my professor during graduate school at California College of the Arts. He was a rock star and I was in awe of him. He was smart and accomplished, but also an incredibly generous and accessible teacher.

Talking Buildings are Here!

Here are a few stills from a recent video shoot we did in New York.

Actually, it's animation. If you think buildings can really talk maybe you should get a checkup of some sort. But if not, then definitely check out the new RetroFits game Groove created for Autodesk. It launched today!

A fun video shoot

Recently Groove had a video shoot at studios in the Presidio for our client, Citrix. We're developing and producing a fun game for them around the topic of desktop virtualization and it stars one of the foremost gurus in the space, Brian Madden. The game has turned out to be a fun mashup of modern technology meets Gene Rayburn [remember him? the host of Match Game...with the long, skinny microphone, bad jackets, and self-conscious leer].

More Reasons to Celebrate

Groove 11 has just been awarded the redesign of the St. Clement Winery website and we're thrilled with the opportunity to bring their brand to life on the web. The truly difficult part however is all that discovery involved; the site visit, the wine tasting and eating of good food that a day in Napa demands. It's hard but we'll manage to love the work!

Time for a Toast

Groove is proud to announce that we've just won a sweet Web project from Chateau St.Jean, a gorgeous winery in Sonoma. We're very excited because we're all such foodies and wine lovers, so the project is near and dear to our hearts – and stomachs. Never mind that it hasn't even started yet. We'll be creating a fantastic new website for them, which will certainly feature the historic chateau and renowned gardens.Sonoma here we come!

How NOT to extend a brand

I saw an interesting retrospective online the other day, about all the wonderful ways Mattel has expanded the Barbie brand over the years. Of course, not all of these ideas were wonderful. Many of them were far from it, and these three are cases in point.

Meet Pooper Scooper Barbie. Complete with little piles of poo.

I honestly did think this one was a joke, but apparently the joke's on me. Because everyone knows little girls love to recreate animal attacks after they have a tea party. I suppose Malibu Barbie will soon be coming with a plastic Great White and break-away torso for those times when she strays into the shark-infested waters off Southern California.

I’m afraid I don’t know the name of this particular model. Moulin Whore Barbie, perhaps?


So let this be a lesson to us all. Brand extension can be a great thing. It probably means you're doing something right, enjoying success, gaining audience, all that good stuff. But for heaven's sake, please do it responsibly. Because there's nothing worse than expecting to win over 7-year-old hearts and minds with an iconic brand by having angry reptiles peck the icon's eyes out.