Just two days before my first day at the Middle Eastern outpost of Carrot Creative, I was completing my last day at my previous job. I was standing on the pit wall of Yas Marina Circuit in the UAE’s capital Abu Dhabi for the final round of the Maserati Trofeo Middle East. As the twelve Italian V8 thoroughbred race cars thundered their way around the Formula One track, I contemplated my latest move into the great unknown.

The past decade has been filled with petrol, tire smoke and a great deal of exhaust noise. I’ve been a web monkey, news hound, road test dog, editor gorilla and PR unicorn – all within the great and disparate world of automotive awesomeness. My work allowed me to travel East and West to visit motorshows and factories, drive on some of the greatest roads in Europe in supercharged SUVs and fuel-sipping city cars (and plenty else besides), blast through deserts in the world’s fastest and most expensive cars and write an absolute stack of copy for websites, magazines and newspapers.

My final eighteen months had seen me cross over to the dark side and saw me represent some fantastic brands both through traditional and social media channels. I gained an appreciation for the fair automobile from a different perspective, and how a brand creates a real connection with people.

It’s that connection, that relationship, that feeling, that buzz which a hunk of metal, rubber and hydrocarbons can evoke with people that excites me now. But it’s not just cars that stir people’s souls and imaginations – you’ve only got to look at the hoardes of Apple fanboys out there (guilty as charged) who go all doey-eyed over a hunk of electronics wrapped up in a svelte case to see that we humans are simple creatures after all.

Social media is a platform that can really help craft and develop that affinity between a brand and the end user. It’s a real leveller that exists without boundaries and with the right knowledge and understanding behind the message, can be hugely effective.

And it’s the bunch of peeps within the Carrot family who I believe are in a seriously strong position to best achieve this. With the first move out of Brooklyn being into unchartered waters in the UAE, I couldn’t think of a better company to hone my skills with.

As the token Brit within the company, all that’s left for me to do now is introduce the guys to some proper English comedy and instill some new traditions such as afternoon tea and crumpets. Cheers!

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I arrived in New York on a Sunday and started work with Carrot on a Monday. A bit over-ambitious in terms of jet-lag, but as I packed up my life in San Francisco, I just kept thinking about the line from When Harry Met Sally that “When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with someone, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.” Now I don’t plan on proposing to the office dog anytime soon, but I did have a gut feeling that my life was waiting for me in New York and it was time to jump in head first.

I’ve spent the past four years bringing people from around the world together off-line through the conference and incubator space my team and I built. I’m excited to start my next chapter as a part of the Carrot team in helping to create our strategy for bringing people from around the world together online – engaging and inspiring people to interact with global brands through digital campaigns. The work that’s happening in Brooklyn right now on the production side is the best in the world. We have videographers, interaction designers and digital engineers working at the forefront of the industry. Carrot has the unique opportunity to develop world-class campaigns on the edge of what’s possible and share those stories around the world through their expertise in social media. I’m thrilled to be along for the ride.

This article is copyright © 2012 

Sincerely,

Carrot Creative

This article is copyright © 2012 

Did you say breakfast? It’s ok if you did, although the answer I was looking for was family.

Back when I was still interviewing, I remember Chris telling me that most Carrots were not from New York City and thus, did not have any family members here. That is why, he said, it is important that Carrot Creative is a family. Since starting here, I have never doubted the absolute truth of this statement. My fellow Carrots quickly became my new New York family and despite being far from home, I’ve never once felt alone.

So in the spirit of family and the holidays and being just a tad bit sentimental, I asked my fellow Carrots to share some of their favorite holiday traditions & memories.

William: Over the holidays we make it a point to watch at least one of the Lord of the Rings movies, usually the Fellowship of the Ring. Then, every New Years eve (that I’m in town for) we have a giant feast of King Crab legs & other related seafood awesomeness before heading out!

Dan: My family gets naked and runs around the neighborhood singing Wilson Phillips songs, drunk. Wait, we’re posting these anonymously right?

Steve: Every Christmas Eve, after dinner, my entire family gathers around the TV, pops in the “Best of Will Farrel SNL” DVD, and watches Mark Jenson’s Family Christmas.

“What do you say, let’s get this party started!”

Kyle: When I wake up at my mother’s house, she makes us all wait at the top of the stairs (even when my room was in the basement). In the beginning it was just me, my two sisters, & our dog. Then my sisters starting having kids, and now there is me, my two sisters, their 4 kids, and two husbands which is far too many people to wait at the top of the stairs. While we’re waiting she’ll take pictures and say “WOW Santa came!” & we’re supposed to act surprised. After she’s gotten a sufficient amount of photos, we’re allowed to come down & open gifts.

After that, my sisters and their significant others will drive to my father’s house on the other side of town. He usually greets us at the stairs with the same “WOW Santa came!” talk. Each of us get handed 1 gift at a time as we sit around the tree while John Denver and the Muppet Christmas Album is playing. We open gifts in the order of our age, my older sister first, then my twin sister gets to open the next one (by two minutes). After all of the gifts are dealt, my father makes everyone breakfast; omeletes titled “Super Dee Dooper Alla Pee Hooper”.

Juliette: When I was little, maybe 2 or 3, my parents bought our first live Christmas tree for the house. I got so excited when it arrived that ran up to give it a hug. I quickly realized that hugging it was a bad idea because it wasn’t soft at all. Hours later, I was rushed to the emergency room covered in hives. It was that day that I learned I was allergic to Christmas.

Will: My favorite tradition is listening to Bing Crosby’s holiday albums with my family.

Adam: My favorite Katzenback Christmas tradition has to be that my Dad has mandated that everyone in attendance must wear a pair of Christmas/Holiday socks. With just shy of 30 Katzenbacks you get some wild sock/slipper combinations along with fierce competition for who has the best pair, but let’s not kid ourselves here. We all know who the winner is…

Kathryn: For the last 14 years, my Dad and I have made it a tradition to drive out to Virginia’s Horse Country for a day of father-daughter bonding, eating, and shopping. We drink hot toddies, talk about the year we’ve had, and end the day picking out ornaments at a German Christmas shop. This year, though, will be the start of a new tradition. Since my parents moved to Western New York we’ll still be battling the cold, but instead of horse country, we’ll be at Ralph Wilson Stadium on Christmas Eve for my first Buffalo Bills game. It will never replace the memories I have in Virginia, but the great thing about traditions is that it’s never too late to begin new ones as long as you’re with the ones you love.

Chris: Getting work done over the holiday break when the brats are gone and it’s quiet. Also, reading or catching up by the fireplace at my parents’ house. Also watching Star Wars.

Daniela: My mother is a little insane about the Holidays – especially Christmas and more specifically, the Christmas tree. She IS the mother in the John Roberts Christmas Tree video.

We’ve had the same fake tree since I was a little kid, and each year my mother would spend at least a solid week decorating it. This wasn’t a relaxing mellow activity either. Every day spent on decorations meant screaming, cursing, my mother on the floor sweating on the verge of tears, exclaiming this will be “the last year” she is doing this, that she hates the tree, etc. But each year – the day after Thanksgiving, she starts setting things up as always. My favorite memory is of the elaborate village she’d create underneath with fake snow, shops, people, a skating rink, and even a ski mountain with little skiers going down it. I’d sit on the floor and make up stories about the people living there and it would provide hours of entertainment for me (I had no friends). The village has now moved to the mantle place and while it may not be as intricate and detailed as when I was younger – the tree is still pretty impressive. Now that I am older, I appreciate how intense my mother gets around the holidays & decorating because it means I get to have these awesome memories & hilarious stories to tell for years to come. Oh and one weird thing me/my sister used to do every Christmas eve is play “bank” (as in, we were both bank tellers working at a bank) while watching Christmas Story.

Mike: One year my mom bought a fake tree. My brother and I came home and after some drinking, decided to go outside and cut down a real tree instead. We chose a 15 foot one, cut it down, dragged it inside the house, and decorated it. There were leaves and dirt everywhere. Maybe we were drunk, maybe the tree was lopsided, but the next morning the entire thing fell over. It is still my favorite tree.

Alexis: I like that my family has a big Christmas Eve dinner (even though we’re Jewish, shh).

Darryl: My favorite holiday tradition is drinking hot chocolate and eating Christmas cookies. And eating Christmas cookies. And eating cookies that are decorated for Christmas. Christmas cookies are the center of all that is good. Do you know where I can get some more Christmas cookies?

Jeff: Every Christmas Eve my whole family sits on the couch and my dad reads us “The Night Before Christmas”. It’s real cute.

Sunny: For at least 22 years (probably longer since my sister is older than me) my mom has let us open a single present (of her choosing) on Christmas Eve. It is always pajamas. My sister and I have probably owned more pairs of pajamas in our lives than any other human beings on this planet. That’s at least 38 pairs of pajamas between the two of us over the years. That’s obscene. The other part of the tradition is that my sister and I (and our mom) alway feign surprise when our gifts turn out to be (!) pajamas.

So, from all of us in the Carrot family, Happy Holidays!

This article is copyright © 2012 

And thus, Instacheer was born! Carrot designed and developed a website that pulls in holiday themed Instagram photos that fall in snowflakes over an animated snowy scape. You can easily toggle the various tags on and off. This way, if you have a hankering to only see photos of dogs dressed up as Rudolph, well… we wouldn’t dream of stopping you.

So check out Instacheer, share with the ones you love (and even ones you don’t love), and have a great holiday season from the Carrot Creative team!

This article is copyright © 2012 

And please remember to donate to the cause. Today is your last day!

A huge thanks to everyone who has supported our Movember team so far! See you next year!

This article is copyright © 2012 

Carrot Creative is participating in the month-long-moustache-growing-charity-event to help raise money for the fight against prostate cancer. Below are the before and after shots of our fine gentlemen. And please don’t forget to donate to the cause… you’ll be helping to save lives!

Adam Katzenback, Mr. Red Beard

Nick Perold, Mr. Moustache Gone and Soon to be Back Again

Bob Whitney, Mr. Had a Beard For Six Years and Just Shaved It For the First Time

Steve Badowski, Mr. Clean Shaven Until Today

Tony Briceno, Mr. Sometimes Scruff Turned Soon to be Moustache

Dan Sullivan, Mr. Sully Bear Goes Beardless

Will Hutson, Mr. Really Nice Beard and Apache Sweater

David Radparvar, Mr. Holstee Crew Moustache Rep

Please help us raise money for this amazing charity… and be sure to follow the blog for occasional “Here’s What the Moustache Crew Looks Like” check-ins!

This article is copyright © 2012 

Let’s face it — 404 pages may not always be a top priority, but for creative agencies it’s important to embrace the opportunity an error page presents. Beyond the obvious utility these pages provide, 404 pages are a great chance to showcase your agency’s personality, creative chops, and attention to detail. Whether it’s treated as an extension of your brand, or a playful easter egg, these once dull error pages are now considered to be one of the most creative ways to exemplify the nature of your agency and the people that work in your organization. Here’s a round up of 404 pages from a handful of the agencies in our field:

Carrot Creative First thing’s first — let us present what we believe to be the best use of the 404 page scenario. Naturally, this is our own agency

Barbarian Group Barbarian Group cycles through 80 or so odd and amusing (seemingly custom) images, creating a unique experience each time.

Big Spaceship The randomized background is a particularly nice touch (especially the bikes!), but the failed google search attempt at the bottom of the page shows a bit of neglect.

Big Bad Collab Sporting a throwback space-themed design, Big Bad Collab’s 404 page is nice, but doesn’t show the “Space Ghost” we were expecting…

Big Fuel Moderately underwhelming. Womp womp.

Blue Fountain Media Pac Man! Novel idea, but this might be taking away valuable time spent learning about the agency.

Breakfast Simple, humorous, and to the point. However, clicking the FAIL blog image shouldn’t direct users away from the site. That defeats the purpose!

Buddy Media Sterile and utilitarian. Less is more, or something like that… right?

Bully This is the best of both worlds — a cheeky message combined with useful internal links.

Carsonified Well designed and helpful. We applaud you.

Centresource Another well done 404 page containing a nice mix of quirky narrative and useful links.

Cuban Council A vintage  (and humorous) art directed error page consistant with their overall site theme. Links back to the homepage.

Deep Focus “Just drop in the site map and call it a day.”  Meh.

Flightpath  Well designed and user friendly, this is an excellent example of a 404 page.

Free Association Nicely composed, but all of the useful links are well below the fold. And we all know how important the fold is.

Freshthrills  Nice wordplay and art direction here. We’re fans.

Huge Straightforward. Although, we expected something more from Huge.

Ignite Social Media Not the most stunning design, but it gets the job done.

Jumping Jackrabbit Beautifully illustrated page with a parallax effect. This page is a delight to stumble upon even though he is cooking carrots. EEK.

Odopod Snarky, but still quite useful.

Space150 With no additional links, this error page relies on the main navigation for users to regain their bearings.

This article is copyright © 2012 

Amid the flurry of activities surrounding Internet Week New York (IWNY), Manhattan Ford will host a rooftop summer concert on Thursday, June 10^th, featuring a performance by Cobra Starship.  The performance is the flagship event for Ford, which is also launching www.fiestafunnel.com, an interactive tool for tracking the latest developments during IWNY, built by Carrot Creative.  All of this comes as the company fast approaches its June release date for the new Fiesta, a vehicle designed with the tech-savvy crowd in mind.

Experiencing IWNY with the Fiesta Funnel

Carrot Creative engineered the site to actively speak with the car’s core demographic – tech-savvy, socially active urbanites. The Fiesta Funnel aims to transcend Internet Week, setting the tone for the entire Ford Fiesta launch program. Fans can track any and all developments throughout IWNY at the website, www.fiestafunnel.com.  Led by Editor-in-Chief Kelly Will and Creative Director Greg Littley, eight Internet-savvy writers, bloggers and videographers were selected to staff this newsroom, covering the celebration of the city’s online community.  The list of contributors includes TMI Weekly’s Meghan Asha and Vibe Magazine’s Adrien Field as well as Mike Avila, Jermaine Miles, Dee Nuncio, Colin Murphy, Erin Wigger and Maria Diaz – all well-known Internet personalities.

With so many moving elements, the Fiesta team had high ambitions regarding the creation and social media reach of the site.  “Carrot Creative had the uncanny ability to bring the project goals to digital life. My partner (Kelly Will, Editor-in-Chief) and I were lead every step of the way with consistent attention and understanding to the needs of Ford. The FiestaFunnel could not be a fully functioning social media hub without the guidance from Carrot’s team,” says Greg Littley, Creative Director for Ford Fiesta.

Star-Studded Kickoff Event

Thursday’s exclusive event promises to be a star-studded hit, with a performance by hipster favorite Cobra Starship. Taking place on the rooftop of Manhattan Ford (7-10 PM), the concert will be live streamed through the Ford Fiesta USTREAM Channel, as well as being embedded on Ford’s Fiesta website. Fans may also access the video through fiestafunnel.com.

Featured at the event will of course be the car itself, along with “agents” from the Fiesta Movement – versions 1.0 and 2.0.  Launched in May 2009, the Fiesta Movement is a social media initiative designed to create excitement about the new Fiesta, putting the small car on the minds of thousands of people nationwide. Teams across the country were given a Fiesta, and have redefined the way the car is brought to market by interacting with consumers online and offline. Agents will be on hand to talk about their work thus far, in addition to showcasing their specially designed vehicles.

Fiesta Rollout

Going on sale this summer, the all-new Ford Fiesta features a vibrant design, sharp reflexes, and a global track record that will redefine U.S. small car customers’ expectations. With 15 class-exclusive technologies and projected best-in-class highway fuel economy of 40 mpg, Fiesta brings efficiency and convenience together in one package.

Fiesta is designed to be versatile, personal and adaptable. In fact, Fiesta will deliver best-in-class convenience and connectivity with Ford segment-exclusive SYNC^® voice-activated communications system, as well as an expressive color palette and available graphics.

Follow the Fiesta Movement:

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/fiestamovement

Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fiestamovement

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/fordfiesta

Twitter: http://twitter.com/fordfiesta

About Ford Motor Company
Ford Motor Company, a global automotive industry leader based in Dearborn, Mich., manufactures or distributes automobiles across six continents. With about 176,000 employees and about 80 plants worldwide, the company’s automotive brands include Ford, Lincoln, Mercury and, until its sale, Volvo. The company provides financial services through Ford Motor Credit Company. For more information regarding Ford’s products, please visit www.ford.com.

Event beverage sponsor is WODKA.  For more information visit http://www.ilovewodka.com

This article is copyright © 2012 

At its very core, Facebook has set out to make it dead-pan simple to integrate Facebook all over the web (see: CNN.com, Yelp.com). So what does that mean for the way we surf the web? A lot. Allow me to explain…

Social Plugins
Facebook has released a suite of social plugins that make it amazingly simple to add contextual and social features to your existing website. Most prominent and perhaps effective example is the new “Like” plugin. Facebook has decided to make the “Like” it’s most central property, after of course, the user. By allowing the ability to Like almost any content on the web, Facebook aims to centralize user preferences and activity by allowing all users to Like content. An interesting aspect to the new web-wide Like is that “liked” content will now be part of your profile info, therefore using user actions to drive preferences, rather then profile forms.

Here’s a quick run-through of some other Social Plugins you will no doubt be encountering in your travels:

Activity Feed – An embeddable mini-feed of recent activity for your website. User’s friends show up first, then the rest of user activity, including shares and likes.

Comments – Not new to the Facebook bag of tricks, but now much easier to implement.  You can now add Facebook comments to your website or blog posts. This resembles posting to a User’s wall – with a nice checkbox to add published posts to the poster’s profile (say that five times fast).

Facepile – 
A really nice way to show potential users which of their friends have signed up for your website by showing a row of profile pictures.

Login with Faces – 
A single sign-on button. This combines a Facebook Connect like sign-in, while showing a version of Facepile to encourage engagement.

Recommendations – 
A nice embeddable widget that offers users recommendations on content. Signed out users see the most popular interactions with your website, while signed-in users get recommendations pulled from the interactions your friends have, allowing it to recommend content more intelligently.

The Open Graph – Get used to this term, Open Graph, because soon enough you will be hearing and seeing it all over. The Open Graph Protocol is Facebook’s attempt to create a seamless and semantic way to connect users and content all over the web. Now to a lot of people that doesn’t mean much – but soon enough you will see the impact such an ambitious protocol will have.

By connecting real-life content like celebrities, brands, products, movies (you know the stuff they have Facebook Pages for) to Facebook’s Open Graph – Facebook is able to make intelligent connections by studying user preferences and interactions. Furthermore, by promoting semantic indexing, using snazzy HTML5 style meta tags, Facebook is able to smoothly index what would normally be scattered all over the web, into clear contextual searches and relationships. The ability to add context to web content is incredibly powerful.  Contextually, it’s something many companies have worked towards (see: http://getglue.com/) but with Facebook’s influence – this will have a massive impact.

What does it all mean?

Facebook has become the party everyone wants an invitation to, and they’re charging at the door.  For one, it means you are going to see A LOT more of Facebook around the internet. The inherent value of Facebook’s social tools and ease of implementation makes it a great opportunity for content generators to create discussion and interaction. Of course, this doesn’t just benefit the content creators – but greatly helps Facebook’s reach around the web.

Facebook has always been able to make associations and hypertarget users through their friends, fans, and interests – but now, by positioning itself all over the web, Facebook can also make connections by the way you surf. Where Google indexes the world by what they are looking for, Facebook may soon be able to index the world once you get there (and know what your favorite band is too).

It’s a classic business model with a new-wave twist. Offer consumers something of such high value that they become evangelists, proliferate and repeat. In this man’s opinion, I can see this working towards a world-wide advertising platform. Imagine a world where ads are not only contextually accurate (see: Open Graph) but hyper-acute. It’s clear Facebook is positioning themselves with their influence and leverage to offer such unique data to the rest of the world. Who is the end user? Who are their friends? What are their interests? Where do they hang out online? These are all questions marketers strive to infer, but soon enough, Facebook will have the answers.

This article is copyright © 2012