The Rake

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Really?

I cannot hide my shock at seeing the lineup of creative directors assembled for Portfolio Night this year hosted by Bos in Montreal. To be clear, I know a great many of the CDs and have worked with a number of them and I most sincerely hold them all in very high regard. What concerns me is that of the twenty (twenty!) industry professionals, not one is a woman. While I am certain these talented CDs will give fair and constructive feedback to all the young hopefuls whether male or female, I...

Why we do CloudKitchen

We are knee deep in this year’s edition of CloudKitchen and couldn’t be more excited about it. Last year we threw ourselves into the unknown with this wee project that turned into a lasting celebration of our values and a way to give back to the clients, friends and collaborators we love. To be honest, we thought about doing something different this year, in the name of innovation, but the idea of not doing it felt weird. So we leapt back in and the enthusiasm around the office is palpable.

Cause à effets : 9 mois, 8 pays et 40 solutions pour l’environnement!

L’environnement est un constant sujet d’actualité. Cependant, les échos positifs se font rares. J’ai donc eu envie de vous présenter deux tourtereaux engagés qui vous feront voir une lueur d’espoir.

It gets better.

We are supposed to be better than this. We know better. Let’s not continue letting people, young people, who feel helpless and hopeless, slip from our grasp because we don’t have the courage or worse, the energy, to stand up for basic human dignities. Let’s be part of the movement that is drowning out the hateful discourse that permeates so much of the media landscape.

Isn’t the mobile web the next big thing?

We all know the stats about wireless revolution. Or at least I thought we did. Inspired by a fun exercise freelancer Nick Jones did taking screenshots of various agency website around the world with his iPhone, I did a little local tour to see the mobile state of things at some of Canada’s agencies.

Ping: The music social network that could

When Ping, the awaited social network from Apple, was unveiled last week, everyone around here was pretty ecstatic. This actually surprised me. As many social networks exist already, I would have thought all of our needs pertaining to exposing ourselves online were fully covered. But I was surprised that I was ecstatic about the news.

Notes on Kenya

A group of us returned from a trip to Kenya last week where we spent four intensive days meeting with members of a tiny rural community. We were exposed to the challenges and advantages of living in a remote village where the landscape is sublime but living off of that land can be life-threatening. I cannot describe the impact it had on me without falling victim to the platitudes we have heard time and again, so I apologize in advance.

Barber Shops vs Hairdressers

Here at the CloudRaker office, there’s been much talk about haircuts among the men. Our technical director Fred had let his grow particularly wild at one point and just recently had it trimmed down. He and several of our male compadres go to the little barber shop around our corner. A few years ago, my finicky self would’ve thought they were crazy, but paying $10-15 at a barber shop versus $60-80 at the hairdresser is starting to make a lot more sense.

It’s the future.

2010 is upon us and we thought we’d help ring in the new year by looking at what lays ahead for the year in trends, technology and goodies and gadgets that we at Cloud are crushing on (read: want for our birthdays). Our top ten:

Brands need to start acting like human beings.

The newly empowered consumer is taking big brands to task online. Suddenly, there is no all-powerful podium (TV, Billboards) from which brands can speak down at the people drawing credibility and influence from media buy alone. Instead, what we are seeing is the forced humanization of brands. In its most basic terms: brands need to behave like people.

Maybe this is the world’s way of getting rid of Paris Hilton.

At CloudRaker, we have spent a lot of time re-evaluating the world and ourselves through the prism of the current global economic crisis. In doing so, we have very carefully avoided falling into Kubler-Ross’s rather time consuming stages of grief for the now bygone era of over-consumption. Truth be told, we kind of believe that era was incontinent, incoherent and without strong vision or voice; it was definitely time to move on.