doug menuez 2.0: go fast, don’t crash


Rick Smolan: Friend’s Suggestions Trump Ads
March 22, 2009, 1:50 pm
Filed under: Field Notes & Essays | Tags: , , , ,

MY BLOG HAS MOVED!!

Please change your RSS and bookmarks! Please vist my blog now at:

www.dougmenuez.com

People trust people they know for product recommendations over ads, says my good friend Rick Smolan, multitalented photojournalist, producer, book creator. We caught up with each other recently in a phone call and in a conversation ranging from the economy and what’s happening with photographers, to how photographers and the public in general use social media. While this has always been true and a natural starting place when hunting down a new lens or printer, the scale has changed with the rise of the social networks and easy access to friends and “friends” alike as a resource for information or recommendations on what to buy. For advertising shooters this will be interesting to watch as companies figure out new ways to reach consumers. Print ads are down significantly this year again with no bottom in site. Will this lead to another rise in “real people” ads or just fuel the growth of non-trackable grass roots marketing efforts?

Check out Rick’s recent interview he did with Nokia:

http://www.ideasproject.com/idea_person.webui?id=2402

Leave a comment


EMIRATES CAMPAIGN BREAKS
March 20, 2009, 12:00 am
Filed under: Field Notes & Essays | Tags: , , ,

MY BLOG HAS MOVED!!

Please change your RSS and bookmarks! Please vist my blog now at:

www.dougmenuez.com

The new Emirates Airline worldwide campaign “Meet Dubai” of 18 ads created by Leo Burnett Dubai is breaking this month.  Commissioned to shoot for an entire month all over Dubai, this project epitomizes everything I have been saying about merging art and commerce: get hired for your eye and paid to shoot what you love and would be shooting anyway. The creative team and client gave me a free h

and to document the daily lives of Dubai citizens from a range of cultural and economic backgrounds, exploring the traditional Arab culture and modern Western influences, as I normally would on my own. Does not get better or more fun than this if you work for a living. And yes, these kinds of campaigns are becoming rare as the economy sinks.

1 comment


Uncommon Schools Pro Bono Campaign
March 18, 2009, 8:51 pm
Filed under: Field Notes & Essays | Tags: , , , ,

MY BLOG HAS MOVED!!

Please change your RSS and bookmarks! Please vist my blog now at:

www.dougmenuez.com

As a photojournalist I’ve shot hundreds of schools going back to the 1970’s, of all kinds, worldwide, as well as the various educational trends in the US coming and going as we as a society have sought to fix our school system. (I personally was the worst student, so bad my own mother tried to have me expelled from High School.) Never had I seen such intensely interested and dedicated kids– they really seemed to love being in school and learning. Imagine that! Alan Blum and his agency Re: Vision pitched my agent Bill Stockland for someone to help out with this new campaign for Uncommon Schools, a charter school system, and Bill brought the project to me. At first I was reluctant given how much pro bono work we did in the last few years. Honestly, we really need to work these days. Once I met Alan, heard about the schools and understood that he really wanted me to do my thing and collaborate with him,

I was hooked.  From their site: “Uncommon Schools (Uncommon) is a nonprofit organization that starts and manages outstanding urban charter public schools that close the achievement gap and prepare low-income students to graduate from college.” We shot in two schools in Bed Stuy. Look for these hitting the NYC Subways this month.

2 comments