The Hibernator

Scott Cromer, age 5, wondering how a bear is so lucky to be able to take naps.

In addition to thick manes of hair and intimidating size, Bears and I have a lot in common. Another one of these commonalities is impressive sleeping abilities. Last night I went home and passed out on my bed after eating half a sandwich and a warm bowl of vegetable soup. I've been illy lately, and as a result i've been exhausted. Anyway, I took a four-hour nap and then woke up around 11 and thought, "man am I glad I'm not Scott Cromer."

See, to start, Herr Cromer probably couldn't nap for four hours if his life depended on it. And second, if he could, he'd have no chance at sleeping through the night. He doesn't have it as bad as some, but he's pretty much an insomniac, which goes a long way in explaining his severe mood swings.

But my name isn't Scott Cromer, it's David Zavertnik and I am the Hibernator. So twelve hours later, after I woke up from my second sleep for the evening, I thought more about sleeping - specifically, those of us at the office who love to sleep. Have you ever seen a sleeping Mutt?

Beauvais sleeps on his back

Nick is a chair-sleeper

Scott prefers his stomach and the comfort of his laptop

Luker's a stomach sleeper but requires ultimate comfort.

I have yet to witness the sleeping patterns of Mike McCommon or Damien Webb, but I promise to keep you posted with any developments.

Our Friend Joel

It's been at least a month since I've last seen our mayng Joel Colley. Last time we were chatting, he was building little office oases (which is the plural for oasis, because he built something like 75 sets) for my other main mayng, RJohnson. And since then Colley (and RJ) have been flourishing.

As I fffffound out last night, Joel entered a pair of Play-Doh kicks into Core77's one-hour design challenge. Not only did the man enter, he received honorable mention - despite deserving something in the range of Medal. Peep the Air Max's he made...

Anywho, as I contemplated the mental processes of today's design challenges, I watched an episode of Sneaker Game. Have you all seen this? If not, you're slippin' kid....My mayng Patrick Tinkle is killing it this episode with the bedazzler.

Foursquare?

As you may, or may not have heard, Foursquare is the new twitter. And being the digitally savvy people that we are here at Mutt, we've joined the club. That's right, Mutt HQ is on Foursquare and, of course, it's all about incentives and becoming the mayor and whatnot. 


We have a very special incentive program here. Check in at Mutt three times and receive an original ink portrait by our very own Head of Research, Scott Cromer.


For those of you unfamiliar with CromerArt®, here's a tantalizing introduction:

Red Plaid Shirt day at MUTT Today! Tell everyone.

"That was impressive."

Oh Canada!

In an effort to be a be a little more worldly, I recently subscribed to a few international newspapers, one of those being The Globe and Mail. I don't exactly have time to read all the papers in a morning, so I generally pick a paper per day and get up nice and early to read it before work. 

Wednesday's are The Globe and Mail days, so imagine my surprise as I'm flipping page by page and all of a sudden the familiar face of Mutt's favorite fashionista, Miss Rachel Mara, is staring at me. Life couldn't be more perfect, because the article is a perfect segue into today's blog post. 

Today is all about Rachel Mara. You see, over the past couple weeks Rachel has been receiving a lot of coverage (read more articles about her here, here, here, here and here,  and watch her on Breakfast Television Toronto and CHCH Morning Live) for her participation in the LG Fashion Week in Toronto.  

We're all terribly excited for Rachel and wish her the best tonight (you can stream the coverage here, her show starts at 8pm Toronto time, 6pm Portland time).

And finally, for those of you who won't be able to catch the coverage, peep Mutt's latest creative venture for Rachel Mara's 2011 Spring line. 

America ♥s Automobiles

Yesterday Ad Age named Ford Motor Company Marketer Of The Year for 2010. I say this because I'd also like to mention that we here at Mutt have been involved in a pretty stellar collaboration with Team Detroit over the past year. 

It all started a little over a year ago when Team Detroit's ECD, Toby Barlow, asked Mutt to help collaborate on the all new Ford Fiesta project. 

Actually, the story really started the summer prior to this, when I picked up a promising looking book (read: cool cover) titled Sharp Teeth by some advertising guy. Turns out that advertising guy was this Toby Barlow. Talk about a small world. And for the record, the book was good, it's about werewolves in LA. 

So fast forward past that summer's read and cut-to all of us Mutt's feverishly writing "Big" launch spots for the not-so-big Ford Fiesta. Concepts, scripts, storyboards and several presentations later and the Ford Fiesta became a pretty big deal.

Then Team Detroit went silent for about six months until a few months ago when they approached us for another job. This time we'd be helping not only to concept but also produce spots for the 2011 Ford Explorer. We're well into the process and can't wait to show you what we're working on (mostly I don't know what I can and cannot show you right now).

Until then, we'd like to give big ups to big man Ford Motors for the Marketer of the Year award and we hope 2011 is equally successful.