So unless you've been completely out of it, you've probably seen the new Hello Jell-O broadcast promotion ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7A7DdtKNLU ). Sweet! (no pun intended). Really. It’s a great example of breathing new energy into an iconic, but sleepy, American brand while staying true to its core essence.

Should come as no surprise – Jell-o's brand archetype is The Innocent, and the new promotion works perfectly with it. Simple, fun, young, sweet. Childlike, but not silly. Spur of the moment, but not reckless. It all adds up to a step-by-step example of how to really make the Innocent work for your brand.

The spots get their spontaneity from the nature of the production - they really did just cast a bunch of teens and tweens to run around New York handing out Jell-o cups, and filmed it.

If you’re anything like me, you find yourself humming or whistling the jaunty little tune while cleaning up, playing with the kids, or writing your blog entry. It’s hopelessly addictive, and it’s a nice little loop, so you can just keep right on humming or singing until you either get distracted, or give up and go grab a cup of Jell-o. It really is fun.

Now, a couple of suggestions, Jell-o:

1 - Think about SEO:
When I search “Jell-o” on Google, the new promotion doesn’t come up really at all. Try it. It’s all the old stuff (P.S…. make sure your family filters are on if you search by images – or not ☺).

2 – Why not include more of this in the brand identity:
The only tie-in I see on the Jell-o site is the swirly “o” in the Jell-o. Why no happy face? I could totally see that on the foil lids of the jell-o cups.

Overall, very nice work! Not often you get this kind of rich authenticity in brand communications. Take it a few steps further!

C’mon! Everybody now! J - E - L - L - 0 , j-e-l-l-o, J – E – l – l – 0, j-e-l-l-o…

Fine. Sounds pretty cool... 9" screen, front and back cameras for video conferencing, Wi-Fi, bluetooth, etc, etc.

Ready for the name? Drum Roll, Please.....

The... the... the BLACKPAD.

uh, yeah. You know, why not just call it "Blackberry II, the Sequel."

Seriously. How much money was spent on the name? Apparently not very darned much. Hopefully it's just a working title. If not, it's a big fail. A gaping miss where the opportunity for a stunning hit could have been.

How about Blueberry? What about Strawberry? Anything but BlackPad.

Stick with that, Blackberry, and you get a big Raspberry.

Back at the office, I proudly presented the inscribed trophy to owners, Joel and Greg.  It was evident that the historically humble duo were doing the happy dance on the inside.  Great job Rocket Science team.

Rocket Science joins the rank of winners earning gold for our Rocket Science brand stationary package, silver for our promotional video and silver for our client, Cincinnati Ballet.  Designer, Katie Condit, and I enjoyed a great moment in Rocket Science history, as the room watched our somewhat irreverent video.  To the guys who couldn't stop laughing...thanks for the support!  It was a satisfying moment to witness “great strategic design” earn recognition from the industry, especially for our friends at the Ballet.

Ever the skeptic, I went straight to the hoax forums, and pulled back the curtain. I figured it was fake, but when I found the source, I was, well, bothered. Like some online Gadfly, it’s just a dumb ol’ stealth ad for a company that schleps Bluetooth headsets. Crap. Drink more Ovaltine. Had it been by a couple of graphics majors for some third-string university film class, I’d have thought – “Gee, that’s cool. Those cats are crazy creative. Sweet. See if they need a job!” But nope. It’s just a dumb ol’ corporate small budget ad. ...And I was having so much fun.

Note to new century advertisers – You don’t have to dupe the market to get attention. You have to spend money. Do something cool and engaging that wins on its own playing field. We all know you want to talk to us. Just do it. Don’t sneak around on our social networking groups, or skulk about in peer to peer networks. Pony up the bucks, make something wicked cool, and put it in the right place.

There are several ways to do this, and many of them can be done in the production department of the printing company. But, due to the unique timeframe to accomplish what we wanted to do, we decided to do as much prepress work as possible in-house. Our printer, The Merten Company, really appreciated the extra help.

Like I mentioned there are several ways to do this (see DCS files). This can be a very difficult and time-consuming process so I needed to figure out another way.

Here is what we did:

I asked the designer of the card to create one separate layer for each color. Since we knew from the start that we wanted to use four spot colors (from RS+D identity) he kept the layers pretty well separated from the start. This step did include some good planning with the illustrator, selection tool magic, and layer merging.

Once the layered Photoshop file was in my hands, I created four individual grayscale tiffs (grayscale psd files will also work in this situation). This would allow me to place the tiffs into Illustrator and assign the spot colors.

In order for the grayscale tiffs to work properly, they need to be ‘leveled’ (i.e., in areas where 100% of the spot color was intended, the tiff needed to register 100% black). The best way to do this is to create a new levels (or curves if you prefer) adjustment layer. This will give you the ability to go back and tweak later. Also make sure you do not over compress the mid tones. This step can be a bit confusing because it will be visually disconnected from the intended final output.

Next I imported the grayscale tiffs into Illustrator. I put them in the order we determined we wanted the colors printed. We chose the order based on certain colors overprinting. Then I applied the spot colors to the individual layers (tiffs).

The last step (and probably the most tedious) was to make a print, check it against the original and make adjustments (using the levels or curves adjustment layer) in Photoshop. I also included production notes in the Illustrator file to help communicate with our printer.

We got the files ready and into the printer’s hands with about two minutes to spare. The final product looks great.