When I started working at DDA (which wasn’t terribly long ago), people seemed taken aback by our four-day (but still 40-hour) work week. “Wow, that’s cool,” or, “Wow, I wish I could do that,” seemed to be the typical response (it was especially emphatic from the mailman when he handed me my mail a few Fridays ago).

While our four-day week at DDA helps us be more “green” and environmentally friendly, it also saves each of us some green (not to mention the totally awesome three-day weekends). One fewer fast food lunch, one fewer trip through the Turnpike toll booths, two fewer 20-mile drives in my gas guzzler, and one MORE day’s use out of the same pair of dress pants (just kidding fellow writers and office-mates, I wash them all the time…well, most of the time…sometimes…OK, on occasion…).

But now, everyone wants to come to the four-day party. First, it was state employees in New Jersey, Colorado, and elsewhere. Now, with school around the corner (really looking forward to bus traffic on the way to work, by the way), even schools are tossing around the idea of a four-day week. A Google News search of “four-day week”produces 266 results in the last two weeks alone, as newspaper editorials and small-town columnists debate the idea.

The idea seems especially “green” in the world of public schooling, which is always looking for ways to save money. Big school districts run hundreds of bus routes every day, twice a day. Imagine how much gas is saved, and the pollution prevented, by eight trips a week instead of 10. Not to mention heating costs, food costs, and everything else that could be saved.

Usually, too many people at a party makes for a crowded house, but in this case, the more the merrier. My wife Andrea watched some show a few months back about pollution, and later asked me bluntly, “Did you know we’re killing our planet?” as if it was the first she had ever heard about pollution. Now it’s become a running joke every time one of us throws a glass bottle in the trash, leaves the car running, or forgets to close a window with the air conditioner running.

At DDA, every copywriter, graphic designer, search engine optimization (SEO) specialist, programmer, and video artist is doing everything they can NOT to kill our planet. And if that means I’ll have to suffer through another long and grueling three-day weekend, well, then I’ll just have to live with that.

I have always found myself very interested in ingenious, eye-catching, and memorable television commercials and advertising campaigns, even when I was little. It is probably the reason I flirted with becoming an advertising major in college, only to be sucked into the campus newspaper and eventually earning a journalism degree (then working at an advertising agency, who knew?).

So last week, while I was relaxing at the Jersey shore on my vacation, I spent lots of time watching the television coverage of the Olympics. One commercial drew my attention for its timliness, as Visa featured a Morgan Freeman voiceover ad congratulating Michael Phelps on his eight gold medals, which aired during the commercial break IMMEDIATELY after he won the eighth medal in the medley relay.

But I was also hooked on two commercials, both of which (not surprisingly) were created for Nike. After some Googling, I found that an ad agency named Wieden+Kennedy handles most of Nike’s TV ads, and had helped create two amazing Olympic-themed ads. The first followed a tried and true Nike strategy of catchy music (in this case, The Killers’ “All The Things That I’ve Done”) with fast-moving video clips and photography. The ad is called”Nike Courage” and is as simple as it is noteworthy:

The other ad was centered on the USA men’s basketball team, and apparently will air in different lengths, including a full 2:30 airing, at least once during a Team USA game. It features clips of Team USA, and all of its NBA stars, practicing, spliced with video and audio of Marvin Gaye’s unique rendition of the Star Spangled Banner. Just watch it, it’s a brilliant commercial that will get your patriotic juices flowing:

My love for commercials and innovative ideas is what drove me to the marketing and advertising world. And at DDA, I’m surrounded by people who share that same love for new ideas. Whether you’re a copywriter, video specialist, graphic designer, programmer, SEO specialist, or photographer, you’re expected to come up with new ideas and think outside the box. We have turned small ideas into huge projects, and perfected a marketing strategy that hadn’t even been invented yet (search engine marketing and optimization). So no matter where you sit at DDA, or what you’re working on from day to day, you know you will have your hand in something new and exciting.

And maybe someday, I’ll help create a commercial that gets 500,000 YouTube hits.

As our first week of the 2008 Olympics rolls on, USA continues to collect medals. We continue to admire the perfection of Michael Phelps as he continually sets new world records and has become the Olympian with the most amount of gold medals ever won by one person (11 and still counting…) And our women’s gymnastic team, that despite a few bobbles, still captured the silver, just behind the Chinese.

Successes like these can be attributed to the practice and dedication that each person continually gives toward reaching their goal. Each and every detail is assessed, worked, and corrected until you reach as close to perfection as possible, and be at the top of your game. Our team of top-notch animators, programmers, copywriters, designers, videographers and SEO specialists put every effort into even the smallest detail of every project to reach for perfection.