Friday, January 30, 2009

The Best Interactive Firm in MN is Puny

And the winner is Puny. Here's their acceptance speech:


I asked them a few questions:

Allan: What advice can you offer Ad and Design shops about pulling together resources to get votes? How did you guys get so many votes?

Puny: We initially put it on our Facebook profiles as a status update then forgot about it. Checking back, we saw our numbers rise and noticed that we were neck-in-neck with Sevnthsin. We had to taunt them a little bit, as we used to share a wall in our mutual first studio spaces and have worked together in the past. Jamey returned the taunt and a little two day rivalry kicked up. Vote-getting got a little slutty. Their numbers jumped from Sevnthsin's University classes, MN Rollergirls and some of their client base. Our plea for votes was heard by the Yo Gabba Gabba fans and the screen printing community. They were leading us at 10 p.m. on the final night so we sent a mass email, and the night owls and client group in Egypt put us over the top. You can't beat Puny after dark.

Allan: Give a short summary of your shop and plans for 09.

Puny: We've been asked to sum up Puny plenty before and it shakes out to a couple of hundred page capabilities presentation. We call ourselves a convergent media shop but what we really are is a mess, an abomination. We take a lot of smart people from different disciplines and throw them against problems with a little controlled chaos and see what happens. Will S. the comedy writer who used to work for Saturday Night Live, various Adult Swim Shows and writes for the Onion; Mitsuru with his Master's Degree in Theoretical Physics; Mike the bitter cell-era animator; Vincent the cartoonist with a background in big agency advertising; and Joe International DJ and computer science/physic major programmer... the design whiz, the instrument maker, the pirate, the banana plantation heir... it's an eclectic mix of 24/7 creative with insights that butt up against each other to come up with ideas that area little fresh across a few different industries. Interactive is the most appealing because we can all throw-down, it's the most collaborative. Our ultimate goal is to create Interactive television. Not broken linear, where users piece a story together again, but story-lines that see, hear and understand you.


2009 is a mystery for everyone but we're optimistic on the project front with really conservative estimates on the financial. We want to stay in business! We've got six television development deals or pilots in the works at various networks and many crossed fingers. It's very fun work that may never see the light of day. We're getting a lot of game requests, and just finished one with Erin Esurance and the new Star Trek movie and an on going client relationship with Scholastic Books. We're waiting to hear about Yo Gabba Gabba Season 3 production and are eager to keep pushing their web presence so that fans get everything creators have planned for years. This is also the year that we open our gallery, PINK HOBO, at 507 E. Hennepin Ave in Minneapolis. We'll have impromptu effortless shows as an excuse to hang out together and have shows with art that we dig... generative, interactive, hacky, indy comix, lowbrow, and maybe a couple touring shows. We're looking for a couple great direct clients, another restaurant project would be fun, while we keep working with agencies and other boutiques on online campaigns. Oh and we took over some social networking for clients. It is a fun and interesting new realm where our casual voice seems to fit. ANNNNDDDD... like everyone... we need to re-do our website... huh.

Thanks to the people who voted for us and thanks to Allan for creating another cool local design resource.

Some Work Samples:

7 comments:

  1. I'm very disappointed that Periscope was not even nominated! We've put out some amazing work over the past year.

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  2. chill. it's just some dude's blog poll.

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  3. Don't hate, Motivate.
    - Just Some dude

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  4. PUNY proudly supports all dude's (and ladies') blogs.

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  5. Periscope is nominated for Best Ad Agency.
    That's prolly good enough, eh?

    Congratulations Puny!

    Thanks for having a fantastic blog, sir.

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  6. Congratulations PUNY - good job.
    Thanks Allan for a great resource.

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  7. Thank you everyone for the kind words and for reading.

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