I was at a CLIO reel party this evening and I had a whole bunch of people ask me, “So… what is this new job that you’ve been talking about in your tweets and Facebook status?”

It never occurred to me that even with all the mentions of a new position, I never actually said what it is I’m doing.

On December 1st, I was promoted to the position of Presentation Director at Barkley. This promotion has been in the works since mid-July, so you’ll have to forgive me for not specifically mentioning anything. To me it’s been old news for a while.

So what is a presentation director anyway? The way I’ve been introduced to people lately, basically think of it as the creative director of the agency’s new business department. I’m in charge of the creative side of all new business presentation materials and internal branding. To be more specific, I’m spending a lot of time in Keynote.

Just thought I’d clarify for all my friends and followers. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a Keynote deck to work on.

As the holiday season is upon us once again, we’ve put together a new site. One that the idea for it has been simmering in its own starchy juices since last year.

I give to you The Christmas Yam (if Christmas isn’t your holiday of choice, just click the bow in the upper left corner until it works for you).

I won’t lessen the wonder and whimsy of the thing by over explaining it. Instead I invite you to visit the site and just play around. It’s a beautiful interface featuring fantastic photography by RushWade2.

If you tweet, you’ll also want to make sure to follow @thechristmasyam on Twitter. It’s a lovely supplement to the idea that brings it all together. You can also send messages to the Yam by giving it an @reply.

I’ve said enough. Enjoy.

The campaign should be pretty interesting and entertaining to many because it delves into a side of Pete and TJ that is never seen during the course of the regular Sonic commercials. And of course, since it’s tied closely to The Hills, you can be sure that drama is the newest thing on Sonic’s menu.

I designed the site, the Facebook fan page and created the graphics for the television spots.

Today I am proud to say that our campaign was chosen as part of Creativity Magazine’s weekly podcast, Creativity Top 5!

Check out the campaign. I’m sure it will leave some lingering questions in your mind over the next few weeks that you’ll have to tune in to have answered.

Of course, Robin and I brought Nathan (forevermore known as tatertini) along. He had a great time and dazzled the ladies with his tiny sandals.

If you were at the Tweetup, leave your profile name in the comments of this post so we can have a list of people to follow (if we’re not already following you).

It was great to put faces to Twitter profiles!

As performances go, I wouldn’t count it as the best. Our practices were better. The laptop that was firing the samples crashed during the first song. The vocals were mixed so that it was nearly impossible to hear the songs I was responsible for singing. But, when you get six grown men on stage wearing head to toe spandex and one other guy dressed as a drum-playing robot, you kind of don’t have to worry as much about the music.

So, people have been asking me “what’s next?” As far as performances go, we’ll perform an encore at next year’s Battle of the Ad Bands, but other than that there’s not much to tell. Friday night’s performance was always noted as being the band’s final performance of its career in the back story we created on Das Cöbra’s site. Unless we get a huge surge in interest, we plan to keep it that way. Besides, the suits reek like you wouldn’t believe. I don’t think you could pay most of us to get back into them.

We will most likely continue to release music. I think we got some studio time as part of our prize package, so that’ll give us a chance to record our songs and have an album. We’ll probably also stray away from the schtick of our songs all being advertising related. That’s a pretty narrow joke that limits the appeal of the music I think.

Thanks to everyone who showed up and supported us through your votes and your enthusiasm. Thanks to the other bands who were cool and enjoyed our performance art.

Barkley’s German techno band, Das Cöbra, will be taking the stage around 11:00 tonight at Crosstown Station as part of the third annual Battle Of The Ad Bands presented by the Kansas City ad2 Club. I, along with 6 other men who should know better, will be entertaining the masses and living not 15, but 30 minutes of fame.

I have the butterflies in the stomach and I don’t think today will be terribly productive. I’m doing my best though to concentrate until 3:30.

If you can, we’d love to see you at the show tonight. If you can’t, just wish us luck.

Barkley’s holiday card/website, The Bad Gift Emporium was recently nominated for a Webby Award in the Weird category. We’re up against some worthy opponents, but we’re confident we can put the final nail in the LOLcat meme once and for all.

Since it’s a people’s choice award system, I’m looking to all of you for votes so we have a chance at tasting the sweet nectar of victory. A vote for http://badgiftemporium.com would be doing a great service to bad gifts everywhere as well as stroking the egos of the creatives who worked on said project. It’s win-win.

All you have to do is head over to http://pv.webbyawards.com/.

There you will need to “Sign Up Now” to register to vote. After you’re registered, click on the “Website” division and go to the “Weird” category. Vote early and pass the word on to friends and colleagues to vote for us before May 1st.

We appreciate your vote. Thanks in advance!

A couple of weeks ago we launched a web site for our summer mentorship program, and when I did my usual round of blogger outreach I forgot to reach out to myself and post about it. It’s urgent now because the deadline for applications is March 31st.

If you are going to be a junior or senior in college this coming fall semester, I encourage you to check out the site and do your best to become part of our collective consciousness and suckle at the creative teat of our leader, B. Doug Brooker.

I got to branch out and stretch my creative muscle for this project. I edited the video on the home page as well as composed all the music for the site. I hope you enjoy it.

In the past, the ADDY award in Kansas City was actually called the OMNI, and this year marks the return to the ADDY name. We thought it would be fun if we did some Spy vs. Spy inspired videos that showed the ADDY killing off the OMNI in classic comic fashion. Without further adieu, I present “Pier Of Doom” and “Doomerang!”

We were site of the day on geeksugar, we were listed first on a list of 10 ways to get rid of bad gifts by PC Magazine. Coudal Partners put us in their Fresh Signals feed, and now… we transcend media to radio.

Today, the agency is being interviewed about the Bad Gift Emporium for the Jay Thomas Show on Sirius Satellite Radio channel 102, Sirius Stars. I’m assuming it will be on air today. If you’re a Sirius subscriber, tune in to hear how we were inspired to create the site as well as what our plans are for it in the future.

Speaking of future plans, I might remind you that bad gifts know no season, and in fact AFTER the holidays is the perfect time to visit the Bad Gift Emporium. When birthdays, anniversaries, bar/bat mitzvahs, or other occasions roll around, the Emporium will be here smelling like mildew and beckoning you to find that perfectly awful gift.