Ben Hudson, AdHoc Projects
Ben Hudson, AdHoc Projects
💭 Thoughts on The Art Of Gathering, Oatly’s offbeat brand voice, and striking the balance between playful and provocative conversations.
Raised without high regard for possessions, Ben Hudson's life has revolved around experiences. Whether unconsciously or strategically, Hudson seeks out rich and satisfying engagement in both his personal and professional life. This pursuit has steered his career towards experiential spaces, particularly in media, hospitality, and marketing. Hudson has led marketing for The Onion, Brooklyn Brewery, and Crooked Hammock, among others, and currently serves as AdHoc Projects' Director of Brand Strategy & Partnerships. Additionally, Ben Hudson once produced a chicken-nugget themed birthday party for his 9-year-old in Brooklyn Bridge Park, which included a golden nugget scavenger hunt and a chicken nugget eating contest, and yes it was named the “9 Piece Party.”
🎯 Personalized trivia game show
I've been tinkering with developing a personalized trivia game show to be played with friends and family. Everybody deserves to be the star of the show at least once in their life – this is that chance. The game challenges players to prove their love by demonstrating specific knowledge that only close relationships would have. Ideally, the game will provide a one-of-a-kind social experience (aka a party!) while also solving for that pesky “unique gift problem” presented by having all the world’s gifts at your fingertips (thanks internet). It’s also a lot of fun – if your idea of fun is laughing at inside jokes and seeing joy in your crew's eyes. If you steal this idea and bring it to market before me, I'll feel really bad. If you’re interested in knowing more and/or collaborating give me a shout!
Long a fan of pranks and prank shows, I was psyched to see that Justin Willman recently released a series on Netflix called MAGIC PRANK SHOW. While not as funny as his first show, MAGIC FOR HUMANS, it's still a fun watch. The final episode is worth the price of admission alone, culminating in a multi-layered mind-bending scenario that will have you LOLing while wondering, "what is real?"
Related -- my wife and I just got back from a week in Los Angeles, where we took a very creepy hike in the cloud-covered seaside mountains near Malibu. We ended up getting spooked to the point of arming ourselves with rocks and making an escape plan. (DM for the full story.)
It wasn't until after getting back home to Brooklyn (safely) and watching MAGIC PRANK SHOW that the thought struck me -- were we IN a prank show? This sort of question surely must occur to Angelenos who live in a world where alternate realities are being produced for television and film on the daily.
📚 Priya Parker’s The Art Of Gathering
The Art Of Gathering, by Priya Parker, has served as both validation and inspiration for me. Circling back to the power of intentional experiences for a moment here, Parker lays out strategies for creating or fostering meaningful gatherings of all types. Her fancy globe-trotting background is a fascinating setting for stories that support her theories with panache. There are many worthy takeaways that an event-centric reader can get from her book, and they all start with the idea that, if your goal as a host is to make for an enriching and memorable gathering, you should prioritize meaningful engagement of your guests above all else. This can sometimes come at the cost of relaxing or even enjoying your own party, but the payoff is huge. Her rules work as well for dinner parties as they do for conferences, meetings or festivals.
🗣️ Striking the balance between playful & provocative convos
As an enthusiast of provocative, unexpected conversations, I've let myself off the hook for unintentional negative feelings that my confident and loose engagement with my fellow humans can cause. For the last year or so, I've been trying to be more mindful of harmful side effects of my playful posture, without losing my personality and the joy I get from nudging social interactions out of established comfort zones. Results have been decidedly mixed so far, and so this practice is lodged firmly in the WIP column.
🥛 Oatly’s offbeat brand voice
Like many people, I'm drawn to confident brands. For whatever reason, they have the gall to stand for something – a cause, a point of view, a distinctive and perhaps a challenging voice. For brand voice, I'm a big fan of Oatly. I look forward to their copy no matter where it shows up. At work, I talk a lot about how lucky a brand or organization is to get eyeballs on any of the marketing that's produced. With so much informational competition, it's a wonder that any impact is made at all. As marketers, we should demonstrate our gratitude for the attention we get by providing value to the observer. Oatly does just that with its unexpected, offbeat copy on its packaging and billboards. And they exploded an entire product category in the process. I may prefer Chobani oat milk (it just assimilates into coffee better), but, if given the choice, I'll read a carton of Oatly any day.
🎧 Discount airpods
I cannot live (enjoyably) without wireless earbuds - specifically the ones that Apple sells. The seamless connectivity and generally smooth functionality is so seductively intuitive that upon losing my pair on a trip to visit my brother in D.C., and waiting to see if he found them, my soundless despair resulted in me taking the black market plunge.
Our offices are in bustling, delicious Chinatown, where open-air sellers tempt pedestrians with all manner of luxury luggage and electronics. Dudes subtly showing off the latest Airpods every day on my commute finally broke me down and I picked up a pair on a side street for $70 (50% off suggested retail price).
And guess what? They totally stink.
But they're mine. I made my bed and I'll sleep in it.
For now.
Meet up with Ben at Creative Mornings, and follow him on Linkedin.