Created entirely in-house, Chip It! is a project of the McKinney Ten Percent, an initiative that encourages all of the agency’s employees to dedicate 10% of their time to innovation.

“We’re always excited to present a big idea to a client, particularly when it’s inspired by the McKinney Ten Percent,” said McKinney Chief Creative Officer Jonathan Cude. “With Chip It!, we turned the entire Internet into a color library. It’s a powerful tool that reinvents the creative canvas and reinforces why Sherwin-Williams is best at helping consumers choose color with confidence.”

The idea for Chip It! came from McKinney’s Stevie Archer, a copywriter not originally assigned to the Sherwin-Williams team. “I’m constantly working on do-it-yourself projects, and I love everything related to interior design. I pin all inspiration on Pinterest,” said Archer, who teamed with Art Director Rocky Reed, Creative Technologist Adam Carroll, Programmer Rafe Kemmis and Producer Jesse Wright. “I noticed how many Pinterest users, including myself, were pinning color palettes and inspiring images with no easy way of putting them to use in their homes. With Chip It! everyone can make their own palettes instantly and also get the paint colors they need to bring the palettes to life.”

Within days, the team had developed a working prototype. “Chip It! analyzes every single pixel in an image and compares each to one of more than 1,500 Sherwin-Williams paint colors,” explained Kemmis. “Then it uses an algorithm to find the most prominent colors and composites the top 10 into a ChipCard. All in seconds.”

McKinney presented the idea to Sherwin-Williams in September of last year and received approval in early November to begin the project for a first-quarter 2012 launch. “When we first saw Chip It! we believed it would be the perfect tool for consumers who want to take their inspiration and turn it into a reality,” said Jackie Jordan, director of color marketing for Sherwin- Williams.

Chip It! rounds out Sherwin-Williams’ suite of interactive tools to help consumers choose color with confidence. The mobile ColorSnap® app allows users to quickly and easily identify the Sherwin-Williams paint colors that most closely resemble colors found in their smartphone’s photo album. Online, the Sherwin-Williams Color Visualizer offers consumers the ability to upload their own photos or choose from a library of home interior or exterior images to experiment with thousands of color combinations. For more information about CHIP IT! or to create an account, visit letschipit.com. 

McKinney and EvoApp announced today the launch of socialbowl.tv, a site for marketers who want to know who leveraged the Super Bowl for lasting brand and social traction.

Created as a McKinney Ten Percent project in partnership with EvoApp, Social Bowl will serve up the best, most in-depth social analysis and tackle the tougher questions marketers want to know the most:

Who are the winners and losers in terms of netting the most social value? What did they do that other marketers should consider?

Does teasing a spot before the big day help gain social traction?

What effect does the creativity of the actual ad have?

Do ads that foster co-viewing (using social and mobile and/or tablets while viewing the game) have a greater effect?

“Until now, Sunday’s battle of the brands has been a buzz and popularity contest,” said Jim Russell, chief innovation officer at McKinney. “With our partners at EvoApp, Social Bowl digs deeper to find out which marketers’ game plan delivered the biggest social and business gains well into the off-season.”

“EvoApp is uniquely suited for this project, because our technology enables us to measure and understand the sometimes nuanced impacts of social media in relation to a brand’s core metrics in a way that no other company can,” said Joe Davy, chief product officer and co-founder of EvoApp. “McKinney brings years of both analytical and creative experience that adds a new dimension of value to our empirical analysis.”

EvoApp will track and analyze basic metrics such as trending themes, a variety of sentiment analysis and influence metrics, and share of voice, as well as more advanced metrics such as cumulative sentiment, gross impressions and change in influence. Those metrics will be analyzed to determine their impact on core brand metrics like campaign cost, customer acquisition cost, total impressions, sales impact, Web traffic and stock price.

On February 2, Social Bowl will establish a scorecard for each brand player and report which brands have maximum social momentum going into the big game. One week after the game, Social Bowl will share their preliminary findings. The final report will post in April, allowing marketers to see who succeeded and who failed. In between those milestones, the team will be blogging and posting insights as they find them.

Fans can follow the action during game week and beyond on Twitter @socialbowl and by following the hashtag #socialbowl.

About EvoApp

EvoApp makes powerful big data solutions that make analyzing big data easy.

EvoApp technology finds patterns in relevant conversations that impact businesses, and it provides easy-to-use solutions for social media marketing and customer service, as well as a developer platform.

EvoApp's real-time data mining and analysis solutions give big data meaning by correlating patterns with business metrics. EvoApp's technology has helped customers quadruple lead generation, dramatically improve customer service and accelerate product launches.

Some of EvoApp’s customers include ABB, RTI, Bandwidth.com and Teleflex, as well as a number of the Fortune 500.