Sky just signed off two really interesting ideas for Facebook.
Having asked us to explore the idea of a branded 'application' we came up with a range of options, including the rather silly 'I Shot JR' - a status updater reflecting your favourite TV programmes.
Myself? "I ain't gettin on no airplane".
Not since Waterworld has there been such a terrible episode involving the wet stuff...
Golden Square's just lost it's water supply! That means no loo AND NO TEA. I'm surprised the industry hasn't ground to a sudden halt.
The FTSE will collapse in a minute.
Submerged in the endless debate concerning plagarism and the origination of ideas in advertising, it's a breath of fresh air to stumble across a site bursting at the seams with truly original thoughts, concepts and people.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/162
The link above takes you to one of many short films about ideas and their makers. Theo Jansen decided to create a series of kinetic sculptures or 'creatures' built entirely from plastic tubes and lemonade bottles and able to live on their own on the beach. Amazing.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/35
And naughty Dr Watson above. He may be controversial (and perhaps more than a little bit mad) but goodness, he's got a brain.
In fact, after spending half an hour or so on TED it's hard to think of tomato bottles or bunnies as ideas at all.
Hooray for new ideas.
Now I've never had the pleasure of advertising a 'Blender', but if I had the chance I'd be hard pushed to do better than this...
Check out the BIC Lighters attempt. Comedy gold.
It's amazing how many things you fail to notice on a daily basis. And let's face it - a creative should know better.
Take 'The London Paper' for instance. I often get one thrust upon my person on the way home from work, but it wasn't until recently that I realised what a great source of material it was.
Everyone gets creative block - but the 'Funny Old World' section provides nothing but hilarious 30" TV ideas every day. Take the story entitled 'Germany' above. It's a Zurich insurance/ RAC commercial in the making.
So note to self: keep eyes firmly open.
http://www.colourlikenoother.com/bravia.html
Now I never knew him, but I think we can safely assume that Bill Bernbach would have been rather taken aback if he had stumbled into a time machine and landed in late 2007.
People actively anticipating the ‘release’ of an advert? Agencies releasing footage from a commercial before it’s even finished? Play-Doh bunnies?
I see him shedding a happy little tear as we speak.
Yes, the new Sony Bravia ad has arrived; and it’s glorious. Glorious not only in execution, but in sheer cultural impact as well.
The Cult of Balls has many followers, and even in the face of a somewhat uninspiring sequel we never stopped believing - because from the moment that first bouncy ball hit the streets of San Francisco
It’s no longer good enough to create a ‘nice’ TV ad and whack out a few print ads. In today’s pick & mix culture, we have to produce unpredictable inspiring work that people want to see. We can’t force a message on consumers; they have to discover it for themselves. And above all, when you realise you’ve created a little piece of genius, milk it for all it’s worth.
The original Balls ad was wonderful. It looked fantastic. It sounded fantastic. It didn’t try to force a tenuous message on us. And it appealed to our childhood memories in a mature, non patronising manner. But more than this, it allowed us to discover more. Anticipating its success, the video was made available on YouTube and its own site. But there was the ‘making of’, the downloadable podcast screensaver and desktop background, track listing, the promise of more to follow, and we lapped it up.
Seeding for the new ad has taken place for months now, appearing on blogs, ‘leaking’ into the press, teasing us with stills from the shoot, and even providing us with a ‘trailer’. And thank god, the new commercial hasn’t let us down.
Returning to the sunny, ‘childish’ essence of the original, the Stones track is a stroke of brilliance. It will stand out in the middle of any ad break, and above all, make people smile.
If advertising truly is dead, long live advertising.
Big day for the world of professional stone skimming - Russ Byars just blew away the competition with 51 bounces in one 'skim'.
That's right.
The world's gone absolutely mad. Trailers for adverts? Bernbach would turn in his grave.
But who cares; look at all the bunnies!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PGpn4c96ZU
Being a big girly pants I don't pay much attention to computer games or their adverts - but the new commercial for Halo3 is beautiful.
Instead of the usual CGI, they've gone all GamesWorkshop and set up the entire battle with hand sculpted figures.
I don't know how they've done it, but far from the geek-fest you'd expect, the commercial is emotive, interesting, and genuinely moving.
It's almost poetic.
Created by McCann, San Francisco, T.A.G., the experience doesn't stop there. The accompanying website (http://halo3.com/believe/shell.html) is even better, with fantastically acted video snippets and general cleverness.
Hooray for properly integrated campaigns!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaJ154r77EU
Look at his little nose chomping on that sandwich!
It's a mean and jaded person indeed who would cast aspersion on Paddington and his newfound love for Marmite. Sure, he’s probably driving around town in a shiny new Porsche, but he’s also working very hard to convert the nation’s parents to squeezy Marmite at lunchtime (of all things).
Recruiting the world’s most famous sandwich eater. Genius. And if it's good enough for Paddington it's definitely good enough for me. (Who would have thought you could put Marmite in a cheese and salad sandwich?)
But if only the client had been brave enough to have Paddington NOT liking the Marmite. Now that would have a hell of an ad.
Now I'm all for crazy inventions and outlandish thinking, but I worry that Burger King's new 'masterstroke' has missed the mark somewhat.
Below is the prototype for the Frypod (no really) filled with cunningly disguised apple slices in the shape of chips.
"We think kids will flock to it," says Burger King spokesman Keva Silversmith. The problem is, the last time I looked kids did still have brains - or at the very least eyes and tastebuds.
I sense a tantrum coming on.
Our first campaign's out!
To advertise the new season of Prison Break on Sky One we've designed an integrated 'frame a friend' concept.
It's still having a few technical difficulties (don't use it with Hotmail yet) but so far all seems to be going well. Hoorah!
It's funny, but advertising creatives aren't known for their amazing ability on the dance floor. Probably something to do with the fact that we are, on the whole, insecure quivering bundles of self doubt and regret. But I think we could change this, if everyone followed the simple yet effective tuition of Mr James Brown. Imagine next year at Cannes...
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Zdz88MBWomo
I'm not going to lie, when I got into advertising the idea of glamorous parties and fabulous locations didn't exactly put me off.
So imagine how disappointed we were when confronted with the Engine summer party 2007: three old coachs to a knackered up disco in a rugby ground clubhouse, somewhere on the outskirts of Richmond.
Not what you expect from a multi million pound advertising powerhouse.
Where's the glamour I ask you? It never would have happened in the 80s.
Our first big campaign comes out on Monday and things are getting pretty stressy in the studio.
Designers, producers, planners, developers, media agencies, (and creatives) are throwing toys out of the pram all over the place. Blood pressure is high. Someone's going to crack.
At times like these, we turn to Martin.
No one can be stressed with Martin.
It's not often that you find an ad so good that you can't find a single bad thing to say about it (a disapointing day in any Creative's life), but I think AMV BBDO's latest offering for Choice FM may just have done it
It's already had a lot of coverage, but good lord it's a hell of a commercial...
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=oGp-LxLYvRc
I thought I was going to wet myself when that bullet flew towards his head.
It's monday morning. I dropped my croissant on the pavement. Northern Mac's lost his mojo. And we've been handed a rather uninspiring brief.
But, believe it or not, we're not grumpy!
Who could be after saving the planet?
http://www.marukin-ad.co.jp/ecoego/
There goes another hour...
In light of the plethora of playdough bunnies currently invading New York, we thought it was a good time to revisit this most classic of virals.
Does anyone know who made it?
We like these Barclays iPath commercials.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ID7hTaWo7I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmuSBwUhMIo&mode=related&search=
Light, amusing, attention grabbing, and only 15 seconds long.
San Fransico's Venables, Bell & Partners have made some interesting banking ads. No mean feet at all.
We want to play! We want to play!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84_QL1kEmH4
British gameshows are nothing compared to Japanese ones. Nothing.
It's just begging to be made into a commercial.
It's happened... we've found a replacement favourite ad (hope the Cravendale pirate isn't too angry).
Check out this little gem from TBWA New York:
http://creativity-online.com/work/view?seed=20c80bed
We like!
How? And, indeed, why God why have I found a worm in my salad AGAIN?
This time I actually bit through the bloody thing. And this one came from the Engine canteen!
As if diets weren't bad enough...
Woo hoo! We've just had TWO ideas signed off by Sky in one meeting. Our first two campaigns EVER. We're like proud parents.
Breaking in mid September, we'll be coming at you from the internet and beyond - one for Prison Break Season 3, and one for 'Are You Smarter than a 10 Year Old?' (a new programme for Sky One). I wonder if we're allowed to disclose the ideas....?
How exciting!
Any more of this and we might actually get hired...
Does anyone know anyone who actually bothered to 'go to' Second Fest?
What a weird idea! A 'live' virtual digital festival where you can't see the band, the sound quality's worse than a car radio, and the best headliner they could offer was The Petshop Boys.
Surely the whole point of a festival is to sit in a field with your friends and experience real live music in the flesh. Who was the target audience meant to be? Was it me?
Well, now I feel like a complete and utter doofus. Just take a look at the IKEA ad on the link below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brtpeNGo8o4
Darn it! Crispin Porter came up with this a few years ago - and won a handful of Lions for it.
Goes to show how much I know... and how much more our good friend Neil Shanlin does!
Someone's going to be in trouble at M&C.
For those of you familiar with the poncy Northern one, take a moment to study the image below.
"Self deluded"? "Delusions of grandeur"? A "boastful Northern burk"? It's my Art Director!
Bless 'im.
Something very strange happened to me the other day.
There I was, watching the TV, when all of a sudden... I liked an MFI ad!!!
What threatened to be yet another 'hard hitting' NSPCC piece (chavvy girl comes home to raging violent argument with parents, grimy 'real' lighting, documentary style camera work etc.) suddenly hit me with the reveal that the family was, in fact, testing the range (and "feeling at home") in an MFI showroom.
The whole piece is produced so naturally that you don't have a clue. Bravo M&C Saatchi.
So the Vodafone commercial broke ( http://youtube.com/watch?v=wJ5sfuYz4No ) and all the creatives and planners I spoke to were suitably under-impressed, as was the industry press. And me? Well I was a little confused. Not because of the advert, but because of everyone's reaction to it.
Ok, the strategy won't change the world - but it's a beautifully shot, well thought out, warm piece of film and it made me (and all my non advertising flatmates) smile. It also made me wonder what had changed on my network, and when I investigated my handset I realised that I can now check my hotmail for free - despite having a phone as old as the web itself.
The posters are beautiful and suitably light, and the idea of buying every channel at once certainly gets round the problem of pinning down those fickle freeview hopping viewers. So what's the problem?
Call me crazy, but I think that the standard of work in today's advertising world has reached such a high standard that it's difficult to impress anyone at all. We're just used to great work. We expect it. And two years ago this ad would have blown me away. So are we being too hard?
No. If anything it simply pushes us to REALLY use our brains and come up with truly groundbraking work (as the rest of the world's doing right now). If the UK didn't do too well in this year's Cannes, lwe should see it as a challenge to do twenty times better next year. We're a really talented country, it's just time we pushed ourselves a little harder.
Yet again, we've failed bitterly where keeping our blog up to date is concerned.
However, at least it's because we're working all the hours God sends us on a pitch for Hurrell & Dawson.
And learning what it's like to be in an agency so small and new that it only has three creative teams - including us!
But more of that another time. Just thought we'd add a quick note to say that we're both excited and bemused in equal measure over Vodaphone and BBH's move to spend £16 million in 9 minutes on Sunday when they'll air a new 90 sec ad at 9.20 OVER TWO HUNDRED CHANNELS SIMULTANEOUSLY - buying the entire ad break on ITV and Channel 4 while they're at it!
Digital sites will switch on and play it 20mins before the TV premier, and 6 sites, including eBay and Google, will fold up into a big phone to announce the launch of Vodaphone mobile.
Let's hope it's a bloody good ad!
