Good Execution...

Is this your brands future?

Change your business model before this happens...


Historic �Blockbuster� Store Offers Glimpse Of How Movies Were Rented In The Past

Product Innovation at its greatest

I almost lost it when they mentioned feed hoses...


New Wearable Feedbags Let Americans Eat More, Move Less

Nokia DANCE

A random spot from W+K but a nice one for a handset manufacturer. I like the tone and pace of this execution - capture a bunch of moments with your Nokia handset and have fun doing it.

Brand Heaven and Hell

Great visual from Logic+Emotion. Where is the brand you work on? My guess is right below the surface...

Live Advertising - Honda

A few days ago, Honda in Spain did this live ad. I know that Honda is all about "The Power of Dreams" but this is pretty different. It got a ton of coverage in Europe and will probably be talked about for the next few weeks

Honda Live Advert Sky Dive Difficult is worth doing
by unitedgoals

When Agencies Recycle

While surfing on welcome to optimism (W+K's London blog), I found this great post about Cutwater - a San Fransisco agency that has had success for two videos for clients Ray Ban and Levi's.

Each of the videos have over 3 million views on YouTube and by all measures, are huge, viral hits. That being said, Cutwater has executed the same idea for two different brands. The products are different but the execution and idea are exactly the same.

For an industry driven on unique and original ideas, what does this mean? All agencies are looking for success, especially in digital, but at what cost? If something works for one client, should we simply copy it outright and fit it too another? Maybe.

But to what extent? It's one thing to reference the success your agency has had through new biz case studies and quite another to apply the same idea to another one of your own brands. Even if Dove evolution was successful, I don't want to retrofit that idea to my new Tampon brand (awkward example but still...).

I can only imagine how this was sold to the clients. "Well," says the cool creative director, "we had huge success with Ray Ban and sunglasses and we want to do the exact same thing for you...except with jeans." The AD is happy about it - it worked before after all - why not for us? And the client? They don't have to make any leaps...they asked for a viral video and why not use something that works?

Because it's unoriginal. Because it's not what you hire an agency for. Anyone could copy Whopper Freakout or Dove Evolution but we're hired to think strategically about our brand, not someone else's. I'm all for knowing what brands are succeeding in the space and learning about what strategies got them there. But let's use those strategies to discover ideas that fit the brand, not the trend.


Ray Ban [Posted a year ago]:



Levi's [Posted 4 weeks ago]:

Sad Stormtroopers

This is totally random but I (as a nerd) loved it. Nice to see a Star Wars reference that's actually funny. Unlike some of the posts on YouTube.

From Laughing Squid.

Social Media in Plain English

From the great folks at Common Craft.


Social Media in Plain English from leelefever on Vimeo.

FIFA Street 3 - Unbelievable vidoe goes guess what? It starts with a V.

As far as viral goes, when it comes to sports...Soccer is king. Please tell me these tricks are real.

See the latest soccer video to go Viral. Created to promote EA sports FIFA Street 3.

P&G launches TAG Records with Def Jam

I see this turning out like Bud TV. The second that the TAG Records artists start signing about Supermaning a ho, this brand experiment will start to stink.

If you want your brand to honestly be cool - you must let the purveyors of cool take control and run with it. Jermaine Dupri has been brought on to make TAG a cool brand, doing cool things and supporting the interests of its brand target. Will P&G let Dupri do his thing, or will we see Will Smith Jr. rap acts featured in commmercials and giving away free song downloads with every can of spray??? God I hope not.

David Nichols is more optimistic....

Written by: David Nichols: brandgym head of invention

Peering over my morning cup of tea on a flight back from a tiring workshop this week I was jolted awake by the news that P&G has teamed up with rapper and music producer Jermaine Dupri to launch a music label. Am I dreaming? Has British Airways tea become so strong that it’s making me hallucinate? No. P&G, kings of analysis and data driven marketing, are putting their faith in Hip-Hop hype.

TAG Records will be a major part of their strategy for their TAG male deodorant brand in the US, targeted at a younger urban population for whom Hip-Hop is a major passion. A joint venture with Island Def Jam Music Group, the aim of the new label will be to find and promote new talent, using funding from P&G to put serious money behind new and untested artists – giving them the kind of exposure and promotion only usually given to already successful artists.

Despite this sounding like a bold new frontier in marketing, this kind of thing is not new. Remember Soap Operas? Back in the 50’s P&G and others put their faith and money into a new and untested medium and funded the development of TV shows to drive sales of their laundry detergent brands.

I like this idea and I will wait to see if they can make a success of it. What’s good about it?

1. Don’t claim you are cool – be cool
If you want people to think you are funny – tell a joke. So, to give their brand a hip image P&G have decided to actually be cool, not just claim it. Young urban men are one of the hardest targets to address if your brand is not already part of their world. We’ve all seen the ads where a trendy young person is holding a product with a caption that says ‘It’s cool!’ – It just doesn’t cut it.

2. Helping consumers, not just shouting at them
P&G marketing money will actually be used to create future careers for young urban artists. Helping your consumers in their lives, rather than just targeting messages at them, has got to be a better way to go in these times of message saturation and cynicism. Of course, you have to hope they do actually find some real talent or they risk a PR backlash. But there’s no reward without risk and marketing is no different.

3. A way to differentiate all your communications
This is not just a sponsorship deal or a promotion. If P&G are serious about this (and there is no evidence to suggest otherwise!) then this will give them a strongly differentiating focus for all their marketing and communications on TAG; from POS to promotions to distribution itself – they can use the codes, language and characters of Hip-Hop as the driving theme for everything they do.

Found on BrandGym Blog

Quote of the week

"Consumers want brands burned with the mark of their founders, not artificially engineered by their agencies. They want to know who made the brand, where and why".

~Mark Ritson

iPhone meet iPong...news doors are opened.

The wireless market in general has been using the idea of "our products help to connect, share

This has to be the coolest implementation of Pong ever: load the iPong application in two or three iPods touch units or iPhones, and start playing between them using your finger, with the ball actually passing from one screen to the other depending on the ball angle.

The software was made by Mr. Kondo—a colleague of Ryo Shimizu, CEO of Ubiquitous Entertainment—in an hour. We don't know if it will make its way to the iTunes store as a commercial product, but I hope it inspires other developers to use this kind of competitive—or collaborative—gameplay. [Asiajin via [Technabob]

GPS, DHL and The Largest Drawing in the World

A few months ago, artist Eric Nordenakar decided to create the largest drawing in the world. Using a high-powered GPS device and a carefully mapped out route through DHL, he create a self portrait tracing the path that his package had traveled.

Below is a video outlining the journey that the package went on. Eric's website goes into detail about his project and even includes the travel instructions that he gave to DHL.



What I love about this isn't just the originality of the idea, but the way that DHL embraced Eric and his project. They gave him access to their supply line, rides on their planes and allowed him to track his package in a way that no other company would.

How many companies would let an artist do this? The purpose of this project wasn't about advertising, but DHL certainly just went up a notch in my books.

But wait...at the end of the website, Eric admits that it was totally made up.

I know...disappointing. But still a cool thought...

Original article from Laughing Squid.

Team Nike defeats the devil

I have never seen this Nike spot before. Not in English but the spot is still worth watching.

Now That's A Splatter

A some nice out of home from Auckland. Created by Saatchi, found on Copyranter.

Why you shouldn't listen to other people...

“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” ~Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

“There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.” ~Ken Olson, president and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977

“Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?” ~H. M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927

“We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.” ~Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962

“This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. ~Western Union internal memo, 1876.

“The concept is interesting… but to earn better than a ‘C,’ the idea must be feasible.” ~Yale professor on conceptual paper that became FedEx.

“What would I do? I’d shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders.” ~Michael Dell on Apple, 1997.

“Everything that can be invented has been invented.” ~Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899.

I am sure that you hear ridiculous quotes everyday, but few that measure up to these.

Quotes found on copyblogger

HP Ripped Paper

And I thought Malaysia's only good exports was Palm Oil, Microprocessors and Yew Ming Si, the tennis player. Well I was wrong, here we have some pretty damn good creative.

Found on adgoodness

The long-lived history of advergames - Flashback

Apparently these were the first Atari based advergames... I don't remember them. Only pong and soccer.

I posted back in October about the first ever advergames that were hidden on records in the 1970's.

"In the case of these programs on vinyl, the user would have to play back the proper portion of the record, record the resultant chatter to tape, and load the tape into the spectrum. Some users have mentioned playing certain games so much that they could recognize the loading sounds.A gigantic step up from encoded text files were actual games included in the grooves of records. In 1984, The Thompson Twins released 'The Thompson Twins Adventure Game' in both regular vinyl and flexi disc formats. The game is a bizarre text-based adventure in which you guide the Thompson Twins around a land of beaches and caves."

Similarly encoded games were also added to the tape releases.

Unbelievably cool.

Safest Minivan on the road

Is it just me or is that a Kia Sedona? Maybe the safest Minivan on the road claim is true.

Ohh the things yo find when you click on Digg images.

Image from here.

Half the World...

The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) reported today that the world has passed the 3.3 billion mark in mobile phones. 49% global penetration.

Developing countries like Africa lead the largest gains with 39% growth annually. Couple that with India and China's massive growth rates and it makes sense how quickly cell phones have spread.

What does this mean for the future of our industry? Some think that mobile advertising is the future. Maybe free wireless in exchange for a few ads every month?

eMarketer reported in March that US cell phone ad revenue would grow from $88 million in 2008 to over $700 million by 2012.

Still, how many people are actually going to want to see an ad prior to making a phone call? I get the fact that mobile web browsing will house online banners within the pages but what would the CTR be on those? 0.0001%?

I guess that means that media will just have to serve 1 billion impressions per $1,000 spent.

Our Distorted View

Alisa Miller, at the TED conference this past March, puts on one of the best, 5-minute presentations I've seen about news coverage in America. Why do we care more about the death of Anna Nicole Smith than Global Warming? Why don't major American networks have foreign countries that house more than 2 billion people?

And most shockingly, why does Google News follow the same coverage patterns as the major networks?

What does this have to do with advertising? If you can't understand other cultures or foreign ideas, how can you market to them?

Agency Interview Tips

Another great post on interviews from Advergirl.

If you've got one coming up or are planning on starting your search for a new agency, read these.

Kobe is jumping again - over a snake filled pool

After successfully jumping over a moving Aston Martin, Kobe is now dunking over a pool. Oh yeah and the pool is filled with snakes and the Jack Ass crew.

Apple - Own The Home

Predicting the next technology trends and the future is something that many people (especially tech nerds) love to do. Forrester, one of the most dominant research companies in North America, has released an interesting study on how Apple will evolve over the next 5-7 years.

The just of the study? That Apple will try to own the home (everyone's home) in a few, critical ways.

The first deals with convergence. Having one device that acts as your home server - controlling your TV, internet, sound and all the digital HD pictures hanging on all your wall. Essentially, they want to be the provider who can not only give you the latest hardware (a new iPhone / iTouch) but also hook you up from a service perspective (think iTunes for your favorite TV shows).

For a long time, I've hoped that Apple will make a strong play into the Cable game. Currently, providers hold all of the content cars. They dictate "specialty" channels and force customers to buy upgrades for better (and mostly essential) content. Networks dictate the schedules of when you're favorite shows are on and advertisers pick the ones that are the most popular / most targeted.

The emergence of the PVR has changed this - slightly. We don't have to be home for the network time, we can just record the show and watch it later. We don't have to wait for the two minutes of ads to go through, we can just fast-forward them.

But still, we can't control all of our content.

I hope that with Apple's "Own the home" strategy (if it really exists...like Forrester predicts) that they provide consumers with a list of the channels they want. Imagine an RSS feed for your TV shows.

In the end, all I really want is one channel. And that channel is always playing shows I love (or will love).

Of course, if they could be beamed to my iPhone or HD TV in the washroom, that would be pretty nice too.

Full article from Wired.