Are Superbowl really that super?
Image courtesy of BeckyAV
This is an article I wrote in the week after the Superbowl. So it lacks a little in the topical department. Thought I'd post it anyway.
In the distant past when advertising was a simpler and somewhat more lucrative business the wine bars of Adland would fizz with excitement every third Thursday of November. The cause for celebration was the arrival, straight from the vineyards, of the first pressing of the Gamay grape, a Beaujolais wine by the name of Noveau. And it wasn’t just the toast of the advertising fraternity, for a short time Beaujolais Noveau made it into the mainstream social calendar; the BBC might even follow its journey to fill out the final five minutes of their news bulletins.
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Election coverage
This is our latest poster for the Labour Party. We are running it in Brighton to coincide with the Tory Party spring conference and the their slipping poll lead.
It's just a poster of course, but even in this day and age they can still be oh so powerful. This execution is about the incompetence of the person that would like to be the next Chancellor of the Exchequer. A man that would be out of his depth in a paddling pool.
As the election unfolds I am going to try and share as much as I can with you. Regardless of your political affiliations (though I have yet to meet a right wing planner) its going to be fascinating, and I suspect very different to the last great case study in political campaigning from the US.
Click below for a bigger version.
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Childline campaign
The Childline remixing tool
We have created a new campaign for the NSPCC aimed at making Childline a part of the fabric of children's lives. The idea is to encourage children to express their emotions and to position Childline as the place they can do this freely with immediate online support for those children needing help.
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Brand new Visa ad
This is the new Visa commerical supporting their sponsorship of the Fifa World Cup in South Africa this summer. It was written by Xander Smith and Jonathan Santana, planned by Martin Smith and Directed by Chris Palmer through Gorgeous.
Getting tasty with the Tories
Thought you might be interested in the first of our new Camera On, Camera Off campaign for the Labour Party aimed at proving that David Cameron (the leader of the UK Conservative opposition party) rarely believes what he says.
We are interested in the way that political communications are now about establishing ideas voters can play with. We saw that unintentionally with David Cameron's 'airbrushed for change' campaign where people made their own versions by editing billboards or by uploading their own ads to sites like mydavidcameron.com. Obviously we'd like to encourage this approach with the Camera On and Off meme.
This version was for a press conference this morning on NHS targets but expect to see more in the future.
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Is it me?
Image courtesy of Josh.Brastead
This website is usually known for its thoughtful opinion and considered approach. But I am having a Superbowl moratorium on well argued polemic. Is it me or were all the ads in the Superbowl complete arse? For christ sake if that is the best creative work that those brands and agencies can muster then heaven help American advertising. The madmen clearly have suffered worse head trauma than the players. I'd include a link to the inconsequential work that ran but you'd be better off spending the time reading a slim volume the worst poetry imaginable while repeatedly beating yourself over the head with a cricket bat.
More sex please, were British
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Image courtesy of Dave Gorman
I have long believed that advertising is not a profession. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not embarrassed about what we do and I certainly have little sympathy with the sentiment of that terrible old joke. You know the in which someone asks that his mother is not told that he works in advertising since she thinks that he is the piano player in a brothel. However, there are a number of reasons why the idea that what we do resembles a profession rings a little hollow.
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Josh's Band
In the Autumn we went out and about on behalf of T-Mobile and asked people what they would do if they had free texts and internet for life - which is what you get as a T-Mobile Pay As You Go customer that regularly tops up.
And in the course of this we bumped into a guy in Brick Lane called Josh Ward who said that he would us it to start a superband. Which sounded like fun. So we helped him and the single from the band that comprises 1107 musicians in total is released on Monday 11th January.
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The price of everything and value of nothing
Image courtesy of Neato Coolville
As brand builders we have always instinctively felt that the sales lever so beloved by consumers, the price promotion, was not just grubby but also rather damaging to the long term health of that brand and business. That said, we have rarely been able to articulate our dislike of price promotions in a way that stands up to any kind of scrutiny, making us seem petulant and un-commercial in the face of the quick volume that can be delivered by discounting.
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Shock and awe
From 30 ways to shock yourself. Image courtesy of Bre Pettis
If there is one enduring fascination the mainstream media has in our business it is with shock advertising and specifically whether shock advertising actually works. Other preoccupations of the journalistic classes come and go – greenwash, teaser campaigns, neuroscience and the like – but the one they keep coming back to is shock.
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Who is to blame?
Image courtesy of Planoscorpio
Say what you like about Cannes but at its best it still serves as a barometer for where our industry and our product is heading. Most notably the Titanium shortlist, packed as it is with the coolest work from the coolest agencies and representing the new creative dividend that is on offer to brands that put participation at the heart of their work.
But the obvious question is that if this is the sort of work we all admire from the sort of agencies we all admire how come the UK is so poorly represented? Having offered the industry creative leadership for so many years is our inability to compete with the Droga 5s, Crispins, Goodbys and Nitros of this world proof that the UK is to be a foot note in the future of creative communications?
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Dynamic micro brands - Toms
Image courtesy of StephanieNguyen
I’m a bit of a latecomer to the Toms party but then I’m not an environmental activist and I don’t live on the West coast. So I had to wait until the TED Global goodie bag to come across this brand of ethically driven footwear and mighty fine they are too.
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Is it the end of the line for the digital agency?
Image courtesy of Ackers-Schoolboy Hero!!!!
Some time in the early summer the Met Office rather confidently predicted that this would be the summer of the BBQ, so hot, dry and altogether splendid was our weather going to be. Alas it turned out to be a rather different meteorological kettle of fish and once again this summer has been unremittingly dreary, anything but the summer of the BBQ. Similarly at the beginning of this recession the soothsayers of the digital community rather confidently predicted that this would be the recession of the digital agency, basking as they would be in the sunny glory of a much-trumpeted culture of accountability. More than that, it would be the death of those sad old orthodox ad agencies that in the parlance of our time simply ‘don’t get it’. Alas, if you are a digital shop it is turning out to be anything but your recession. Good news for digital, bad news for the rather quaint idea of the standalone digital agency.
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Brand respsonse - a case of having your cake and eating it
Image courtesy of Blake E. Marquis.
Eddie Izzard has a standup routine about how useless the Church of England would have been at the Spanish Inquisition, because everyone appearing before it would have been given the option of cake or death. Naturally most people end up choosing the cake option.
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The Book of Revelations
Greetings from Charlotte Street. Image courtesy of Michael in South London.
Well you all know of my fondness for the idea of revelation as the new action standard for insights - astonishing disclosures about people, brands and the world in which we live.
So the book of revelations is the name for the new planning blog from Saatchi & Saatchi in London (AKA the SAS).
It's written by top bloke Tom Gibson. We are using it to inspire the agency but everyone is welcome of course.
