6.13.2010
We’ve all heard the phrase, “You are what you eat.” Well, I wondered if you couldn’t continue that train of thought down a more metaphorical path. Say, “You are a product of that by which you’re influenced?” While this is surely asking for a deeper discussion (as well as a pizza, some drinks and a very late-night debate), I can with certainty say that this project posits this in a very literal sense. Billboard music and Almap/BBDO teamed-up to provide an interactive consumer experience in which passers-by could select their musical influences and have a live portrait taken with miniature profiles of those artists as the RGB pixels. Engaging on a personal level by having your image as the main product of the interaction, for one; then, to have your iconic musical favs as the items visually comprising your image? Well, that’s quite an accompaniment. Enjoy the video and the pics posted on Flickr. Who would you choose as your influences and why do they hold such meaning to you? What type of pose would you strike? While it may seem like over-analysis, when it comes to our tastes and impressions we are certainly inspired by those who have come before us. Who knows, we might be shaped in more ways than one by them, too…
6.11.2010
Now, admittedly it may appear with this brief post that there’s a pattern developing here. While I am a fan of both sports and inspiring advertisement, I’m not intentionally trying to slant this towards a World Cup fever. Having said that though, may I remind you that the cup comes once every four years and is the largest sporting event in the world! So, without further ado, I felt a need to include Puma’s “Journey of Football” lead-up to the World Cup. While Nike’s witty and wry “Write the Future” has taken the spotlight recently, I find the purity of Puma’s ad refreshing and jubilant. I watch the 90s spot, produced by the agency Syrup and outside of Puma’s product and logo placement, really feel like it gives me a truly unadulterated introduction to the fundamental love that the African continent has and offers to the sport. The repeated scenes of children playing the game, interspersed with slightly older, uniformed versions of themselves (professional players are living a childhood dream, after all, no?) and the pulsing joy of the Gnarls Barkley ‘Going On’ tune combine in beautiful unison.
Ads like this make you briefly understand how truly interconnected we all are and that regardless of socio-economic means, race or religion, we are and always will be more similar than we are different. Political agendas, regimes, doctrine or class are washed away for 90s and this sports seems a global language that all can readily speak. Larger cultural and human statements like this are why advertising can be so much more than simply selling a product or service. It can rekindle hope, rejuvenate our values and momentarily remind us of the privilege our humanity. Puma and Syrup warmly invite us into this world. Come on in…just make sure your cleats are laced up tightly.
6.10.2010
Another “daily difference” that caught my eye briefly from AdFreak this morning and certainly seem in the spirit of the upcoming FIFA World Cup in South Africa. This requires a bit of background unless you’re an avid soccer fan. The “vuvuzela” or “lepatata” is a type of horn that fan use during soccer matches. The deep, lingering tone of the stadium horn is synonymous with “football”, the passion of its fans and air of sanctity with which fans approach the spectatorial endeavor. Decked out in colorful regalia, chanting the songs of their club, much of what it is to be a fan in these games does follow a remarkably similar strain to a religious gathering. Ok, well I suppose I’m getting a bit metaphysical and overly analytic.
However, to bring the pursuits of the true fan together with technology, an iPhone can now be as necessary as a flag or a jersey. Pereira O’Dell’s new iPhone app allows four different vuvuzela sounds, prompted either by shaking the phone or tapping on the app’s on-screen soccer ball. If smaller and electronic is not your thing, try the building-mounted vuvuzela in Cape Town. Sponsored by Hyundai, this mammoth vuvzela measures 114-ft in length. The games haven’t even started and I can already see players practicing a new stretch: Raise arms to ears, hold tightly, repeat. Creative, yes. Marketable, yes. Noisy, you’d better believe it. Enjoy the world’s game, folks…and all that comes with it!
6.9.2010
It was late at night, past my ‘bed-time’ and there I was surfing the web. I noticed a tweet from the incomparable Tito Melega that said something about underwater base jumping. Now, having just completed my second skydive a couple weeks back (and, again, it being late at night), I gobbled up the link with great anticipation. This video is short, but breathtaking in its imagery and execution. The fact that this is a “freedive” (sans supplemental air) is amazing first-off, but the beautiful and mysterious underwater landscape is impossible to turn away from. The presence of a tiny human figure at the mouth of the gaping Dean’s Blue Hole sinkhole is simultaneously enchanting and nearly incomprehensible.
While initially drawn to this from adrenaline-induced male fervor, the lasting impression is more metaphorical. I am reminded of how risky creative endeavors can be, whether it be on a canvas, committing to a fledgling business idea or pitching an unorthodox idea to a client. Each time there is a visceral courage required to meet the challenge, if not to just meet the critics. And with this courage there is confidence. Not blind confidence, but a sense of fundamental belief in an idea, a methodology and the ability to push one’s capabilities. To each of us there is a Dean’s Blue Hole into which we’re dove and a new one into which we consider diving again. How close are your toes to the edge and how long do you wait atop the precipice?
Guillaume Nery Underwater Base Jump
12.13.2009
This one caught my eye briefly as I was searching on study break for an inspiring spot that I hadn’t seen recently. VW Germany and Grabartz & Partner have produced a delightful, simple and amusing ad in this piece featuring an elderly woman illustrating just how easy the VW Parking Assist is on their Passat (and the degree to which it can change someone’s view of you, if only for a brief moment.) Enjoy this one!
12.10.2009
Ahhh…viral videos. How much we have come to love thee and yet, we are even more fascinated by them when we have reason to scrutinize them further. Now that many companies are jumping on the viral bandwagon, we are getting more examples of execution that might leave a little bit more to be desired. Much as we’ve come to recognize that “reality television” is about as abnormal an environment as a human psyche can be exposed to, so too are some of the inconsistencies that are being uncovered by the ever-more perceptive eye of the consumer populous. Case in point, is the video that has been circulating with a great deal of velocity showing a minivan getting hit by a wrecking ball in downtown Manhattan. Different theories have been posited about the video’s source and the clues that would lead one to think that they might’ve been duped. Mashable had a peek at it (and subsequently elevated its web-presence) and the debate continues.
Have a peek, see what you think. Is Dodge putting this out? Are those people on the other side of the street about to get hit by the wrecking ball? Was that a “Cut!” you hear on the tail-end of the video? And why on earth would the video stop when it does. Ahhh, hours of endless entertainment playing it and replaying it. Um, but might I just inquire as to how this delivered a strong brand-recognizable response of any sort in the consumer’s mind? Nah, I suppose that’s not joining in the fun now, is it?
11.28.2009
I noticed this in a rather serendipitous manner, floating errantly along the internet as I cooled down from writing a paper at school. I was stunned. The stop-motion style action along with the photography and audio are simply fantastic. This is an advertisement for the New Zealand Book Council, which wouldn’t typically be a group from whom I’d expect a great deal. Now, I mean no offense by that (Lord knows, they’re most likely more creatively in-touch than most), but I was truly impressed by the 2 minute and 11 second spot. This is not your typical PSA. This very convincingly transports you into the world to which books hold the key. The manner in which the textual pages are used to construct model-like landscapes and scenes are fantastic in the true sense of the word. I am sure to write more about this soon, but click on the link and check it out for yourself (as well as the advertisement that they ran in New Zealand theaters…available on YouTube). It is a perfectly executed escape that convincingly suggests that we all pick up a good book (and maybe shave off a few minutes from our typical Internet surfing!)
NZ Book Council’s “Going West”
11.25.2009
This ad reminded me a lot of the viral stop-motion outdoor video “Combo” put out by Blu and David Ellis that was rather popular in mid-to-late september of this year. While very stop-motion animation is not necessarily distinct as a medium, when paired with an interesting message for gum as “Clean It Up” it offers some interesting possibilities for the imagination to drift back and forth between the real world and that of the stop-motion eternity. For reference, here is a link to the Combo piece:
Now, this piece gently walks you through the wanderings of a cartoon mouth as it tumbles from a sketchpad, past seemingly two dimensional stop-motion figures. All the while, the mouth is cleaning up in some fashion, and whether it picks up sidewalk color from the red drawn drippings of a girl’s ice cream cone or it carves a clean path on a dusty window the message of the gum’s ability to clean becomes clearly, yet imaginatively evident. The advertisement’s musical accompaniment lulls you to the beat of the strolling mouth, a simple and melodic female tone walking with you on the stop-motion journey. A simple, yet spatially interesting and “light” ad. There’s no shock, no awe. A simple and clear message reveals itself unobtrusively thanks in part to a two-dimensional mouth coming to life in a three-dimensional world.
11.20.2009
I know I went briefly over some of the ideas of AR in a previous “Holding Pen” file, but I have begun to notice a surprising influx of articles on advertising magazine websites, blogs and even tweets pertaining to this subject. I have to be careful, because I know that I’m only just now becoming fully aware of its history and how prevalent it is (and arguably will be), but it seems to me that within even the last couple of weeks it has begun to reshape some of the major trend headlines online. It appears to have some amazing capabilities and has the potential to offer brand new horizons for consumer experience and purchasing behavior. I noticed this particular piece this evening (ok, you got me…”morning”) and some of the ways that both AR markers as well as motion interfaces (such as “thumbs-up”, “thumbs-down” and camera features) seem to promise wholly new worlds to shop and interact. I’ll be following this one up as well, but check into this…potentially one of the first e-commerce dressing rooms catered to you.
11.19.2009
So, I’m definitely going to write about this one next in the blog. Were it not for the Business Ethics paper that I have to write tonight, I’d be tapping away at this and you’d never have had to look here for this. However, things are what they are and I’ll crank on a bit more depth about this one soon. I digress however.
I noticed this today when reading through the Ad Age article on Cadillac’s current review process as they’ve cut the viable agency candidates to BBH – NY, Publicis NY and Martin Agency. This is a pitch ad that BBH generated for a 2006 Audi of America review. It won them a finalist position in that review process as well. I love the paring of the music with the cartoon, the brave manner that Audi’s polished brand name would be paired with a whimsical sketched figure playing with a typically boring corrugated cardboard box. Simple, unassuming, an effective message and a sticky idea. Well done BBH!
11.19.2009
So a couple friends and I were sitting and brainstorming about great ad ideas based on the tones of certain music types. A great idea came to mind when playing “When the Lights Go Out” by The Black Keys for a dusty, genuine ad for a whiskey label (Jack Daniels or otherwise). I thought it might be poignant to have a black and white shot from a camera positioned on the ground looking out over a desert (Mojave) panorama with a lone joshua tree positioned in the mid-ground and a bottle of the whiskey positioned closer to fore-ground on the right edge of the screen. The spot would be a 30 sec with a time lapse, with the shadow of the joshua tree sweeping across the desert floor, elongating and overcoming the bottle in the foreground. Quick-moving high level clouds can be seen scraping across the desert sky, layers pulling across each other, contrails popping into sight and fading slowly away.
As the song flows on, a simple, classical font would appear on the bottom of the screen (or in the center) fading in in gray or white. Simply the word: Timeless. Slow fade the whole shot out with font, but with the music still playing to a hollowed-out tone (as if a dusty old radio were playing the twangy tune from the bottom of a metal trashcan) and then silence. Fade out maybe at 27 or 28 sec for a silence buffer of 2 to 3 sec for impact.
11.17.2009
This (the link below that is) was a short article with embedded video that I found while strolling through the fertile and exciting pages of creativity-online.com again. It’s ironic, as a speaker in my Advertising Planning class spoke about AR a couple of times tonight with regards to future ad “space”. I had also spoken with a friend a couple weeks ago about these types of adapted apps for smartphones and the potent capability that they hold for the near future. This article is quite illuminating, but the video showcasing the iPhone app that is AR-based is really pretty incredible. Not quite sure what to do with this yet except be a bit amazed. Though, it does make me wonder how regardless of how wonderfully efficient we might become with fingertip information anywhere/anytime, might we in some way be de-training our brains to remember key information? I’m all for not getting lost, but I do wonder about some of the ways we incorporate information into our every action now, digesting bytes like digital fast food. So, when does digital obesity set in?
11.16.2009
I was working on a creative brief for my Advertising Planning class and the content of the brief led me to search for some relevant imagery. Top on the list was this image that appeared when I search and sifted. I love the angle, perspective and color (arguably touched-up). Great photo, with I’m not sure what implications for ideas in the future, but it was one of those beautiful images that you can often find in the otherwise controversial and illegal practice of graffiti.
11.14.2009
This is an interesting and lighthearted approach to the subject of insurance by the British Columbia Automobile Association. While the humor initially seems to appease the “I like it…I guess I’ll look a little deeper” filter that we have, the implications are rather weighty when you consider a child getting-by after losing a parent. The vivid way of showing a child trying to bear the burden of an adult job and adult responsibilities is “cute”, but poignant after it sets in. The way in which the website is integrated, with consistent and relevant copy, functions and imagery uncovers a creative way to hit the rarely fun topic of life insurance. Drop-downs and scroll-overs are all consistent in the theme, functional and populated. It “sticks-the-landing” with the tag-line “How Would They Get By Without You?” Good risk-taking BCAA and Rethink!
11.13.2009
Simply put: I thought this was yet another way to find creative ways to do something that we’ve thought to be pretty set-in-stone. There’s always another way, a better way to innovate something “tired”. The next right shot, the next right answer as DeWitt Jones would say…
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