I’d like to posit that the variation of creative output between good agencies has less to do with the difference in the quality of the creative team than it has to do with the comparative difference in the quality of the client. And by quality I don’t mean marketing ability or intellect, I mean propensity to approve good thinking.
I’m reflecting on a common theme that was touched on by many at Circus this year, but in particular by both Nick Law, chief creative at digital pioneers R/GA and Tom Uglow, head wizard at Google Creative Labs. Experience. Both Tom and Nick talked about, and provided brilliant examples of, how brands benefit from selling an experience rather than just a product. Tom went on to suggest that the process [...]
Joe Crump seems to think we shouldn’t underestimate the value of doing the kind of stuff we often lump into the ‘digital’ basket sooner rather than later. But how can we lessen the risk? Read on…
Circus 2012 Lesson 2: Reframing your category Sarah Robb O’Hagan is the Vice President of Marketing at Gatorade. She’s also a kiwi (kia ora Sarah), and seems way too young to be such a global marketing ass-kicker and in Forbes’ top ten most powerful women in sport. It didn’t take long to see why. She made several simple and brilliant points about reframing the category you think you’re in. Service [...]
When an agency sends someone to an industry event like the Circus Festival of Commercial Creativity (#circus2012) the task at hand is to bring knowledge back to the agency – but for me, the tricky part is knowing which bits of information are relevant, and which bits are purely advertising academic porn. With the best communications minds in the world converging on a single event, it’s difficult to divide the two. But [...]
Well, this doesn’t take much explanation does it. XXXX have bought an island for their tribe of beer drinkers to ‘be men’. Oh yes.
Once in a while a new business model comes along that smashes the status quo. Add a healthy dose of ‘tell it like it is’ internet advertising that doesn’t conform to cheesy sports star endorsement and ridiculous product development claims… and you have a game changer. Take that Gillette.
Mercedes Benz have a zero-emissions car (using F-CELL hydrogen fuel cell technology). So they figured the best way to promote a car that is invisible to the environment was to create an invisible car. Love this. (Thanks @Melis6)
“Sh*t Perth People Say” is a compilation of observations and oddities about the people in the most isolated city in the world – Perth. It is also, as it turns out, a neat little case study in tapping into public sentiment and a social trend, rapidly creating bespoke content, and seeding it in the community. A good social idea isn’t just an entertaining bit of content, it’s something that enables a participative form [...]
This is all you need to know. Contagious exists to find and filter the most innovative exercises in branding, technology, and popular culture, and deliver this collective wisdom to their subscribers. Once a year, they round up the highlights, identify what’s important and why, and push it out to the world. Welcome to Most Contagious 2011.
We just created our own planet. Well, not a real planet, but a globe of our agency’s streetscape using Stereographic Street View which transforms any location into its own three dimensional panoramic floating island. It’s like a tailor-made planet for every type of habitation. Users can also invert the globe, making the outer frame of the planet its center and vice versa. The globe can be moved around to change the perspective [...]
Weightwatchers UK know their people. They’ve created a music video with their weight-watchers, a community for their audeince and a game of their offering.
We all hear and talk a fair bit about gaming, or the buzzwordiculous phrase gamification. At times the idea of gaming is discounted as only relevant ‘for the kids’. Wrong. Check out PSFK’s ‘Future Of Gaming Report’ which presents key trends emerging within the gaming space that brands, non-profits and communities can leverage to build engagement and motivate their target audience towards achieving a desired goal or outcome.
It’s designed to inspire anyone tasked with creating compelling user experiences, whether that be on a digital screen, in the real world or somewhere in between.
Here’s a sweet project from Google Chrome for the tribe of Johnny Cash fans.
The project was created to give Johnny Cash fans a chance to collectively make his final music video. Each fan illustrates their own frame of the video to make a tribute to Johnny. As people all over the world contribute, the project continues to evolve and grow, one frame at a time.
Here’s a festive tear-jerker. Coca-Cola’s short film, from McCann Erickson Phillipines, about families reuniting in the Philippines is now one of the most shared ads of the year, and it’s easy to see why. Brands are getting better and better at using their advertising to point at the things they’re doing, rather than just ‘making ads’. Watch it.
Here’s a cute idea that seems pretty relevant for the Christmas season. Enjoy.
Who doesn’t know and love (envy) the ‘Gorilla’ spot from Cadbury’s Glass and a Half Full Productions campaign? It’s surely one of the best examples of a brand that has been reinvigorated by doing things differently. Cadbury (with the help of Fallon London) boldly stepped beyond persuasion and product benefit to pursue brand fame with content that doesn’t talk about the brand experience, but is the brand experience. This video [...]
This is a superb new campaign for Drambuie which intentionally seeks to ‘explain a little less and intrigue a little more’. A campaign than acknowledges the value in being both esoteric and mysterious. Sometimes being a little less obvious works.
This is clever. Know your audience, serve them up a shareable idea that feels like it’s just for them (an idea that couldn’t work for a competitor)… Art Series Hotels is hiding a Banksy in one of their hotels for you to steal. See the full story here
For an informed opinion about why our industry strives for creative excellence, check this out. The Case for Creativity View more presentations from James Hurman We all believe in creativity, but often clients need to give themselves permission to want great work. The Case for Creativity is a book about the connection between creativity and effectiveness in advertising. Supported by the numbers (from various research sources) it makes a pretty [...]
