Though for the day

Special thanks to Armando from Logic Emotion for this wonderful little piece of inspiration.

He shoots. He misses.

Nice milk ad by Lowe NY featuring David Beckham.

What a pity they didn't run it during the World Cup.

Farewell Pluto

I love a good topical ad and this one by TBWA in the Middle East is an absolute gem I think.

They even tweaked the original Pedigree tagline to We're For Underdogs Too which is a really nice touch.

Click here for a supersize pic courtesy AOTW

Rethinking the new car launch

Car launches are big news here in Oz at the moment. Both Toyota and Holden are spending serious amounts of money promoting their new family cars.

Over in the US Pontiac are taking a very different approach with the launch of their G5, with all their ad spend going online.

Pontiac marketing director Mark-Hans Richer admits it’s a radical experiment but considers it a calculated risk due to the nature of the target market.

According to Richer the G5 campaign is costing around sixty percent less than a typical mainstream media launch.

After six weeks the campaign has proven a success with August targets exceeded by a whopping 185%.

The dark side of M&M's

Mars have launched their new Dark Chocolate M&M’s with a fun mash up of Edvard Munch’s dark masterpiece The Scream.

The original painting was stolen from a Norwegian museum a couple of years ago.

M&M’s have put up a reward of two million Dark Choc M&M’s to whoever returns the painting.

Woo hoo!

US radio network Clear Channel is pioneering a new ad format that they’re calling Blink ads. Two second spots that pop up between songs.

One of the first users of the Blink is the Fox network who are using it to promote The Simpsons.

Says Kaye Bentley from Fox, “You’ll be hearing a song, you hear Homer go ‘Woo Hoo’ and then you’ll go into another song.”

Sounds like fun to me although rumours that the ‘Woo Hoo’ ads will run every half hour for a whole day sounds like overkill to me.

Next generation newspapers

I gave a talk at Melbourne University this week and one of the topics I touched on was how newspapers keep pace with advances in technology.

After all most of the news we read in the daily paper actually happened the day before.

British company Plastic Logic has just released this video and a series of images demonstrating their new electronic paper.

There has been much talk about e-paper but this video shows it’s closer than we may have realised.

Just imagine, rather than buying a newspaper you could simply buy a branded blank sheet.

Then whenever you wanted to read the paper you simply connected your sheet via usb into your news provider’s rss feed and voila. Fresh news in print.

Content providers could also install news machines at train stations where you could upload fresh content.

The possibilities are endless.

Click here to visit Plastic Logic.

This ad is rubbish

The Surfrider Foundation has been battling to keep the oceans clean for many years.

After a recent clean up campaign in California they were faced with what to do with the veritable mountain of rubbish removed from beaches.

Enter Saatchi LA who put the rubbish to good use with this billboard which is quite literally covered in beach rubbish.

Hate to be a critic but I reckon this excellent idea could have used an easier to read headline.

Nice work none the less.

Calvin Klein on the ball

Fashion Slave is the title of this installation by Calvin Klein at an exhibition centre in Chinese town of Xiamen.

Visitors have the chance to win a 5,000 Yuan cash prize by guessing how many pairs of Calvins make up the two tonne ball of jeans.

Suffice to say the promotion has generated a great deal of publicity in China. Although it’s not known if the prize has been claimed yet.

Fun but not funny

One of a set of fun little postcards inserted into Madison magazine.

The not so fun disclaimers:

'Diet Coke' 'As it should be' 'I ain't as sweet as I look' 'All sass no sugar' Contour Bottle and Dynamic Ribbon all trade marks of Coca Cola.

Talk about over the top.

If you only buy one book...

Bill Bernbach. Advertising legend, seller of many Volkswagens and the B in DDB.

Helmut Krone. Advertising legend, art directional genius and the man who helped make Bernbach look good.

The man behind the man as they say.

Now you too can be inspired by his ads, ideas and thinking with a copy of the imaginatively titled Helmut Krone. The Book.

It doesn't seem to be available at Amazon but you can read all about it and order it direct from the publisher by clicking here.

You or U banned

A British radio ad for child protection website Think U Know has been banned because someone typed the wrong address incorrectly.

A woman typed ‘you’ rather than ‘u’ which took her to a porn site.

In a bizarre ruling the Advertising Standards Association said the advert had not made it clear how the web address was spelt and as a result indirectly publicised adult material and sexual services.

Interestingly the porn url was registered shortly after Think U Know was launched. The lesson here being always register misspellings and variations of any new url.

Get yourself some awards

Minneapolis agency Colle McVoy are having a moving sale and everything has to go.

They're so keen to clear their shelves they've set up an eBay store where you can buy all sorts of stuff including a collection of advertising awards.

Perfect for up and coming agencies the awards are in pristine ready for trophy case condition.

The price even includes a nearly empty bottle of ad industry award polish.

Click here to check out the wares at the Colle McVoy eBay Store before they're all gone.

Melbourne's Greatest TV Ads

A good night was had by all last week when the AFA held a night to celebrate Melbourne's best TV ads.

The 250 strong audience voted by SMS with the legendary AntZ Pantz by the Campaign Palace coming in at number one.

Highlight of the night for me however was when Ron Mather took centre stage to tell the story behind Up There Cazaly.

Guess you had to be there, but there was something really special about Ron openly confessing in his best pommie accent about how he new nothing about Aussie Rules football.

He went on to tell how he and Lionel Hunt simply "loved watching blokes jump up and catch the ball."

Brilliant!

Up There Cazaly

Trust the Poms to capture the essence of Australian Football.

Lyrics and music by Mike Brady from an original concept by Ron Mather and Lionel Hunt at the Campaign Palace.

Interview with Mr Lovemark

I recently stumbled across an interesting interview with Kevin Roberts in The New York Sun.

Despite being so busy he had to do the interview via email the Saatchi head honcho had some great quotes to share.

"I'm a radical optimist," he wrote. "We live in the Age of the Idea and the Consumer is Boss."

He described the ad industry as the most exciting it's ever been. The challenges he says are "Keep attracting the bravest and most innovative, and have the courage to unleash and inspire them by getting out of their way."

Kevin believes great ideas can come from anywhere. The client, the agency, the media agency, the consumer.

His final point seemed a little obvious to me, but it's worth reiterating.

"It's about getting together, developing a holistic consumer-driven idea, then figuring out how to emotionally engage with the consumer at every touch point in new, exciting ways."

Click here for the interview in full.

Web 2.0 Bullshit Generator

With the arrival of what we now know as Web 2.0 the buzzwords and cliches are flying thick and fast in boardrooms across the globe.

Blogosphere, podcasting, viral, rss, content. What's a marketing meeting without them these days?

If you're struggling to keep up you need the Web 2.0 Bullshit Generator.

It's the must have tool for any next generation communications expert.

Headline of the year

Those who know me know I love a really good trashy newspaper headline.

This one my friends surely has to be the best I've seen this year. It's topical, insightful and funny.

The amazing thing is these newspaper guys knock out headlines in a matter of minutes.

Unlike us adland types who agonise over a handful of words for days.

Product placement booms

A new report by PQ Media predicts that product placement in movies, TV shows and games will triple by 2010.

The market is reputed to be worth around $2.2billion globally with a large portion of that coming from Hollywood.

007 currently holds the record for product placement with a deal worth around $70million for the film Die Another Day.

The Bond deal saw twenty products prominently featured in the film including of course an Aston Martin car.

Budweiser creative now on tap

America’s biggest brewer is setting up an in-house production company to produce material for the web and mobile phones.

A company spokesman was quoted as saying, “We’re always looking for new ways to reach beer drinkers.”

Of course Bud are not the first brand to do this type of venture. Pepsi has its own Mountain Dew production unit, whilst Starbucks co-produced a movie last year with Lions Gate Films.

Via Adage

Spam now in newspapers

If there's one place I expect to see advertising it's in a newspaper.

What I never thought I'd see in my morning paper though is spam.

Yes spam.

The pic above is of an annoying sticky note ad stuck on my home delivered paper yesterday.

There was one on today's paper as well.

Is this any way to treat a valued home delivery subscriber?

Neil French goes viral

This is an excerpt from Neil French's infamous speech in Toronto.

You know the one I mean.

Now he's using it to plug the World Press Awards.

Some good advice from the ladies man. Honest!

Back to the future

Not content with having taken on and beaten the big boys of the European airline world, Ryanair are now doing their bit in the ongoing war against terror.

This ad is running in today's English newspapers. Not sure if the talent's been paid though.

Smoker's Breath

This is how you smell when you smoke.

4.000 toxic chemicals leave a stench no perfume can mask.

Just ask the people around you.

Please stop smoking.

You’ll smell better instantly.

Call 1800 000 000.

Via Direct Daily

Keeping you posted

Now here’s a damn fine example of how not to spend taxpayer’s money.

Over in merry England the Royal Mail is launching a campaign to show how new postal charges will affect the cost of posting things.

Centrepiece of the campaign is a website by Proximity London with flash interactive demos.

The cost of this exercise? A lazy 10 million pounds
which is around 25 million of our Aussie dollars!

No wonder stamps are so expensive.

Waste of space

Proving that there really is nowhere to hide from intrusive advertising supermarket checkouts in the US are now carrying ads.

According to Frank Cox from EnVision Marketing a store with 10 checkouts has “about 100 square feet of wasted ad real estate.”

Funny how some people see an empty space as a wasted space.

Beer with a great head

And the award for best topical ad that probably should have run a month ago goes to....Amen from Canada.

This is a great ad for Kronenburg don't get me wrong. But why did it take so long to surface?

Within 24 hours of the World Cup final I had nigh on a dozen Zidane virals in my inbox.

It's only topical when it's still topical.

The ad headline by the way is "Cool your temper" or something like that.

Who's watching TV?

Here's an amazing statistic from a recent Business Week article on vanishing mass markets.

In 1965 you could reach 80% of a mainstream target audience with three TV ad spots.

117 spots were required to achieve the same reach in 2002.

I wonder what the 2010 figure will be?

WPP gets into the game

Global advertising goliath WPP has made a belated entry into the world of in-game advertising.

The marketing services giant has just taken a stake in WildTangent which has developed advergaming for brands like Jeep and Oakley.

WildTangent software comes pre-installed on more than half of home PCs in the US. A fact surely not to have gone unoticed by WPP.

Via Brand Republic

Auction or Buy It Now

There are loads of people who earn a decent living selling stuff on eBay and this Belgian ambient campaign capitalises beautifully on that.

The work picked up a Bronze at Cannes this year and what did the agency do. They went and sold the trophy on eBay!

A big pat on the back to the team at Mortierbrigade in Brussels.

Hasta la vista, Vista

Proving that too much PC bashing is never enough this banner poking fun at Microsoft's upcoming Vista operating system ran at a recent Apple Developers' Conference in the US.

Wii Wii Wii all the way home

This very funny piss take of the recent Mac ads sees Sony's over hyped and much troubled PS3 take on Nintendo's bizzarely named Wii.

Can't see myself going into a shop to buy something called a Wii but it sure looks more appealing than the still unreleased Playstation.

Fresh DNA delivered daily

Whether you're snowed under at work, away on a shoot or working on a assignment, there's no need to miss out on your daily dose of Brand DNA.

Even if you have the site bookmarked you still have to find the time to visit. So why not save yourself a lot of hassle and get the latest adland news from DNA delivered direct to your desktop via RSS.

If you already have an RSS reader simply cut and paste the following link into your reader: http://feeds.feedburner.com/BrandDna

If you haven't discovered the wonders of RSS click here and download it right now.

Bad guy turns out good

Yet another great TV spot for Coke.

This ones a neat twist on popular video game GTA by W&K in Portland.

Great use of game style animation by Nexus London lends the ad a really nice air of authenticity.

D.I.V.O.R.C.E.

I've always been a sucker for nice business card and this has to one of the best I've seen in ages.

Exceptional use of the medium by the Canadian hotshop John St.

Their website is well worth a look too.

Mix it up at the Tate

Forget about putting together mix tapes and compilation cds. Now you can create your very own art mix.

Whatever your mood, whatever the reason Britain’s Tate Gallery lets you compile your own art compilation online.

Just like a mix tape you can theme your collection, give it cool title and share it with a friend.

This is smart thinking from the folks at the Tate and it makes you wonder why nobody thought of it before.

Click here to play art curator yourself.

Helvetica the movie

The font Helvetica is so ubiquitous it’s now the subject of a documentary film.

Helvetica is the directorial debut of Gary Hustwit producer of I am Trying To Break Your Heart the award winning Wilco doco.

The film features interviews with several leading design figures including Hermann Zapf and Erik Spiekermann.

If you can’t wait for the scheduled 2007
release date click here and check
out the cool movie merchandise.

Help your VW feel at home

People have always given their cars names so it's surprising that no-one has ever tried an idea like this one by DDB Tribal Germany.

To get new owners to treat their VW as one of the family they were mailed a pack that included a kitsch Volkswagen print wallpaper.

Instructions in the pack showed how to decorate your garage to enable your VW to feel at home.

In a word, charming.

Beware the pop ups

According to a recent post on bannerblog internet pop-ups have moved from being annoying to possibly criminal.

Sounds a bit alarmist I know but the Australian High Tech Crime Centre has listed pop-up ads as a type of online crime.

If you think I’m joking click here and see for yourself.

Investigate the hype

Getty Images has just published their who's who or will be sometime soon list of photographers.

Put together by a team of respected talent spotters Getty claim "it's a list of the individuals we believe will change advertising imagery in 2007 and for years to come."

Marketing hype? Most definitely. But if you're on the lookout for something fresh I'd recommend you take a look at Photographers 2007.

Farewell the ultimate slogan

Cars come and cars go. But for over 30 years only one brand has laid claim to being the Ultimate Driving Machine.

Now it seems the ultimate isn’t enough for BMW.

Auto News reports that the prestige car maker is killing off the ultimate tagline and replacing it with A Company Of Ideas.

Yes you read that correctly: A Company Of Ideas.

Apparently BMW in the US has a new Vice-President of something or other who’s looking to make his mark on the company.

Looks like he’s already made a mark to me. Whether it’s the ultimate remains to be seen.

Airtime up for grabs

A group of marketers and agencies in the US are teaming with eBay to trial media sales over the online auction site.

You can buy pretty much anything on eBay these days so why not commercial airtime on TV stations?

What this will mean long term is anybody’s guess but agency creatives looking for somewhere to run their scam ads are sure to be signing up for eBay accounts.

Treadmills are go

A big tip of the hat to Russell Davies for this video by OK Go.

Cheap and ever so cheerful. I bet there's a great outakes reel.

Expect to see this idea pop up in an ad on your TV sometime soon.

DM Babushka

Every now and again an idea comes along that is so simple it's perfect.

Canadian agency Cossette are behind this very sweet Babushka DM piece to promote the1000 Years Of Russia event.

Makes me want to take the no junk mail sticker off my letter box.

Well almost....

Use your imagination

I can't remember the last Lego ad I saw but this one is a real beauty.

Nice to see the creatives at FCB in Joburg have been letting their imagination run wild.

For a closer look at this infinitely campaignable idea Click here

Photography at its finest

Magnum Photos have been capturing and documenting major events for almost 50 years.

Their photographers have been responsible for many of the most iconic images of our times.

Their new web project is Magnum In Motion where you can view brilliant photo essays on a range of subjects.

As if all that wasn’t enough reason to visit the site they have a weekly video podcast too.

Piss on the internet

In breaking news from the US Fosters has announced it is shifting its entire $5million ad budget onto the internet. I doubt you'd get a lot of TV time for that money in America but it's sure to go far on the web. Stay tuned for their first campaign which launches on lads site heavy.com later this month.

Bublin' Dublin Dub

This is one of several very kooky spots for Guinness Extra Cold featuring reggae legend and sometime extraterrestrial Lee Scratch Perry.

Scratch practically invented the musical form we now refer to as dub.

I say it's free beer for life to the creative team who spotted the link between dub and Dublin the home of Guinness.

Apple wasn't always cool

Click here to enlarge if you dare.

Carmen Elektra to be desired

Over in the US it seems Carmen Elektra has signed on to promote NV the so called “world's first beauty-enhancing weight loss pill.”

To be honest I can’t for the life of me figure out how NV is going to use the lovely Carmen.

After all she doesn’t really need to enhance her beauty or lose any weight for that matter.

As for rumours that she’s doing it purely for the money. Well….

Like a knife through...

This press ad by Y&R Santiago for soft spreadable Colun butter takes the idea of product demonstration and serves it up with a neat little twist.

What a pity we don't see more of this kind of interactivity in our newspapers and magazines.

If your eyesight's as bad as mine click here to see the ad at full size.

What's happening in Japan

Pingmag is one of the best places to go for news and views on advertising and design in Japan.

They produce a regular-ish video podcast covering all sorts of weird and wonderful stuff.

The most recent one features the inspirational Aoki Katsunori from Japanese agency Butterfly Stroke

All Pingmag podcasts come with English commentary and can be downloaded from here.

Next generation Saatchis

It's a bit hard to tell from the pic above, but this is the launch ad for Saatchi Interactive.

Click here to enlarge it and you'll see it's a print proof giving the finger to traditional thinking.

If you have any interest at all in the future of advertising click here and check out their website.

Just make sure you turn up your sound before you visit.

Pop ups piss us off

Surprise surprise: 86% of online users hate pop-up ads.

According to research by CCB most people interviewed also said they have negative feelings about the brands that use pop-ups.

With around 60% of people currently using pop-up blocking software the writing is surely on the wall for these annoying ads.

Oh what a series

Toyota US has made a 6 part made-for-mobile series called The Pool staring the Toyota Camry.

A light hearted fly on the wall look at a group of carpoolers the series was directed by filmmaker Malcolm Lee.

Toyota will be advertising both the Camry and The Pool in a campaign worth more than $10 million.