Back soon

I'm off on holiday for a couple of weeks.

There may be an occasional post to the blog while I'm away.

Then again there may not.

See you on 1st July.

DM gets dirty

This was a very worthy winner of a direct Gold Lion at Cannes this morning.

It's one of the best product demonstrations I've ever seen.

Wish I'd thought of it!

Click the pic for a closer look at this great work for Breeze detergent from Lowe Bangkok.

No Lion for me this year

After all the excitement of the last few days I was brought back down to earth this morning when the Direct Lions winners were announced.

Still a Cannes finalist is better than no finalist at all.

And I have to say I'm so proud of that little dm pack.

Big thanx to everyone who took the time leave their kind words in the comments on my previous posts.

Origin are on a roll

After picking up a Bronze at the MADC Awards on Friday the humble Origin recycled mail pack was this morning short listed at Cannes.

As you can imagine I'm pretty excited.

Although I have to admit this is most definitely the ugliest job I have ever produced.

Melbourne's best

It was Melbourne advertising's night of nights last night and what a night it was.

69 Categories covering advertising, design and creative craft.

109 awards handed out.

The much admired Schweppes Burst picked up a couple of gongs including the coveted ad of the year.

I felt like a proud father catching up with many of the RMIT kids I have mentored over the years, including James and Juzzy from DDB who nabbed a Bronze for their work on My Career.

Yours truly also walked off with a Bronze for the Origin GreenPower recycled mail pack.

I'm sure a list of winners and finalists will eventually be posted on the MADC website. Once the hangovers have eased of course.

Product or packaging?

When I was a young advertising wannabe the following mantra was drummed into me;

We sell benefits not products.

So what does this ad sell?

It's from a campaign by Deutsch to launch the new Ikea in New York.

It doesn't sell product or benefit.

It sells the packaging.

Or is it the packaging method?

I always thought Ikea was about affordable design.

Never stop trying

Advertising overkill

I am an unabashed fan of Host and their creative partners the Glue Society.

Two Australian agencies who have been responsible for some of the most groundbreaking work produced in this country over the last few years.

Sadly their new campaign for BT Financial Services is anything but groundbreaking.

Well not in a good way anyway.

The colour magazines included in Saturday's newspapers carried five consecutive double page spreads for BT.

That's ten consecutive pages of BT advertising.

Why?

According to the Host press release, "BT aims to snap consumers out of their inertia and encourage them to re-evaluate their priorities."

Me thinks they'd be better off re-evaluating their media planning.

Arm yourself with Lego

BrickGun proudly bills itself as the home of the coolest Lego weapons in the world.

Hmm!?

No surprise to find the following piece of small print tucked away at the base of their website:

"LEGO" is a trademark of the lego group which does not sponsor, authorise or endorse this site or its contents.

Access to news

I read this morning on NineMSN that Hilary Clinton had finally conceded defeat and endorsed Barack Obama.

The news story had a link to a video of Clinton's speech, so I clicked on the link to go and watch it.

Rather than the video I got a NineMSN dialog box telling me that my browser was not compatible with their video.

In spite of this, the dialog box offered the chance to proceed to video if I wanted to. So I did.

I landed on a page with dozens of video screen grabs, but no sign of the Clinton video.

Frustrated I headed to the New York Times.

Not only did they have a video that worked, they showed me what on online newspaper is all about.

The video was her speech in full. It ran for close to half an hour.

Alongside the video in a separate screen was a transcript of her speech.

Next to that was a list of links to key parts of the speech, much like a DVD chapter list.

So rather than sit through ten minutes of platitudes and thank yous I could get straight to the nitty gritty.

It wasn't that long ago that the New York Times made you pay for a lot of their online content.

Not anymore.

It has followed the lead set by The Guardian many years ago and become a 21st century newspaper.

Sadly NineMSN, which proudly proclaims itself Australia's most visited web portal, offers me little more than a handful of news stories and celebrity puff pieces. What a wasted opportunity.

Teenage lifeline

We recently upgraded my daughter's mobile phone.

As part of her new contract she receives an itemised bill listing all calls, even the free calls included in her plan.

Her first bill turned up this week. It was 17 pages long!

That's 17 double sided A4 pages. Which means it's actually 34 pages long.

On top of all those phone calls she also sent 1235 text messages.

I have no idea what she talks and texts about, but when you add in all the instant messages and MySpace updates she makes she's quite literally never alone.

I was going to ask her if she'd heard of or used things like Twitter or Plurk, but somehow I doubt she has time for them. She's too busy talking to friends or hanging out with them.

Enough already

Today is June 7th. Which means it's still two whole months before the Beijing Olympics.

And yet I'm already sick of them.

Why?

Olympics advertising.

It's been a wet and wintery weekend here in Melbourne, so I've watched a lot of TV these last couple of days.

Theres an Olympics related ad in virtually every break.

Proud sponsors. Official suppliers. Your Olympic network.

Enough already!

If it's like this now, what's it gonna be like in a month or two's time?

Video of the week

I'm currently killing time in the reception at JWT Melbourne.

I turned up late for a 2.30pm inter agency meeting which has been rescheduled to 4pm.

Big thanks to Gavin for making my time wasting time in reception worthwhile with this lovely piece of work by Clemenger Sydney.

My melancholy moods

As anyone who's followed my Facebook status updates of late would know, I've been struggling to get my Muxtape up and running.

It's been incredibly frustrating. Songs that wouldn't upload, pages that wouldn't load, not to mention random site crashes.

Anyway they seem to have chased away whatever gremlins were bugging them and the site is now working well.

As is, I think, is my cassette mix for Brand DNA.

Like me it's a tad melancholy, but with a few smiles along the way.

Click here to listen to the sounds of Brand DNA.

Scorcese at the Clios

The Martin Scorcese helmed Freixenet ad/film for JWT Barcelona generated a a lot of talk on adsites and blogs last year.

It really is a beautiful piece of film making.

Check it out here if you haven't seen it.

The ad/film won a Gold Clio recently.

I was very pleased to find Scorcese's acceptance speech on YouTube and wanted to share it with you.

The guy seems genuinely chuffed to have picked up an advertising award.

Was difficult worth doing?

Much chatter out in the advertising blogsphere these last couple of days about the live to air Honda skydiving ad in the UK.

In very sad news today, one of the planes used in the stunt has crashed, killing two people.

Now as much as I admire the the brazen thinking behind the Honda ad, imagine if the unthinkable had happened and that plane had crashed live to air the day before.

In fact I can't imagine something so terrible to be honest.

It would have made for horrific viewing as close to 2 1/2 million people watched the stunt live on television.

Much respect to everyone involved. But as a wiser man than I once said, it's only an ad. It's really not that important in the greater scheme of things.

Where is the future?

The latest issue of Marketing magazine is out this week.

In my regular column I take a look at Blogosphere chatter around the future.

The future of the web. The future that came true despite a few naysayers. And the advertising agency of the future.

Click here to read the latest Around the Blogosphere.

If you agree or disagree with any points discussed please feel free to leave a comment.

Fresh thinking?

Came across this beautiful Land Rover print ad the other day.

Excellent performance on land or water is the headline.

Always nice to see a good idea so simply expressed.

Thing is it reminds me of an expression that one of my old creative mentors always used to use when we showed him concepts.

"I love that idea, I really do. But not as much as the last time I saw it."

Land Rover by Grey Ecuador - VW by Springer Jacoby Hamburg.