See you next year

Just got sent a link to this video in an email. Fun way to end the year on Brand DNA. Big thank you to everyone who stopped by. Hope to see you all in 2009. Best...Stan x

Try the 70's on for size

To celebrate their 60th birthday Puma have launched a website where you can have fun with the sporting fashions of years gone by.

As you can imagine the old school clothes from the sixties and seventies are the best.

For added fun you can even see how you would look in some of the seriously unfashionable threads from the Puma archive.

Sadly some lazy creative person has named this Past Masher. Still great fun though!

Mac or PC for Christmas?

Very sweet animated twist on the I'm a Mac campaign.
What's not to love?

Start your own agency

Everything you need to start an agency can be found in this box.

You can get yours for under $10 on eBay.

Well you could this morning. Sadly it's just been sold!

Thought for the day

Mad Men go digital

Click here for part two.

Merry Christmas

Here at the home of DNA the tree is twinkling. The grand-parents are snoozing on blow up beds. The kids are pretending to be asleep. And I'm writing a blog post and keeping an eye on Twitter. Merry Christmas.

Headlines of the year

These are the year's best from satirical mag The Onion. Props to the Guardian for sending them to my inbox.

Man With Apple Hovering In Front Of Face Sues René Magritte's Estate

New VH1 Show Cancelled For Not Being Pathetic Enough

Woman Profoundly Moved By Lyrics Artist Put Zero Time Or Effort Into

Black Guy Asks Nation For Change

'I Am Under 18' Button Clicked For First Time In History Of Internet

Powerful 'His And Hers' Towel Lobby Stalls Gay Marriage Legislation

MTV Movie Awards Snubs Director Jonas Mekas Yet Again

Commas, Turning Up, Everywhere

Wealthy Teen Nearly Experiences Consequences

History Doomed To Repeat Itself, Reports Man Who Just Dropped Food On Pants

Not so say my kids

They'rre grrreat!!

I think kids' cereal boxes have some of the funnest illustration around.

Who among you doesn't have childhood memories of Tony the Tiger, Snap Crackle & Pop, The Fruit Loops Toucan etc?

They may be sugary. They may not be as healthy as they make out they are. But colourful kids' cereal packaging is even more fun than a crunchy chocolate milkshake.

If you're up for a few more early morning childhood flashbacks go visit the excellent Aeron blog.

Have a decent break

If you're looking to take a break where better to take it than this KitKat bench.

Could be they're creating a whole new ad medium with this - Benchvertising.

VW Golf takes on itself

This new Golf spot by DDB London launches this weekend in the UK.

Obviously a much bigger budget than anything I've worked on this year!

Anyone know who did the Kraftwerk remix used in the soundtrack?

Where's the Gorilla?

Two thumbs up to Zac for tipping me off to this clever tweek of the Cadbury Gorilla.

Real estate scam I mean spam

A big thank you to all the DNA readers who decided to follow me on to Twitter. Your patronage is much appreciated.

One thing I've noticed during my brief time tweeting is the number of spam twitts.

And I have to say they're just as annoying in Twtter as they are in my email inbox.

My favourite spam follower has to be the Real Estate Institute of Victoria.

Honestly. As if estate agents don't a bad enough image already.

Now they're taxing downloads

I just read that the Governor of New York state wants to introduce a tax on digital downloads of music, movies etc.

Is he serious or is this a very early April Fools joke?

Digital piracy and illegal downloading has been around for ages.

Apple are one of the few companies to build a successful download business in a marketplace where a large percentage of people are quite happy to get stuff for free rather than pay for it.

Surely a tax of this type will only move people away from legal stores like iTunes and back to torrents, rapidshare etc.

Reminds me of when I was young and the music companies wanted to put a tax on blank cassettes.

Funny how so called regulatory bodies always seem to trot out the same old solutions every few years. Don't you think?

Empty promises

I know banks are fond of empty promises but this one from ANZ really takes the Christmas cake me thinks.

Making Christmas a little more convenient.

How on earth do they do that?

And when did Christmas become inconvenient anyway?

And why oh why are ANZ offering extended branch hours?

Hardly anyone withdraws cash from a bank branch these days. Do they?

Apart from paying in my tax refund cheque I haven't set foot in a bank for over 18 months.

I use an ATM.

They make things much more convenient. Especially at Christmas.

Vodafone & Last.fm

In a pioneering social media musical move Vodafone has announced a partnership with Last-fm.

Javier Foncillas from Vodafone Group, says: “With Last-fm, Vodafone continues to pioneer social networking on mobiles, delivering a new, relevant and unique music experience, to millions of customers, across our high speed, reliable network.”

Don't know about the high speed reliable network bit, but the rest of it is pretty much spot on me thinks.

Sadly it's only available on selected Nokia phones at the moment.

So iPhone users will have to stick to the iTunes Store and the 16gb iPod built into their phone.

Is this product placement?

I'm a Mac man through and through.

I've been using and loving Mac computers for as long as I can remember.

I've got several other Apple products at home. All of which I love.

But I have to say the whole Apple fanaticism can be a tad tiring.

Which is why I absolutely lurve this Apple spoof from The Simpsons.

It's brilliant. The detailing is second to none.

And my favourite bit?

That surely has to be the homage to the 1984 TV spot where the Comic Book Guy hurls the sledgehammer.

Ideas for sale

Scott Goodson of Strawberry Frog recently published a brief interview with Guy Kawasaki.

One particular comment about ad agencies caught my eye:

"They should try selling a product instead of helping others sell their
product. It's a whole different world from being an agency."

More here.

Best use of video in 2008

I was going to title this post best viral for 2008 but I couldn't be bothered with all the rants and comments from social media specialists going on about how you can't call something viral because only people can make it viral etc etc.

So in the interests of peace and quiet in the comments I present to you the most popular video created to spread a message in 2008.

The video was chosen by GoViral not me.

Their choice was based on compiling numbers of views from Youtube, Dailymotion, Metacafe, Break and Vimeo.

A very worthy winner.

By the way, if you're interested in ROI on the video I'd suggest you contact the Whitehouse.

This makes me really >:(

Regular visitors to DNA will I'm sure be familiar with my issues over trademarking of symbols and everyday language.

Now a Russian entrepreneur has gone and trademarked an emoticon.

Not just any old emoticon mind you. My favourite one.

Honestly how on earth can someone lay claim to the ownership of a combination of a semi-colon, hyphen and a bracket?

It's totally insane.

What next? Someone trademarking individual letters of the alphabet?

Quantum of Bonds

My first Bond was Live and let die so I'll always be a Roger Moore man.

Have to say I love this battle of the new Bonds. Very clever.

Thanx to Kate from Marketing mag.

Advertising the bailout

This spoof was obviously not done by an agency as the headlines are really not working hard enough.

Still bloody funny though!

Especially the tagline - We're the big 3. We don't need to compete.

Click pic to enlarge and read the copy.

Via

Another Amazon post

Call me a snob if you want too, but if there's one place I wouldn't go shopping for a diamond ring it's Amazon.

Especially a $9,500 ring.

Even if it was reduced from $14,630.

Although I have to admit the offer of free shipping is quite tempting.

Not quite artificial intelligence

Amazon has just released an iPhone app in time for every retailer's favourite shopping season.

As you can imagine it lets you browse and search the Amazon site from the comfort of your iPhone.

Where it gets interesting is the app also includes an Amazon Remembers feature.

This lets you take a photo of something with your iPhone which the app will match to the item on the Amazon database.

Sounds amazing doesn't it?

Well guess what - It's all done using Amazon's Mechanical Turk.


The Mechanical Turk is what Amazon calls its artificial artificial intelligence.

No that's not a typo.

Their artificial intelligence isn't artificial at all. It's human!

In fact it's a bunch of people who look at the iPhone pics, work out what the product is that has been photographed, then go looking for it on Amazon.

Who'd have thought such a seemingly high tech service would be so dependent on a bunch ordinary folks looking to make a dollar?

If you fancy a stint as a Mechanical Turk click here to find out more.

These trumps are tops

Type Trumps.

The ultimate Xmas gift for art directors, designers and any other type obsessed friend you may have.


Via

What the!?

Apologies to Angus but it looks like my self deprecating self promotional activities have paid off.

All I need now is an invite to Kevin's next summit.

Building an organic nation brand

New Zealand has been doing a great job building an organic brand for itself. Organic Kiwi produce is all over Melbourne these days.

Be interesting to see if the new goverment over there capitalises on this great export opportunity.

In fact I'd love to get David MacGregor's thoughts on this.

One of the first of the Kiwi organic brands to make it to Oz was the fruit juice company Phoenix.

I kinda like the clumsy language and all over the place design of their new delivery truck.

What do you think?

Thanx to Nev for the pic.

Classic Australiana

Came home tonight to find my St Kilda FC membership renewal sitting in the letter box.

Which reminded me to post this classic TV spot I found the other day on the St Kilda forum.

It features the late great Saints superstar Trevor Barker.

Quite why this ad missed out on a Lion at Cannes way back when is anyone's guess.

Bruce Lee takes on Nokia

Gotta love this video work for Nokia.

No idea what Bruce Lee has got to do with mobile phones but who cares!

Way better than the Mars Bars ad with Bruce Lee from a few years back.

The sequel is just as good if not better than the first.

Love the use of black & white too.

Although I have to say I'm not that keen on the inclusion of a search function on the Google video player.

Thick Skins

I remember when Skins was first launched in Australia they ran ads saying something along the lines of We don’t pay sports stars to wear our products. They pay us.

Seemed like a great strategy to me.

Until my football mad son told me that it wasn't true.

He pointed out the Skins logo on the team jumpers at a game we were at. "They're team sponsors Dad," he said.

Hmmm!?

The ads in question went on to pick up several awards.

Now it seems the truth is starting to emerge.

The ACCC has just fined Skins $120,000 for breaches of the Trade Practices Act.

And if that wasn't embarrassing enough the Advertising Federation of Australia announced today that the agency behind the Skins campaign will be stripped of the 4 awards they won at the AFA Effectiveness Awards.

Ouch!

Tipped off by Twitter

Regular visitors will know that I resisted Twitter for a very long time.

Much as I hate to admit it - I'm hooked.

Can't really see the point of it but I guess that is the point. Well kinda.

Anyway today I learned that Brand DNA has somehow managed to gatecrash the just published global list of Top 50 marketing blogs to watch in 2009.

So where did I uncover this information?

Why Twitter of course.

A huge Fonzie thumbs up to Jules for Twittering the news.

If you're a first time visitor who's come here via the Top 50 welcome.

Feel free to subscribe to the RSS feed or get yourself more manageable bite size chunks by following me on Twitter.

The links are both over there on the right.

Perception Vs Reality

Age tipped me off to this video.

Very interesting. Especially given the recent banning of an iPhone TV ad in the UK.

Thing is it doesn't worry me that things don't happen as quickly as they do in the ad.

I bought the iPhone because I wanted it. Badly.

Advertising didn't impact on my purchase decision at all.

If this video results in better faster service then I'll be even happier.

And whether or not the performance is quite as good as the ads say it is, it definitely made life bearable for me last night as I sat in a cold primary school playground enduring a kid's Xmas concert.

Headline of the year

Bet those Somali pirates are kicking themselves that they never hijacked this ship.

Victim of peer pressure

Take a look to the right.

Notice anything different?

Yep. I've succumbed to peer pressure and started twittering.

You can follow my antics in bite sized chunks if you click here.

You can also click the follow me on twitter link off to the left.

Please note: Just because I'm twittering doesn't mean I'm going to start wearing unicorn T-shirts.

The business of blogging

The Christmas edition of Marketing magazine is out now. In my regular Around The Blogosphere column I take a look at the business of blogging.

Click here to take read my latest ramble.

The Marketing website is also looking pretty good these days. Click here to go check it out.