Working methods

Saw this and thought to myself - I am not the only one!

Cheap Heroin

The cheapest specific for the relief of coughs.

Especially at just $4.35 per ounce. Even less if you buy in bulk.

Boy how times change.

Shoot to kill Powerpoint

Powerpoint gets a bad rap. There's no denying it. But who'd have thought one of its biggest detractors would be the US military?

"Make no mistake, PowerPoint is not a neutral tool — it is actively hostile to thoughtful decision-making. It has fundamentally changed our culture by altering the expectations of who makes decisions, what decisions they make and how they make them."

That quote comes directly from the Armed Forces Journal. Wow!

Lies and damned lies

We all know that bottled water is becoming a bit of a problem.

I just don't think this campaign is the right way to tackle it.

That headline is just ridiculous. Don't you think?

The copy reads as follows:

*If bottled water companies can lie, we can too. Find out the truth at tappening.com or spread your own lie at startalie.com

I don't know about you, but I just think there has to be a better way to raise awareness of bottled water issues than this.

Anyone got any ideas?

Look behind you

Sadly this piddly little pic does not do this very cheeky Lexus billboard justice. Click the pic for a better look.

It's by CHI & Partners in the UK and it made me smile. A lot.

No tweeting please

After seeing this video snippet I suspect that Zac Martin and his buddies will not be applying for a job at the Whitehouse any time soon.

Apollo 11 - 2009 Remix

My art director and I spent ages looking at photos from the Apollo 11 mission yesterday.

We could not get over how DIY the spaceship looked. As if it was made from sheets of aluminium pop riveted together.

We also learnt that the computing power that took man to the moon was not much more than my Macbook.

So you can imagine how much we laughed when we came across this video. Classic!

Woodland fashion

I find fashion advertising baffling at the best of times.

But Bambi!?

What on earth was Stella thinking?

Category killer

"Marketing historically has been obsessed with the concept of positioning – how you are different to your competitors in your category. Increasingly, great brands are realizing that people don’t see categories and don’t obsess about them. What actually matters is having a point of view on the world, a cultural mission to ask people to rally around."

Gareth Kay - Modernista!

Sweet as

How cute are these pharmaceutical pocket packs.

I especially love the simple everyday language used for the product names.

The packaging materials are pretty great too, as they're completely compostable.

So they won't end up giving the environment a headache.

Here's a look at the full range. Click the pic to enlarge.

How much is too much?

The new VB ad by Droga5 is surely one of the most anticipated ads ever produced in this country.

VB is an Australian icon. And everyone, and I do mean everyone, cares about VB. Even people who don't drink it!

I'm not a big fan of the new ad to be honest. But I'm sure plenty of people are.

My problem, and I believe it is a problem, is with the amount of times the ad is running during The Ashes.

It runs in virtually every ad break.

Over and over and over.

Now I'm no expert in the theory of reach and frequency but surely there there is a limit to how many times you can interrupt a show with the same ad.

Any media planners out there care to explain why VB are doing this?

Art & copy & cinema

I just spent half an hour going through the program for the upcoming Melbourne Film Festival.

As usual there's lots of interesting films to see. Especially the series dedicated to the original Melbourne punk scene.

Sadly Art & Copy is one film I didn't see listed in the Festival program.

Hopefully this film about adland will make its way down under eventually as it sounds fantastic.

Click here to find out more.

Good advice

Wisdom of Malcolm

Always knew Malcolm McLaren was a smart thinker, but I never thought his ideas from the 70's would fit so neatly into much of the way I go about my day to day life in the ad biz.

Thanx to Eaon for the pic.

Creative Twitter

These tweets by @grahamcreative appeared on Twitter yesterday.

Whilst I'm no fan of people offering to work for nothing, I love the silliness of advertising your creative services on Twitter.

So much more interesting than the usual social media guru self promos we normally see on Twitter.

To find out more click here to visit Graham's blog.

Wonder when we'll see an Aussie creative trying something like this?

I love Pina Coladas

Escape (The Pina Colada Song) is one of my fave guilty pleasures. So I had high expectations for this ad.

Boy was I disappointed.

What should have been a fun throwaway idea is seriously let down by non-existent production values and incredibly wooden acting.

Even the timesheet reference wasn't enough to make me love this dud by DraftFCB in the US.

The personal approach

Radiohead introduced a whole new way of retailing music with their album In Rainbows.

In addition to the pay what you want online release they also offered a very pricey special edition boxed set.

Now Nine Inch Nails have taken the Radiohead model a step further.

They offered a $300 deluxe version of their new album. It sold out in 2 days! Grossing them somewhere in the region of $750,000.

The album was released under a Creative Commons license, yet it managed to gross sales of $1.6 million.

Goes to show that if you have something worth buying people will pay for it.

So maybe the future is not, as many experts will tell you, all about free.

Maybe, just maybe, it's about offering something a little more personal.

Drive and drink

Love this car window decal. Reminds me a lot of the Carling iPint app for the iPhone.

It's an ad for a popular brand of Chinese beer.

Which is a bit of a shame to be honest because it would have made a terrific take a cab if you've been drinking ad.

Oh well.

How many is too many?

How many agencies does the average brand need?

Ask an old school adman and he'll tell you just one.

Chances are these days it more likely to be a couple.

But I doubt anyone reading this could guess how many agencies Sony work with in the UK.

Believe it or not it's 130. And no that's not a typo!

Rumour has it Sony are looking to whittle those 130 UK agencies down to just a handful.

Carl Pring, head of UK brand and advertising, told Marketing magazine that Sony UK wanted "consistency in its marketing activities."

Given that Fallon do most of the high profile Sony work, what on earth do the other 129 agencies work on?

Shred those documents

Gotta get me one of these! Especially as it comes with its very own USB cable. Click here to find out more.

Whole lotta Rosie

This wartime poster of Rosie the Riveter is one of the all time classic advertising images.

The inspiration for this was a hard working woman called Rosalie Kunert. Sadly Rosie as she came to be known passed away this week at the age of 86.

Yet for all the talk of Rosie the Riveter, that isn't the real Rosie in the poster! It's a model by the name of Geraldine Doyle.

You can read all about Rosie here.

Bubblegum rocks

Those of you who follow me on Twitter will know that music is important to me. So I think you can appreciate just how excited I was when I came across this collection of rockin' bubblegum cards. Brings back memories of the graduation invite that the RMIT advertising kids did a couple of years ago.

Is selfish is good

You really need to click the pic to appreciate this ad.

It's one of the nicest long copy ads I've seen in ages. Yet it doesn't use long copy. Well not in the traditional sense anyway.

Click the pic to enlarge and see for yourself.

Lovely work by BBDO Jo'burg.

Pages of perfection

I love a good book cover and I love this Flickr set of classic Penguin covers.

Around the Blogosphere

The July issue of Marketing magazine is out now. As usual there's plenty to read within its pages including my Around the Blogosphere column.

This month I look at using social media to get yourself connected, noticed and employed. Click here to go take a look. And don't forget to add your two cents worth in the comments.

Sick or sad?

Negative residual was one of the things Marcus Tarrant used to always bang on about all those years ago when I went to Copyschool. I don't think the people responsible for this ad ever got that lecture.

It's the future

Another classic cartoon from Mr Jetpack. Click it for a better look.

Front page Thriller

Can't believe it's taken a week for me to see this.

Man I love the headline writing skills of the Brit tabloids.

Via the Chimp.

It's Man Week

It's Man Week and Gavin Heaton has roped me into getting involved.

Apparently I'm surposed to write something about my feelings as a man.

But this blog is about the world of advertising. So I'll see if I can come up with something that combines both.

I left school early and took the advice of my parents - get yourself a trade and you'll be set for life.

Thing was, after a few years getting my hands dirty fixing things I realised that being a tradie wasn't for me.

So in my late 20's I set out to become a copywriter.

I was so excited when I got offered my first job in an ad agency.

As you can imagine I rang my parents to tell them.

Boy were they excited....Not!

"What d'you wanna do that for?" said my dad.

"You've got a good job, company car. Why would you want to give that up?"

"What about your super?"

I was gutted.

I was so proud. Yet they made me feel anything but.

They just could not understand how I felt, living my life as a square peg wedged into a round hole.

They knew only of their world. A world where you left school, got a trade, got married, had kids and eventually retired.

I didn't want to settle for that world. I wanted to venture out and discover a new one.

A world where you had fun at work.

A world where your opinons counted for something.

A world that was not a glamorous as it seemed on the TV, but was way more glamorous than the shithole where I worked.

Sadly I still don't think my parents understand my decision. Which makes me a little sad to be honest.

But I can guarantee you that when my kids Ruby and Max grow up and go out to work I'll support them no matter what they choose to do.

For more on Man Week click here.