No argument from me

Wisdom of The Don

Text me...Text me now

So many ads want you to sms for something these days.

Problem is the reward for participating in sms promos is generally pretty crappy.

This poster for Axe (Lynx) knows its target market well and uses sms brilliantly.

It gives you the missing parts of the poster. Which are the most important parts for young males.

The campaign also only works after dark. Which is a nice touch.

Great work from Lowe in Uruguay of all places.

Happy Halloween #2

Hot on the heels of yesterday's Guinness Halloween ad comes this one for Miller Lite.

It's by Arc Worldwide in Chicago.

Unlike the Guiness ad it's anything but subtle.

And what kind of Creative Director lets a headline like that leave the agency?

Click pic for a better look.

Happy Halloween

Sometimes an ad can be too clever for its own good.

I suspect this one by an agency called Tempo is one of those ads.

Then again maybe I'm wrong. Because once it clicked it did make me smile.

Drink any more than two pints of Guinness however and I'm pretty sure this ad would leave you completely mystified.

It does make a change from bloody pumpkins though!

Click pic for a better look.

Where are the good banners?

I am a regular visitor to Bannerblog. Even the not so good banner ads they post there have some merit.

Which is more than I can say for most of the banners I see each and every time I go online.

I never see any decent banner ads.

In fact I can't remember the last time I saw a banner ad that made me think "I wish I'd done that".

I wonder why?

As a medium online offers unparalleled opportunities.

Yet most of the ads are shit.

It's been like that since forever.

Surely it'll have to turn the corner someday. Won't it?

Nobel Prize for denim?

Far be it from me to question the work of the mighty Wieden & Kennedy but WTF!?

What on earth has Levis got to do with gender equality or the Nobel Prize?

Bugger all if you ask me.

Back in the 60's and 70's Levis was definitely a part of the counter culture. Hell it was practically a uniform for longhairs and bra-burners everywhere.

But where is Levis in 2009?

Of course I could be completely wrong. And research labs across the world may well be populated by women wearing Levis.

But somehow I doubt it.

Click on pic to enlarge.

Born to rock

It's long. Way too long in fact. But this is a beautiful little video vignette.

There are just so many clever little details. From the baby giving the devil's horns hand gesture tthrough to the the guy turning the lights on and off in the jamming scene at the end.

Rock on AMV London!

Ch..ch..ch changes

When I first started out in the ad biz I went to show my homemade folio to the Grand Dame of Melbourne adland - Claire Worthington of Apple.

She smoked furiously throughout the fifteen or so minutes she spent with me. Bits of ash falling on my folio pages as she spoke.

As you can imagine I was incredibly nervous at the time. Yet she made me feel like I had something to offer.

She remarked on the fact that I was the only Weights & Measures Inspector she had ever met. Then gave me a list of agencies and CDs in Melbourne.

She circled names like Ted Horton and Nick Trumble and told me that they were people similar to myself in that they had had careers in an unrelated field before they got into advertising.

That meeting with Claire seems like a lifetime ago. So much has changed in my life and also the industry that I had chosen for my next big adventure.

On the weekend I was clearing old papers and junk from the cupboard in my study and I came across the list of agencies and CDs that Claire had given me.

As you can imagine the paper had yellowed and it was kinda dog-eared.

The big surprise for me was just how many of the agencies on the list were no longer a part of the Melbourne scene.

Names like Masius, Monahan Dayman Adams, Saatchi & Saatchi, DDB Needham, Wunderman Cato Johnson and dozens of small local agencies.

It's funny how we all talk (a lot) about how much our industry is changing. Yet we never really stop to think about how it always has. And probably always will.

Google Wave - Pulp Fiction

Twitter on average

Love this visualisation of an average 100 people on Twitter. It's by David McCandless. You can see more of his clever visualisations here.

Click the pic if you need to enlarge.

Not so world wide web

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't 'www' stand for Worldwide Web?

Yes of course it does.

So why is some content on the web off limits?

It's not the UK web or the USA web it's the Worldwide bloody web.


I understand there are copyright issues and similar restrictions but surely there must be a way to allow people from any country to watch other country's television programs?

Anyone got any ideas? Apart from Bit-torrent that is!

Trumpeter Swans

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet

You can't really call yourself an art director until you've used 'Lorem ipsum' in a layout.

But where do art directors get 'Lorem ipsum' from?

I don't know the answer to that question to be honest.

But if I was an art director I'd use a Lorem Ipsum Generator. A handy web based generator of latin text.

Even better than that is the new Blind Text Generator which generates a variety of generic text for layout purposes.

Click here to give it a try.

Kids or children?

Two years ago I got my then 10 year old son Max to help out on a campaign I was working on.

The product we were marketing was for teenage boys and our medium was the online kids world Habbo Hotel.

Max took one look at the brief and said we should turn it upside down.

When I asked him what he meant he explained that the minor prizes in the promo would be way more interesting to kids than the main prize.

I took his advice and the campaign went on to be the most successful ever run on Habbo Hotel in Australia.

Now EA Games has gone one better (in theory) and put a 12 year old in charge of their latest TV spot for the Nintendo Spore Hero game.

I say in theory because I just saw the ad and it looks like it was written by a couple of suits.

So I showed the ad to Max (who's now almost 13) and he said it looked like a little kids ad for a little kids game.

Guess some kids are just a bit more switched on than others.

Real life adventure

I was playing with an idea like this for the Ford Falcon Ute last year.

Sadly it never got past concept stage.

So as you can imagine I felt a serious twinge of jealousy when I saw this campaign for Ford of Europe by Ogilvy London.

87 cool things

I'm always on the lookout for cool stuff on the web.

This Google presentation features 87 cool things that they have found.

It is truly inspirational and well worth a look.

iPhone optimisation

Although it is vastly superior (in my opinion) to other mobile browsers, the iPhone web experience is obviously quite different to browsing on a computer.

Which is why optimising your site for the iPhone is definitely something to think about when creating a new site.


Smashing Magazine has recently compiled a list of iPhone optimised sites. It's a great showcase I think.

They've also put together a comprehensive list of tools and resources to help you create the perfect iPhone site.

Click here and go get inspired.

Sex sells but what about slutty?

A few months back I wrote about an article I'd seen in The Age newspaper about the use of sex in the advertising of American Apparel.

Quotes from the article included "soft-porn imagery" "semi-naked female models" and "blatant use of sex".

Now fashion blog Stylecrave has put together a list of the 50 sluttiest American Apparel ads of all time.

Slutty they may well be but they're definitely well photographed.

Click here to go take a look.

Try again...

Via

Tits 'n auto

I've worked on a lot of auto brands during my career including Ford, Peugeot, Chrysler and Volkswagen.

And in all that time I never ever wrote an ad quite like this one.

I also never worked on a brief where headlamps were considered a key selling feature for a car.

Honestly who approves this stuff?

Surely someone at Ulster Trader or their agency must have thought this was not a particularly clever idea?

Apparently not. Here's the ad in-situ:


Seems the British Advertising Standards Authority were not too keen on the ad and have just banned it.

I'm surprised they approved it in the first place!

In their defence Ulster Traders argued that their billboard used "light-hearted slang, to what people of both sexes would regard as attractive attributes."

As the Andy Millman character from Extras would say - Are they havin' a laff?

Life is about living young

People who know me well know how much I love Paul Smith.

He's a Nottingham born boy just like me.

This video was made to promote the bottle he has designed for Evian.

But it's about so much more than a bottle of water.

If you consider yourself to be a creative person you really must watch this video.

It is genuinely inspirational. Much like Paul himself.

Is it worth talking about?

The latest issue of Marketing magazine is now available at your local newsagent.

I've just posted my most recent Around the Blogosphere column online.

It looks at conversation as one of our most valuable marketing tools.

Click here to go take a look. Feel free to leave a comment and join the conversation.

A top collection

Just came across a wonderful Flickr collection of bottle caps.

Yeah yeah I know that sounds dull. But it's not. Promise!

Click here to go take a look.

Spot the difference

Everyone's an expert

I think it was Kate who pointed out that most of the top marketing blogs were written by people in who don't work in marketing.

Similarly all the people saying print is dead have probably never been involved in the print medium.

And all those experts that proclaim no-one watches TV anymore seem to be the exact same people who spent a large part of last night tweeting about the return of HeyHey on Channel Nine.

As for social media - well you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't.

People who are active online are way too quick to put down any tentative attempt at a social media campaign.

Which makes it harder and harder to get clients to dip a toe in the water.

So maybe it's time all those self proclaimed experts took some time out from being negative and instead started focussing on something positive for a change.