Early urban spam

I always thought that ambient advertising and urban spam were relativly recent ideas.

By recent I mean the last 20 years.

Turns out advertising has been invading public spaces for a lot longer than I realised.

Back in 1930 a Barcelona wine merchant used a rolling drum and stencil to advertise his wares on the pavement.

Unlike today's interuptive advertisers he didn't use paint.

He used water!

Which meant that after a while his messaging disappeared.

Environmentally sensitive advertising. In the 1930s.

Who'd have thought?

Headline of the week

Obviously this ad predates the war on terror. Then again maybe the client just had a warped sense of humour. Who knows!

Not waving, drowning

Well folks it had to happen eventually. I'm surfing the Google Wave.

At least I would be if I knew what the hell to do with it.

I feel a bit like a pommy backpacker at a surf school in Bondi staring at the Wave but with no idea how to ride it.

If you're already on the Wave get it touch. My username is branddna.johnson

Another design dies

The much delayed myki public transport ticketing system will be launching shortly in Melbourne.

Once it takes hold we'll probably be saying goodbye to travelcards and tickets.

Another little piece of Australia lost forever.

Yeah I know it's dumb to get nostalgic about tram tickets but someone somewhere spent time designing them you know.

And as Paul Smith says, you can find inspiration in everything. Even bus and tram tickets!

If you don't believe me click here and check this wonderful collection of ticketing memories.

Play with Penguin

I think you'd have agree that it's almost impossible not to love the classic styling of Penguin books.

So you can imagine how keen I am to get my hands on The Great Penguin Bookchase.

That's bookchase by the way not bookcase.

And guess what - It's a boardgame!


Pretty clever huh?

Click here to learn more and order one for yourself.

Watch me!

Somehow, don't ask me how, this blog has managed to scrape into the Top 50 marketing blogs to watch in 2010 list.

There are some big names on the list too including the likes of Chris Brogan, Seth Godin and Drew McLellan.

Click here to go take a look.

Where's the good stuff?

I went up to Sydney for an award show last week.

As usual many of the winners had me feeling a little envious.

But the next day, as I sat waiting 5 1/2 hours for my delayed flight home, I got to thinking;

Why are award shows the only place to see great work?

Sure we get the occasional moment of brilliance in our media, but for every great piece there are 100 duds.

Actually make that more than 100 duds.

So what do we as an industry need to do to improve the quality of our work?

Even just a little bit.

Seriously shake proof

Anyone who's ever travelled in Asia is sure to be familiar with these ramshackle three wheeler taxis.

Sure they might look cute in photos but they're a pretty bumpy ride.

Which is why putting an ad for a seriously steady camera on top of them is such a good idea.

If you can get a great shot from the back of one of these babies you can get a great shot just about anywhere.

Top stuff from Saatchi's Jakarta.

Nice tagline too - Seriously shake proof.

Classic ad of the month

I know cigarettes are bad for you but how beautiful is this ad?

Great music. Wonderful art direction.

Classic creative thinking from the legendary CDP in London.

Hard to believe it's 30 years old!

Are you in good company?

One of the things that bugs me about Twitter is the way they are constantly tweaking it.

I'm a big believer in not fixing things if they aren't broken.

One of their most recent initiatives was the introduction of Lists.

I have no idea why. I really don't.

Seems I might be in the minority though if MustExist is correct.

According to their site I appear in a whole bunch of Twitter Lists.

No idea why. But I was very interested in seeing who else was in some of the lists I appear in.

If you're on Twitter click here to give it a try.

Become a DoGooder

I've been thinking a lot about green initiatives lately for one of our clients. So you can imagine how excited I was when stumbled across the DoGooder.

It's an ingenious plug-in that enables you to support green initiatives and charities simply by surfing the web.

How's it work? Glad you asked.

Once installed the DoGooder replaces the banner ads you're supposed to see with green, charity or cheeky DoGooder messages like those shown in the NY Times above.

Pretty clever huh?

According to the DoGooder website their plugin doesn't actually block the original banner ads. And any click related revenue agreement is unaffected.

To learn more about this very clever idea click here.

Tenacity, tenacity & tenacity

Laura Davies & Mark Lees are a young creative team who recently graduated from college. They did a 2 week placement at Wunderman London. Which is where they made this movie. It is jam packed with pearls of wisdom from my colleagues in Camden.

Did God approve this?

Stumbled across this less than classic ad today. Proof that even Apple was daggy when they were young.

Sanity prevails

Saw this ad on a website some time ago and It made me smile.

Totally random headline. Not that I have any idea what it means.

Which is perhaps why it made me smile.

Sadly a bunch of people with nothing better to do complained to the British Advertising Standards Authority about it.

Reckoned it suggested oral sex with a bull.

Luckily sanity prevailed and the ASA dismissed the complaints saying that although some people may interpret suck a bull's udder in a sexual way young children and other 'innocent' viewers would not.

Yes, but...

The day you stop asking why is the day you stop learning. And the day you stop learning is the day you die. So keep your mind fresh and visit the wonderful Learn Something Everyday.

Happy Anniversary George

It's the 75th anniversary of the agency everyone in Aussie adland knows as Patts. George Patterson Y&R.

75 years in business is a long time. But 75 years in the ad business is a seriously long time. Especially in Australia.

It makes Patts older than US agencies like Ogilvy and DDB.

To celebrate their anniversary the team at Patts have put their Top 20 ads on YouTube.

If you grew up in Australia you're sure to recognise many of them. It's a brilliant body of work.

The 'Memories' ad above is a certified classic and was the first Aussie ad to win a Grand Prix at Cannes.

Here's a couple more of my personal favorites.





To see the rest of the Top 20 click here.

Ad after ad afer ad

One of the most annoying things about Australian television is the way that programs never seen to start or finish on time.

I always thought this was some kind of ploy by the networks to stop you switching channels at the end of a show.

Turns out that may not be the case at all.

According to the regulatory authority, networks are allowed to air a maximum of 13 minutes of advertising per hour during the evening.

I think you’d have to agree that’s more than enough ads.

Yet our TV networks are blatantly flouting these restrictions.

According to a survey conducted by the Herald Sun, networks often cram in as much as 19 minutes of advertising during an hour show.

19 minutes!

No wonder the shows don’t start or finish on time.

And no wonder so many people say they hate advertising.

Apple v Microsoft

Interesting comparison of the advertising of Apple and Microsoft.
Well worth five minutes of your time I think.

Theft or fandom?

You know that downloading television shows has become commonplace when there’s a two page article about it in your local newspaper.

Just to clarify - that’s the local paper that gets delivered to your house free of charge. Not an actual daily newspaper.

I couldn’t help noticing the article over breakfast this morning as it featured a photo of a small stack on TV show DVDs. And I owned pretty much all of them.

It was so nice to read something in the mainstream media about downloading that wasn’t hysterical or hyperbolic.

In fact I found myself nodding along as I read.

Bizarrely it seems many of the shows that are popular in Australia, like Desperate Housewives and House, are also amongst the most downloaded.

Why?

Because people want to see episodes as soon as they can. They don’t want to wait. In fact they can’t.

They are not downloading to steal. They are not downloading to burn discs and sell them at flea markets.

These people are true fans of a show.

So why are they constantly tarred with the brush of theft and piracy?

Naughty or not?

I know very little about Islam or its traditions but I would have thought that perving on a half naked woman before she puts on her Burqa is wrong.

Which either makes this a very naughty ad or a highly offensive one.

What do you think?

Around the Blogosphere

The latest issue of Marketing magazine hit the newsagents on Monday. And for some reason my latest column appears to have gotten one young man a little riled up. Read all about that here.

My last column was seemingly a lot less controversial. It looked at how mobile marketing appears to be finally getting mobilised. Click here to read it at my Around the Blogosphere blog.

Farewell Freeman

Just heard one of my favourite little US agencies is shutting its doors. After more than 20 years Cliff Freeman & Partners has fallen victim to the GFC. They leave behind a body a charmingly clever work including this wonderful TV spot for Little Caesers.

I'ma let you finish

Yo, internet memes! I'm real happy for ya, and I'ma let you finish, but theez 2009 internet memes are da best internet memes of all time!