Your Saturday smiler

Work that feels like play

Click pic to enlarge.

Data's an expense but knowledge is a bargain

Hardly a day goes past at the moment without some guru or other blathering on about the importance of data.

The thing is data is worthless if you don't gain any insights from it.

And nowhere is this more important than in direct marketing.

In 2012 the eDM is rapidly taking the place of standard direct mail.

Which is not surprising given it costs 2/3 of nothing to email thousands of people.

But what so many of the agencies pumping out eDMs fail to realise is the basic rules of direct marketing still apply whether use use email or snail mail.

Know your customer!

An eDM I recently received from PayPal is a great case in point.


A cursory glance at the email reveals quite quickly that these people know very little about me.

But they should.

After all I've been on eBay for 12 years and using Paypal for around 10.

So they must have a decent amount of data on me.

Yet that data is worthless if no insights are gained from it.

And if they'd bothered to look at my data PayPal would know:

* My name is Stanley Johnson not Johnson Stanley

* I am a middle aged man so I am not a Supre shopper

* I live in Melbourne so have no interest in Sydney Easter show

* I am 4sq Mayor of my local Dan Murphy's and buy beer not bubbles.

What a waste.

A waste of money. A waste of my time. And a huge waste of all that valuable data.

Smart spammers

The pic above is a screen grab of a spam Twitter profile.

Definitely not your average spammer.

At least on Twitter anyway.

Usually they have a ridiculous little bio filled with smut or sexual innuendo.

But not this one.

She's billing herself as the illegitimate child of strategy and creativity.

It's pretty good don't you think?

Especially if you're following one of the many ad industry types on Twitter.

Problem is if she really was the child of strategy and creativity chances are she wouldn't look like that.

In fact I doubt she'd even be a woman.

More likely a powerpoint.

How quickly technology dates

Aussie TV spot for the Commodore 64 from the same year as Apple's legendary 1984 ad.

Not quite in the same league obviously.

Although I did remember the jingle once it starting playing!

It's not about search

Wisdom of Mr Clow

If anyone knows Lee Clow does. End of story.

Technicolour Olivetti

Love love love these old Olivetti posters.

Very Yellow Submarine meets Austin Powers but in a totally good way.

Wish I knew who did the illustrations.

Don Draper versus reality

Don Draper presenting the emotional story behind this ad is one of my favourite moments in Mad Men.

His technique of personal storytelling when presenting work is something I do all the time.

But how do The Don's ads compare to the actual ads produced at the time?

Well here's the actual Kodak Carousel ad:


The actual Carousel ad is very much of its time unlike Draper's ad for Janzen was way ahead of its time.

In fact it looks like it would have come from the 1970's.

Unlike the original which looks like it was done in the 1930's!



Like Janzen the Mad Men ad for Life cereal also looks very modern.

I love the bold use of type too.

In fact it reminds me a lot of the print work of the Campaign Palace in their heyday.


Of course the original Life ad does have a certain charm.

But it has none of the cut through of the Draper piece.

David Droga on Mad Men

Having an idea

Animal attraction

Made me smile when I heard this morning that Lynx is going to be sponsoring a pair of pandas in Edinburgh Zoo during mating season.

Yes I know it's corny.

And perhaps a little tasteless.

But like all Lynx advertising it knows its target market very well.

I'm just not sure its target market hangs around in zoos looking at cute 'n cuddly pandas.

Then again girls love pandas...

Watch what you tweet

I was shocked to read this morning about the collapse and hospitalisation of footballer Fabrice Muamba in England.

Totally bizarre story.

But not as bizarre as hearing that since his collapse a man has been arrested by police for allegedly making offensive racist tweets about the matter.

Given how many tweets are posted every day it must be bloody hard to monitor this sort of stuff.

So I'm glad that the authorities do.

And yet I'm not happy to hear that police are eavesdropping on our tweet streams.

But then again they are public so I guess it's perfectly ok.

Unlike racist tweets.

The rise of Facebook advertising

The largest publisher of online advertising in Australia isn't a media company.

Well not in the traditional sense.

It's Facebook.

And Facebook currently accounts for almost one out of every four display ad impressions.

That's an astonishing figure.

Especially when you consider that as recently as five years ago most people hadn't even heard of Facebook.

Weird thing is I don't think I've ever clicked on an ad on Facebook.

Have you?

Chubby Hubbies

Gay marriage is a hot topic at the moment.

And to show their support (or cash in on it - depends how you look at it) Ben & Jerry have renamed one of their ice cream flavours in the UK.

What I don't understand is how they came up with the name.

They're changing Oh My! Apple Pie to Apple-y Ever After.

Yes. I know it it has marriage connotations but it hardly shouts we support gay marriage.

Or maybe it does. Especially as there's a pic of two grooms on a cake.

But personally I reckon it's a missed opportunity.

What is nice though is the brand has partnered with gay-rights charity Stonewall to encourage people to use the #applyeverafter hashtag on Twitter to register their support for the legislation.

Tick Tick Tick

After a lifetime in the ad business I'm sad to say that the former are starting to outnumber the later.

Where's my logo?

I was just reading an article about Scottish football team Celtic boycotting the print media.

It's connected to alleged misreporting of the financial situation of rival Glasgow club Rangers.

After the Celtic game yesterday their coach restricted his interviews to just the BBC and Sky TV.

He was quoted as saying, "There's a lot of muckraking going on between some hacks... the players are not going to be speaking to you."

Personally I don't have a problem with this. In fact I love the way the club is taking a stand.

However I wonder how their sponsors feel.

By restricting media coverage of the team and its players the club is also restricting exposure of their sponsor logos.

And I don't know about you but if I was paying a tonne of money to sponsor a football club I'd definitely be expecting maximum exposure of my logo.

Show me the money!

I'm sure you've heard by now about the leaking of the Twitter financials.

Well if you haven't the company lost somewhere in the region of $26 million last year.

Hardly a surprise if you ask me.

I just can't see a way for them to make money.

I really can't.

And given there are around 100,000,000 active users on Twitter that is definitely something of a problem.

Classy campaign

Love this campaign.

Beautifully photographed and art directed.


Seems to be getting harder and harder to convince clients of the value of good photography these days.

So respect to the team behind this campaign.

Especially Bjoern Ewers the photographer.

What's not to love?

Miranda likes Lipton

It's Miranda Kerr.

Flogging Lipton ice tea.

In Japan.

Seriously. What's not to love?

The future looks bright

This graph is taken from the recently published SODA Report on digital marketing outlook.

It shows quite clearly that writers and content creators are more in demand than ever in the digital economy.

Obviously the graph is a bit on the hard to read side so click it if you want to enlarge it.

Interestingly the development of online advertising sits at the bottom of the graph.

Which is great. I reckon.

Because I'd much rather be creating content than doing crappy old banner ads.

Fingers crossed clients keep thinking this way too!

Where's the 3 little pigs?

The Guardian's Three Little Pigs spot out of BBH London is generating plenty of talk online.

And I suspect it'll generate plenty of award show metal as well.

But nobody seems to be talking about the print campaign.

In fact the only mention I've seen about this campaign was on Facebook where two industry people were debating why the idea from the TVC hadn't been followed through in the print.


Now I don't know about you but if there's one thing I hate it's a lazy "matching luggage" campaign where the print is nothing more than an adaptation of the TV ad.

This campaign is not one of those. Far from it in fact.

Spend a few moments with these ads and you'll eventually see how beautifully they capture the idea behind The Guardian's new Open Journalism approach.

Pretty clever. Don't you think?

Advertising Invaders

Love the internet.

Love social media.

Love new kid on the block Pinterest.

What I don't love is when these services that allow us to gather and share with like minded souls get invaded by advertisers.

I don't mind brands. Especially if I invite them in.

But adverts. Especially crass ones like the Pinterest example above.

Well they really shit me.

A lot.

Big red ball hits Perth

Seriously how cool is the Red Ball Project?

The man behind it is artist Kurt Perschke.

And he's currently in Perth for the Perth Festival.

Which means you've only got a day or two left to find the Big Red Ball in its next Perth location.


To be honest I have no idea what the project is about nor what the point of the big ball is.

But according to Perschke, "The work is able to access the imagination embedded in all of us."

No idea if that's true but it sure sounds good.

Click here for more info on the Red Ball Project.

A woman of taste

Saw this on Twitter today.
Really made me smile.

Can art directors sing?

Far be it from me to criticise a fellow creative's attempt at self promotion. I'd love to hear your thoughts though.