Taking a break

OK folks. I'm knackered after a seriously busy working year. So I'm heading off for a couple of weeks rest and relaxation. Look forward to seeing you again earlyish in the new year. Happy holiday!

Re-wraping Xmas paper

What a clever (and lovely) idea by 3M.

A wrapping paper inserted into Timeout magazine along with a freepost address label.

The idea being any gift you get but want to regift you simply wrap in the paper then pop in the post box.

All wrapped gifts go to charities for redistribution to those less fortunate.

Like I said. Just lovely.

More info here >

Time to change title?

A recent survey by Linkedin has resulted in a list of the ten most overused words that feature in people's profiles.

As you can imagine the list is populated by cliches such as strategic, organisational and innovative.

What annoyed me was the term creative came in at number three.

Which is all well and good unless you happen to be a creative director who oversees a creative department and their creative output.

Hmm!? 

What the!?

If an Aussie ad filmed in India featuring people on a camel gets viewer complaints who knows how this utterly random spot from Scotland would fare. Somehow I doubt it'd even make it on air. 

Merry Xmas from VW

No this my friends is how you do a Christmas card. Wish I'd done it!

Intel inside Barcelona

In the early days of this blog I wrote a post about Barcelona breaking with tradition and putting a sponsor logo on their shirt for the first time.

What made it such an interesting story is that the brand in question was Unicef and as an act of goodwill Barcelona paid them rather than the other way around.

Fast forward a few years and Barcelona are seemingly struggling for cash.

Which was why an announcement on Friday that Intel were going to sponsor their shirt did not come as a surprise.

Was did surprise though was the placement of the logo.

Inside the jumper.

Pretty neat branding move I reckon.

As long as the players remember to lift up their shirts every time they celebrate scoring a goal.

SpaghettiOs and Twitter

It's only my opinion, but why oh why do brands (and many agencies) entrust the creation of social media material to junior staff members?

Nobody with a few years of life experience under their belt would ever consider posting a tweet like this one from SpaghettiOs.

As you can imagine the tweet spoked a social media outrage.

And as far as I'm concerned that anger was thoroughly deserved.

Clever Captcha

I'm been trying for ages to get an idea up that involves some sort of sponsorship of Captcha.

Looks like JWT London and Future Ad Labs have beaten me to it.

I'm not sure how this works but I presume you have to drag the silver paper off the KitKat bar.

Much more fun (and probably easier) than typing and retyping those weird wobbly words.

Times change

It's easy to mock the outdated ads of yesteryear.

The 'good old days' when sexual innuendo and male superiority ruled.

This ad for White Horse whisky really does take it to a whole new level.

Yes I know I'm reading too much into it, but having recently worked on a campaign about violence against women I can't not be troubled by what is (unintentionally) implied in the headline.

I wonder if some of the popular ads from the last few years will appear as badly dated 20 or 30 years from now.

Small print can be fun

I found this on Facebook so I cannot vouch for its authenticity.

But it certainly made me smile. A lot.

I've been wanting to do some clever clothing label writing for ages.

I wrote a lovely tongue in cheek label for an agency t-shirt back in my JWT days.

Must be about time I did another I reckon. 

Advertising in schools?

A bill to allow advertising in schools has just been cleared by the Philadelphia city council.

According to a spokesperson it'll bring in millions of dollars for the Philly school system.

Which I'm sure is much needed.

But at what cost?

Working in advertising bought my house and pays for my bills. But enough is enough.

To plaster ads all over schools is just plain wrong.

It is, for want of a better cliche, the beginning of a very slippery slope.

Introducing the bill Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown said there would be "commercial advertisements on school district buildings as a means of generating major dividends for the school district."

She went on describe it as, "A win-win on all sides and it goes way beyond Coca-Cola on a scoreboard."

Which may well be the most damning statement I've heard from a politician this week.

Mob City on Twitter

Surprised this hasn't been done before - A TV show screenplay adaptation for the 140 character world of Twitter.

There's even an adaptation of the adaptation - A graphic novel style version called Mobscript.

Fingers crossed the show lives up to the digi hype!

The power of Twitter

This short video was created for the Twitter IPO roadshow.

It captures so much of what the service is about.

Personally I don't think that the guys who created Twitter could have envisioned just how powerful a tool it would become.

Then again maybe they could. Guess we'll never know.

Trott wants a cuppa tea

This brilliant 5 minute video should be compulsory viewing for anyone working in adland.

It's the legendary Mr Dave Trott sharing the secret to great advertising.

He reminds me at times of a cockney version of Ted Horton.

Like Horton a lot of the younger generation in our biz reckon Trott's a bit old school.

Well guess what - he is.

But his analogue approach has never been more relevant than it is in the digital age. 

Creative + Media = Pg3

When I was at JWT back in the 90s we had a media department. Large one too.

Then one day the big wigs at WPP decided to spin off media as a special service and created Mindshare.

Most of the other agencies followed suit.

Apart from the fact that the JWT media dept was heavily populated by young females I didn't think it was that big a deal when media moved out to their own building.

But once they were gone we I certainly missed sharing ideas with them and having them help make them even better with their media savvy.

These days it is very rare to have media in house. At least in a big agency.

And I guess that's why I love this Playstation ad so much.

Not because it's clever. And certainly not for its art diection.

No I love it because it clearly shows the power of creative and media working together.

I mean how else could an ad have knocked the Page-3 Girl off page 3 of The Sun?