Greasy hair?

I don't know about you but I'd never ever contemplate using a used fried chicken container for a hat.

The smell. The grease. My hair. Hell no.

But they obviously think a little differently in Russia where KFC has teamed with a local streetwear brand to launch the bucket hat.

Yeah...Nah. Sorry.

Ha Ha Ha

Friend of mine in London snapped this on the Tube the other day.

Very naughty. Very funny.

If only real advertising could be this good. 

Be more creative

GaGa does beauty

Does the world need another beauty brand? I suspect not. But put the focre of nature that is Lady Gaga in to the mix and I'm going to pay attention. 

To like or not to like

Last week Instagram announced they were taking away the number of likes shown on an Insta post.

Much chatter was generated but to be honest I can't say as it made any difference to me.

But it may make a difference to a very clever (or should that be silly) Instagram idea from Droga5 and Kahlua - Zero Likes.

It's an exhibition of sorts of Insta posts that generated absolutely zero likes.

The idea came from insights in a piece of Wakefield research on millennials.

More than a third would delete a post in under a minute if it hadn't received any likes.

While 90% said that living in the moment was important to them, more than 50% of them missed important moments because they were too focussed on trying to capture them on social media.

And after reading those insights I can see quite clearly why Instagram decided to take away the Likes. 

I wanna weiner!

People of my generation are often critical of the Americanisation of our culture.

As we should be to be honest. But I digress...

When I was a kid I loved hot-dogs but what I really wanted in my soft white bun with some tomato sauce was an Oscar Mayer weiner.

So finding out AirBNB had run a promo where you could stay in the weiner-mobile got me all excited.

Sadly it was all booked out by the time I found out.

The Eagle has landed

Yet another DDB classic for VW. Copy by Larry Levenson and art direction by Jim Brown.

Well spotted

They say that creativity is spotting a connection between two things nobody has seen before. This gorgeous little spot for Heinz is a great example of that. I mean seriously. Who on earth would ever see a connection between spiky blonde hair and chips. Kudos to all involved. 

Cannes in a nutshell

Goddamn Influencers

Influencers.

Gotta love 'em.

Click the pic so you can read the comment. Brilliant!

WTI & NFI

Friend of mine paid a visit to the Dept of Foreign Affairs & Trade (DFAT) last week.

They snapped this pic while they were there.

I have no idea what any of this means. Nor did she.

Do you?

Something fishy?

I imagine it's hard for a young meat loving copywriter to find any enthusiasm for vegan fish fingers.

But lack of interest is not the problem here.

Take a look at the closing sentence. Yep...

Toilet humour

Friend of mine on hols in the US snapped this bus in Seattle.

Toilet humour. But in a good way.

Kudos to the client for signing it off. 

Social media done right

Bought or sold?

Love this old Y&R house ad.

I've shared it many times in my career with corporate types who question the value of marketing.

So many start up founders think if their product is good enough it will sell.

It will. But only if people know about it.

Which of course is where marketing comes in.

Wipe your feet in style

This is some damn fine copywriting.

On the back of a doormat of all places.

Click on the pic to get a better look. 

Restarting Glastonbury

A lot of hype last week about Kylie Minogue & Nick Cave at Glastonbury.

Far bit of coverage for headliner Stormzy too.

But as far as I am aware nobody mentioned the guest appearance of Windows XP during Neneh Cherry's set.

I very much doubt it was product placement though.

Bloody computers!

Snack wrong

This ad came up in my Twitter feed.

As you can imagine it is generating a lot of conversation.

None of it positive.

At first I thought it was from a student folio. Then I read it ran in New Zealand over 10 years ago.

So given it's a few years old I'll cut its 'body shaming' ways a bit of slack.

However. I still have two questions:

Who approved this ad?

And who approved this ad?

Pleased to meat you

Fast food chain Arby's in the US is hopping on the 'plant based' bandwagon.

Well kinda.

They pride themselves on their meat. So there is no way they're going to introduce a veggie burger.

Instead they did the opposite - meat based vegetables.

That's not a carrot in the pic above. It's a marrot. A carrot made of meat.

I'm sure Heston Blumenthal would approve of this meaty hijinks.  

It's tax time!

I spent five years working on accounting products. So I reckon I've seen more than my fair share of tax time ideas.

This is a lovely approach from Sydney agency The Works. Beautifully lit and shot too.

Nice touch leaving the apostrophe off the label on Ben's box. 

Magnum goes arty

This is quite lovely work by Lola Mullen Lowe for Magnum ice creams.

Street art posters from what I understand.

Of course the Magnums in the artworks don't look exactly Magnum shaped.

But what the hell. it's still lovely work.

Missed opportunity

Well known marketing professor and writer Mark Ritson shared this Tokyo Olympics logo on his Twitter last week.

It's clever. And beautiful.

Sadly it's also a massive missed opportunity.

It was never used. The one below was.

Boring...

Advertising onslaught

This horrific nightmare of a photo was taken in Cannes last week during the Cannes Lions.

Now the Lions is all about celebrating (and recognising) great work and big ideas.

But this photo looks a long way from that.

In fact it looks remarkably similar to browsing the internet without an ad blocker.