The new Nike ad?

Saw this whilst killing some time on Kontraband this morning and thought it would make an awesome sports brand ad...



Now whilst I don't wholly agree with using viral ideas as inspiration, if creatives continue to use these raw, user generated platform for ideas generation then they should at least 'fess up and incorporate the original people in the making of the ad, instead of bastardising the orginal and making it look shit. i.e.



Instead of using Kristopher Storm to design (and get paid for) the new Carphone Warehouse ad:



and you guys who ripped off Flight of the Conchords for Coors Light, stop it, stop it right now, and come up with something original you lazy bastards.

At the next tree, turn left, collect the fruit...

Image courtesy.

I was reading an article on Thursday night about how games are being specifically made to coincide with the proliferation of GPS on mobiles. Basically the premise is that by using your GPS enabled mobile you can go to any open space (park, beach, disused airfield) download a specific GPS game (classics such as pacman) and then by using the built in technology you (your phone) turns into pacman and you have to run around the place trying to collect the fruit whilst avoiding the ghosts and dog poo.

It's such a simple idea, but it blew me away. What a fantastic way of getting kids to play outdoors whilst still being tethered to their beloved iPhones. From an advertising perspective there are certainly opportunities for brands to get on the back of this. I can just imagine someone like Innocent coming up with a game at one of their Fetes that involved collecting ingredients for a smoothie whilst avoiding nasty sweeteners and preservatives!

Send in the clouds...

make your own at http://wordle.net/

Silence is golden...

I was in the pub with a friend yesterday and the Grand Prix happened to be on, and whilst watching the ads (with the sound muted) in between Hamilton getting a flat and Massa's engine blowing up, something dawned on me. Some ads just DO NOT work without audio commentary.

The ad break was so short my re-call was fairly minimal but it got me thinking. Car ads work without a v/o although they often need a commentator to highlight the points of difference that may be on offer however some ads (interestingly the more conceptual ones) don't need anything audio for the message to be understood.

Examples of ads that work:





And those that don't:







I think when ads are tested they should be played without any audio to see if audiences still get it. Something tells me some of the time they wont...

P.S. If you have a bit of a fetish for TV Ads visit this site.

A is for Apple

Last week we had the guys from Work come over and take us through their 'Fission Training' which is something they've designed for our agency as a guide to conducting successful brain storming sessions.

We practiced various techniques which all worked very well and got people thinking of some awesome ideas for what were fairly mundane topics at times.

One technique that resonated was the 'Random Whack' technique which involved using pre-school style flash cards with pictures of a dog or egg etc and using this as a starting point for an idea. It was so effective! I think that maybe people could come up with ideas based on the card and hide behind it and blame the picture for what they might consider a crap idea.

This follows on to another point that came out of the meeting which was that you should always try and include people in the brainstorm who have nothing to lose i.e. members of your finance team or reception, people who don't necessarily give a toss about what you think of their idea!

Brief 2008 - have we started something??

So after what felt like months, Brief 2008 finally happened last Thursday at the Design Council. I really wasn't sure what to expect and was having all sorts of day dreams about the night, most of which ended in disaster so was pleasantly surprised when everyone who said they would turn up did, and no-one got too pissed and made a fool out themselves (although I think Ant was giving it a good go!).

We ended up with 8 teams (The Young Guns (aka Spandex!), The Naked Mashups, Rapier, DLKW, The Latecomers (Banner), The Randoms (mashup of VCCP, Iris, Omnicom etc), Loft Digital and Magic-ish (creative pair from BBH and Hyperhappen).



The judges were invaluable and threw in some excellent curve balls in the form of reducing the time by half, 10 minutes in, and asking some nasty questions from time to time which kept all the contestants on their toes.

The brief itself for Time Bank, threw up some really interesting questions including a tough target audience (young apathetic youths) and the responses were broad reaching and surprisingly insightful given the time available.

There could only be one winner however and this accolade was given to The Young Guns who gave an excellent presentation which was full of energy and certainly pushed the brief!



Overall feedback has been excellent and although it wasn't really on the cards, there will definitely be another Brief before the year is out. There are many lessons learnt from this one but the overall energy and competitiveness is not something you see all that often and I'm keen to replicate it so watch this space!

Band of the week - Vampire Weekend

for all you trendy festival groupies I'm sure you've been humming along to these guys for months but my sidekick Anisha introduced me to them last week and I'm slightly addicted as a result!



Just found out tickets are going on sale this Friday, right in the middle of our company AGM, typical.