Sunday, December 27, 2009

The post that started last year and won’t end till the next

We had intended to try and write about our favourite work from last year in quite some depth but that’s fallen by the wayside due to heavy drinking and bouts of food induced coma’s. Instead here is a small list with a few slapdash words.


whopper sacrifice – Offering you a simple reason to take annoying people of your friend list and changing behaviour on Facebook.

Baker tweet
– Real time updates so that you can get the freshest baked foods. Not to mention some great writing.

Chalkbot
– Writers were able to inspire riders during the tour and promote the Livestrong cause.

Facebook showroom
– Using Facebook’s features to spread news of the Malmo store opening.

Best job in the world
– Promoting tourism to Australia with a whole load of PR behind it and a very effective idea.

Philips Carousel – Great piece of work but not sure how much it actually sells the product as there isn’t even much association.

McDonalds favourite – Amazing writing and pretty bang on what Maccy d’s is all about.

Monopoly city streets – Got off to a bad start but its good that the brand is experimenting with digitalising its games.

The Zimbabwean trillion dollar billboard – Just a very powerful idea.

The Obama campaign
- Simply the most advanced campaign for government ever held. Embracing the views of the people as well as clearly stating his views for the world to review.

The Newspaper club
– Taking digital design into the real world. Holding a physical piece of paper when you read can be a very nice experience and just look at wired magazine for an example of an enriched physical experience.



As for this year, we’re not making any resolutions or predictions. Instead it’s more about making sure that we take part in lots of random acts in both advertising and life as a whole. Taking inspiration from Dave Trott here and his stories that show just how much you can learn if you throw caution to the wind. Guess we'll have to see how this has gone by the end of the year.

It feels best to use the words of a great man to bring it all into context.

“Don’t look for the next opportunity. The one you have in hand is the opportunity.” Paul Arden.

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Sony pitch win

Photo via Ian Muttoo


Over the last month or so we've had the pleasure of spending of our spare time helping out at Anomaly London. Today the news broke that they have won they have won the two-way pitch with Fallon for the Sony Europe account. A more informative news story can be found here.

We've been lucky to share some time with Johnny Vulkan (Who inspired Luke to write his dissertation on branded utility and the future ethics of advertising.) Mike Byrne and Paul Graham; assisting and listening to them work during the pitch, which has been very valuable. Seeing the application of their strategy through to creative ideas. What's more, we even managed to get an idea presented and overall its been rather rewarding.

Its also interesting to look at how they solve business problems overall, rather than just create adverts. So we look forward to seeing it come together. It can be summed up by this quote from Ben Moore (Sony VP of Communications)

"We are looking for great strategic thinking that leads to great creative execution. To get there we were looking for a new advertising model that puts brilliant people, who instinctively understand digital but who have an agnostic view, at the heart of our approach. Anomaly will give us that."

Thanks to Everyone at Anomaly London for the late night grub and words of wisdom and a special thanks to Alfred for his continued support.

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

The weeks gone by

The last few weeks have been rather busy but the D&AD digital workshops are now over and this is an attempt to get some thoughts down before things pick up again. It feels good to have things out of our heads onto something slightly more solid, not to mention it’s forced us to try and make sense of what we’ve been told.


Post Profero:


We were told that it’s easy to produce a piece of utility without a big idea. That can mean that you jump straight to execution, rather than considering exactly how it will be a solid piece and not just throwaway. Its important that we spend time considering exactly what you’re trying to say or do with the utility and how it can be supported.


If you really want to sell an idea, see if you can get it made yourself or with the help of others, particularly if its something that takes existing behavior and attempts to change it. As if you can prove it works in the real world and not just in concept, then it’s a lot easier to sell the work.



Post The Viral Factory:


Making something viral seems to be about gaining an understanding of what makes people communicate and about knowing the culture you are trying tap into.

Not to mention, it’s only a viral if its actually ends up with a huge amount of hits of effects everyday culture.


Does a viral have to be film based, what about a piece of music or those stupid little restaurant vouchers? Although they are not considered ‘creative’ that are very popular and if you could take this idea and transfer it into a more expansive creative idea then you may be onto a winner.


Maybe the best type of viral is to conduct experiments and then showcase those, as if you’re doing something groundbreaking and exciting then you’ll attract attention. This ties into the sponsorship model rather than actually having an end frame at the end. So maybe create this real life activity and although your brand is in the background, it could gain recognition for its understanding.


Sharing content on facebook and such has become a huge deal. If your share a viral, then its saying something about you to others. This is bad but sadly its true. Particularly for younger teens, who can encounter huge amounts of pressure online.


Post R/GA:


They looked at the work that was produced from the briefs we were given by all the agencies during the workshops. The main feedback was that they wanted our work to be more finished visually, which represents the dilemma. As we’ve had several crits were we have been told to stick to the scamps, until you’ve had so much feedback that you know an idea is going to stay in your book. That’s when you work the idea up.


So if those of you who care to read this want to share your personal experiences on the comments section, we’d be interested to see the current trend?

Friday, November 20, 2009

Very good utility

An app for Emirates by the very clever gang at Lean Mean. Its a utility app that takes an image of your face and uses your mouth to convey french phrases.

Looks fun and useful.


Oh Thierry

Click the picture to see it in full.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

The return of the Ashes (for now at least)


Another post on some sport-related activity, however the story is pretty darn interesting and infuriating. We have been greeted today with the news that the Ashes is set to return to its rightful home, the 'crown jewels', on terestrial TV, and all seems to be fairly well and good about that. However, looking further into the story, this national (and international) event has effectively been used as a gold bar, passed 4 years ago to Labour's most trusted media ally, News Corp, and now has been ripped back.

Before we get wrapped up in a proper rant about this which will end up in me being sad at not having Sky, the revenue that clubs and players receive is vital to these entities and their continued existence. Whether it's proportionally fair etc is another matter we won't get into. It seems that the resistance to broadcasting national and club events on premium channels is coming from the bodies themselves, as they seek to maintain financial stability on a grass-roots level. The government doesn't seem to be too worried about this, which is a worrying sign, and there is no mention of any further government investment in grass-roots level sports (of course there wouldn't be, we're in a recession) or sports in any capacity. To put it simply, a fit, healthy nation will be a happy, productive one, and grass-roots are massively important to this. Although the current system in place will obviously take a few years to yield results, there are troubling signs across a number of sports, namely football and cricket, that they are not working well enough.

This continuing lack of faith from one of the only bodies that can actively and healthily invest in not just a business project, but a population, is troubling as we continue to rely on premium initiatives - a lot of which are beginning to lose ground and the ability to captivate minds to more open initiatives. It will be interesting to see over the coming years if this will change in any way, my initial thoughts are no, however you never know if a true representation of the digital world made its way into the sporting world, be it a mindset or a training regime, then we could have something that transforms the way we interact with sports and eachother.

Friday, November 6, 2009

Changing history one pixel at a time

I recently came across this lovely set of photo manipulations on Relleno De Mono's Flickr page which are some of the nicest bits of photo manipulation I've seen in a while. It reminded me of other instances where, either for political motives (before/after), or for more creative purposes, such as Tom Hanks in Forest Gump, people have taken a part of history and completely altered its significance and meaning. More recently the utterly disappointing Watchmen, had a very nice title sequence which did set a nice scene. I've always liked it in films which you know aren't to be taken too seriously, begin to supplant their reality into ours, which is why this next set of TOYIB's images are just brilliant:

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Best Halloween Costume Ever



This is an awesome idea for a Halloween costume. Done by Eric Testroete, it gives reference to his professional background and we like how he's turned it into a project. Lots of nice photos of it on his portfolio site.

Monday, November 2, 2009

NFLondon



This has been in the news for some time, and as the NFL has already staged on game over here in the UK, it probably should come as no great suprise that the organisation are seriously considering exporting the game to our shores in more permanent capacity. I can see nothing wrong in one sporting organisation wanting to ply their trade for a game or two in a foreign country, as it has multiple benefits for the clubs, the players (financially and, as I naively hope, socially in that they come across new experiences and fans), and the fans themselves who don't normally get to see these games in the flesh.

If you were to read further related articles, you may have come across speculation that the Super Bowl of all things could be held in this country. I have watched two Super Bowl games on TV before and thoroughly enjoyed them. I do quite like American Football and other US mainstream sports as does Luke, but our sports of choice are 'proper' football and the rest of the British mainstream sports. I couldn't imagine watching my beloved Charlton playing the F.A. Cup final in Dallas, not just because I don't think it won't happen (it will I tell you!), but because I'd expect it to be at Wembley or at least within a train ride to the ground as I'd see it as a discourtesy to all the fans - some of who put vast amounts of their lives into their clubs - to deny most of them the chance to watch what could be a once in a lifetime event.

I think that the whole situation would be very different if the proposals in place were for exhibition matches, in which case the whole financial incentive for the clubs is seen as beneficial as well to the fans back at home, and of course it must be nice to see people across the World flying your colours as well. However when it comes to something important, ie the league/title etc, I reckon that the reception that would receive in this country would be very different and completely hostile. Can you imagine a Liverpool/Utd derby for 3 points in the Premiership outside of Old Trafford or Anfield? Well, for United I can seeing as most of their fans are from Kent or Croydon or abroad, but you get my point. I'd be interested to hear the opinions of resident fans of the NFL to see if is simply my overreacting or whether they'd share my concerns. As it is still just speculation at the minute however, I shall now rest my keyboard til further announcement. In the meantime, watch this - the second one is pure reflex genius

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Football Hero



This is a really fun idea.

Promoting Kasabian and their new album and also Umbro's Tailored by England strategy.

Friday, October 30, 2009

Has Google just killed SatNav?



3:47 is my favourite bit, although the iPhone positioned itself as the ultimate handheld device, the utilitarian features of Android phones and the like, and also the growing market for cross-platform applications, are surely going to outway future offerings from Apple? More to the point of this post, I think the video is pretty self explanatory. Wilf iPhone rant over.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Thoughts From Greenroom


This week we went to Greenroom as part of the d&ad digital workshops and it was an interesting experience.

The brief was for Rowntree's Randoms and the ideas shown by the group showed an improvement in our eyes. So much so that so of the ideas lead us to think about a few things, thus the reason for this post.


Firstly, there was a nice idea about digital screens. It got us thinking about the use of screens for content generation. After all, billboards have normally been used to display messages, not in the creation of them. It’s something that could be very useful for user-generated campaigns, which mostly seem to rely on the user going to a site or filming it on their camera for uploading. Instead you could buy space around the city so that users could partake in the experience during their daily routine. All you’d need is a camera in the board and enabling it to showcase the footage when active. This thought links with this footage that’s been doing the rounds.

Hand from Above from Chris O'Shea on Vimeo.


ARG’s are very nice and can turn out to be amazing campaigns (We created one for our final major project, to help the Science museum attract more adult visitors.) What you should remember is that they need to tap into the culture of those you are targeting if you want them to be a success. In most cases, this means they only work for fanboys of films, music, etc. There is every chance that you could create an ARG for a something with less value, yet it would have to be the most amazing story and pr stunt ever.


Lastly, someone asked a question about keeping up with technology and if it mattered to the CD. He replied with a rather nice answer that we cannot remember but in our head we’d sum it up by saying, It doesn’t matter what technology you are using, what matters is that you are tapping into the culture in the right way.

Sunday, October 11, 2009

Speechbreaker

Speechbreaker went live on Friday and its awesome. Interesting to see how this will affect the views of younger voters who might enjoy it as much as we have. Well done by those at Lean Mean.


Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Increasing The Peace

Having been on placement at Lean Mean last week, we missed the first workshop of the D&AD digital workshops. So last night’s workshop at Digitas was our first chance to meet the rest of the workshops gang and everyone we had a chance to talk with seemed rather decent. Its also clear that as a group, there are many people from different backgrounds which produced some ideas that we’d never have considered, making it a really interesting first session for us.

The crew at Digitas were really welcoming and had a lot to say about the ideas on show. A particular highlight was the fact that a fair few creatives attended, as well as planners and other members of the agency, which made for some well-rounded feedback. There was a lot of talk about social media and providing platforms for communication, something that we identified with after watching the video below a few days ago. Its nice to feel like this thinking is spreading and we hope to learn from it, particularly the idea that although media has become all fragmented, TV still provides an event and digital of any kind can help to connect this event in an interactive form.


5D Conference : New Television Pt 4 - Kevin Slavin from Dave Blass on Vimeo.

Video via Gareth


Overall, it was another helpful and interesting workshop and thanks go to Maurice over at Digitas for the drinks as well.

Friday, October 2, 2009

New York Reminder



Saw this and it made us think of New York this summer, and how nice it was to experience it all.

Found via AndyKinsella

Monday, September 28, 2009

Forwards

Last week ended well and this week has begun with us tasked with attempting to crack some awesome briefs.

And it feels like we're learning, which makes a change.


We've come a long way...

Chevy vs Chevy

This lovely, violent demonstration of how far safety has progressed in cars definitely hits home, and shows us how much 50 years can make a difference. Although it may not seem like a huge difference in that your car is royally buggered in both instances, I'd prefer my legs not to be pinned to my chest like a Ryanair flight, as is the case with the original. The leg room provided post-crash by the modern car looks a lot more inviting...enjoy!

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Placement With 'The Fighters'

This week we started our first placement.
It's been good so far and we're excited to be given a chance to learn from an awesome group of people.

Sunday, September 20, 2009

Crazy Stats

The stats about the phones compared to the original MIT computer is mind blowing.

Monday, September 14, 2009

Small Thought

Issues with iTunes made us think about how we listen to music these days. Apart from iTunes, we personally use Spotify, Deezer and The Hype Machine (The last being a personal favourite.)

So Hype Machine in particular has its own online feed of songs, which randomly generates new tracks that seem to relate to the popularity of each track in musical blog land. Which to us is awesome, as most of the people that write music blogs are the people that go to tiny gigs that you can't be bothered to attend. Then you get to sift through all their hard work for little musical nuggets, making you feel like your down with all the new music and before all the commercial hype and blah. Anyway, we digress.

Our point is that Spotify or preferably the Hype machine should broadcast on a digital frequency (If they do not already.) Thus allowing you to listen to the random stream of music whilst in your car or on your snazzy new iPod with it's in-built radio. Wouldn't that be ace, then the blogs would really get a following and build an even larger community. This might already exist, but if it doesn't then maybe we should make it happen. Any thoughts on this, let us know.

Friday, September 11, 2009

Dangerous Graffiti




Can't help but think that in the 'real' world, these guys would have been blown out of the water within seconds. Still, the effects are pretty cool, especially with the light being drawn and being fixed, as opposed to being viewable only through a frame.


A few years ago the guys at GRL did their own 'Ghetto Matrix', using a number of cameras, interspersing stop motion with real time to nice effect. We thought that this was a pretty good attempt at bringing light drawing into reality, something which Red Bull took to the next level.

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

To Be In School Right Now


President Obama gave a speech to the school children across the USA, to those of all ages who are about to start the next year of their life in education. He did an excellent job. You can read the whole speech here, but below is a small section for inspiration:

"But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject you study. You won’t click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won’t necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.
That’s OK. Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who’ve had the most failures. JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, "I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."
These people succeeded because they understand that you can’t let your failures define you – you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next time. If you get in trouble, that doesn’t mean you’re a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to behave. If you get a bad grade, that doesn’t mean you’re stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying.
No one’s born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work. You’re not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport. You don’t hit every note the first time you sing a song. You’ve got to practice. It’s the same with your schoolwork. You might have to do a math problem a few times before you get it right, or read something a few times before you understand it, or do a few drafts of a paper before it’s good enough to hand in.
Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don’t know something, and to learn something new. So find an adult you trust – a parent, grandparent or teacher; a coach or counselor – and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals.
And even when you’re struggling, even when you’re discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you – don’t ever give up on yourself. Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country."


A great speech. As for the kids, how wonderful it must be to know that others believe you can face the challenges ahead of you.

Friday, September 4, 2009

Magical TV

Not the biggest fans of most ads on TV, especially the Poo at Paul's low point. Although, we are massive fans of most of the 4creative ads and a personal favourite is below. It shows that there is still some great Tv work, even if some people say the UK is at a creative low.


Customers Think You Are C**ts


Photo via Bonnie Almedia

Recently a family member has been plagued by bad customer service, particularly by an Internet provider who tried to charge for an extra two months even after the provider had been switched.

So, this family member calls up and kindly asks if they can take this charge from the bill, yet the bloke on the other end of the phone replies with something similar to “Sorry, I can’t help you. You will just have to pay it.”

Sadly for the bloke who was in the overseas call centre, this family member likes a good argument. They then started to shout down the phone till and eventually demanded to speak to a supervisor, at which point the employee said this “Was not possible.” As you can imagine, the noise levels in the house suddenly became a lot higher and this continued for an hour or so. Eventually a rather frustrated figure walked back into the room where we all sat rather sheepishly and muttered, “They will call back tomorrow.”

The next day the phone rang and a Scottish bloke on the other end asked for the family member. And after a few minutes it was all sorted, with the man on the other end of the phone stating that “He’d be pissed off too.”

This got the cogs turning a bit and we’ve come to the conclusion that no amount of advertising will work if you have a bad product or customer service. It may well mask the flaws or get first time buyers to purchase the product, but the changes of a repeat purchase are low. To us, it seems that the best option is to work hard to make sure you have a reliable product and to secondly make sure you have a good support system for your customers. We think that there must be a way to bypass the bad training and lack of understanding that most people encounter with customer service.

With this, we’ve been throwing a few ideas around and are going to try and work on something to try and make the customer experience a little more bearable.

We’ll keep you posted on any developments.

Sunday, August 30, 2009

Wise Words


(Via Stan Lee, created by Russell Davies.)

Saturday, August 15, 2009

Another dedication...

...to Les Paul, who died in the early hours of yesterday morning. A true guitar legend, co-designer and name on one of, if not the, most sexiest guitars ever made.

Friday, August 7, 2009

This Is A Post In Dedication

For John Hughes.

We Have Mostly Been

Working on our entry for the D&AD digital workshops, which we submitted on Weds.
The brief was to persuade more football fans to purchase a replica shirt from the Nike online store rather than club shops.
Pissing around with stamps Wilf bought from FailBlog.


Developing some ideas we've had for our book and drinking lots of beverages, both alcoholic and non. The drinking bit has mostly been in the company of people who have some interesting things to say about advertising, including a rather fun first meeting with Sam and an eye opening chat with Alfred.

Thursday, August 6, 2009

Worth A Look

A good presentation for those looking to the future and wising up.
Post Digital Marketing 2009
View more documents from Helge Tennø.






Tuesday, July 28, 2009

El numero nueve de Liverpool



Whilst researching some stuff for the D&AD Digital Workshops, we came across this gem from the people who brought us the Next Level viral. Lovely bit of humour in this ad, and matches our expectations on how far we reckon Liverpool would go to ho
ld onto the Spaniard.

Friday, July 24, 2009

Whopper Idea


Nice Burger King idea. Wondering how many times the players will actually celebrate in this way.

But then again, countless fans will when playing with jumpers for goalposts. More here.


Wednesday, July 15, 2009

The Phone Apple Should Have Thought Of

Go to the website via the pic...
Wow, aren't mobile phones great??

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Muse


Muse seem to have created an ARG, and we reckon it'll be big amongst the huge crazy Muse fanbase.

Looks like some sort of political war between asia and the states or something of that nature. Its called Project Eurasia, you can find it here.

We like ARG's in the right context, we created one for a uni project with the Science Museum Lates. Let us know what you think.

Monday, July 13, 2009

On Your Bike

This is well good, relates to the post below for sure.

Thought For Today

Real people do real things that brands cannot without looking false.

So instead just help people with their stuff.

Friday, July 10, 2009

You Like It, As Do We

Everyone seems to like this and we have to admit we are fans as well. Not sure what the process behind it was, apart from the fact that they seem to be fans. What does seem important to us is that it feels human and done with passion, thats no doubt the reason why everyone likes it.




Via Dan and several others.

Verbals Picks

A quick one, just to promote our mate Chris. He blogs here, he's a film production grad with a love of music and other creative stuffs.He's a good source of music.

Friday, July 3, 2009

New Beginnings


So we spent a day at D&AD New Blood, which was rather helpful and attended some awesome workshops particuarly with the creatives from LBi who have a really interesting way of thinking which we liked. It was an informative day, allowing us to have a look at some of the other courses and have a chat with those grads that may be our peers in the years to come.

We also had a look at some of the work producued by those we inspire to work for at the 'Everyone starts somewhere' exhibition. It must be said that, some people complain that D&AD does not do enough for those trying to get into the industry, yet to us it seems like they provide the perfect platform for graduates to launch their careers from.


The first website produced by Flo Heiss


Then came our rather hot graduation day, something we've been looking forward to for the last year. After getting a taste for the industry with our dissertations and placement unit, we've been eager to finish the uni work so to just get some alone time with our book, and finally that time has come.
We've recovered from the hangover but not the sun burn.
Now onto the website and hard work
.

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Yonks & Yonks

Summer photo


Been very busy blokes recently with some interesting stuff going on. Firstly we both took a break after finishing our degree, visiting Valencia and Download.

Since then we've had crits with a few people, all whom have been honest and generous with their time and given us some good tips to improve all round. This last month has been full of personal commitments and the usual moving home issues. Yet tomorrow should be an eventful day, we're off to D&AD New Blood and are booked into several workshops which we hope will teach us a thing or two.

Whilst on Weds we're back in little Farnham to graduate, with the two of us both collecting first class degrees which makes us smile a bit. Once that's all over, we will finally say goodbye to our all consuming 'university' and move back home to south London. From then onwards, we will be much more regular with posts and hope to get the portfolio up to scratch.

We will also have our new website up very soon, which can't come soon enough. Maybe see you at New Blood, otherwise the next post may contain some stupid graduation pictures.

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Our Show

Dialogue went really well overall, more to be posted soon when less busy/tired.

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Deadline Awaits

Thursday is our presentation day for the FMP, so with only a few hours to go we wanted to put a post up to commemorate our big white board, without it we'd be unorganised fools.


Lots still to tick off it before the presentation, but we're slowly getting there.

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Dialogue: Our Degree Show

Our degree show is only a few weeks away (28th May) and we've been working very hard on it. It's something that we've been developing for the last eight months and hope to feel very proud of it when the opening night comes along. It's been a long process, which started with our fundraiser Deathmatch and has continued with the implementation of the show itself. We've been part of a central group that has been in charge of the management of the show and our mate Dave has done the design work for it, with us giving a helping hand.


This post is us inviting anyone who takes the time to read this blog to come along to the show and check out the site for everything you'd ever need. We built the site ourselves and have been in charge of all it's content. It is going to be a huge source for information and we have the intention of using it to create a dialogue with those in the industry. With this in mind, we've already managed to get Dan Germain from Innocent to write an excellent post about what counts when getting a job. We hope you feel compelled to share your thoughts with us on the site, we appreciate all advice. It's not just for us, it's for any Grad that is thinking about the joining a communications industry.

The show also has a Twitter and Skype account so that you can contact us however best suits you. If you can't attend the show, then you can always Skype us and you can have a chat to some of the students as we will have a live link for anyone that wants a chat. Just add: dialogueshow

The details of the show are in the image below which is actually the front of our invites, please note it down in your calender. If you'd like a PDF invite, just give us a shout and we'll send one over.




Monday, May 11, 2009

Screw The Card Complex

For one, most corporate business cards are crap. Agencies should let their staff have their own versions. Secondly, this site is really nice thought, it's dedicated to people who have done something positive after losing their job.

After all, the job shouldn't define you.
You should be defining the job.

Friday, May 8, 2009

F*ck Water



Bloody love this. There is something awesome about a rubber duck with super powers.


Found via Ben Kay's blog.

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Human Interaction: Good Vs Bad

Not normally the types to write a post on adverts we don't like, we feel particularly compelled to write this after a conversation on the train this morning.

There are people within advertising that see digital and above the line as two different disciplines, we know people that think its just web banners and Facebook fan pages. This should not be the case.

The internet and digital in general are there to assist human interaction, all the gadgets in the world should only be utilities, after all that is the purpose of the internet. Overall, to us it seems that if you don't really include this basic understanding then your digital or non- digital will not resonate. This leads us to the reason that we are writing this, the horrible T-Mobile flash mobs.



First, these events show the sheer amount of money that T-Mobile have to throw away on adverts rather than spending it on their customer service (bitter customer experience.) Second, these stunts have a very forced nature. We don't care if you pay for Pink to be in the crowd, what we would appreciate much more is if you didn't shove a camera in the face of all those singing away. Now I am not saying that this wasn't an effective idea, but when the idea becomes more focused on getting footage to seed on the internet, than actually have a feeling, then you know you've lost your way.


In comparison we have Tweenbots, a lovely experiment by Kacie Kinzer, a student at ITP. It may be a month or two behind the times now, but it's the best use of thinking we can recall right now. It uses a small robot to impact upon the citizens of NY, giving them a glimpse of something more personal than just a piece of content for a viral.



Tweenbots was an investigation into human nature - into the reactions of the everyday person. The content and films were secondary to the impact upon those affected. Brands don't need to copy this, but they do need to understand that the very essence of this supposedly 'digital' mentality should be to impact/ assist upon people during their day, not to use them as feed for online content.

Oh, just to note. There shouldnt even be a 'digital' mentality, it should just be about a basic understanding of how we all react best with interaction and using whatever method is best to do this.

FMP Logo Development


Thoughts anyone?

Sunday, May 3, 2009

Friendship Data

Nice graph on online friendship, which is something we've been looking at for some recent projects.

Friday, May 1, 2009

Catgut Video

Catgut - Television from Craig Bilham on Vimeo.


Done by one of the blokes at our Uni, very nice video.

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Takeover

Nice takeover by Honda of Vimeo, not keen on the ad itself but love this.

Saturday, April 25, 2009

Epic

Just watch



Friday, April 24, 2009

Stick Em' Up


Made a nice little sticker for a campaign we've been working on.

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Perfect With Sunshine

Nike, James Jarvis and et al made us smile with this video.


Onwards from akqa on Vimeo.

(Via @contagiousmag.)

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Bikes And Stuff

This video is getting quite a lot of hits right now and it's actually bang on the mark with a brief we've been working on.

Enjoy.


Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Street View

Looks like Google are checking out Croydon. We found the car parked up, so maybe they were having a cuppa.


Just glad there were no angry residents.

Monday, April 20, 2009

Waiting

Looks awesome, makes you realise how hard it can be to judge awards.




Hasty BBC



It hasn't been a good week of football for our creative team, first my team relegated, now Luke's beloved Red Devils are out the FA Cup. The BBC however were all too keen to report an early victory For Man Utd (seen above) much to my amusement; a mistake that was later rectified to show the true result, as seen below.

 
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