We heart The Teens' Speech

The Teens' Speech by Poke is really rather good. It was a piece created to inspire younger people to think about their future and to also persuade adults to take more care in their actions, as one day these young people will inherit it. Not to mention, show that these kids are not just a mass of aggressive hoods.

Below is the final film that was shown on the myspace homepage and on youtube. There are many extra pieces on the blog, in particular these excellent findings and Poke man Andy Whitlock has got some nice stuff on his site about what they had set out to do.

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.

via chinmay22

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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:

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.

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

Football Hero

This is a really fun idea.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.