optimist prime
we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the starsArchive for advertising
Gesta non Verba
Or as they say outside of the Roman Empire, Deeds not Words. Its a saying thats been around a while. And an ethos that is to be commended, celebrated and encouraged. So, when I sat down with a copy of the Guardian in Saturday I was faced with an existential crisis of massive proportions.
Honda had “taken all the advertising space in the first 11 pages in Saturday’s Guardian (and an entire ad break on Channel 4) as part of its campaign to get more members of the public to be “do gooders” regarding the environment” (see the full article here).
Brilliant sentiment, gorgeously illustrated. Made me want to watch the ad (which is sweet and cute and well, lovely)… until… it went on… and on… and on… page after page after page.
By page 11, I was steaming mad. Mad that Honda had just highlighted to me how much paper is wasted in those pages every Saturday with ads. Mad that what was a sweet story of discovery and action had turned into a rambling Oliver Stone epic; and most of all mad because if Honda REALLY wanted to do something for the environment then why not make a statement, buy the ad space and not print anything at all.
Imagine an ad-free paper, with a nice “Brought to you by Honda”. Save the 5 pages per Guardian you used with your pretty pictures.The PR you would get! The readers would have thanked you. The trees would have thanked you (5 pages x 1.24 million – the average daily readership). And you would have been making a difference, instead of just making a noise.
Don’t get me wrong, as I said, beautifully executed work and the sentiment couldn’t have been more right, but its saying green rather than doing green, and both client and agency should have spotted that. In comparison to the Fiat Eco Drive, which is actually helping their drivers use less CO2, its just a load of hot (achingly beautiful) air.
Posterboy – New York’s answer to the Shoreditch Decapitator…
There’s something really appealing about the mash-up of broadcast and outdoor media for artistic/social commentary purposes – it often brings out some painful truths. From old-school audio-pirates like Douglas Kahn (who I was lucky enough to have as a lecturer at uni for a semester) and Negativeland to current street art, I love the way it plays with the true value of advertising and the media. And they’re always hidden – are these artists who create something beautiful/funny/poignant/political, using what our industry creates as raw materials, operating in secret because of the threat of big business and the brands ‘we’ represent? Surely if we’re helping brands become more real, believable, genuinely useful and honest then this kind of expression is quite beautiful, and not at all scary? (Or maybe that’s just my art-school roots talking, but Iove the idea of someone mashing up our work).
I haven’t seen anything from my beloved Shoreditch Decapitator for a while now, but Posterboy is just brilliant – and with maybe a slightly broader repertoire.
You can check out his Flickr page here.Or watch his video: Posterboy on the NYC subway.
Our Inaugral She Says Golden Stiletto Awards
Thanks to Getty Images for a great night – in excess of 200 women at the event, and some incredibly high-quality pieces of work entered for judging.
Yasmin (Dare) has won a place with me on the Hyper Island She Creatives course in February ‘09 for her Sony Walkman site. Runner-up was Cherie with Hyperhappen’s BBC Culture Show site (my favourite), with all three commendeds going to Lean Mean Fighting Machine – including my equal personal favourite ‘Non-Stop Fernando’.
Bring on 2009!
Here are some pictures of the event.
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- At the awards
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- Yasmin from Dare – the Award winner!
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- The audience
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- The Lean Mean girls with their awards
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- Emma and Jo – two of the She Says crew
Amnesty bullet
I don’t often plug and play a straight-down-the-line bit of TV advertising on my blog, but this piece for Amnesty International France is great. Easy to do good work for charities – tugs the heart strings and all that – but this is great regardless.
An MPU that actually made me stop and watch
Checking out the questionable new Saatchi ad for Guinness on Creativity Online, and down in the bottom corner I spotted this great little ad for the now corporation in NYC.
Dunno what they’re REALLY trying to get at here, and it obviously helps a lot that the placement gives it just a teeny bit of context, but my god did I watch it over and over again.
Guess I’m just a sucker for mucking about with food – its so wonderful and visceral.
Anyway, they lose something in the translation from ad format to movie, but you can catch the MPUs as Facebook films here.
The rise and demise of ‘display advertising’
I was interested to check out Google Trends on the term ‘display advertising‘, as in the space of about 12 months, its become a real throw-around term in terms of digital executions with a media buy (and I was sure it wasn’t beforehand). And lo and behold, this time last year, it just wasn’t in common parlance, as it goes… Poor display advertising – it just gets its own term, and everyone starts talkng about its death, and the rise of SEO etc…
The Wind – Brilliant energy company ad
You’ve just got to love this splendid film for Epuron, a wind energy supplier.
This TVC won a Gold Lion under the film category in the 54th edition of the Cannes International Advertising Awards.
CREDITS:
Country: GERMANY
Advertising Agency: NORDPOL+ HAMBURG
Director: The Vikings
