Hasta La Creative!

So Sony has finally bitten the bullet and starting January 15, 2008 will be offering there music catalog DRM-free. Hooray! In an attempt to regain some market share from our good friends at Apple, the clever folks at Sony have finally ditched DRM on at least some of their catalog. Yes, not all, just some — 37 albums by artists including Carrie Underwood, Jennifer Lopez and I’m hoping at least 35 others. But it gets better. Never mind that they were the last of the major labels to do so. Nor the fact that you can already purchase DRM-free music on iTunes, all be it for a premium. What really sets Sony apart is their ingenious model. Yes now if you want to buy Sony music online, you first have to go to an off-line retailer, buy a “Platinum MusicPass” then go online and visit MusicPass.com, where you then enter the code from the back of your card and finally get your music. Voila! Online music shopping really couldn’t get an easier than that. Amazing. And I’m assuming that because they are just so confident that hordes of people are going to run to stores, and then run home to buy their music they are not really promoting the new offering at all. Guess they’re counting on all that great word-of-mouth they hope to get.

Technorati Tags: review, music, advertising, beyond madison avenue

[Courtesy of Sarah Lane]

There seems to be some debate regarding the meaning of the boss in this Subway commercial reacting to his employees ass by saying “oochee mama.” When the employee asks the boss if he can just photocopy his ass in…

Hugh Macleod is not part of the Facebook-hating mob (or is it a clique?) but he does like this critical Guardian piece on the politics behind the company.

Investigative journalist, Tom Hodgkinson, says he hates Facebook in his lead. He then delves into a deep background check on the money men behind the soc net.

Although the project was initially conceived by media cover star Mark Zuckerberg, the real face behind Facebook is the 40-year-old Silicon Valley venture capitalist and futurist philosopher Peter Thiel. There are only three board members on Facebook, and they are Thiel, Zuckerberg and a third investor called Jim Breyer from a venture capital firm called Accel Partners. Thiel invested $500,000 in Facebook when Harvard students Zuckerberg, Chris Hughes and Dustin Moskowitz went to meet him in San Francisco in June 2004, soon after they had launched the site. Thiel now reportedly owns 7% of Facebook, which, at Facebook’s current valuation of $15bn, would be worth more than $1bn.

Thiel is widely regarded in Silicon Valley and in the US venture capital scene as a libertarian genius. He is the co-founder and CEO of the virtual banking system PayPal, which he sold to Ebay for $1.5bn, taking $55m for himself. He also runs a £3bn hedge fund called Clarium Capital Management and a venture capital fund called Founders Fund. Bloomberg Markets magazine recently called him “one of the most successful hedge fund managers in the country”.

But Thiel is more than just a clever and avaricious capitalist. He is a futurist philosopher and neocon activist. A philosophy graduate from Stanford, in 1998 he co-wrote a book called The Diversity Myth, which is a detailed attack on liberalism and the multiculturalist ideology that dominated Stanford. He claimed that the “multiculture” led to a lessening of individual freedoms. While a student at Stanford, Thiel founded a rightwing journal, still up and running, called The Stanford Review – motto: Fiat Lux (“Let there be light”). Thiel is a member of TheVanguard.Org, an internet-based neoconservative pressure group that was set up to attack MoveOn.org, a liberal pressure group that works on the web. Thiel calls himself “way libertarian”.

Well, at least he drives a Prius

Advertising Agency: Bed & Breakfast, USA
Art Director / Copywriter: David Krulik
Photographer: Luke Stettner
Photographer’s Assistants: Jason Oneal, Po Ewing
Wardrobe: Haley Lieberman

Scary things happen in the dark

Lately in South Africa there have been many power outs due growing infrastructure. So everybody should get the ER Lamp that turns on when the lights go off. Who knows what we could be enduring in the dark in our everyday lives. This campaign uses night-vision to demonstrate just that. Be it someone drinking water from grandpa’s false teeth cup, sitting on a sleeping child or missing the toilet bowl.

Advertising Agency: DDB Johannesburg South Africa
Creative Director: Gareth Lessing
Art Director: Andre Vrdoljak
Copywriter: Claudi Potter
Photographer: Clive Stewart
Published: December 2007

Scary things happen in the dark

Lately in South Africa there have been many power outs due growing infrastructure. So everybody should get the ER Lamp that turns on when the lights go off. Who knows what we could be enduring in the dark in our everyday lives. This campaign uses night-vision to demonstrate just that. Be it someone drinking water from grandpa’s false teeth cup, sitting on a sleeping child or missing the toilet bowl.

Advertising Agency: DDB Johannesburg South Africa
Creative Director: Gareth Lessing
Art Director: Andre Vrdoljak
Copywriter: Claudi Potter
Photographer: Clive Stewart
Published: December 2007

Advertising Agency: BJL, Manchester, UK
Creative Directors: Gary Fawcett, Lisa Nichols
Art Director: Richard Pearson
Copywriter: Harinder Bajwa
Published: September 2007

Advertising Agency: BJL, Manchester, UK
Creative Directors: Gary Fawcett, Lisa Nichols
Art Director: Richard Pearson
Copywriter: Harinder Bajwa
Published: September 2007