Hasta La Creative!

LOS ANGELES – The US media regulator, the Federal Communications Commission, has fined the Walt Disney Company’s ABC network $1.4m (£700,000) for airing an episode of ‘NYPD Blue’ in 2003 that showed a woman’s naked buttocks.

LONDON – Mason Zimbler has created an integrated campaign supporting the launch of Toshiba’s high-definition camcorder range, which will be released in the UK at the end of January.

Consumer Reports, which for a long time has helped people buy products that aren’t crap, is now expanding its analysis of the advertising that pushes both good and bad products with the launch of CR AdWatch videos.

There has been way to much talk about banks and we need to kick this blog into a more sexy gear. And what better way to do that than with a promotional site for K-Y personal lubricant.

Poke NY’s new site titled Keep Life Sexy is a never ending list of things that peopel equate to being sexy.

The visual design and audio design is quite nice. The sites sections react to the touch rather than the click which I think works well. After seeing this buzz word last month I feel this is a good example of “crowd sourcing” and it’s quite interesting drilling down the words and also sorting via age and sex. (Although this sorting mechanism has now been removed?)

There is also a Flickr pool which feeds into the list. Altough as the site is new this is still in its infancy.

The site reminds me of We Feel Fine which gathered people’s feelings from their blog posts and displayed it in various visual ways.

Here’s Jonathan Harris talking about the site at a recent TED.

LONDON – A new ad-supported music download service called Qtrax has launched in the UK, backed by deals with Universal Music, Sony BMG and EMI, whose artists include Lily Allen, Coldplay and Robbie Wiliams.

LONDON – Fast food giant McDonald’s has been given the green light by the Qualifications & Curriculum Authority to run its own nationally recognised qualification, offering pupils courses up to an A-level standard in human resources and marketing.

SYDNEY – Mark Collis (pictured) is leaving Leo Burnett Sydney to take up a new role as executive creative director at Ogilvy & Mather Japan.

GLOBAL – Sixty-five per cent of global marketing spend in 2007 had no effect on consumers, according to a report from Fournaise Marketing.

Yesterday, together with a horde of other visitors (note to self: never ever again visit the usually peaceful C/O on a Sunday) i checked out Assorted Cocktail, Martin Parr‘s retrospective which features Bored Couples, Last resort, The Phone Book, Small World, Common Sense, Think of England, Think of Germany, Knokke-le-Zoute, Glasgow and Mexico.

The photographic series, taken between 1985 and 2003, guide us from what could be regarded as the essence of “english-ness” to the garish effects of globalization.

New Brighton, Merseyside, from “The Last Resort”

Apart from Knokke which so so much reminded me of my childhood holidays in nearby Ostende, the work i found most endearing was Last Resort, one of Parr’s first successful series, the one that brought him fame and a reputation for being a sarcastic chronicler of our times. Taken between 1983 and 1986, these photographies formed a snapshot of a typical Summer day in the life of holidaymakers in the seaside resort of New Brighton. There´s more to it than a few teenagers queuing for ice cream though as the series reflects the social decline and distress of the working class during the era of Margaret Thatcher.

New Brighton, Merseyside, from “The Last Resort”

Bored Couple gets the Award for hilariousness. Yet, it is also a very bitter award as i guess very few among us have escaped those moments when love appears to give way to indifference and dullness.

FINLAND–On a ferry between Helsinki and Stockholm, 1991

Slate has a slideshow.

Small World dates back to the early ’90s but the insanity and inanity of mass tourism it portrays have only become more widespread and acute with the passing of time.

Kleine Scheidegg, Small World, 1994

From 2000 onwards, Martin Parr travelled around the world to document the high and low (but most notably the low and very low sides) of daily life in Russia (Stalin World), Germany (Think of Germany), England (Think of England), and Belgium (Knokke-le-Zoute).

Think of Germany, Berlin, 2002

Parr also went to Mexico and flew back with a photo series that made me think that he was so charmed by the country that he left his sarcastic lens in good old Europe.

Untitled from the series Mexico, 2002-04

Both BBC and The Morning News have slideshows on the Mexico series.

More images in Magnum, Der Spiegel, artnet, Stern,

At C/O Berlin, The Cultural Forum for Visual Dialogues, until February 24.

Sedlescombe, from the series Think of England, 2000-2003

Previous shows seen at C/O: The Bread Man, Weegee’s Story.

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