LONDON – Advertising expenditure in the Europe is predicted to grow by up to 4% this year, despite a slowdown in the economy, according to the World Advertising Research Centre in association with the Advertising Association. UK adspend is expected to rise by 3.5%.
LONDON – TV Licensing is launching an integrated campaign called ‘Circuit City’ to encourage viewers to use new technologies to pay their TV licence.
(TrendHunter.com) Life happens. Every day. The Monthly Doos calendar celebrates this cold, hard fact with a calendar that features beautiful scenery with doggy doo-doo in every shot.
Oh, sure, it’s an easy laugh, but it’s also surprisingly well done. From Watch Your Step productions, an outfit that seems utterly ob…
(TrendHunter.com) In today’s competitive business world, individuals are being advised to create a brand for themselves. That includes everything down to designing their own logo and thinking up advertising slogans in order to stand out and succeed. Whether you run your own company or work for a firm, the way to succ…
JWT Sydney says: “The superior quality of Schick Quattro razors ensures exceptional smoothness. To demonstrate this, we fitted a zamboni machine at Sydney’s largest ice arena with a giant Schick Quattro razor.”
Helena Braddock, Illustrator
Lee Turner, Illustrator
Jay Benjamin & Andy DiLallo, Executive Creative Director
A. Chris Moreira / Mark Schöller, Art Director & Copywriter team
Gerri HamillL, Agency Producer
Creative Services Manager, Graeme de Vallance
Account Service, Peter Bosilkovski
LONDON – It is being predicted that even as the global economy weakens, online adspend will not and advertisers will spend £3.4bn on the medium this year, up 27%.
Lowe Strateus, Paris, has created this campaign asking women to please use Miss Epil. Looking at this campaign my first reaction isn’t to go hairless, but to get a bigger man. (oh yeah, I went there.)
LONDON – The last episode of BBC One drama ‘Ashes to Ashes’, which has been commissioned for a second series, bowed out with 5.4m viewers last night, according to unofficial overnight figures.
LONDON – ITV has awarded executive chairman Michael Grade a 2007 bonus of 117% of his salary, giving him total package of nearly £2m.
LONDON – IPC Southbank has secured an advertising deal with Dulux paints covering its digital and print brands.
LONDON – Guardian News & Media is looking to enroll all 800 of its staff journalists on a voluntary ‘digital awareness programme’ ahead of the publisher’s move to a new 24/7 integrated newsroom this autumn.
LONDON – British Airways has postponed a multimillion-pound ad campaign to promote Heathrow’s Terminal 5 after yesterday’s first day of operation was plunged into chaos by problems with the baggage system.
LONDON – John Lewis will next week launch its first Spring television advertising campaign since 2005.
All ye adgrunts who loved the Nova FM print campaign, rejoice, we now have TELLY as well!
NOVA FM – Electro – (2008) :30 (France)
LONDON – US pen brand Sharpie is planning to launch an online competition in June as part of its sponsorship deal with David Beckham.
The Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporaneo in Sevilla is currently running an exhibition dedicated to Ant Farm, a group of experimental architects and critical artists active mostly in the ’70s. The exhibition includes videos, models, original drawings, inflatables and all the quiet you can expect in a cultural center located inside a stunning monastry on the bank of the Guadalquivir River, the Monasterio de la Cartuja de Santa MarÃa de Las Cuevas.
Monasterio de la Cartuja de Santa MarÃa de Las Cuevas
Founded in San Francisco in 1969 Ant Farm could be regarded today as a very effective mix between Archigram, the Rolling Stones and The Yes Men. Ant Farm embraced the latest technologies at the same time as they hit American culture on the head with their social and political comments and their highly critical (up to being in some cases destructive) approach to mass media. Their projects do not stop at the work of art itself, they also encompass the mass media rendering of that work of art.
All i knew about them was their rusty Cadillac Ranch installation which i do not like very much but the rest of their practice impressed me beyond words. I can’t think of any artistic group playing a similarly brilliant, innovative and multidisciplinary work today. Here’s a shortcut to their works:
Ant Farm, Space Cowboy Meets Plastic Businessman, 1969. Performance at Alley Theater, Houston
Ant Farm deployed their conceptual world through videos, manifestos, spectacular performances and installations until 1978, when they disbanded following a studio fire. Most of the slide and video documentation was saved, but very little else survived.
50×50 Foot Pillow, used as a medical pavilion at the Rolling Stones free concert at Altamont in 1969
Ant Farm started their career as evangelists of inflatable structures. Cheap and easy to assemble, they challenged the American consumerism culture and fitted perfectly a nomadic, communal lifestyle, in total contrast with the Brutalist architecture prevalent in the United States during the 1960s.
In 1971, they took the road abroad their Media Van, a customised Chevrolet van turned into a mobile studio to share information and images with the public while they toured the country to give talks and organize public happenings. The van not only transported the material necessary to build their ICE 9 inflatables but its motor was also used to generate the energy indispensable to blow up the structure.
In 1972 the group built in Texas the House of the Century, a ferro-cement weekend residence with organic shapes that remind the inflatable structure that Ant Farm had realized a few years earlier, in particular their ICE 9 prototype.
House of the Century, 1972
Video showing what the House was like before its decay:
The Dolphin Embassy was a never realized sea station in Australia which engaged with interspecies communication using the new video technologies. The structure would sail with the help of a solar mechanism.
In 1974, Ant Farm created their most famous pieces in Amarillo, Texas, Cadillac Ranch. They half-buried a row of used and junk Cadillac automobiles dating from 1949 to 1963, nose-first in the ground, at an angle corresponding to that of the Great Pyramid of Giza. To add to the outrage done to the iconic vehicle, the public is very welcome to graffiti the cars.
Image wikipedia
The installation was originally located in a wheat field, but was later moved 3 kilometers to the west, to a cow pasture in order to place it further from the limits of the growing city.
A year later Ant Farm staged the performance Media Burn. Dressed as astronauts, they drove at full speed a 1959 Cadillac into a wall of burning television sets. Media Burn critiqued American ideals of heroics and technological superiority, and offered an affront to the television media who were the only one invited to attend the event.
Their video of the performance is styled after news coverage of a space launch, including melodramatic pre-stunt interviews with the artists and a speech by “JFK” (impersonated by Doug Hall).
Short video and a 26 minute one.
Media Burn was not their first attack of the media, in 1972 they collaborated with the video collective Raindance to launch the guerrilla Top Value Television (TVTV) to provide alternative coverage of the political conventions of that year.
Let’s close the post with The Eternal Frame, a 1975 reenactment of the John F. Kennedy assassination. Part of it plays on America’s obsession with the media, but the video demonstrates also that the sacred images of the assassination cannot be mocked. The work can be read as a commentary on the pervasive media culture in America, as it explores how the Kennedy assassination itself became a new type of media event.
Video:
More images.
The exhibition of Ant Farm’s work is on view at the CAAC in Sevilla, Spain, until June 8, 2008.
Actar has just released Ant Farm – Living Archive 7. Felicity D. Scott has collected archival material to illustrate the early trajectory of the collective, including its architecture, inflatables, performance, multimedia, and video work.
LONDON – Sony has created a new corporate ad for its online gaming service Sony PlayStation Network.
LONDON – Sky’s latest ad uses existing footage from films, documentaries and dramas to show the gritty reality of watching television in high-definition.
For world water day Ogilvy & Mather, Mumbai decided to go the educational route and actually tech us how to make your urine drinkable water in this poster, which looks a lot like old school posters in its Art Direction/ Illustration style.
It’s pretty simply actually, all you need is a hole in the ground, a bucket, some tarp and rocks, the sun itself and then of course, your pee. In fact I hear that the übertough French foreign league men and Chilean army soldiers do this all the time. So next time you’re at a loss for water, here you go.
Mahesh Gharat, Typographer
Piyush Pandey, Executive Creative Director
Abhijit Avasthi, Executive Creative Director
Shekhar Jha, Creative Director
Mahesh Gharat, Creative Director
Mahesh Gharat, Art Director
Anad Rane, Art Director
Shekhar Jha, Copywriter
LONDON – Al-Jazeera English, the sibling of the Arab-language news service, has suffered its second high-profile resignation in as many weeks after US anchor Dave Marash said he was quitting the network after talk of an anti-American bias.
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