I’m a big fan of branded utility. So I ought to be impressed by this out of the box example from Krispy Kreme in the UK.
We Heart Stuff describes the grass flip flops as an “ideal solution to those ’stuck-in-the-office-blues’ by offering stressed out city workers the chance to have that feeling of a summer lawn beneath your bare feet all day long.”
What this has to do with donuts, I can’t say.
Under the premise that if people could experience Vista firsthand, they’d love it, Microsoft decided to bamboozle a bunch of Vista-haters with The Mojave Experiment.
OK, so this has been covered everywhere but it isn’t news until it appears on Adrants.
HP’s latest online video campaign, aimed at the back-to-school crowd, launches with “Shaun White and Friends Fight to Help Shower Hottie.”
It is important that an agency help its employees avoid their comfort zone. This means its leadership must ensure its employees do not fear failure. In fact, an agency would be well served to reward those who continually push the envelope.
(TrendHunter.com) Season 8 of American Idol is coming to an end. With thousands leaving New Jersey with broken hearts and dreams and the promises of stardom crushed, Toprockstar.com is coming to their rescue to mend the…
Dan Wieden made a speech to the wing nuts who work for him before W+K moved to their new offices in Portland’s Pearl district.
I’ve read it before, but today I read it again.
W+K puts “the work” first and it shows. The work comes before the client/agency relationship and before the people who do the work.
Wieden describes why this makes sense:
In big agencies, the client/agency relationship is the most sacred thing. The difficulty seems to be that the work then serves the relationship, and everything becomes political. And when things get political, the work suffers. And when the work suffers, the business suffers, then the client agency relationship suffers, and you suffer.
And when we say the client/agency relationship is second to the work, that doesn’t mean it isn’t important. Because the work is a direct reflection of the quality of that relationship. If it is strained, the work shows it. If people are having fun, it shows. If people are bleeding, it shows. If people are just trying to turn other people on, it shows.
In other words, when you put the work first, the people who do the work and the clients who buy the work are happiest. Thus, a logical argument can be made that putting the work first actually means putting people–inside and outside the agency–first.
We’re all painfully aware of the recent hubbub over regarding ads getting yanked for being insensitive and all the associated angst.
So what’s the big deal? Well, let’s start with the truth about humor.
Humor, while often exaggerated and cartoonish, is cutting in the sense that, nearly always, someone or something is the "butt" of the joke (see above). The most widely appreciated humor is also most often based on at least a single grain truth. So, in this sense, humor is a mirror. And who holds that mirror up to your face can make all the difference.
This is why humor in advertising gets so tricky.
We ad folks love to talk about how we create entertainment and
culture, but the fact of the matter is that a good section of the public just doesn’t see it that way. People are comfortable with artists holding the mirror. They are not nearly as comfortable with salespeople holding up the mirror. Oh, did you forget that what we are? Salespeople? We may use culture as a tool, but, in the end, we aren’t creating art. We are selling something even if that’s just an idea or feeling.
It’s my contention that the issue stems from the unfortunate fact that advertising and art are simply not equated in most non-advertising minds. I believe this has to do with the issue of choice. In the end,
people can choose to watch a movie or not. They can DVR a controversial show. Or not. But the public does not feel the same
immunity with ads (even today). Throw in the built-in sentiment that we
are mind-warping liars hellbent on destroying society with needless
consumerism (have you seen WALL-E?) and, well, you get letters. Lots of
letters. Particularly if a sensitive type perceives corporate
sponsorship of any kind of "hate," which, in reality is likely just the "butt" of a particular joke.
Now, for some brands controversy is
welcome. For most it is not. We may not like it (I don’t), but it is certainly
the way of things. This is not to say I don’t lament an overly sensitive society. We all need to take some lessons about laughing at ourselves. And I say we keep tilting at the windmills and pushing the culture. But
when we get knocked on our butts and have an ad pulled, whether it REALLY deserved or not, we
shouldn’t whine. This is reality not portfolio school. This is another contraint to create tension. Embrace it.
As far as the pulled Snickers ad goes, well, it’s not as nearly funny as this anyway.
(TrendHunter.com) Harry Potter fans: the new trailer is out!! The sneak-peak at Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince has been highly anticipated, after months of buzz.
The sixth Harry Potter movie actually goes back…
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Interpublic Group of Cos. is aiming to bring its agency brands and clients added interactive capabilities though a deal the holding company announced this morning. Interpublic has purchased a stake in Huge, a shop specializing in e-commerce and building online businesses.
The Kansas City Star reports that VML is on a tear.
New VML clients include the Cartoon Network, ESPN, Hallmark, Jägermeister, Petsmart and Kansas City Power & Light.
Agency president Jon Cook declined to put an exact dollar on additional billings, saying only that it was “millions of dollars.” Cook said the agency has added 40 employees in the past three months and is “aggressively looking for more staff for our Kansas City, New York, London and Seattle offices.”
Keira Knightley has become my new hero with her refusal of allowing the producers of her new movie, The Duchess, to digitally enhance her breasts in publicity photos for the film.
Whether she’s doing…
(TrendHunter.com) With all the hype about the iPhone, it is easy to forget there are other great smartphones out there, like the Palm Centro, which are more suitable for the majority of people.
Let’s face it, how many…
Dear AdFreak,
Say what? Adrants not interested in a story about McDonald’s hanging with celebrities to celebrate the 40th birthday of the McDonald’s Bic Mac?
(TrendHunter.com) A hilarious video called “The Commander In Chief Test” is not one that John McCain will be happy about. The video takes some of his classic comments that make him look less than the ideal presidential…
I only wish that I had seen this mention of Adland’s user-tags when it was published in 2006, as soon afterward I threw away the whole thing (CMS-wise that is) and started working on a new structure from the ground up (which you see today), leaving the user generated tag feature behind. I still have the tags we generated of what was in each commercial here and might revive the idea in the future. I still fancy the idea of tagging what was is in a commercial rather than a name of the ad – but it does require a lot of active user input to work nicely as Internetworld points out.
You can download Internetworlds old issues from their archive: here’s this one – also a smaller mention of the same thing here “Sätt etikett på webben” 2005-06-30
Riffing on the increasingly fake aspects of culture from implants to injections to extensions, Toronto agency Zig created a print campaign for New York Fries which draws a dichotomy between fakeness and the all natural goodness of New York Fries.
LONDON – Interpublic Group has singled out its UK operation as one of the principal drivers of a 21.4% surge in international revenues year on year in Q2.
LONDON – Jacqui Kean, the global brand director of The Economist, has left the publisher following its recent restructure.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
