Hasta La Creative!

And now for a famous musician at Cannes who actually likes advertising.

While the famously grouchy Mr. Reed did grouse about the model for artists and the loss of sound quality that’s accompanied the move from vinyl to MP3s, he wasn’t a complete crank. Instead, he recognized the trade-off that’s come from giving more people access to more and different kinds of music.

“It doesn’t mean it’s worse,” he said. “You have the library of the world. Before you had to search it out. But now it sounds like shit.”

Continue reading at AdAge.com

CannesTumblr founder David Karp laid it on thick to the creatives assembled here at the Cannes Lions Festival, urging them to bring their client brands to the community of creators he recently sold to Yahoo for $1.1 billion.

The 26-year-old high school-dropout, now a millionaire many times over, gave a soft sell, using examples from the likes of Lincoln Motor Co., Lion’s Gate, Old Spice and Whole Foods and employing a reverential tone to the audience of creatives. Words like “humbled,” “privileged,” and “honored” tripped off his tongue, as did the hope that next year the crowd would be winning Lions for work created on Tumblr.

Mr. Karp, in a conversation with Co:Collective Chief Content Officer Tiffany Rolfe, even suggested that marketers can bring more innovation to bear than software engineers can. That’s an extraordinarily unusual remark in a tech world that put programming skills on a pedestal and often doesn’t respect the brands it relies on for revenue.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

A challenge for Amazon, an all-in-one magazine and three other brilliant ideas were the winners of the 2013 Future Lions, announced today in Cannes by ad agency AKQA.

The agency’s co-founder and chief creative officer, James Hilton, and its founder and CEO, Ajaz Ahmed, hosted the ceremony, which honors student ideas created for brands without any constraints of media, technology or audience. This year, the eighth installment of the Future Lions, which is also Cannes Festival’s official student showcase, saw more than 1,500 entries coming in from all over the world.

“Awaken by Amazon,” by a group of Japanese students, was one of the year’s winners. The project was aimed at helping increase literacy in India, by using Amazon books. The idea was to collect the books that go unused in developed countries from customers, who could send the tomes using the boxes their purchases came in. It was developed by Tokyo Institute of Technology’s Konomi Tashiro, Keio University’s Tatsuki Tatara, Kenji Shimo and Taichi Nihei and Waseda University’s Tomoki Hayashida.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

The newspaper business fascinates me. Like advertising, it’s a place for rogues. And like advertising the industry is rapidly morphing into something hardly recognizable to its senior practitioners.

Change is natural, of course, but change is not always good. According to Columbia Journalism Review, “The Oregonian is about to get Newhouse’d.”

The Times Picayune company yielded to NOLA Media Group (and Advance Central Services). The Plain Dealer shifted focus to digital, cut publication/delivery, and added Northeast Ohio Media Group. Advance’s Alabama papers became Alabama Media Group. All more or less followed the same template: gutted newsrooms, reduced publication, and a turn to the hamster-wheel model of digital journalism.

Now Portland’s Willamette Week reports that The Oregonian’s holding company has filed to trademark the name Oregonian Media Group.

The Newhouse family owns Condé Nast — publisher of Vanity Fair, Vogue, Wired and many other top shelf magazines. The family is also in the newspaper business. In 1950, Advance Publications founder S. I. Newhouse purchased The Oregonian for $5.6 million.

Like all newspaper owners today, the Newhouse family is scrambling for answers to tough economic problems. Their failure to find them is becoming a real problem for the company, and its newsroom staffers.

Oddly, for a company leaning towards digital (over print), Advance’s corporate site looks like something right out of 1994. I don’t see this as a minimalist approach, I see it as lazy and uncaring.

Regardless, what the hell is Advance’s leadership doing to its newspapers brands? Advance is taking historic newspaper brands — which “belong” the the city, as much as anyone — and corporatizing them in a weak bow to digital. The strategy is flawed in so many ways. For instance, The Oregonian is one of the most recognizable and powerful brands in the state, along with Nike, Intel, The Ducks and so on. Yet, to read “the paper” online, you must go to OregonLive.com.

I’m not against sub-brands or offshoots, but the digital version of The Oregonian, from a brand perspective, is The Oregonian, not Oregon Live. And “Oregon Live” as a two-word combo packs no punch. It’s lightweight, frivolous. The Oregonian, by comparison (like the other legendary newspapers owned by the Newhouse family) has history, believability and the community on its side.

[UPDATE 10:48 a.m.] Here’s the official announcement, just released from The Oregonian: The Oregonian will continue to be published daily and sold at outlets in the Portland metropolitan area and elsewhere in the state and southwestern Washington. Home delivery will be Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday, and include the Saturday edition as a bonus.

Previously on AdPulp: Will The Newspaper Industry Save Itself By Reinventing Online Advertising?

The post The Oregonian Is A Valuable Brand Asset, But Its New York Owners Have Other Ideas appeared first on AdPulp.

Apparently in recent years, Israeli gossip columns have been busy covering the growing relationship between supermodel Bar Refaeli and the womanizing Israeli comedian, Zion Baruch. Are they just friends? Are they a couple? It’s a question everyone seems to want answered

Sunglass brand Carolina Lembke stepped up to the plate and gives us an answer that just might put the whole thing to bed.

É óbvio que um festival da dimensão de Cannes Lions é capaz de prover muito conteúdo inspirador e/ou realizar debates relevantes em torno da indústria de comunicação. Considerando as agências e marcas aqui reunidas, junto com seu poder para trazer grandes nomes e até celebridades, parece obrigatório tentar acompanhar tudo, certo? Errado.

Os dias são divididos em diversos seminários e workshops, muitos acontecendo simultaneamente, e naturalmente é preciso selecionar o que se quer ver. Mas mesmo escolhendo com cuidado, com foco naquilo que parece imperdível, você se depara com as irritantes palestras mídia kit.

Por estarem falando em auditórios infestados de publicitários, muitos acabam perdendo a oportunidade de realizar um momento marcante, dedicando-se apenas a auto-promoção. Sim, sei que soa irônico, afinal, estamos num evento de propaganda, mas justamente por isso é preciso fazer mais do que, bem, apenas mais propaganda.

Toda a pompa e estrutura, com olhos e ouvidos dedicados por 45 minutos, são desperdiçados com longas e aborrecidas explicações sobre como determinada plataforma ou serviço é incrível para anunciantes, ou sobre como a tal campanha fez um sucesso incrível.

Será mesmo que o YouTube precisa explicar a força de sua comunidade? Ou o Tumblr dizer que oferece soluções para agências e marcas? Tudo isso me parece tão óbvio, ainda mais para o tipo de público que gasta euros para passar uma semana na riviera francesa.

É possível aproveitar muito do conteúdo distribuído, mas invariavelmente se acaba caindo sem aviso num papo cheio de auto-elogio

Sean “Diddy” Combs veio à Cannes para vender seu canal de TV, Revolt, a MOFILM jogou fora a presença de Jimmy Walles, fundador da Wikipedia, para mostrar sua plataforma de crowdsourcing, a R/GA prometeu contar qual é “A Próxima Revolução Criativa” mas passou 50 minutos repetindo como a MasterCard é incrível.

Não serei ingênuo. Tudo mundo quer se jogar de cabeça na pequena área, e isso faz parte do jogo, mas existem modos mais sutis e eficientes de dar bola dentro. Cada agência ou grupo de mídia, por exemplo, tenta impressionar a sua maneira, geralmente trazendo famosos. Alguma vezes dá certo, como foi o caso de Lou Reed pela Grey e Conan O’Brien pela Time Warner (falarei mais sobre ele depois), outras não, como o caso de Jack Black pelo Yahoo!. Outras focam no debate, que pode ser interessante e gerar aprendizados, ou ser morno com repetição de clichês.

Já as palestras mídia kit se resumem a um conteúdo que poderia ser enviado em PDF por email, faltando apenas exibir valores no telão. Quem vende suas incríveis plataformas e cases com milhões de views se que esquece que tudo, absolutamente tudo, começou com uma boa ideia. Não importa apenas a ferramenta.

Se o foco estivesse no processo criativo, e de como a plataforma foi utilizada para alavancar a ideia, o discurso seria mais natural e convincente para quem assiste. O Twitter deu um bom exemplo com o seminário “The Social Soundtrack”, equilibrando conteúdo e promoção na medida. Deb Roy, que é cientista de dados do Twitter e professor do MIT Lab, fez uma ótima introdução falando de psicologia da memória e contexto social da rede antes de citar algum tipo de solução comercial.

Com surpreendentes infográficos animados, Deb Roy mostrou a influência e alcance de um tweet. Não é a toa que, com quase 44% da menções, essa se tornou a apresentação mais comentada de Cannes Lions até agora.

Outro acerto foi da Ogilvy, com o arquiteto e teórico holandês Rem Koolhaas, com um profundo papo sobre ambientes de trabalho criativos versus espaços organizados. Uma das poucas palestras realmente pensadas para falar de inspiração e criatividade na sua forma elementar, e não em videocases ruidosos.

É possível sim aproveitar muito do conteúdo distribuído por aqui, mas invariavelmente se acaba caindo sem aviso num papo cheio de auto-elogio e frases de efeito sacais. Esse problema passa também pelo receio que muitos devem ter de entregar algum “segredo” ou de propor temas e fazer perguntas que gerem algum tipo de desconforto. Fica tudo dentro de uma zona de segurança que impede a discussão do que realmente interessa. A sensação que fico, findo o quinto dia de evento, é que grande parte dos palestrantes olha para a platéia e só consegue enxergar cifrões ambulantes.

Post originalmente publicado no Brainstorm #9
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Situés dans le quartier de Roppongi à Tokyo, les bureaux japonais de Google ont été pensés par les équipes de Klein Dytham. Mélangeant avec talent les influences occidentales à celles du pays du Soleil levant, des images de cet environnement aux multiples ambiances sont à découvrir dans la suite.

Top cable TV networks are nearing the final lap in upfront negotiations for ad time in the new season even while some big broadcasters continue to negotiate deals.

In the last few years, the Big Four broadcasters and The CW have completed their upfront deal-making by early-to-mid-June, ahead of their cable counterparts. In 2012, Fox, the last to conclude, closed its negotiations on June 13. This year looks a bit different. While negotiations took off rather quickly, deals started to slow down as media buyers and the networks disagreed on pricing. CBS, Fox and The CW wrapped up earlier in the month, but major cable operators have swooped in while talks continue at ABC and NBC.

Turner’s suite of networks, which include TBS, TNT and TruTV, are largely completed. The company struck deals for about as much of its ad inventory as last year, securing increases in the cost of reaching 1,000 viewers, an industry measure known as a CPM, between 7% and 8%, according to people familiar with the negotiations. While revenue is expected to be up, it’s currently unclear by how much.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

La marque à la virgule a récemment demandé aux créatifs berlinois de Scholz & Friends de repenser le packaging de la célèbre paire « Nike Air Max ». En remplaçant le carton par un emballage rappelant les bulles d’air de la chaussure, ce concept très réussi est à découvrir en images dans la suite.