Hasta La Creative!

As Brand Republic takes a break for Christmas and the New Year, we leave you with a 10-part round-up of 2007 as told through some of the site’s most-read stories, from Brand Republic, Campaign, Marketing and Media Week.

For all those nights you spent with your creative mate, even your girlfriend tought you were gay.
Merry Christmas.

Advertising Agency: Duplantinia BsAs Argentina
Creative Directors: Andrés Benavides, Juan Sasiaín
Art Director: Andrés Benavides
Copywriter: Juan Sasiaín

The Nation has finally discovered Facebook. Ari Melber has written a lengthy piece about how the site is killing personal privacy. Of course, privacy by any reasonable definition died long ago, but the essay is thorough and well reasoned, at one point positing, “Like guests at the Hotel California, people who check out of Facebook have a hard time leaving. Profiles of former members are preserved in case people want to reactivate their accounts. And all users’ digital selves can outlive their creators.” Which made me wonder: Just how popular are the Eagles on the social networking site? Well, pretty darn popular! As a band they have 545,000-plus fans. Don Henley has 11,811 fans, but a bad ’70s ’fro. That hair can check out any time it likes. Glen Frey (with one N) has just 173 fans, while Glenn Frey (with two N’s, he’s the “real one”) has 849. As far as privacy goes, the Eagles put it most succinctly: “We are all just prisoners here, of our own device.” Think about it. Ari, by the way, has no Facebook profile I could find. Sign up, Ari! Maybe Glen Frey will poke you. It won’t be the famous one, but it’s a start!

—Posted by David Gianatasio

Dewey Cox, soon to grace movie screens in Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, wouldn’t be much of a fake celebrity if he didn’t have a fake product to shill. Hence, this spot for Cox Sausage, in which the jokes all but send a telegram to let you know they’re coming. Still, hearing about the “big Cox smoker” got a snort out of me. This actually looks like an interesting flick, and we’ll have to see if his hearty appetite for Cox Sausage contributes to the inevitable bloated, purple, dead-on-the-toilet phase of his career.

—Posted by David Kiefaber

LONDON – Weight Watchers has awarded its £10m UK media planning and buying account to OMD, after a four-way pitch.

Considering that practically everyone has been talking about the huge gash in the floor of the Tate, Doris Salcedo’s 3ft deep and 584ft long installation called Shibboleth – affectively known as “Doris’ crack” – it was only a matter of time before someone hijacked it to try and crack into the papers with their brand.
London creative team Max Bugoyne and James Beswick did just that.

full glory inside

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Dressing up a guitar player’s best friend in Xmas gard makes a campaign. Ok, it’s kind of sweet, I’ll give them that.

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The European Parliament’s Legal Affairs Committee is in favour of a mandatory rulebook for lobbyists working in the European Union.

FD has acquired Dublin-based K Capital Source – the financial agency that advises Aer Lingus, Smurfit Kappa and Independent News & Media.

Honestly, there were some great shows this year, which means great titles and after a long hard think these are the two titles that Adland (and I) loved the mostest of them all.

Dexter main title design
A mundane morning turns sinister in the hands of Digital Kitchen with their design for Dexter which won a well deserved Emmy. Shaving, cooking eggs, making plunger coffee and even tying shoes all hints as bloody mayhem and mass murdering violence – just like the calm character Dexter himself who is so clean on top but violent right beneath the surface. We have to let this win only because cutting oranges now scares the bejesus out of us. Damn that’s good.

Mad Men – Title Sequence – (2007) :30 (USA)
Imaginary Forces directors Mark Gardner and Steve Fuller created a free-fall animation where the falling character is suddenly found reclining in a overly confident pose in the end shot – all surrounded by pretty ads and shiny skyscrapers. The end shot was such an iconic image that it became the branding device of the show. Well done.

See also Adland on Mad Men Episode #1 (Pilot) if you missed it.

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