Hasta La Creative!

LONDON – Companies that fail to adopt social media could find themselves obsolescent, according to a report from Datamonitor, while other new research says digital consumers have stronger relationships with brands.

LONDON – Comet is talking to agencies about helping it change its approach to marketing in the midst of the recession.

Advertising Agency: Young & Rubicam, Paris, France
Creative Director: Les Six
Art Director: Guillaume Auboyneau
Copywriter: Guillaume Auboyneau
Photographer: Romain Laurent
Retoucher: Pierrick/Sparklink
Art buyer : Sylvie Reveillard

(TrendHunter.com) Illustrations are cool, but interactive illustrations are WAY cooler. These anime-style sketches are drawn, cut out and then placed to look as if they are standing up all by themselves.

After all of…

LONDON – TBWA is bringing all of its UK companies under one roof and rebadging the group as TBWA\Media Arts London.

LONDON – Setanta, the sports broadcaster, has called a pitch to find an advertising agency to relaunch the brand, should it ward off the impending threat of administration.

One of major benefits of working in the ad industry is witnessing creative campaigns and innovative ideas come to fruition. Once the hard work has been completed and the hours tallied up, there’s not much to do but wait and see if the strategy pays off. When it does, the best reward is knowing that the strategy was solid, the tactics were on-target, and the execution was flawless.

In pursuit of this excellence, more posts will be dedicated to the agencies and clients that aren’t talking, but listening. Companies that realize “yesterdays” are the past, and longingly look toward tomorrow, in search of the next coup.

Enter Rachel Nasvik, a New York City designer famous for chic, custom-made handbags. In early June, 2009, Ms. Nasvik began placing 96 of her designer bags around New York City, while simultaneously kicking off a social media campaign to deliver helpful clues regarding each bag’s location. Call it a giant scavenger hunt. The clues are dispersed regularly via her Twitter page, along with follow-up content on her blog, Where The Night Takes You. The hand-printed, “Alice Bond” bags have shown up in coffee shops, the White Horse Tavern, Marlow & Sons, Prime Meats, and other hotspots in the city, along with a simple note: “please take me, I’m yours!” to those lucky enough to uncover their “secret” locations.

One simple, but brilliant idea, flawlessly executed, and thus far, effective. Combining the consumer’s desire for “free” with Twitter-to-Win clues, the campaign has generated buzz and a serious Twitter following, generating nearly a thousand faithful followers in eight days. The story has been picked up by Creativity, numerous blogs, and is receiving its fair share of Word-of-Mouth.

Just as the shoes do not make the man, the bag doesn’t make the woman. It’s her marketing strategy.

Jeff Louis: Strategic Media Planner, Project Manager, and New Business Account Coordinator. His passion is writing. If you would like to get in touch with Jeff, please leave a reply or follow the links: www.linkedin.com or www.twitter.com.

With the explosion of social media, the direction marketing flows is shifting from outbound to inbound.

SAN FRANCISCO (AdAge.com) — Lots of brands are giving Facebook a lot of face time in their advertising lately. In a TV spot unveiled over the weekend to launch the Palm Pre, Sprint plugs Facebook to show that the social network is accessible and live on the smartphone.

(TrendHunter.com) Argentinean photographer Catalina Bartolome embraces the current trend of faceless photography in her work. But rather than use freaky masks (a la Maison Martin Margiela) or Photoshop the face out, she…