Hasta La Creative!

Perttu Murto just changed from his overmode.net to perttumurto.com; plus hitting us with a new website and new graphics.
 
Excellent quality, as always.

Today at MacWord, Apple introduced the world’s thinnest notebook: MacBook Air. It measures an unprecedented 0.16 inches at its thinnest point while its maximum height of 0.76 inches is less than the thinnest point on competing notebooks.

Here’s a more detailed report, or if you prefer some tweets from fakesteve.

[UPDATE] Emily Chang won’t be buying one.

 

Graf moves to Saatchi from TBWA\C\D.

NEW YORK TBWA\Chiat\Day New York executive creative director Gerry Graf has resigned to accept an offer to run Saatchi & Saatchi’s creative department here, sources said.

TBWA worldwide CEO Tom Carroll confirmed the resignation this afternoon. “Gerry has done great work for us and we really appreciate it,” Carroll said. “We wish him well.” He declined further comment.

Advertising Agency: Serviceplan, Dritte Werbeagentur, Munich, Germany
Creative Director: Christoph Everke
Art Director: Alexander Nagel
Copywriter: Cosimo Möller
Junior Copywriter: Janne Sachse
Graphics: Susanne Günther, Alexandra Sänger
Photographer: Bernd Ebsen c/o karina bednorz
Retouching: die bildproduktion: Daan Reirink, Ralf Baumeister
Project Managers: Christiane Löschke, Stefanie Kandt
Production: Katy Pergelt
Published: November 2007

Advertising Agency: Serviceplan, Dritte Werbeagentur, Munich, Germany
Creative Director: Christoph Everke
Art Director: Alexander Nagel
Copywriter: Cosimo Möller
Junior Copywriter: Janne Sachse
Graphics: Susanne Günther, Alexandra Sänger
Photographer: Bernd Ebsen c/o karina bednorz
Retouching: die bildproduktion: Daan Reirink, Ralf Baumeister
Project Managers: Christiane Löschke, Stefanie Kandt
Production: Katy Pergelt
Published: November 2007

After seeing this LensCrafters ad on The New York Times homepage, one has to wonder if, perhaps, it was created specifically to get a bit of added awareness because, as one Adrants reader notes, it’s somewhat “Obama-esque.” Or, it…

Tonight during the premiere of American Idol, The United States Marine Corps will debut a commercial called America’s Marines which supports the Our Marines website that tells the stories of current and former Marines and why they serve. The…

You may recall the mini-ruckus created last year by a Chicago law firm whose billboards featured racy images and the line, “Life’s short. Get a divorce.” In most of the media coverage of the ads, the law firm was represented by a partner there named Corri Fetman, who said the campaign was meant to be “lighthearted,” “thought-provoking” and “not boring like law firm advertising is.” It appears Fetman isn’t boring either, as she has parlayed her notoriety into a side gig as Playboy’s official “Lawyer of Love.” She’s writing a legal-advice column for Playboy.com (sample advice: “Anyone who gets married without a prenuptial agreement is a tool”). And yes, she has taken her clothes off for a pictorial. Can your lawyer say that?

—Posted by Tim Nudd

These two videos from DraftFCB Hamburg examine the idiocy of focus groups and why it’s silly to rely too heavily on them. In the videos, one caveman moderator and three caveman panelists turn great ideas like fire and the…

We’ve seen how many premium brands fool customers into thinking a product is of a higher quality when in reality, it may not be the case.

So check out this study as reported on Bloomberg.com:

Volunteers in California who were given sips of wines with fake prices said they preferred the cabernets they thought were more expensive to the ones they thought were cheaper about 80 percent of the time, according to the study published tomorrow in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Researchers scanning the volunteers’ brains while they drank confirmed they enjoyed the pricier wines more. The experiment helps explain how marketing practices can influence both the preferences of consumers and the enjoyment registered by their brains, said Antonio Rengel, one of the study’s authors.

“The lesson is a very deep one, not only about marketing but about the human experience,” said Rangel, an associate professor of economics at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. “This study shows that the expectations that we bring to the experience affect the experience itself.”

I’m sure there’s a bit of a wine snobbery in effect here, but there’s an argument to be made that this principle extends across a whole range of products. Which is why attractive, elaborate packaging works well, too.

But what about advertising agencies? Can a BDA (Big Dumb Agency) charge more and fool clients into thinking they’re getting better work because there’s a prestige factor as opposed to getting less expensive work from a relatively smaller, independent agency?