Hasta La Creative!

Bren and Luke’s quick inro to this spot :”An ad that myself and my partner put together. Possible viral, mpu or tv spot.”

Spot inside (access for all).

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NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — The results are in, and it's official: For most retailers, it was a brutal holiday season. Hampered by heavy promotions, cutbacks in consumer spending and six fewer selling days than last season, the majority of retailers today reported dismal December sales.

Fred Wilson, a.k.a. “A VC” on the need for a great Chief Technology Officer:

Great managers are hard to find in any line of work. But managing developers is even harder. The better the developer the harder they are to manage. I assume its a bit like managing high maintenance entertainers. The best developers are artists who are often moody, are anarchists who have bursts of creativity and equally long periods of uselessness. They are strong willed people who will fight with their colleagues over anything and everything. The people who have mastered the art of managing these kinds of people are a rare breed and every great technology-based business needs one of them.

Wilson invests in start up tech companies, but the same can be said for the agency business. We’re all in communications technology today, as well as marketing communications. Providing strong leadership for the code monkeys is good stuff, but the ability to translate the thinking into English for one’s team members and clients is arguably even more important.

The Kaiser is lamenting the state of creative affairs today.

If you work in the creative department of an advertising agency in 2008 you will be hard pushed to find either a member of your team who can remember the old process or somebody who can handle a pencil and can draw – but I bet everyone is pretty savvy with a Mac, Photoshop, Quark and InDesign.

Suddenly everyone with a computer, a mouse and a piece of software could do “creative” stuff, which is morally superb – but has proven to be, functionally and qualitatively speaking, an absolute bloody nightmare and has created what Walter Gropius called an “art-proletariat” – a mass of people misled into believing that just because, they had secured a place in art education (whether it be painting, architecture, design or sculpture), that they had all the tools needed to be artists – and were somehow muddying the waters of creativity.

Gropius, of course, passed away well before the introduction of desktop publishing. But what of The Kaiser’s argument? Are there any real artists left in the ad biz, or did they head for the hills decades ago?

I once had a full head of luxurious hair that, as the Bible would say, flowed “like a flock of goats moving down Mount Gilead.” (OK, so it was actually pretty nappy, but let’s not split hairs.) Since then, I’ve gradually embraced the monastic/professorial look, with the double benefit that I retained a wife well out of my league while also saving lots of money at the barber. So I always get a chuckle out of hair-growth ads that make it sound like there’s a bounty of euphoric delights awaiting men with lush noggin foliage. Now, Adrants tells us that Hair Club for Men has stepped up the preposterousness with a photo comparison advergame that shows how Playboy Playmates would totally date a guy if he had hair. Wait, I could have my own silicone-bolstered trophy skank? Oh, sweet golden tresses, why have you forsaken me?!

—Posted by David Griner

Either ingenious or just gross, Clearasil has placed a sticker that looks like a zit on German teen magazine stadtlichter. Created by Euro RSCG Duesseldorf, the sticker says “Get rid of it” and when removed from the magazine cover,…

Is there really any value hiring a mass-market media firm to assist you with your multicultural media strategy? Not really. But why would you anyway? To save money? To consolidate your media planning and buying under one roof? Or, because your mass-market media agency is feeling the pinch of reduced corporate media budgets? Clearly the reasons aren't always that simple to explain.

HoneyShed, that Droga5-created, brand-as-content site has some new videos out that are floating around YouTube. As whacky as the originals, these videos feature iPod silhouette-like female figures gyrating while HoneyShed voice mails are played, a woman in her underwear…

Click HERE to listen to the latest PRWeek audio podcast featuring PRCA director general, Francis Ingham.

Life in every drop, protect the water.

Advertising Agency: BBDO, Quito, Ecuador
Creative Director / Copywriter: Dennis Chinchilla
Art Director: Memo Valverde
Photographer: Xavier Jacome
Published: January 2008