Nicely Done

This is probably the best use of taxi media we have seen for a long time. I think it was done by CST.

The whopper Freakout

Crispin porter have come up with a great film showing the side effects of what will happen if Burger King took the Whopper off the menu. It's funny and it sells all the benefits of the burger. What struck (and scared) me was how passionate people got about the loss of the whopper. If only they could channel that energey into a cause worth shouting about like...erm...i don't know.... the war in Iraq for example.

Look pretty pictures

A few people have been taking about the fact that the new John Lewis ads have been influenced by the artists Tim Noble & Sue Webster.
I found this guy Fred Eerdekens the other day who is doing some equally interesting work making type out of objects.
Look out for it in an ad coming your way soon.

What does Micheal Jackson do in the bath?

This is a diagram showing how joost works. You can follow the path of the tv shows and trail the route the ads take right to you screen. What is does'nt show is the route that cokes taken. They have just launch a new app for joost enabling you to rate how good you think a particulr show is and mark your favourite clips with a bubble.

Does anybody use Joost though? I downloaded it for my mac but i havent touched it.
I'd be there if they've got The Wire. I'd put a bubble on the scene in the first series when they only use the word fuck!

When Castles Fly

Last weekend was probably my last warm weekend of the year (I'm due back anytime now) and I decided to hit to beach.

Came across this stall that sells sandcastle building kits and shrewdly enough, they also conduct sandcastle building classes for free by the side. And there were some really obvious and interesting pointers that I would never have thought of. While other tips require a nifty pair of hands and a set of really good tools.


What struck me was a real genuine effort by the demonstrator (whom I realised later is also the boss of the company that sells these kits) to encourage parents to allow their kids to be creative. He said that local kids don't use their hands enough and almost pleaded with parents to allow them to use their hands more, whether it's arts and craft or building sandcastles.

He later added that sand is free. If they think that the kit is too expensive they can feel free to just come by every Saturday and let their children use the sample kits and tools that are strewn all over the beach.

Respect.

IPHONE

Another spoof iphone ad from the states only 7 days to go till its over here. Not a good deal though.

Full price phone and not enough minutes.

But you do get to go cheap to the new tutankhamun exhibition at the O2. Sold.

While the mice is away

Well Janson have been away for good few weeks now (getting his visa) and i'm begining to settle into being a single person team at DHM.
It's a little strange knowing that you can roll with your own ideas without having to run though them with somebody else.

I'm finding that it's helping to establish some more self belief in my ability as a creative. Rather than waiting for somebody to valadate if your right.

I've created a new self management idea filtering system and im calling it:
IF IT FEELS RIGHT RUN WITH IT.
It's working quite well.

Dhm is good clean fun. Working on howies is great, plus it's helping me to hone some copy writing skills which you dont really pick up when your at Saint Martins.

Anyway...erm somthing to post...i havent really seen that much around thats has taken my fancy but maybe thats because i've been tryin to keep my head down with work un all.

I do quite like the new apple iphone ads from states this has to be my favourite.


They should have cut it half way to keep it the same length, made me smile though.

Back in the deep south

In case some of you didn't know I'm currently in Singapore sorting out my visa while Ollie is holding the fort at dhm.

Everything is pretty much the same since the last time I was back in February. Except that we have the world's first Boeing A380, the Singapore River front looks like a war zone as cranes and excavators work through the night to build 2 super casino/resort in down town, my entire neighbourhood going through a similar 'demolition' phase to beautify and enhance the surroundings and everyone here is excited about the F1 race here next November.

Here's another news that's making headlines:



Read the comments and you can get a sense of the general feelings of Singaporeans about this incident. I personally find the clip funny initially but as it wore on it looked increasingly outrageous as the 3 Brits clearly had the intent to take the mickey out of the poor trishaw rider from the start.

I met a Scottish guy yesterday and he asked me if the reaction would be the same if it's a bunch of locals that did it instead of 3 Brits. Probably not because you don't go to someone's country and take the piss out of our their countrymen, especially one that is clearly poor, old and illiterate. It's respect.

I think most of us were upset by the fact that one of them had the cheek to post the clip on Youtube to further ridicule the old man. For all it's brilliance, Youtube has also become a platform to showcase ridicule and flaunt violence as though it's some sort of trophy.

---

PS for the record:

1. One of the guys post up the clip on youtube and then took it down due to unprecedented abuses and complaints. This clip is hosted by another Singaporean.

2. The three of them left without paying a single cent.

3. Ten dollars is roughly 3 quid.

Moving on

We have left Cunning.

It was a combination of frustration, lack of appreciation, change of leadership and most importantly, we don't believe we will be going anywhere if we had stayed on.

It was good while it lasted. There were some great days and equal amount of bad days. Then it came to a point where we felt that we probably have got the best out of Cunning and vice versa.

To which we thank them.

We are now on a placement sort of thing at Dye Holloway and Murray. Nice little place, great mentors and even better clients.

We are also working furiously on Here's What You Could Have Won and did a photoshoot a few weeks back for the website. Here's a selection of a few of the pictures we took down at street studios with the help of an amazing photographer Alec Mcgue (my flatmate) He did everything for free and was a real star. Thanks Al x

The whole set was build out of card over a week in my lounge. After leaving cunning it felt great to finally have a bit of time to get some stuff done and feel a bit like Pat Sharp.





Last of all my good friend Rory, who for some reason decided on this little pose. Oh he is big isnt he!

IF WE TOOK A HOLIDAY

Well i'm back from my sunny holiday in Mexico and thought i would share a few shots from the trip.

Brake screeching sirens

Apologies for the lack of posts. something went really wrong on blogger. Well, they actually changed some settings to make it more user friendly but they fail to inform all blogger's bloggers that they have added this function which will cause web forwarding to fail.

Before I get into the nitty gritty and sound like a geek,

TA DAH!

Our very first Product! This is one of three 5-a-day fruit posters that we have designed and produced. The next 2 will be revealed in the upcoming posts. We will also have the selling details if you're interested.

If you didn't know what these posters are all about, read the fine print on the poster here. Click 'download' on the bar at the right hand side.

Don't you even dare think about what we think you gonna do.

100th Post

Here it is. Our 100th post and we thought we should do something special.

Back in January, Ollie mentioned here that this is the year of do. More doing and less talking. And here's one of the dos we have done.

As an offshoot, we present you Here's What You Could Have Won, which we loosely call it the product design arm of adsareboring.com. Loosely because all the ideas we have at the moment are product led. We do not want to be pigeon holed as yet.

We are still working on the website but hey, it's a start.

In the next post we will be unveiling our first product but here's a teaser...

"A Damn Good Movie" - Daily Mail

Why do movie posters have to have quotes from journalists about how good they are? It almost feels like they are suffering from a lack of self-confidence and that they need to be reassured that they are are not... crap.

It's not just movies. Musicals and plays are at it as well.

I remember seeing a poster for Green Street a few years ago that had 'A Damn Good Movie - Daily Mail' plastered across the top. I'm not sure if that is actually a good thing or bad thing.

Likewise, this picture I grabbed from the official site. It looks great, sounds great but why do I need some journalists' quotes to reinforce how good it is? Don't get me wrong. I do read movie reviews and such occassionally but I don't think I will be swayed over to watch a movie after some over enthusiastic reviews. Certainly not after seeing one or two quotes on a poster.

This morning I heard a radio ad of the latest John Cusack film and it is all but a collection of tense voice-overs from the movie. I didn't know what the movie was about. Something about 'one man and his mission to.....' and 'Now showing nationwide.'

PS Our 100th post coming up next. It's something rather special and that we've been working on for a while.

Shall I be mother?

Funy new vid for Smirnoff green tea follwing up the east coast tea party video for Smirnoff Ice Tea.

Here's Johnny

I went down to see Johnny Borrell perform for part of a Ben Sherman tour last week at the proud bar in Camden. Not the best gig ever as the girlfriend ended up passing out due to the heat!! I did manage to take a few shots though on Janson's wonderful pap cam, god I looked cool. The whole experience got me thinking about the results that brands hope to achieve through these sorts of gigs.

These are my main gripes:

1:Most of the people there were on the guest list with all the fans waiting outside, unable to get in due to the size of the venue. Some had been queuing since 4pm only to be told at 10:00pm that they couldn’t get in. Nice.

2: Johnny left as soon as he had finished which shows that he doesnt really care much for the cause.

3: Ben Sherman wasn't mentioned at all, not once.



The PR must have been good but i just feel for all the fans who queued, they would have been better off spending the night in the Hawley Arms across the street where Johnny went straight after the gig!

Back in '64...

More old D&ADs... I was looking through the one in 1964 (only the second year of D&AD's inception) and I realise how difficult it is to look at book of just black and white pictures.

Quite amazing book though.

At the end of the annual was where sponsors put up ads and job opportunities. Pretty tough job, writing an ad for your agency for the D&AD annual.

Some clever copy from FCB.
A classic 60's style ad from Y&R
But this takes the cake. Respect.

Red Rock Cider

Rob our new creative director brought in loads of old D&ADs the other day and I found these old red rock cider ads in there. I remember watching them as a kid so they might go some way to explain why i got myself into advertising. They are still fresh now using that great american style of putting the product at the heart of the ad but using irreverence to pull it off.
Good old Neilsen.

Those little things

I have probably fulfilled my ice-cream consumption intake for the year last weekend at the Ben and Jerry's Festival. I said this to myself this time last year and went on to buy more Ben and Jerry's when there's a 2 for £5 offer at my local supermart.

It was the same usual affair: Free ice-cream but this time they served them in cones (which I suspect is a cunning ploy to make you feel fuller so you ask for less ice-cream, but then again i saw many empty cones in the bins), great music on stage and the eco/green brigade was out in full force.

One funny thing I noticed this year was a RIP corner for ice-cream flavours that didn't quite made the cut over the years. I didn't know they had so many other flavours and some of them were quite unusual, to say the least.
Small little things like these that just adds a little bit more to a brand. Have a read at this well-written article from Richard Huntington about the Innocent Fete he went to last weekend. He's a planner. He says it better. Even his 'helter skelter ride' picture is better than mine.

Special delivery

I got sent this film today from my girlfriend, she works for the PR company Canoe. With the help of Grain Media they've made a beautiful little film for New Balance to celebrate 25 years of domestic manufacturing. Sweet idea, well executed.

Same Execution, Different Strategy

I found these ads while browsing through WPP's 2005 yearbook. They are from JWT, Argentina.

Funnily enough, a few months ago, we submitted similar looking ads to a competition organised by some low carbon/green organisation. The ad was originally for SMART but we tweak it for stopurban4X4.org to enter it for the 'responsible vehicle use' category. We did win it but was later disqualified and given commendation instead because we made a schoolboy (quite literally) error.

Anyway, not to digress further, I just find it baffling that while we are mocking 4X4 users about urban road conditions, the Argentinians actually use them as product benefits.

Maybe it actually is an urban jungle in Buenos Aires.

Never quite like this

Upon the discovery of quite possibly Britain's biggest hand-cooked crisp, we've decided to call in the experts.

*measurments in centimetres.

Blackle

It's seems here at Ads Are Boring HQ we have been unknowingly doing our bit for the enviroment. We both recycle and i turn the light off at work after i have had a wee, but i had never thought about how much energy we would be saving having a black blog.

It turns out that if google had a black page instead of a white page it would save, according to calculations, 750 mega watts/hour per year.

Well they were told and in response to this Google has created a black version of its search engine, called BLACKLE with the exact same functions as the white version, but with lower energy consumption.

Now we can all search for porn and do our bit at the same time.

Thank you Google.

UPDATE: Just seen that it was created by heap media but it's powered by Google.

Thats sooo 2003

Janson was going on about the new MFI ads all of last week. I finally managed to catch them at the weekend and thought that the argument (the one above) with the daughter was great; really intense.

So i skipped away with a nice warm feeling for M&C untill............ i saw this.



Did they? Didn't they? We may never know.

1-18-08

The Internet is kicking off about this film. It doesn't yet have a title yet except the release date of 1-18-08. Some people think its called Cloverfield while others think it's a movie to preview the new season of Lost. All i know is that i'm obsessed with trying to find out about it.
I have never been dragged into a marketing campaign as deep as this due to my skecptical eye but I was hooked. I spend a good 40 mins trawling through fake blogs only to be spat out the other side, none the wiser.

Here are the links to the fake blogs that are setting up the story.

Slusho
Eathan haas was right
Ethan haas was wrong

Get my slippers out

I really think that the latest VW work for Golf is stunning. Great strategy; driving for the sake of driving. But it’s VW. Good work is expected from them.



Ditto the latest Passat Ads (Shown below ) out of CP+B. Showing a Car crash in an ad is pretty fresh I thought.



Then there's the latest MFI work. Go look up youtube. It won’t win awards nor make me go to MFI. In fact it’s an old idea but it made me sit up and watch. It's the familiarity of domestic situations such as those that had me in chuckles each time I watch it.

I think I’m growing old.

The best thing about mud is...

I'm sure many will attest to this. Glastonbury is quite truly an experience. Probably one of the best things I have done. Everyone is just so happy. There's so much feel-goodness about it that I felt like a hippy, in clean socks and spotless t-shirts (I change everyday and tread carefully).

It's one of those things where one minute I wondered what the fuck was I doing there and the next, I thought to myself, "This is an experience of a lifetime". Like on a roller coaster.

The only real poster I saw. A spoof movie-like poster that warns people against taking drugs with those classic quotes like "You will never forget the single 'The Cell" and etc.

Yup. Mud.

I love big colourful tents. It just reminds me of my childhood.

And nice flags.

Other than seeing how dire the ground was, there was a little stage at the far end in this picture where people turned up and play random tunes. I heard country and western when I walked by. Yes. People did stop and watch.

Spot the pepperami at the far left.


Best bit about mud is once it's in it's semi dried up stage you can almost peel it off revealing a clean pair of wellies!

PFSK Conference

My camera phone has been playing up of late so this is the only image I could get from the PSFK conference last month. It was put up by Hugh MacLeod one of the highlights of the day.

He talked with such passion about how he had created a campaign for a South African vinyard Stormhoek by using the geek blogging community to generate a buzz. This snowballed with it becoming the cult drink at Microsoft to th epoint where they even got their own lablels!!

A great presentation and a truely interesting guy, it really showed the power of 2.0.

I've just finished reading "A GUIDE TO BEING CREATIVE" which is a collection of his musings and lessons which he a learnt over the years. I don't think i have read a better piece about being young creative yet. Drink it in here

Check out his wonderful site and drawings here

I LOVE TYPE

Falling type from the 56 on the way home from the airport.


Nice type from a shop in Spain.

More from Barcelona

I do love people who just get out there and do stuff. These posters where plastered all around sonar i don't what they mean but you can just about make out an email. I'll try and decifer it and get in touch.