We’re all a bunch of miserable sods apparently!

Especially those of us that live in London if you’re to believe everything to read. No time for casual chit chat, rush, rush, rush, not even time for a cordial hello and a smile anymore.

Well VW have decided to inject a little bit of harmless playful fun into our lives, nice.

Even though it’s been around for a while The Fun Theory this is still my favourite campaign at the moment. A deserved winner at the Cannes Cyber Lions by DDB Stockholm, Sweden.

It’s one of those pieces of work that just brings out an inner smile, a whisper to a colleague of “oh very nice” and an envious thought of “oh I wish I’d thought of that”

A great example of a campaign that utilizes the digital platform perfectly. It’s not a digital solution, or a digital execution, just a campaign that integrates digital platforms and technologies perfectly.

It looks like they’ve continued the fun here to with their Fast Lane!

This post has got me thinking about other campaigns that use digital in innovative ways and I will post up my favourites. One of those is the now famous Nike Chalkbot that sprayed tweets onto stages of the Tour de France.

A very brave piece of guerrilla marketing from Heineken. On the night of the biggest football game in Europe, Real Madrid v AC Milan Heineken decided to stage a fake concert event and recruited 200 people to try and get 1000 people away from their televisions to watch the concert.

The reactions of the boyfriends, husbands and friends is superb.

Continuing with the advertising influence I grabbed these favourites from the bookshelves this weekend. They’re a continual source of inspiration and are small enough to have a good flick through.

Words of wisdom on every page, from advertising legend Paul Arden.

If you’re going to buy one book this week/month then Creative Mischief by Dave Trott is the one I would pick up. I can’t recommend it highly enough. It works for every creative discipline.

I won’t tell you why. You’ll understand once you’ve read it. Genius.

Dave Trott’s Blog

A great talk by Rory Sutherland on TED about perceived value. A brilliant speaker, he discusses advertising and suggests that changing perceived value can be just as satisfying and effective as changing ‘real’ value. Look out for Diamond Shreddies, brilliant idea!!

Are we telling stories or are we just playing games?

So the biggest thing that I took away from Click London last year was how advertisers are having to address how they communicate to their consumers and the general public.

In the last decade the huge increase in popularity of the internet, smart phones, and gaming machines meaning there has been a complete revolution in how people communicate. In turn brands can no longer just shout messages at people they have to be much more engaging and reactive to audiences. In short brands have to be become useful to their consumers.

Lee Clow and Alex Bogusky (blog) discuss the merging worlds of gaming, computing, movies and social media and the way that advertising is being born again by becoming much more integrated and engaging.

Turning a ‘Monologue into a Dialogue’ – courtesy of Lee Clow.

Tomorrow I am off to Click London, hosted by Creative Review at LBi’s London Headquarters.

Tomorrow’s theme is – Advertising born again


Advertising is not dead, it’s just being born again by merging with the world of gaming, computing, movies, and social media – in short, advertising is getting closer to, and more integrated, with all the things that people are already using and appreciating in their daily lives. Nowhere is this more evident than in the digital advertising world. In order to become relevant in the everyday lives of regular people, brands need to enter the web that people actually use. With this in mind, we set out to explore how all the external influences will impact the creativity of digital advertising.

A full day’s activity and lectures given by some of the industries big hitters including James Hilton, Chief Creative Officer, AKQA, Johan Tesch, Creative Director, BBH, Nicolas Roope, Founder/Creative Director, Poke London, Matt Ross, Creative Director, Tribal DDB London.

Expect updates on how the day progressed and what were the main topics of conversation.

The New York Times innovation group has launched their Innovation Portfolio to showcase their archive of infographics and interactive articles. The newspaper has been forefront of pushing technology and interactivity to bring articles and features alive online.

It is however, obviously another clever marketing tool to attract advertisers and to promote the reach of the NY Times. Each case study highlights the amount of page views and the average time spent on the NY Times. This is vital data that anyone in online marketing/avertising needs to create and optimise campaigns.

I don’t normally watch much tv these days as I can’t stand any of the reality tv nonsense which seems to be the lazy option of filling broadcast hours. But this new advert for McDonalds really made me sit up and pay attention. I wasn’t really going to blog about it but it seems I am not alone in thinking that it’s a great campaign. A very well observed script, beautifully voiced accompanied by good direction. Are we really at the point where a fast food chain is producing the best ads on telly?

Juan Cabral CD at Fallon and the creator of the now famous Sony Adverts (think thousands of coloured balls in San Fransico, paint exploding over a Glasgow housing estate and the recent Sony plasticine rabbits in NY) and the hugely popular gorilla advert for Cadbury, gives the lowdown on the making of Sony’s latest commercial Soundville.

Set in Iceland the ad documents three days in the life of the town of Seydisfjordur, after it’s been transformed into a giant soundspeaker system.