Advance

SOME NEW BLOGS IN OUR LINKS

29/04 2008 // aaron

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I’ve really been enjoying Tom Fishburne’s wry take on the advertising industry recently, and his latest cartoon kind of sums up my feelings about the hollowness of corporate efforts to colonise social media:

I’ve added his blog to the list on the right, along with Influx Insights, which is always a good bet for some original and thought-provoking industry analysis.

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HORSING AROUND

29/04 2008 // aaron

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Advance has been beset by injuries in recent weeks. First there was the sumo debacle which left three creatives severely injured, and last week planner Daniel drank half a beer, started dancing on the nearest table and then thought it would be a good idea to leap off it. Unfortunately he succeeded only in hitting his skull on an overhead beam and gashing it open (his head, not the beam). Now pictorial evidence reaches us of our latest setback – an undeniably comical hip injury to Martin Cohen, a key member of our 3D team, but a somewhat hapless horseman:

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BLOOD ON THE WALLS

28/04 2008 // aaron

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Here’s some good promotional thinking for the sci-fi and crime channel 13th Street. The loos in a Hamburg bar have been equipped with black lights so that upon entering, the regular lights dim, revealing a bloody crime scene playing out across the walls. Nice.

(Via Cross the Breeze.)

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HOW THE MEDIA SHAPES YOUR WORLD AND THE WAY YOU LIVE IN IT

22/04 2008 // Annette Flinck

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I’ve just finished reading Thomas de Zengotita’s Mediated – an extremely interesting and thought-provoking book – and a must-read for everyone interested in media and the society we live in.

A worthy addition to our ongoing struggle to understand postmodernism, the book focuses on how media shapes the human psyche and how it has created a mass culture of narcissists who, paradoxical though it may seem, are distanced and alienated from their own lives.

His main insights are that postmodern culture is US-focused and he believes that the media influences so many human experiences that it is hard to be certain whether something is real (as in directly lived) or transmuted through the distorting lens of the mass media.

He argues that we’re surrounded by a “flattering field of represented options”. You live, he writes, “in a world of effects” where you can be “a connoisseur of what moves you.”

He continues: “It’s all about the options – and they are all about you. No limits. You are totally free to choose because it really doesn’t matter what you choose.” Why? Because we live in worlds where instant shifts by remote controls, mouse clicks and Verizon 411 make our own identities fluid. Of course, the upside of media saturation is that we are more tolerant of others because we see their stories, too.

All in all an interesting perspective of the world we live in, and it makes you wonder why we always strive and hope for things to change: ‘it’ll all be better when the summer comes and I have lost ten pounds’. We’re never content in the here and now, because we know things can change in an instant.

A genuinely interesting read for anyone interested in consumer behavior.

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WEB 2.0 – TWO SIDES TO EVERY STORY

22/04 2008 // aaron

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This BBC article talking about the Web 2.0 conference underway in San Francisco is pretty gushing about the corporate cash flowing into social media.

And then on the flipside, we have WIRED’s preview of the same conference which focuses on the seemingly inexorable increase in internet addiction, much of it fuelled by the rise of social media sites like Flickr, Facebook etc etc.

Makes you think.

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FOAM LIKE NO OTHER! (PART II)

20/04 2008 // Annette Flinck

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Less than a month ago we wrote about the making of Sony’s Foam City. The UK will have to wait until May 1st to see the final ad, though it went live across the rest of Europe Monday last week. Personally I think Fallon have done another nice job but it was interesting to note the reaction on some of the big ad blogs was less positive. Anyway, make your own mind up!

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WHEN MUSIC WORKS, IT REALLY WORKS

15/04 2008 // aaron

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I am about 6 months behind on this one but it doesn’t seem to have made much of a splash on this side of the Atlantic (perhaps not surprising given the subject matter) so maybe I can be forgiven. It’s a Michael Mann-directed ad for Nike which uses a piece of music from the film The Last of the Mohicans to great effect. Typically with Mann, the action is particularly visceral, but the overall effect is strikingly poetic. Even if you hate American football, I reckon you’ll like this:

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JUST A BAG?

15/04 2008 // aaron

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The always informative Kottke points us in the direction of a new book debunking the myth of the ‘rare as rocking-horse shit’ Birkin bag from Hermes. The bag is apparently so coveted that there’s a two year waiting list but Michael Tonello’s book – Bringing Home the Birkin – would have us believe otherwise. According to him, the list is little more than a marketing ploy:

“I would go into a store with a list in my Hermes Ulysse notebook and pile up scarves, shawls, bracelets, worth about $2,000. This made me seem a regular Hermes client,” Tonello told Reuters in a telephone interview. “Once I had that pile ready to buy at the last moment I’d ask for a Birkin and they would usually produce one of the back room. In 2005 I bought 130 Birkins in a three-month period — and you tell me there is a waiting list?”

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1ST DUBAI LYNX AWARDS

13/04 2008 // Annette Flinck

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The inaugural Dubai Lynx Awards took place earlier this month, and, as is always the case with Dubai, it was on a pretty grand scale.

A total of 180 Lynxes were awarded while the total number of entries was a mightily impressive 2,023. Talk about a fast growing festival! U.A.E. won the most awards taking home 127 trophies, followed by Qatar with 18, Lebanon with 12 and Egypt with 7 awards, including 2 Grand Prix.

We heard about the awards during our January visit to Dubai and were a bit disappointed that we hadn’t timed our visit to coincide. But we’re told that the 2nd Dubai Lynx Awards will be back next year bigger and better. So get inspired by the fastest growing city in the world and check out the winning work here.

Inshallah!

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TODAY’S INSPIRATION . . . (2)

11/04 2008 // aaron

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Best-known for their annual Web Trends Maps, Tokyo-based Information Architects also have a cool blog and often churn out some very perspicacious industry analysis. Their most recent post is particularly hard-hitting; it’s a real clarion call to marketers everywhere to wake up and smell the coffee. Their argument? Print is dying on its arse and it’s time to spend some serious money online.

Here’s a quick excerpt:

“What continues to astonish me is that corporations continue to spend so much money for print ads while skimping on their online budgets. Yet our dear marketing departments stay the course: throwing suitcases full of hundred dollar bills out the print ad window, wasting money on an information medium considered informative only by human relics—everyone else, you may have noticed, utilizes newspapers to hide yawns in public cafés, cover floors while painting, and stuff wet shoes to expedite drying.”

You may not agree with it all, but it’s well worth a read.

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