Advance

LEGO BUCKS THE ‘DOOM AND GLOOM’ TREND

26/03 2009 // aaron

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A lovely article by Jon Henley in The Guardian today celebrating LEGO’s enduring success.

Not unsurprisingly, its recent record profits are attributed to ‘the fact that in times of trouble, consumers – in this case, parents – turn to “the well-known, the safe, the durable. Lego may not be the cheapest toy, but parents know it has stood the test of time, it will last years, provide hours of quality play, represent good value for their hard-earned money”.’

We would have liked a little more about how the success of BIONICLE helped to lift LEGO out of the doldrums but you can’t have it all!

Tags: Advance, guardian, jon henley, lego

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SOMETIMES THINGS NEED TO SWITCH OFF FOR PEOPLE TO SWITCH ON

25/03 2009 // Annette Flinck

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Recession. Hate the word. And even more importantly I hate the ambiguous presence of its consequences. A colleague of mine asked me if I’d seen any original recession communication lately. Sadly enough I haven’t. But it made me think of one of my favorite pieces of communication from a couple of years back.

The brand behind it is Orange – it’s from 2003, from the days whn milk and honey flowed in the streets. Orange operates with the payoff ’The future’s bright – The future’s Orange’. A compellingly optimistic and curious way to view the world, especially these days.

The campaign idea behind my favorite piece shows how the blackout of electricity affected New York on August 14 2003, and it explains how a man had only noticed the diversity of the city walking home experiencing the New Yorkers getting closer:

By itself, this ad might not strike you as something out of the ordinary. How blunt is it to ask people to switch your phone off in our connected lifestyle? Well, I think the creative solution justifies the means. It plays into a specific event, influencing a whole city and uses this as a synonym for the world we live in and how quickly things can change.

And indeed it has. I think there’s a lot to take away here, especially in terms of looking at what’s happening right here, right now. What if we all look at this recession as the greatest opportunity of our time. Let’s get creative, try new things, try out new strategies – both in terms of execution and media. As a brand owner, see this as your biggest opportunity ever to increase your share of voice (and thus share of market) in times where everyone else is cutting back.

Well back to the Orange ad. As the follow-up ad to the NYC Blackout they launched a piece about Renato – a street cleaner in Brazil dancing in the streets during the carnival. One day a street cleaner, the next day the biggest singer in Brazil. I think it speaks for itself:

So it’s true what they say. Sometimes things need to switch off for people to switch on. Happy Wednesday!

Tags: New York Black Out, Orange, Recession

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48 HOURS IN DENMARK

24/03 2009 // aaron

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Kudos to the guys at Seismonaut up in Århus for some genuinely innovative thinking in their latest project – 48 hours in Denmark.

It’s a cool idea; one lucky couple wins a weekend trip to Denmark and the only catch is that they have to detail how they use digital media while they’re here and then share their experiences afterwards. They expect Twittering, blogging and all the usual geekery.

The client is a Danish tourism agency keen to find out more about how people use the internet during their vacations ‘and what it means for the tourism industry’.

Definitely something to tell your friends outside Denmark about.

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TWITTER IN ACTION

23/03 2009 // aaron

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Friday afternoon saw a spot of drama here at Advance towers. Police cars came careering down the road, sirens blaring, and officers started cordoning off the building opposite. My colleague Chris and I did what any self-respecting nosy Englishmen would do and grabbed our iPhones and headed down to the street.

We sent a few Tweets and took a few pictures, and our networks helped disseminate the news using the #vognmagergade tag. We hung around for a while until the proper journalists turned up and then went back inside for a beer.

The incident turned out to be a false alarm but it was a good example of Twitter in action, and the first time it’s been used in Denmark to document a news event in real time.

Ernst Poulsen, a new media editor at the Danish national broadcaster DR, has covered the story in a terrific blog post (in Danish) here.

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FREDAGS MORGENMAD (FRIDAY BREAKFAST)

20/03 2009 // aaron

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Every Friday we eat breakfast together here at Advance. We take turns in pairing up and making some lovely grub for each other. We even have a roster posted up on the fridge in case we forget when our turn is:

This morning was Thomas and Lene’s shift:

And they put on a lovely spread, one of the best of the year so far!

Everything laid out beautifully, before feeding time at the zoo:

The best way to start a sunny Friday here in Copenhagen.

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THE CRACKS IN THE WALL

13/03 2009 // aaron

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This is going to be a bit of a ramble but maybe it will lead to something meaningful.

A while back I read this, a review of Marketing Week’s ‘New Agency Models’ conference written by W+K London’s Neil Christie. It was intriguing reading for a lot of reasons, but chiefly because it aggregated the thinking of some of the most forward-thinking people in the industry about the future of the ad agency.

Some of the words that crop up again and again in Neil’s report are innovation, collaboration and entrepreneurship, while almost all of the speakers he mentions talk about how their agencies are developing their own IPs or creating their own products.

I started seeing more and more blog posts touching on this subject until I got the sense of an industry in flux. It’s a debate that is being propelled far quicker than would have been the case just a decade ago, principally because of the speed and immediacy of the interweb.

And it got me thinking that maybe this is all a result of the ‘agency comparative complex’. We’re all trying to differentiate ourselves, crafting ever more elaborate positionings and USPs or whatever and it’s getting to the point that we’re now even turning ourselves into companies that sell actual, physical stuff. Maybe those agencies will be served by newer agencies and the whole thing will become some sort of weird infinite loop where every company in the world is an advertising agency.

But then that thought didn’t really lead anywhere productive and I started thinking that this is all just a natural byproduct of a society that is now being shaped and reshaped by cultural convergence. Everything else is getting mashed up so why not business models? It’s all quite inspiring, really.

It’s interesting to see a magazine like Monocle extend its brand to include shops that stock its bags and other products designed in collaboration with top-notch specialists, and that Acne is now probably better known for its clothing than it is for its advertising.

The latest stop on this circuitous and rather vague little meaning quest was an essay by the American graphic designer Tibor Kalman that was posted up over on the Sell! Sell! blog. Here is the essay in full. Check the date it was written at the end. You’ll be surprised.

- – - -

FUCK COMMITTEES

(I believe in lunatics)

It’s about the struggle between individuals with jagged passion in their work and today’s faceless corporate committees, which claim to understand the needs of the mass audience, and are removing the idiosyncrasies, polishing the jags, creating a thought-free, passion-free, cultural mush that will not be hated nor loved by anyone. By now, virtually all media, architecture, product and graphic design have been freed from ideas, individual passion, and have been relegated to a role of corporate servitude, carrying out corporate strategies and increasing stock prices. Creative people are now working for the bottom line.

Magazine editors have lost their editorial independence, and work for committees of publishers (who work for committees of advertisers). TV scripts are vetted by producers, advertisers, lawyers, research specialists, layers and layers of paid executives who determine whether the scripts are dumb enough to amuse what they call the ‘lowest common denominator’. Film studios out films in front of focus groups to determine whether an ending will please target audiences. All cars look the same. Architectural decisions are made by accountants. Ads are stupid. Theater is dead.

Corporations have become the sole arbiters of cultural ideas and taste in America. Our culture is corporate culture.

Culture used to be the opposite of commerce, not a fast track to ‘content’- derived riches. Not so long ago captains of industry (no angels in the way they acquired wealth) thought that part of their responsibility was to use their millions to support culture. Carnegie built libraries, Rockefeller built art museums, Ford created his global foundation. What do we now get from our billionaires? Gates? Or Eisner? Or Redstone? Sales pitches. Junk mail. Meanwhile, creative people have their work reduced to ‘content’ or ‘intellectual property’. Magazines and films become ‘delivery systems’ for product messages.

But to be fair, the above is only 99 percent true.

I offer a modest solution: Find the cracks in the wall. There are a very few lunatic entrepreneurs who will understand that culture and design are not about fatter wallets, but about creating a future. They will understand that wealth is means, not an end. Under other circumstances they may have turned out to be like you, creative lunatics. Believe me, they’re there and when you find them, treat them well and use their money to change the world.

Tibor Kalman
New York
June 1998

- – - -

I think that now more than ever we need to ‘find the cracks in the wall’. I don’t think the answer is finding a ‘new model’ (for agencies or our clients), I think the answer is to keep pushing forward, incessantly, delving into the cracks and pushing them apart. I think business should be about risk.

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TWITTER ON DR1

12/03 2009 // aaron

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Twitter continues to seep into the mainstream. Yesterday Twitterererer Kristoffer Solberg gave an interview to DR1 about it, marking a watershed in Danish televisual history by being the first person to be recorded live sending a Tweet. Relive the moment (in Danish) here:

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JONATHAN AND METTE GET HITCHED

10/03 2009 // aaron

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Saturday saw a blessed union of Advancers past and present. Jonathan, who heads up our International Account team, tied  the knot with Mette, a much-missed former member of our planning team.

It was a lovely ceremony, followed by an even lovelier day of drinks and grilled sausages. Everyone at Advance wishes them both a beautiful future.

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ADVANCE WINS ZULU AWARD ’08

05/03 2009 // Annette Flinck

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Last night, our ‘Langt ude i skoven‘ campaign for Elsparefonden won a Zulu Award for Best TV Commercial 2008. We were up against some tough competitors: SAS, Fleggaard, Seat and Café Noir. But apparently voters found the environmental focus of our campaign more worthy than naked babes pole-dancing on the back of a truck. So thank you for that

This award is the culmination of a strong and visible campaign effort throughout the latter half of 2008 and it’s fantastic to get this recognition.

So thank you to those of you who voted and congrats to everyone involved: Remée & Thomas Troelsen, Craig Frank Production and Kuntz Koppel. And of course Elsparefonden for having the courage to trust in the creative solution.

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WHEN BABOONS GO BAD

04/03 2009 // aaron

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Gavin was in South Africa last week to direct a client photo shoot when he and his photographer came under attack from rogue baboons. Apparently it got quite hairy for a time (sorry) and the baboons only retreated when park rangers happened on the scene.

There is a lesson to be learned here and that is to never swan off to exotic beach locations while the rest of your colleagues are freezing back in Copenhagen. Here’s some pictures of baboons. I like saying that word. Baboons:

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