Toodle-pip to Good tech as they leave fashionable Noho for way past-it Clerkenwell. :)
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The web and real world marketing for Trent Reznor's new Nine Inch Nails album is getting a lot of people very excited.
It's been blogged about a lot, see Faris at Naked for example or Dino at Mediaedge. I agree with pretty much everything they say, for example the marketing is becoming the art as much as the product and these immersive experiences are becoming more popular.
But, and I really fear I may be showing a teeny weeny bit of ludditeism here, I just find it all way too complicated. Russell Davies says we should embrace complexity. I agree, strategy and touchpoints are the most complex they have ever been and its only going to get more so.
But I think the creative expressions should still be simple. For example Balls from Sony or even our own Lynx work might be part of something bigger but when you experience that particular bit it's wonderfully entertaining because of the simplicity.
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Campaign ran a pretty interesting article where Creative Directors got together on a blog to talk about, guess what, being a Creative Director. I thought it was a good idea that didn't quite work.
Perhaps it was the people involved. All of them (possibly with the exception of Rory - who really just says what he likes, and is all the more entertaining for it) were just saying the sort of things they think they should be saying.
Maybe if there had been a CD from the US or someone with a slightly less traditional outlook (even Mark wants to do TV ads really!!) say Bob Greenberg or Nick Law from R/GA, or Ben from Barbarian then it might have thrown up a few more curveballs.
But let's not throw the baby out - this kind of interaction between people is a good idea and should be continued.
Sometimes you are sent a link which proves nothing in the world is sacred any more, that marketing really is rotten to the core.
Ladies and gentlemen I give you Jeep's assasination of one of the best movies of all time - The Goonies.
PS. Don't come all artsy farty with me. I like my Kieslowski and Herzog as much as the next black-beret-wearing creative director, Three Colours Blue is probably my favourite movie, but The Goonies (along with Weird Science) is up there. You know it.
I ride a scooter into work most days so I quite often see some great things on the way. Mostly I see those f**king annoying bendy buses, but sometimes I wish I had a digital camera implanted into my eyes so that I could record stuff instantly.
Today for example I saw a really bad superdrug recruitment ad that had a picture of a naked lady and the line, 'expose yourself to a better career'. Nice.
Then as I went past Parliament Square there was a full-on druid walking across the grass with a big staff with a skull on the top. Cool.
Then, going down Whitehall I saw a woman on a bike who wanted to indicate that she was going straight on at the lights instead of turning and so raised her arm high and the air and pointed forward, like she was about to joust.
It was all very enthralling to me and I thought wouldn't it be great to have a picture of these things to share my delight, but then I thought, actually, that's probably what writing is for.
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The two leading democratic candidates in the States are using you tube to flog their messages. No surprise there, but what is interesting is that both would choose old advertising icons to get their message across. Are old TV ads more powerful than new politics?
There is a spoof of the classic 1984 Apple ad for Barack Obama that likens Hilary Clinton to the Orwellian Big Brother charcater from 1984. This has already racked up 2.5 million views. That's 2.5 million people who actually want to watch this film rather than have it on in the background while they make a cup of tea (or cwoffee, probably).
Clinton's repsonse to the apple spoof is to do a Burger King spoof. Only 100, 000 people have watched this so far. Is that because no one likes Hilary, it's a follow up, or it's just not a very well produced idea. (I think it's the latter).
I wonder if we'll see the same kind of digital fisticuffs when Gordon Brown faces a leadership battle?
Anyone? No, thought not. Not even the people stuck in their dreary advertising jobs could possibly feel anything but a warm glow about this company.
I have followed them since I saw their ads in the D &AD annuals about 10 years ago. As a writer and someone interested in outdoor sports they seemed like my kind of people.
What's so interesting about them is that I know a lot of people who know them, from the industry and outside and they just seem to get everything right. From being green before most people or forgoing a posh photo shoot in order to build a printing shop and then making that the focus of their brochure magazine they just get it. And, as they said in the yahoo chair piece in Campaign, they blogged very early on.
I guess it's a similar story to Innocent but I think there are a few people out there who are a little sick of the nicey-nicey way innocent go about their business. There is the thought that they might just be trying a teeny bit too hard. Anyone agree?
Anyway, Howies, like innocent, are to start 'advertising' more, through Dave Hieatt's old chum from AMV days, Dave Dye. I can't wait to see what they come up with. it promises to be special.
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Phew, it's nearly the end of a busy week. We put pitchng on hold at the end of last year and vowed not to go for anything unless it was a perfect fit. Something came up that we couldn't help but nibble at.
No real gossip, we knew who we were up against and so it was no surprise to see some friends in reception afterwards. Everyone wished each other good luck, and, to me, at least, it felt genuine. We are still at the stage where there is enough digital business to go round and a tight knit community so that even though of course you want to win you're also not too gutted if a friend picks up something instead.
Oh, there was one bit of goss. You know when you come out of a pitch and think, 'I'd love to know what so-and-so's idea was'? The agency that pitched before us were kind enough to leave their notes on the table... :)
News just in from the United States of America. According to Forrester research about 95% of traditional agencies think they are well equipped to handle the internet. The trouble is only 45% of marketers agree.
Maths is not my strong point but that seems like quite a large gap. And let's be honest our American friends 'get it' much more than we do. What does anyone think the numbers might be over here?
JWT head honcho Bob Jeffrey has coined a new phrase, 'digitivity', with this piece of magic he is going to launch a new era of digital agencies that are going to save JWT. Apparently.
Well, clearly then need to do something, but why do the old school agencies always try to do stuff like this? Saatchis even have two! - 'Sisomo' and 'Lovemarks'.
You don't find the younger agencies doing stuff like this - they just get on with it. Actions speak louder than words. However, I shall leave the last word on the subject of Jeffrey's new invention to my no nonsense PA, 'What a knob!'
Being an inquisitive (and digital) kind of chap I saw some posters on the tube for information-revolution.org. I went there and found a torrent of abuse for one digital agency.
The site is a covert attempt by Ask to get people to use their search engine rather than Google. Not a bad strategy, but executionally it seems to have annoyed a few people.
There have been a few examples of things backfiring, like the fake Sony PSP blog and I'm no way saying that this is anything near as widespread as that - it's probably just a few people having a laugh - but it does open up an interesting question.
If you are going to be all open and 2.0 ish then at what point do you say, actually this is damaging the people involved, agency (and more importantly, client) and revert to being closed and...ermmm...1.0 ish?
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One of the great things about workig in digital is that, for the time being, there's a good sense of comradery between all the agencies. Witness how rival agencies can come together for the common good.
Alessandra Lariu of Agency Republic and Laura Jordan Banbach of glue are putting on an event (at Dare) for women in digital to network and help female graduates and students get into the industry.
The event is called She Says and should be a great night, if you would like more information check out their myspace page.
And if you want to see how the New York ad scene handles promoting women in advertising you can check out Pigs Anonymous - featuring ex london adland charmer Mark Wnek, looking like a pig.
I was on the other side of the world when arguably the best digital gossip so far this year broke. Andy Sandoz and Patrick Griffith both resigned from Republic.
Now that the dust has settled it seems Paddy wants to see a bit of the world and Andy wants to try something slightly different. Both good sentiments if you ask me.
Digital is a fast moving industry. You go away for just a week and it's all change. But conversely the flipside of that is that the bigger picture doesn't really change.
The best thing I ever did was take 6 months out when I was at Ogilvy Interactive. I went travelling and did some writing. I was slightly nervous that I would miss something but in actual fact all I missed was 9-11 and loads of people getting fired. I came back refreshed and ready to kick ass (or something like that).
Who knows what Paddy and Andy will end up doing but I wish them well. One thing I do know is that Jane's quote is an absolute cracker!
We're sad to see Paddy and Andy go because we love them, but the graveyards are full of indispensable men.
I would have to agree with Jeremy Craigen that this year has not been 'vintage'. The trouble is jury foreman have been saying this every year for about the last 5-10!
Could it be that the internet actually saves quality TV advertising? I hope so. We all know that users love good ads. They specifically request them, blog about them, forward them to friends. Just look at 'Balls' or John West's 'Fighting bear'.
What seems strange is that clients and/or agencies haven't worked this out and continue, as Craigen admits, to churn out 'boring' work.
John Hegarty is right about one thing: 'If you do interesting things, interesting things will happen to you'.
So it seems Fallon beat Glue (and Beatties lot) to win Eurostar.
I'm sure many people will see that as a moral victory for the old order (not that Fallon are old, clearly they are far from it!) over the digital imposters. 'Get back to your banners and leave the TV to us', will no doubt be muttered in a schadenfreude stylee in the soho pubs. Obviously Glue are one of dare's main rivals and I would have been very jealous had they triumphed but, jeeze, it would have been interesting!
So, not this time, but hopefully someday soon?
James Cooper
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