aspire to enquire

This may be everything I love about the internet

Found via Nickel Cobalt

More girls on bikes

They're everywhere!

Image by The Sartorialist

I think I was late on it the first time, but I just thought I'd give a little nod to two commercials with massive bike references - Nokia E7 and Revlon Grow Luscious

 

 

This Nokia one also features quite a few other notable trend things: Pop up shop, authentic/handmade, natural materials, social connectivity, locally sourced produce, and I'm going to throw something in about slightly off weather as well.

It's a shame Nokia didn't make this phone two years ago because they could have made the ad the same time as the Visit Wales Holidays unpackaged series.

I've started refurbishing bikes from the 50s - 70s, here is my first effort:

Interesting fact: If you ask a young lady who is thinking of getting a bike like this, what kind of bike they are looking for, the first description (in my experience) is likely to be "one with a basket".

 

A wave at TV

There are two tv spots I'm really enjoying at the moment.

 

First up is the Super Fruit one from innocent, which for me is completely on the tone that I used to hear in my head when I read the copy. So it's nice that a way has been found to transfer that to TV. The concept is cool but the slightly d.i.y feel of the film itself makes it extra awesome.

Then there's the new Honda Jazz campaign, which is beautiful itself, and was a lovely watch. But then I heard you can wave your iPhone at it and capture the animated characters!?! 

 

This is basically the most simultaneously bonkers and amazing thing I have seen for a long time. I think if it can be got into the hands of small people it could be really successful.

Respect as usual to Wieden + Kennedy and Gravity Mobile, although they seem to be getting a bit of a hard time on Creative Review, where I saw the second video

 

Just an observation

I've seen a few examples of this recently; using a digital visual language in very offline places. 

I guess it sort of ties in with what Harry Brignull wrote a few weeks ago about showing a new product in use so that people can imagine its functionality and how it will fit in their lives.

Which as a theory is kind of cool. And it's not just a theory because people like Apple obviously still do it and prove its effectiveness. I also like the way AirBnB have integrated the product into this nice video.

 

But I feel a bit dissapointed, as someone who spends quite a lot of time with digital things, when interactive elements are shown in this way without the abstraction of someone else's hand as part of the image. I want to play with the poster and make it work for me, or search for my train times right there on the livery.

The other weird thing for me is that I've only just got my head around the idea that web interfaces are representations of working stuff – pictures - rather than being the stuff themselves. 

Anyway. Just an observation really.

 

This is the ad

This new campaign by Fallon for French Connection is one of my favourite ever  I think. It's classy, but tongue-in-cheek, knowing but edgy. Everything you'd expect from a brand called French Connection.

It's not that new any more, but I've been saving every piece of it I've seen in magazines and on the street so that I could share it here, except that Sell Sell have produced a far more eloquent and educated review of it already, so I direct you there.

Here is also a video:

It's a shame that most of their mens range still seem more suited to a night at Infernos though.

 

John Lewis Advert

I love this new ad for christmas 2009 by Adam & Eve. 

It's so beautiful - the targeting of the photography and music, alongside the products featured, seeming totally true to brand whilst also being quite cutesy, it's clever. Based on last year's one I'm guessing there wasn't much difference between the briefs, so it's inspiring to see a different angle on it.

What does social look like?

I attended IPAsocial last week.

As a recent graduate, and someone who doesn't even work in advertising I should probably have known better than to tweet a suggestion for a break-out talk during the second half of the evening.

But listening to the other subjects that came up, I do think there's some space in the debate for a consideration of the aesthetics of what we're all doing at the moment, whether we're working in straight up advertising or in a more productiony / content kind of place like public zone. The title I suggested was "what does social look like?"

I didn't really manage to talk about this much, but elsewhere there was a discussion on how clients could be convinced, and why they might be sceptical about using social media. There was also a lot of discussion on the more anthropological aspects of behaviour and imitation. You can read a lot more on the IPAsocial page

From my experiences so far, I'm not sure there are many sceptical clients. For me, it's been quite the opposite - nearly every project I've seen recently has had social media and engagement as part of the brief. They're all public service and voluntary projects, which might offer some rationale, but my feeling is that it's probably the same in commercial-land too. At least at the beginning of campaign discussions, people seem to be rushing to 'use' social media right now. I do feel it's widely accepted that it is changing the way brands and organisations need to operate, even though Will has raised some concerns that ultimately I do agree with.

My own concern is the speed that the transition to conversational marketing is taking place. The way that it's occurred within the lifespan of one visual trend; the Web 2.0 world of glossy rounded corners, big search bars and clean lines.

There's nothing wrong with these things, but I think it's going to put half-baked social media campaigns in a precarious position over the coming months and years. 

What I mean by that is that right now it's kind of ok to have a website screaming "share this!"... "add this!"... "tweet this!"... "facebook!", but this won't last for ever — It's always been the case that it's the ideas being conveyed that need to be social themselves to gain momentum and spread. So I'm worried that as clients come to the end of their transitions to adopting these new techniques, or at least thinking they have, their audiences will be on the way to turning off from the generic iconography and aesthetic that's been shouted at them for so long. People get bored.

Of course this transition won't be a one off thing, it will need to continually re-invent itself as new platforms and trends emerge. But there will be no point if people have got fed up with listening. And I think that for that to happen, we need to be very careful in the short term not to push 'social' into people's eyes. People know they can share, they have the tools to do it. Let's spend our time worrying about giving them things to talk about rather than whether they should or not.

Which kind of ties quite nicely back into Will's notion of brands just being good at what they do. As well as the 'technology changes, people don't' principle that Amelia wrote about a few weeks ago.

Yes.

Times to wake up

I quite like these adverts, really fun use of logo and image - there's another with a helicopter which is also good. All the different executions are visually inviting and fresh whilst still relevant to the target audience and suitably austere.

But I have a little question about this particular version - they've found a statistic that says the average Londoner gets up at 6.04 am. So why can you only get your paper before 7am? Wouldn't it be easier to get it before 6am? It seems strange to show off that they know what time you're going to get up and then not let you read your paper for potentially another 55 minutes. 

What happened to the red button?

The other night, like a lot of nights of late, I sat through a load of TV adverts that have had their scripts slightly altered to reflect 'better value'. It's not just TV, it seems like everyone recently has decided to ditch design aesthetics in favour of cramming as much visual 'value' into their offering.

I suppose what I mean by that is that it looks like a lot of campaigns have changed from 'this is cool' to 'look at everything this has/does'. I'm not sure we would have seen an iPhone ad like this in 2008:

Innocent seem to have changed tack slightly as well, although they haven't had to sacrifice visual style too much just yet. 

But this little addition at the bottom of the cartons is so subtle, I'm wondering if it's really made much difference.

Anyway.

Back to TV. I wondered thus: If everyone is looking to maximise their reach with less money during this downturn, why haven't TV ads made more use of the red button? In theory, it could offer whole pages of extra content and product info, and weren't you meant to be able to order pizza or something? ITV should be all over this with planners and buyers right now.

Red button image courtesy of James Wagner, who has a great art blog based out of New York.

It's a genuine question. I'm sure there are really good answers, answers like "well it's a bit like WAP - everyone thought it was going to be this big amazing thing but actually it's a bit rubbish", but I'd love to know what the real answers are.

What are your thoughts? No need for a postcard. Would you press red if prompted? Why don't more campaigns use it? Comments please!