Archive for October, 2008

Is it time to call direct mail something different? How about Indoor Advertising

Published by admin on October 23, 2008 in Uncategorized. 6 Comments

Went to the Campaign Big awards last night, which–apart from BBH collecting an almost unhealthy stash of perspex desk ornaments–was notable for the way in which it was structured.

In a clear attempt to challenge traditional media demarcations, everything was split into sectors, with best executions then awarded prizes within that sector. Mostly it worked, though some sectors were understandably better than others, was a good attempt at representing all the main disciplines, Digital, Direct, Outdoor, Press, TV, Radio as equals.

A couple of things struck me though…

It used to be that Ambient advertising was, for some reason, lumped in with direct (because there’s no paid-for media?), but Campaign had (wisely) decided to include in the Outdoor section, which immediately elevated that category since so much ambient activity is heavily idea-based (and is increasingly influencing paid-for outdoor media).

That then got me thinking that maybe Direct could do with a similar boost. Might it not be an idea to call it Indoor Advertising?

This would also embrace both traditional direct mail and Matter, which is, of course, in-direct.

Warhol Cans - National Galleries of Scotland (BBC) - Finalist Campaign Big Awards 2008

Crystal Head Vodka, really?

Published by admin on October 21, 2008 in Uncategorized. 11 Comments

Seen this?

You could believe that this really is a new Vodka brand with some smart creative people sprinkling a liberal dose of fairy dust to give it a good send off into the world.

It’s convincing, with bottles made by Bruni Glass, an arcane Italian glass manufacturer and the technical stuff about filtration over diamonds seems the obvious next step in distillers’ oneupmanship. But, the story about the mystical powers unleashed when the legendary thirteen crystal heads are brought together is real magic. Really.

And why not? Drinks brands have form in developing innovative marketing angles. But, then again, so have movies.

Is this a spoof, one of the early raiders in the coming onslaught for Ghostbusters 3? Lots of bloggers seem to think so.

The Crystal Head Vodka website offers no outlets, distributors and or ways of purchasing the stuff, nor any contact or corporate information. In fact, the site has nothing but Akroyd’s lengthy movie. A few booze sites seem to feature it as a product but don’t show any stock or availability.

It smells like a spoof, but Notcot says “no, it’s real” and even has pictures and comments testifying to the fact that it’s real.

It’s a mystery. I guess that’s the point.

Crowd Sourcing a Jigsaw Puzzle

Published by admin on October 20, 2008 in Potential Matter ideas and matter. 1 Comment

I’ve been recently intrigued by the idea of getting the Matter subscribers to do a single jigsaw puzzle. I like the idea of everyone (notice how I avoided the over-used word community) collectively create something and I’m particularly fascinated by the things inside Matter moving from the private experience into a more public one.

The easy and more obvious way to do this would to do it online, but web puzzles seem to be a bit twee and, frankly, a little unrewarding. But, maybe that’s just the ones I’ve seen. More dramatic and exciting is the prospect of getting all the Matter subscribers to ‘do’ the puzzle in real life. Obviously, this wouldn’t be easy, not least of the challenges would be getting people to physically do the puzzle and how could we avoid the inevitable frustration if one person failed to turn up with their piece?

Leave aside the politics, the Freedom Not Fear campaign created this collage of our leader from CCTV images, which goes some way to illustrating how this might work.

Could we do the same but for purely entertaining reasons?

Photo: Felix Cohen (on Flickr)

Normal service now resumed

Published by admin on October 7, 2008 in Uncategorized. 1 Comment

Sorry. We had an interruption to the web service over the weekend-something technical I don’t pretend to understand. Anyway, as you can see, it’s now fixed and we’ll try and make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Hope you all didn’t think we’d just vanished.

Photo: Robert Brook, used under creative commons licence. Thanks

Thing of the day

Published by admin on October 2, 2008 in Thing of the day. 2 Comments

Here’s the first in an informal series of notable things. They might not be new, and it might not be every day.

No 1… MILLENNIUM CHANDELIER ( 2004) by Stuart Haygarth, which I happened to see at an exhibition at Mother in London last week is made of 1000 exploded Party Poppers collected after the Millennium celebrations in London.

You would think

Published by admin on October 2, 2008 in Interesting objects. 1 Comment

I came across this inspired piece of product design: a redefinition of the scotch tape / selotape dispenser. Sadly, many people can’t get on with tape dispensers and so they become little more than desk ornaments. Maybe that’s why there are so many aesthetic designs. Few products could have demanded a re-think than this. I thought.

My next thought was to imagine the unstoppable viral effect and that this genius idea (assuming it works, I haven’t tried it) would be all over the internet, and that the makers, Yanko Design and the product’s creator Paul Sandip would be household names.

But, there seems to be a flaw in this plan for world-domination as a Google search for TapeWORM revealed a lot of medical detail and not much else. Is this a candidate for how-not-to-name-in-the-internet-age or am I missing something?

FireStats icon Powered by FireStats