…the honourable Rupert Britton, Dark Lord of Content Strategy here at PHD, has had a tweet picked up of his thoughts on the new Chris Morris film Four Lions, and it’s been used in an ad.
It’s the second one down…
He’s not the only one though… they’ve used about four or five, mixed in with reviews from proper journalistic organs.
Oh, and the Evening Standard.
Anyway, it’s really interesting, for several reasons.
Firstly, if you were a little short of good write-ups of your film (which I’m not suggesting Four Lions is, it’s just a hypothetical ‘if’), you could just find the tweets by people who did like your film, and use those.
Secondly, it highlights the fact that we increasingly trust (or at least marketers believe that we trust) the opinions of other people at least as much, if not more so, than those of the so-called ‘experts’.
Thirdly, if you are going to use someone’s tweet in a review… is it polite to ask? The first Rupert heard of it was when a friend called him up and told him…
Rupert says he wouldn’t have minded at all.
So why not just ask?
(If you’re listening, Four Lions folks, the very least you could do is send him a poster or something…)
I was just reading an impressive article on the BBC News web site about Jamie Oliver’s latest venture to plough millions of his own cash over the next 10-15years in to a scheme that aims to improve the school dinners for primary schools in the UK. His idea is to provide the funding to allow schools to apply for it to build better kitchens, gardens, fruit trees, seeds, as well as provide mentors and advisers to help with all areas.
This is the stuff of legends. In a way it is sad that it takes a chef to motivate and create opportunities like this. Like his Fifteen restaurants which funds chef apprenticeships for disadvantaged young people. I mean sad, but amazing. Love him or loath him what have you done that even compares to this? Exactly.
However it lead me to look on 4oD to watch his new series ‘Jamie Does…‘. I wonder if he is aware that the advert running before his programme is for Pizza Hut? Not that he can control this, but interesting choice from the media planners to place an advert for a company that produces the worst type of food to be advertising before a programme of someone whose principles in life are to use good, healthy food as a means to improve life for all.
Love this sort of stuff. Satisfies the creative and production sides of me.
Angus Kneale of The Mill NYC, the cast and crew give us an insight into the creation of the advert, which was filmed in New York and involved state of the art technology notably the Spydercam.
You may have already seen the new rollercoaster Barclaycard ad, pretty neat isn’t it? Well here’s some behind the scenes feastings for you to enjoy. The Spydercam is quite fantastic, as is the backing track.
There’s no perfect template for creative briefs. But with the iPad there could well be. This template would be interactive and customizable in real-time – just drag ‘n drop the elements you need. Or download new ones.
This was taken just prior to kick off, but no more than around 8,000 fans attended the match at the 25,000+ stadium in Reading.
London Irish are a rugby club to watch, though. According to their CEO, the club has ambitions to become the Manchester United of club rugby (without the debt).
Whether achieving that goal, in perspective, will leave shareholders dispondent or elated, I’m not sure. It depends in large part on the growth of the sport as a whole, which is of course out of the hands of Irish alone.
They’re soon to release a new content offering, perhaps in the form of an app. I can’t say much more other than that it excited me a bit!
So there you go, I’ve said what I wanted to say for a reasonably long time now, I’m joining Dare. For anyone that knows me, a secret like that is hard to keep. As the ever wise Tom Fishburne shows above, we don’t always know entirely what we’re letting ourselves in for but isn’t that exciting. There’s obviously the fear of the unknown, the change of surroundings and the new people, but leaps of faith have to be taken to move forward, to better myself, to keep me on my toes and to take myself out of my comfort zone. I’ve had a fantastic time with my boss @pbizzle, so this was a tough decision but nonetheless the decision has been made.
Most careers are not rung-by-rung linear paths. Instead, they involve a series of flying leaps, not knowing whether those leaps will take you up, down, or sideways. Or if you’ll miss the trapeze altogether. Or if there’s even a net.
It takes courage to take each leap. And patience when you’re not headed the direction you’d like.It takes courage to take each leap.
Thinking about your career in purely a linear way focuses you on all the wrong things and blinds you to the actual experiences along the way. Worst of all, it can make you risk-adverse.
It’s much easier to stand still and be happy where you are and doing what you’re doing. Hey, I am happy where I am and doing what I’m doing. But i’ve always wanted to be constantly developing, being adaptable, taking risks, moving onwards and upwards and making my own destiny. And I guess you only do that by taking leaps of faith.
Risks sometimes don’t pay off. That’s why they are risks.
‘To expose to a chance of loss or damage; hazard’
Here’s one example: The first ‘proper’ job out of Uni that I took didn’t work out. I naively accepted it while I was still at Uni thinking I was clever not to have to worry about months of job hunting. In hindsight I didn’t give myself the time to appraise whether it was the right thing to do. I had a week time difference from finishing Uni to starting work. Within months of starting I was desperately unhappy and found myself questioning what it was I wanted to do, where I wanted to go and how I was going to get there. I’d studied a Marketing degree for 4 years at University which lent itself to the job I was in, within the Marketing team of a large retailer, where I was told that jobs didn’t exist to do with social media. I disagreed. When 4 months later I had quit, I wondered if what I’d studied for my degree was completely useless. Of course it wasn’t but at the time I thought differently.
Licking my wounds I moved to London without a job, just before the economy imploded. Everyone asked me what I was smoking. My parents said I needed to stick at it. But I knew it wasn’t right. It didn’t *feel* right. So I trusted my instinct and took a risk. To thrust myself in to uncertainty in the country’s capital. Even though the job didn’t work out, the life lessons it taught me were invaluable and accelerated my thought processes to get me to where I am now, I firmly believe that.
After a short and highly enjoyable stint at Splendid, working with some inspirational people, I joined the fold at Consolidated PR where I’ve been involved with some brilliant projects, which Paul mentions here in the inaugural company blog post over at Thatsgreatand.com
I’ll paraphrase the post:
In the last twelve months we’ve set up our digital and social media stall here in the Covent Garden office, commenced an agency-wide social media education and training programme and started integrating social media activity into project and retained campaigns for clients in both London and Edinburgh. In this short space of time we’ve delivered digital and social media work for a whole range of brands and organisations – MTV, several parts of the Scottish Government, The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, learndirect and Mishcon de Reya just to name a few. On top of that we’ve got lots more exciting work on the boil with a number of other clients, and an appetite for more in 2010.
So as is evident, in a year we’ve made great progress.
However, I’ve always held a great curiosity and interest in adland. Paul gave me stick for having a subscription to Campaign magazine. But I always felt at some point I’d move in to it. Don’t ask me why, it was just one of those fate type things I felt would happen. Which leads me wonderfully to my next leap of faith. Dare, the digital agency of the decade.
I’m excited about the new challenge, settling in to the role of Social Media Planner and mixing it up with the web trendies.
Let’s hope it’s an upwards leap on the career trapeze. Wish me luck!
Last week Gizmodo spotted that Google has filed a patent entitled “Claiming Real Estate in Panoramic or 3D Mapping Environments for Advertising,” which in short allows them to paste media (adverts) onto the images.
Its interesting how the mouse in Street View follows the 3D space, we assume to allow any data to be tagged to buildings etc.
With data of course comes the ability to provide click throughs and advertising. We dont think it will limited to simple images however as video can also be embedded into panoramas as one of our previous examples shows.
It seems like the car co’s are really stepping up their game recently with great stuff like this and the stunt Mini pulled off in Amsterdam which I wrote about recently here. I love this. It’s brilliant, unexpected, ambient and I’d imagine a wow moment when you see it in the flesh. It wasn’t the kind of thing I’d expect Alfa Romeo to be doing and that’s always a good thing.
So Alfa Romeo Belgium have been unconventionally taking one of their cars to shopping centres in Belgium to demonstrate just how easy it is to buy. The ambient stunt, associated with the Salon de l’Auto et de la Moto de Bruxelles (14 to 24 January), incredibly suspends the car to make it fit into a shopping trolley. Genius.
The tag line, “Your chance to own an Alfa Romeo” is a bit dull though. It doesn’t really motivate me enough. How about “Put an Alfa Romeo in your shopping trolley today!” Too long? Oh well.
Pictures below were taken in Woluwé Shopping Centre and will soon be replicated in other shopping centres in Antwerp and Liege.
Jeans brands love a manifesto. Diesel has a new one, which is a call to arms to, um… Be Stupid.
Summed up in the film above, the new manifesto basically sees ‘stupid’ pitted against ‘smart’, with smart in this context meaning stuffy, risk-averse, geeky, while ‘stupid’ means brave, daring, and creative. “To be stupid is to be brave, when you risk something, that’s stupid,” says the manifesto. “The stupid aren’t afraid to fail. Why? Because they’re stupid! We think that you are probably pretty stupid too.”
The manifesto includes reference to Renzo Rosso, the founder of Diesel, who built his manufacturing empire by initially selling jeans that looked secondhand. “Renzo Rosso is stupid,” says the Be Stupid manifesto. “Stupid is motoring around in your Ford transit and visiting shop owner after shop owner, trying to sell your brand new denim made to look worn. ‘It’s a sign of innovation. When you are already doing the things nobody even thinks about.’ That’s a very stupid quote, Mister Rosso. Respect.”
The campaign is backed up by a series of posters (a selection of which are shown here) shot by photographers Kristin Vicari, Melodie McDaniel and Chris Buck, each showing examples of people ‘acting stupid’. In addition to this, Diesel are trying to recruit ‘stupid people’ (though judging by the call for entries, which asks if you “are you doing something particuarly stupid right now…like starting a band, building a tree house or creating an art installation”, are in fact simply creative people) to be part of a forthcoming music video that will feature the new Diesel collection.
Created by Anomaly (who recently picked up the Sony account from Fallon), the campaign certainly takes a more bombastic approach than previous Diesel campaigns, which have been more noteworthy for their style than their taglines. But while it may be eyecatching, when we’re all fed a regular diet of genuine stupidity via the media and TV most days already, will the ‘Be Stupid’ tag just prove grating? Or is everyone in fact longing to out themselves as stupid to Diesel?
The full Be Stupid campaign can be viewed online here.
What dyu reckon? I like it. But then don’t really understand the link between being stupid and buying Diesel. Or maybe I shouldn’t take things so matter of fact. Would I be stupid for buying Diesel because of its astronomically premium pricing? Or are they wanting people to be stupid? Are they trying to make the notion of being stupid a positive thing? And how can people advocate buying Diesel products if its seen as being stupid? The messaging can be construed so many ways. Overall, I’m leaning closer towards fail but I might be horribly overthinking it all.
Then I think I started to get it a bit more after a friend had this to say.. Still odd though.
No jeans at all in that video ad, interesting. I kind of get what they are doing – they are supporting creativity and chance takers over the boring, well thought out approaches. Its like an antidote to the current conservative thinking. If you’re Diesel, you are an exciting, interesting chancer, rather than a predictable smartypants.
