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Canine Technology: Be More Dog

I’ve seen a bit of discussion online about the new O2 ad from VCCP – not all of it positive. But before I go on, have a look for yourself:

I like it. Yes, it’s not instantly clear what it’s got to do with phones and yes we’re probably reaching saturation point in terms of animals in ads what with all those meerkats, cats with thumbs and dancing ponies – and that’s before you even rewind back to the PG chimps and Andrex Puppy.

But even a cynical cat person like myself had a hard time suppressing a smile – and that’s something you can’t say for a lot of the crap that fills up the breaks. And if you want the plannery bollocks, there’s a nice observation in there about how jaded we are about technology, and in Britain, how jaded people are about life in general. We moan about our mobile internet being a little slow but forget that it didn’t even exist (for most of us) ten years ago.

The sign of a good creative idea is that it contains a point of view that transcends a specific execution and offers a platform for new thinking – and this campaign probably needs to build a bit more before it really starts to feel distinctively ‘O2′.

But the TV spot also shows the importance of ‘how you say it’ in the first place – in this case the power of a simple analogy. If Samsung or LG had tried to tackle this topic, we probably would have ended up with some generic, pompous guff about ‘limitless possibilities’ or ‘the power of curiosity’. ‘Be more dog’ manages to talk optimistically about technology in a way that’s down-to-earth and charming.

If you’re still reading, there are also some interesting digital extensions – throw frisbees from your phone to your PC, make a (rather heavily branded) cat/dog video for a friend or watch Dom Jolly getting overexcited about cool new gadgets etc

Top 3 stupid bloke ads of the week

Being surrounded in Hong Kong by rather earnest ads for health supplements and tech products, I’ve started to miss the tongue-in-cheek humour that you see elsewhere. I thought I’d redress the balance by posting three new ads from around the world that are unashamedly aimed at blokes. Yes, they may make men look like one-dimensional idiots, but they’re still more memorable than a million FMCG product demos.

Australia has its fair share of awful ads (i.e. pretty much anything from Harvey Norman), but one area it consistently excels is beer advertising. My favourite of the week is BMF’s spot for Tap King. It combines what seems like quite a cool new gadget with Lionel Ritchie crooning in a fridge. And they’ve even managed to make the instructional video reasonably amusing.

Next up is one for Cerveza Andes in Argentina, which asks why the most devastating hurricanes always seem to be named after women:

The final one for Stowford Press Cider feels a bit derivative, but it’s still better than the terrible Carlsberg ads that aired recently in the UK. And when you consider it’s the brand’s first ever national TV ad, it isn’t a bad effort:

Have a Break…No WiFi Zone

Really like this Kit Kat idea, I think it’s been kicking for a while but I only just clocked it here. A simple but elegant way of bringing ‘Have a break…’ to life, and just shows that sticking by a classic line doesn’t have to mean stale ideas.

Like a lot of great ideas it works because it taps into a tension that we can all relate to – it seems particularly pertinent here in Hong Kong, where people are well and truly under the spell of their smartphones…

Smuggling in the entertainment

Just read a great post from Simon Veksner addressing a major misconception on the role of entertainment in advertising:

“It’s often said that ads need to be entertaining because the entertainment allows us to ‘smuggle in’ a product benefit – the bit that is the commercially effective part of the ad.

I agree with the smuggling theory, but I actually think it works the other way round.”

Simon’s point isn’t just about making life more fun for creatives. It’s also in line with an increasing amount of research showing that emotive advertising is significantly more effective than ads that seek to communicate a rational product benefit (I’ve written more on this here).

The myth that creativity is just a vehicle for communicating a product message still seems to go largely unchallenged by clients, but it has major implications for how we brief and evaluate work. If you haven’t read it, I strongly recommend Paul Feldwick’s excellent paper ‘Exploding The Message Myth’ – probably the most illuminating piece I’ve read about how advertising really works.

 

Expedia bag tag

An elegant campaign from Ogilvy and Expedia that shows it’s not so much what you say as how you say it. There’s something instantly intriguing about the used baggage tags, which are all based on real IATA airport codes. Bonus points for not spoiling it all with a desperate plea to ‘like us on Facebook’.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Creatives Jon Morgan and Mike Watson explained to Creative Review where the idea came from:

“It all started when we saw a woman walking through Heathrow with the word FUK hanging from her suitcase,” they say. “Turned out she’d just flown in from Fukuoka in Japan. That got us thinking, ‘maybe there are more’.”

More here at Creative Review

The real Mad Men Christmas party: pretty dull actually

Droga 5’s recent full page ad in The Australian confirmed what we all already knew. Despite telling everyone who’ll listen that ‘the old agency model is broken’, most people in advertising still prefer the idea of a Sterling Cooper-style long lunch to a four-hour workshop on cross-media integration.

And there’s nothing wrong with that. Except that according to the BBC’s Adam Curtis, the reality of sixties adland was actually a bit less glamorous than Don Draper and co would lead us to believe.


Spot the difference

On his blog ‘The Medium and The Message’, Adam’s posted a fascinating, if slightly dreary, documentary about the 1969 Christmas party of London ad agency Davidson Pearce Berry and Tuck.

26 year old Media Director Allan Rich is pure gold – he puts an upper limit of ten minutes on festive socialising and shuns alcohol for a cheeky glass of bitter lemon.

Check out the video footage here.

[This post also appears on Amnesia Blog]

IKEA’s self-assembly banner ads

With everyone banging on about ‘being part of the conversation’ it’s easy to forget about the humble banner ad…and let’s face it, a lot of the time banners sit somewhere between pretty forgettable and downright irritating.

Well, here’s a great example of why banners don’t have to boring – it’s an IKEA ad by Hamburg’s Grabarz & Partner that made the finals of the LIAs a while ago.

Briefed with promoting IKEA’s spring sale, the Germs could have banged out some Harvey Norman-style price screamers. Instead they managed to create something that cheekily encapsulates the IKEA philosophy – “assemble it yourself and save money”.

Unbox the banner yourself here.

[This post also appears on Amnesia Blog]