Your browser (Internet Explorer 7 or lower) is out of date. It has known security flaws and may not display all features of this and other websites. Learn how to update your browser.

X

Navigate / search

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

Ever tried a bananaberry?

Here’s a beautifully simple idea to promote Philips blenders in Brazil. Rather than trying to persuade people that Philips blenders spin faster or chop finer, Ogilvy went back to the old cliche that it’s what you do with it that counts.

They decided to show that fruit tastes better when it’s blended together – by creating real hybrid fruits.

Philips : Fruit Mashup from Fabio Seidl on Vimeo.

Clients are often wary of ‘selling the category’, preferring to talk about incremental product improvements or meaningless proprietary technologies that only the product managers understand.

Not really sure if this is just a one-off awards stunt or part of a bigger campaign, but well done to Philips for realising the potential of a great category idea. And extra kudos to the agency for getting a guy playing the spoons in there.

Found via Creativity Online 

 

 

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…

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

Idea Envy: Driving Dogs

Driving Dogs. I’m not really a dog lover but you can’t help smiling when you hear those two words together.

When DraftFCB New Zealand was briefed on a new campaign for New Zealand’s SPCA, the lazy response would have been a sob story about neglected puppies in need of a new home.

Thankfully, they decided that a cleverer approach would be to show people how smart abandoned dogs can be – by proving that you can teach an old dog new tricks…

FInd out more about Driving Dogs.