Right-Half Chow

Delta takes it's time

Another illustration of the fact that you really can't afford to fool your clients anymore. Who needs consumerist lobbies when you've got camera cellphones, hurray! I'd hate to be Delta but if you can't get any flexibility through your organisation you deserve this kind of thing:

The antithesis of urban spam

The grand prix outdoor in Cannes is a great example of how communication can actually deliver something more than it's own message. A billboard equipped with solar panels used to deliver power for the kitchens in a township school, feeding 1100 children in the process. I've yet to meet anyone who was not blown away by the idea. Head over to the winners' site and have a look at the movie that accompanied the entry.

Together with the grand prix for Dove in film it's a triumph for brands that dare to look beyond their own tiny set of values and equity, stand up for something and actually give something back to people.

More of this please.

Smart AND bold

Just back from the french riviera where we had a great time, only to return and face an insurmountable heap of work that needs to be done by yesterday. So I'll probably put up some of the stuff I really liked.

First up is this commercial:

Face it, if you're in the market for a Smart that means you don't have any kids and rarely need to transport large volumes. You probably don't go out shopping for 3 full caddies every weekend either. I really liked the way of turning it's main weakness into an argument for the brand. It puts a lot more stress on the reasons why it's small, instead of using arguments like 'nimble', 'easy to park', 'the perfect city vehicle',... And it's got perfect pacing.

Reality 1 - Fiction 0

Found over at Bock's Car.

Management by Clip Art

As a student I did a whole lot different jobs: barman in a railway station, babysitting, assistant in a copy center, deejaying (but I never really regarded that as a job), stage aid at concerts, industrial cleaning, building scaffolding,...

But the worst was -by far- a selling job in a call center where the management tried to motivate us by putting up this kind of crap on the dividers of your phone booth:

I found the culprits here:

The keyword here is cheap...

Just what the doctor ordered

The Camel 'doctors' commercial came up in a few different discussions I had with colleagues lately, but I never actually saw it. Until this morning when someone sent it to me (thanks Bram, quite the coincidence actually). It's probably even better than the Flintstones. You can see why some people were afraid to speak out as advertising professionals at the time...

Of course, strategies like these really depend on the authority of the endorser you use, and doctors lost a bit of their status lately, or not?

Use the vibe, luke

I've been thinking about agency and creative culture quite a lot lately. What we do (marketing, advertising, communication) is supposed to be fun (you don't stay in the business for the hours, do you?): you can often judge the power of ideas by the amount of laughter they generate when you're working on them, and people in general work harder and better when they're having fun. So this post by Seth Godin struck a bit of a nerve: why is it that -in general- we don't look at 'the vibe' as a malleable thing?

If vibe is so important, why does it sound flaky to worry about it? Who's in charge of the vibe at your place? Could it be better? A lot better?

Changing the vibe isn't always possible, but most of us rarely try. From physical layout to organization to what leaders say and do... it matters. Sometimes, it's all that matters.

We talk to our clients about experience marketing and the way people could feel when interacting with a product or service but we don't take the time to regard the people we work with as clients of a brand (their employer) themselves.

Stand up Powerpoint

It won't teach you to be a good presenter, but it sure highlights some of the classic powerpoint pitfalls, and some of it is funny:

Gnippandikeht

This is what happens if you take the reverse url of Saatchi, and a whole bunch of other agencies as well...

All lead you to the following site (a hard read if you don't have a laptop, and the turn button at the end does not seem to work...), the story in short:

They got my attention, so I'm hoping something really nice will happen with this after Cannes.

If not, there's another 'let's go cyberwild' agency on my 'die to avoid if necessary' list.

Formula Annoying

Following this post on Influx insights on the Kubica crash in the Canada grand prix, where I saw that the video was removed I did what I usually do: enter some search terms on YouTube and see if I can locate another copy... which works about 95 times out of 100. I clicked the first result that came up and this is what was shown to me:

Never one to give up, I tried about 30 videos that were included in the search results. And while I could understand it if they tried to control all video material from the races they organise I seemed to remember that I saw F1 related films on YouTube before. So I went looking under other search terms like 'monaco grand prix' and so on... Imagine my surprise when that seemed to work perfectly, no problems with copyright here.

Dear FIA, please explain why you would only want to copyright the crashes which are, to my (admittedly, limited) knowledge, a part of the sport? YouTube is, at least for me, one of the best ways to catch up with missed (audiovisual) world news... and you spoil the fun.
Are you planning to release your own crash compilation? Are you waiting to make some money out of this? Or do you want to suggest that it is a safe sport? I get the impression from the website:

I'll let you in on something: I won't think your circuits and roads are any less safe because I see a spectacular crash... I even believe there are far more dangerous sports than formula one. But I would like to follow up on the news, and that's what it was so please prety please: stop meddling!