Posted in: Creative Social | No Comments
 

Due to a last minute filming schedule change, Art Malik unfortunately wasn’t available for Tuesday’s Creative Social London and after a morning of panicked phone calls and thanks to Mr Graham Fink we managed to find an alternative speaker; award winning director Mike Figgis (Leaving Las Vegas, Internal Affairs, Timecode). What an alternative it was.

Mike kicked things off with how we all need to discipline our creativity and not let the ‘new’ blur the basics; we need to think more and not jump straight into the Adobe comfort zone, which then lead him onto discussing current fads: The Redcam, 3D films and anything else what people use for ‘new’ sakes and not always to make a script better. A point we can all relate to.

After a few stories Mike picked up on the point of how we seem to have lost time, we don’t ‘do lunch’ and discuss ideas or spend the much needed time to perfect a piece, the group debated this and concluded that it was mainly due to technology enhancements which seem to have enabled clients to receive things faster. Technology may be getting faster and more efficient but does that mean that we have to? We concluded that it’s not good to.

Mike then took us through how he made it in Hollywood, his ups and downs, how he had stuck to his guns and didn’t buckle to the critics when he directed the multi award winning ‘Leaving Las Vegas’. Next he went on to the explain how he made Timecode and the extraordinary techniques he used and how he let the movie just define itself, there was no script, hotels, makeup artists, transport or catering and each day they shot the entire film in the morning and premiered to the cast and crew in the afternoon with a live mix, allowing for the next days film to be even better, a world first.

Mike finished with a story of how he got into music as a youngster; he could play the trumpet but only by ear, he couldn’t read music at all. Something that didn’t stop him joining an orchestra!

It seems that his jump in the deep end and go with the flow attitude has gotten him where he is today. A real inspirational speaker. Thanks Mike.

Posted in: Creative Social | No Comments
 

… and can be seen here. Overall Germany ranked in at #1 in 2009 NYF. USA comes in 2nd, followed by England at 3rd. Australia in at 4th, Sweden in 5th and Japan in 6th.

Digital grand prix was won by nitrocummins which won yet another grand prix for ‘The Best Job in the world” for Tourism Queensland. Not a bad week.

Well done to all Social winners which included Akestam Holst, Big Spaceship, Daddy, Far Far, Great Works, Perfect Fools, Plan.Net and Profero.

Posted in: Awards | No Comments
 

We have a solution:

Posted in: Conferences, Creative Social | No Comments
 

Work in progress by Frank Plant for a forthcoming show in my garage.

Posted in: Creative Social | No Comments
 

Back from another year in Cannes. I think that graham fink summed it up well when he tweeted: “a few great winners, but on the whole a bit weak. some odd decisions and strangely very little humour” (on the final point he clearly did not see LMFM’s slot at Cannes - see the Cannes Lions site for a clip which will give you an idea).

However it definitely shook up the world of advertising. The most coveted prize at the Cannes ad festival went to an ad that wasn’t made for TV, a PR campaign broke the record for winning the most Grand Prix in a single festival and the Titanium’s were dominated by a political campaign. I am proud to say by the way that that coveted prize at Cannes was the Grand Prix for television which was won by Tribal DDB and our very own Chris Baylis for the rather brilliant Phillips Carousel work (see below). Well done mate.

NMA’s coverage focused on another strong performance by the UK advertising industry (I will update the country table later in the week) while Ad Age recognised ‘the winners were dominated by attempts to engage consumers and deeply involve them in brands — or, in the Obama case, a movement — rather than whack them over the head with canned message time and again. As such, the big winners at this year’s Cannes were choices that reflected where the marketing business is going rather than a slavishness to tradition or an insistence on basking in what glory the creation of a Lion-winning 30-second spot will grant’ .

I also picked up on an interesting well balanced piece by Jerome Courtial, a planner at W&K who used to be a Glue who asks whether the results of the Cyberlions represents the end of the digital ad agency . Obviously he wrote this before Tribal DDB won the grand prix in film and to be honest there is nothing in the piece that we have not already said here (see trads vs digs).

However I did want to pick up the fact that maybe we are focusing the discussions in the wrong area. Obviously I cannot speak for all Socials but I certainly believe that our digital heritage means that we have permission to play in a few wider area of marketing. For those who could manage our Profero talk in Cannes (again the first 6 mins can be seen at Canneslions) would have learnt about a world in the 60s and 70s where agencies actually solved business problems rather than ‘advertised’ to consumers. When some farmers had a surplus of pears, the agency responded by inventing Babycham. Again when McDougall’s flour wanted to sell more flour, the ad agency invented Mr Kiplings Cakes:

It is for this reason that I am delighted that the digital agency (AKQA London) that picked up a Grand Prix was for something that actually made a difference to business and is not in fact advertising. In the same way that Nike+ was not advertising, the ecoDrive simply allowed Fiat to provide a service which actually can help people be greener and provide Fiat with a competitive advantage. The fact is that as it has been said for a long time digital is not just another channel - it actually builds business and this means that maybe we will move from being digital agencies to becoming partners to our clients. Unlike ad agencies, many of us actually build the stores from which our clients sell their products. We make sure that people’s experience on-site is maximised and that their engagement with the brand is ongoing. We build communities and listen to what customers are saying. We deliver real tangible value.

To add to this I think that the changing landscape and the emergence of social media is going to have an even greater impact on the influence of digital and those that can match basic human motivations with the evolving online behaviours will have have fantastic wider marketing opportunities . Therefore I too like Jerome hope that the agencies from a digital heritage (I doubt we will be talking about digital ad agencies in 12 months time) have a better showing at the next Cannes festival but only if it is recognising the work they are doing (and some are already doing) in becoming true business partners to clients.

Posted in: Advertising, Awards | No Comments
 

Shot by Perfect Fools very own Vinh Kha during a recent production. We need some of this kit for the next Creative Social mug shots.

Lunch break and a Phantom camera. from Vinh Kha on Vimeo.

Posted in: Creative Social | No Comments
 

Here’s a topline on Amplify and the Natural Language Processing that they specialise in. Instead of key words they ‘read’ and take meaning from the overall content. To date this sort of stuff has been based on key words which tell you bugger all.

Social media, still not completely embraced by all, will simply become the media. That’s it.

Posted in: Creative Social, Social Media, Technology | No Comments
 

If you are still in Cannes be sure to go to the final workshop by Iain Tait at Poke:

Saturday 27 June
14:00 - 16:00
Workshop Area Level -1
POKE
The Art Of Creating Simple, Smaller And Smarter
Or… Mommy I learned in Cannes how to stop making advertisements and start making things that advertise

Speaker:
Iain Tait, Creative Director - Poke

Recession. Advertising agencies and brands are running scared. They’re being forced to seek out alternative means of engaging consumers because their excessive marketing habits of the past have been rendered obsolete, both by technology and by lack of consumer interest.

Face it, no one wants to be advertised to.

But for many, this movement isn’t just some new fad to control costs during troubled times. For digital natives, the best marketing has always come from creating something valuable and useful. People gravitate towards, and like talking about, simple and valuable interactions, and are willing to forgive (and even embrace) branded messages that come with them.

Forget thinking big. It’s time to think small. It’s time to embrace the art of simple, smart and social. It’s time to stop creating advertisements and start creating useful things that advertise.

This session will explore this idea in a hands-on breakout session. Delegates will break into groups where, under a series of realistic constraints, POKE will put to use the thoughts surrounding simple, smart, small, and social. It will demonstrate that by embracing the digital toolkit and focusing on being nimble, effective communication can be executed more efficiently and with greater impact than the clutter that’s prevalent today.

This workshop features a special guest speaker.

Posted in: Conferences | No Comments
 

Well done to all the Cyberlions winners last night. The Grand Prix winners were as follows:

The Best Job in the World - Cumminsnitro

This campaign became the first ever campaign to win 3 Grand Prixs (also won PR and Direct gongs). Full entry can be found here.

Fiat Eco Drive - AKQA

Really nice innovation in the automotive sector. Eco:drive is a computer application that connects your car to your PC. Using cutting-edge analytic software, eco:Drive dissects and evaluates your driving style and shows you ways to cut down on fuel consumption, reducing your CO2 emissions and saving you money.

Why So Serious - 42 Entertainment

Brilliant campaign to promote the Dark Knight. While last year’s NIN campaign was criticised for maybe not being mass and only catering for NIN audience, this campaign definitely had a far broader reach. Full campaign overview can be found here.

All winners can be found here. Congrats to all Social winners which included AGENCY REPUBLIC, ÅKESTAM HOLST, BOONDOGGLE, GREAT WORKS, HERRAIZ SOTO, TRIBAL DDB AMSTERDAM, THE VIRAL FACTORY,

Annual country table to come soon although no doubt that the big winner was the US with Goodby Silverstein as Interactive Agency of the Year and Crispin Porter Bogusky runner up. Yet again one of the boutique Social agencies lands in the Top 3 with Boondoogle in third place. Well done guys.

Posted in: Awards | No Comments