The Good Call Centre – Fosters

A nice campaign that interacts with you and your friends to keep the party going by calling them out.

http://fosters.co.uk/goodcallcentre

One of the best honesty experiments. NAB – The Honesty Experiment

Something for all the runners out there

All you runners would have loved this.
Winner of a silver for Promo & Activation lions.

Bronze in Titanium & Integrated.

In line with Nike’s curent global campaign #makeitcount, Nike created an online auction site where instead of bidding money, you bid your Nike+ kms for exclusive products.

Not a bad way to demonstrate that their efforts have not been in vain.

 

AirTime: Chat Roulette for Facebook – 2/5 rating

The latest venture from the Napster founders aims to bring a lil bit of excitement back into the world of social media. At a time when most people are facing some form of FOMO due to the lack of excitement currently happening online (quite sad really that we have to rely on others to create our own excitement) this couldn’t come at a better time.

Or so it seems.

While most people in Asia would have a hard time getting to grips with it, our western counterparts will surely enjoy and ravel in it just like Chat Roulette. However how long before it becomes another Chat Roulette?

The problem with ventures like these is that it is easy to replace as it is based on the idea of offering a sense of serendipity, but while talking to strangers to some is a nice thing, to most they prefer to keep their identities locked away and only opened for those that they know.

Just like how Chat Roulette became a place for indecent behaviour, where there is no enforcement and restrictions it will soon follow.

I give this a start-up rating of 2/5. Simply because I don’t see it scaling to the East and can be easily replaced by other ventures that offer an element of a social surprise.

Copywriters VS Art Directors

Copywriters and art directors are supposed to work in tandem—but they both have different work styles and habits.From their choices in social media to their preferences in computers—they seem to draw a line that sets them apart from each other.Here is a set of illustrations taken from Copywriters versus Art Directors that illustrates their differences.

Do you think these illustrations truly represent the differences between copywriters and art directors?

Source : designtaxi, Facebook

Dead Men Cooking – A Cookbook Hopefully Never be Served

A creative solution for death penalty advocacy brief. Raise my hat to Jung von Matt which really deserves the five years-in-a-row being agency of the year for the consistency on their juicy ideas.

Alive, a German organisation advocating for worldwide abolition of capital punishment, worked with Rocket & Wink and Jung von Matt to publish “Dead Men Walking”, a cookbook with dishes that will hopefully never be served. Inmates on death row in the United States were asked what they would want to eat on their last day. Forty of the recipes were then collected in one volume, which was sent to key decision-makers worldwide. The cover material is made from American prison clothes, closed by the kind of belt used on the electric chair.

Credits
The Dead Men Cooking project was developed at Jung von Matt, Hamburg (text and client service) and Rocket & Wink, Hamburg (design and illustration) by creative directors Doerte Spengler-Ahrens, Jan Rexhausen, Felix Fenz, copywriters Marc Freitag, David Wegener, Vicky Jacob-Ebbinghaus, Stefan Golde and Estelle Raschka, art director Alexander Norvilas, illustrators Alexander Rötterink, Reginald Wagner, Julika Dittmers, Adam Bunte, typographer Jule Dittmers.

Source : The Inspiration Room

How Famous Brands Got Their Names?

You hear about famous brands, such as Coca-Cola, Amazon, LEGO, Nike and Adobe, all the time.

These brands are world-famous and some of the most advertised; and their logos, instantly recognizable—but what’s in a name; as Shakespeare once uttered, do you know how their names came about and what they actually mean?

Based on the Wikipedia list, online magazine Bored Panda has made a visual list of famous company name etymologies.

How many of these ‘fun facts’ did you already know?

via Designtaxi.com, Bored Panda

Advertising People Are Not Normal

Do advertising people really understand consumers who are not from advertising, who are not clients, salespeople or marketers? Well, the article followed by infographic below gives us a point of view. Do we really understand our consumers? Or, are we actually a bit..bias?

Infographic Confirms It: Advertising People Are Not Normal
By: Christine Champagne

A new study shows: Ad people love advertising and social media. Other people, less so. Also, ad people are more likely to behave badly at office parties.

Those who work in advertising often wonder if they live in a sort of bubble. You wonder, are civilians as active on social media and as inclined to pay attention to what brands are doing on Twitter, and is the rest of the world as preoccupied with that award-winning ad campaign that industry types can’t stop talking about?

The unsurprising answer is no, according to a study commissioned by San Francisco-based advertising agency Heat and conducted this past March by iThink, which found that people who work in advertising and marketing are worlds apart from the “normal” people when it comes to how they use social media and how they view social media marketing.

By the way, the survey also revealed that ad professionals tend to engage in more bad behavior at office holiday parties. More on that later.

First, mull these findings on how advertising/marketing professionals use Facebook as compared to the general public:
• 71% of advertising/marketing professionals say they pay attention to brand posts in their Facebook news feed “all of the time” versus 23% of the general population.
• As for Twitter: 92% of advertising/marketing professionals use Twitter to follow brands they like. 33% of the general population does so.

Should brands put more effort into interacting with consumers via social media?
• 63% of advertising/marketing professionals “strongly agree” that they should; 23% of the general population “strongly agree”

Meanwhile, digital marketing campaigns that are endlessly discussed in the advertising industry aren’t so well known in the wider world. Chew on this:
• 70% of advertising/marketing professionals were aware of Burger King’s “Subservient Chicken” digital marketing campaign vs. 8% of the general population; as for the mega-award-winning Jay-Z “Decoded”: 63% of advertising/marketing professionals aware of campaign vs. 9% of the general population.

And the study also seems to suggest that the Mad Men stereotypes aren’t off the mark: Subjects were also asked about how they act at office holiday parties, and it appears that people who work in advertising are more likely to puke from drinking too much (37% vs. 9% of the general public); do drugs (26% vs. 3% of the general public); and hook up with a coworker (26% vs. 8% of the general public). If you work in advertising, these results likely aren’t surprising to you.

Source : fastcocreate.com

The Creative Pursuit of Laziness

It’s seems like a common understanding that companies have valuable assets if they have people who’s hard-working and staying late at the office.
However, the article and the infographic below suggest the opposite. Specially for you whose core work is to maintain fresh creativity, it’s time to be a bit creatively lazy (read: go home faster); and take a break from working too much in front of the computer/internet! Here’s why;

The Creative Pursuit Of Laziness
BY Jeffrey Paul Baumgartner

You start a new job with a new company. There are two employees in similar positions. They have both been with the company for several years. One is clearly hard working. She is constantly busy, juggles numerous tasks successfully and often stays late to get work done. The other seems much more relaxed. Indeed, she is often sharing jokes with her colleagues! She does not appear to work very hard, finishes tasks seemingly too quickly and is usually one of the first to leave the office at the end of the day. Which one should you emulate if you wish to do well in the company?

The seemingly lazy one, of course. Both have been with the company for some years, so you can assume that both are doing their job well. More importantly, you can assume that the apparently lazy one has worked out how to do her job efficiently, allowing her to work in a more relaxed way and go home at a reasonable hour daily.

CREATIVELY SEEKING THE EASY WAY

In my experience, this is something creative people are very good at, particularly if they work in organizations which do give them new creative challenges on a regular basis. They use their creative skills to find short cuts in performing regular tasks and improving the efficiency of their area of operations.

In truth, it is not just creative people who are lazy. Humans are programed to be lazy and this is a good thing. When our prehistoric ancestors were hunting and gathering, the less work expended to kill and skin a mammoth or to collect fruit, the better. Even today, it is sensible to ask why you should spend four hours performing a task that you can complete sufficiently well in an hour.

FOLLOWERS OR THINKERS

At work, when a new employee is shown how to perform a task, she will normally continue to do it in the way she was taught. This is not surprising. Most of us are taught to follow instructions, especially when a superior at work or school demonstrates tells us to do so.

But the creative individual is always questioning things and considering alternatives. She cannot help it. That’s how the creative mind is wired. She will try performing the task in different ways. Of course there are risks involved. An alternative approach to performing a four-hour task could prove more complicated than expected—and eat up eight hours of her time. She may be reprimanded by her superior for not doing the task in the prescribed manner. Worse, her method might not work at all, forcing her to start all over again.

However, this is normal for the creative person. Her curiosity and desire to explore alternatives is stronger than her sense of following instructions. Over time, she will try out various ways of performing tasks and will soon find the most efficient methods.

LESSONS TO BE LEARNED

As I wrote initially, if you are new to a company, do not look to the workaholics for advice on how to do your job well. Look to the laziest people. They will almost surely be able to show you the most efficient way to do your work well.

If you are an employer, on the other hand, those apparently lazy people are probably your most creative thinkers. When you need people with ideas for improving products, services and processes, be sure to include them in the teams responsible for developing these ideas. Moreover, be sure also to allow them to perform on these teams as they do on their tasks: let them try out ideas, see how they work, dispose of failed ideas and try out new ideas. This is how the creative process works.

The Internet Is Ruining Your Brain [INFOGRAPHIC]
by Stephanie Buck

Turns out, multi-tasking online doesn’t positively exercise our brains or mental state. Heavy Internet users are 2.5 times more likely to be depressed. And web addiction reduces the white matter in our brains, basically the transmitters responsible for our memory and sensory abilities.

Source : DesignTAXI, mashable.com

Do People Still Fall For Banner Ads?

“Banner ads first appeared on the web in 1994 and since then they have been used extensively over the Internet. They are made to be eye catching and impressive so that they create an urge in the visitors to click into their business. But, their mass production and misuse has caused viewers to be skeptical and unresponsive to them. After 8 years, do people still fall for this attractive ad?”

Killer Infographics have produced an infographic for Prestige Marketing, looking at who’s clicking, why they click or don’t click, and the top three ways they are used. Check this out below, and scroll to the bottom for an example of one cool implementation of a banner ad:

So.. someone would most likely to survive a plane crash rather than click a banner ads.
But here’s one cool example of a creative banner ads. Do you think you’ll fall for this ad?

source : digitalbuzz, inspiration room