HTML5. A Great Intro to What is New.

August 23rd, 2010 • View Comments Tech
Tags: Agencies, Blast Radius, Cool, Development, flash, HTML5, Prediction, Presentation, Tech, Tools, Trends, visual

When you start a new job it is always extremely interesting to find out about your coworkers after a while. Who is this guy across the table actually? And what did he or she do before we actually started collaborating?
One of my new colleagues who really surprised me is Bobby van der Sluis.

Bobby is Technical Experience Director here at Blast Radius, Amsterdam and a veteran of Flash Development. He is author of UFO and co-author of SWFObject 2 (along with a lot of other projects), which are both well-known open source JavaScript libraries for detecting the Adobe Flash Player and embedding Flash content in web pages. In addition to that he does publish articles at A list apart quite often and speaks at conferences. Oooh….and he is also a very nice guy – a fact that should not go unnoticed here as well.

Anyway, last week Bobby held a very insightful presentation about Flash HTML5 and his personal perspectives on its progress. It is interesting to watch Flash veterans such as Bobby to reinvent their job profiles and start developing on a similar  different platform.

Here is Bobby’s presentation. Check out his blog as well and follow him on Slideshare.

Bizarre. My Tram Station is an Outdoor Award Entry.

August 22nd, 2010 • View Comments Ads
Tags: Ads, Agencies, Amsterdam, Awards, Funny, Ideas, Media, Outdoor, Truth, Underway, visual, World

I work pretty much in the center of Amsterdam. I love the city. But to be honest, there are nicer places than Leidseplein, the square nearby which opens the gates to the touristic part of the city.

What I find really bizarre (beyond stoned German teenagers) is Leidseplein’s tram station. In fact, it’s not a tram station – it is a living Cannes Outdoor Lions Award entry for the city’s agencies. Every second week the tram station is in the center of another expensive outdoor ad idea that you cannot see anywhere else. It’s the kind of stuff that you see in award videos. The kind of idea that is getting sold to award jurys as a globally executed ad campaign, while in fact we are talking about one tram station at Leidseplein.

This week it’s 180 TBWA\BEC with adidas F50 Lightspeed.

A couple of weeks ago it was some fantasy motion picture…

Read more »

Survey. How much can you actually earn as a Planner?

August 18th, 2010 • View Comments Work
Tags: Agencies, Jobs, Money, Planning, Report, Salary, Strategy, Study, Survey, Truth, World

Finally! An interesting analytical paper about the status quo of planning salaries in planning. My colleague Heather LeFevre from the colleagues at Strawberry Frog here in Amsterdam has just published her Planner Survey 2010. It tries to compare salaries of strategists worldwide to bring some light into the dark. The data was collected via an online survey with 1570+ participants from all over the world.

The effort definitely was worth it. You get a pretty good understanding about what you can expect to earn in NYC in comparison to London. But as usual – salaries don’t say much as long as you don’t integrate real costs of living. Earning and spending 100$ in Frankfurt is a very different thing to earning and spending 100$ in Amsterdam or London.

Anyway, great work, Heather. Thanks a lot.

Creative Briefs. Two Decks on making them evolve.

August 11th, 2010 • View Comments Jobs, Strategy
Tags: Agencies, Cool, Creative, creative briefs, Ideas, Jobs, Prediction, Presentation, Process, Strategy, Tools, World

As a strategist it is kind of a fixation to think about creative briefs. Creative brief? Yes, a piece paper which traditionally is created by a strategist/client directore to serve as a guideline for the creative process. There are literally hundreds of these templates out there. Some are good and some are bad.

In fact, most creative briefs circulating in agencies nowadays are pretty old school. That’s not surprising. Most agencies are pretty old school in the first place, secondly all too often the briefing context is the key problem and not the template. Finally, the ownership over the document is frequently not shared among the different stakeholders. Stupid process that is.

Jasmin Cheng has pulled together quite a nice deck that collects a lot of thoughts about this problem.

Case Study. Old Spice Guy flexes his Muscles.

August 5th, 2010 • View Comments Ads, Strategy, We like
Tags: Adaptation Marketing, Ads, Agencies, Brands, Case Study, Creativity, Funny, Ideas, Old Spice, Presentation, Social Influence Marketing, Truth, We like, wieden & kennedy

Yes, we all love Old Spice now. No, it was not at all unsuccessful. In fact Wieden + Kennedy did not only stage a highly entertaining stunt with ‘the man your man could smell like’ – obviously it had exactly the effect a great campaign is supposed to have. It sold stuff.

I admit, ad agency case studies should always be watched with a certain skepticism. But hey, the best social media first ad campaign of the 21st century rocks big time (via adweek).

Hire this guy. A ‘Contest to be my new boss’.

Juli 6th, 2010 • View Comments We like
Tags: Agencies, Cool, Creativity, Funny, Jobs, Truth, Underway, World

If there ever was a post on craigslist that you couldn’t but agree with – it is this one. This bloke know the rules of the industry. Hire him.

I am a graphic artist and in need of a job. I have decided to fill this need the same way many people think the can fill their graphic design needs; with a contest!

Here is how it will work;

Send me one weeks worth of salary and benefits. I will keep all of the checks that are sent to me and use all of the benefits.

Whoever sends me the best salary and benefits package will win the contest and get the prize of two days of graphic design work!!!

Good Luck! I am really looking forward to recieving your payment packages!

Eye Candy. 100 Beautiful Slides from Cannes.

Juni 29th, 2010 • View Comments Business
Tags: Agencies, Award, Awards, cannes, Cool, Creativity, Ideas, Presentation, Underway, visual

I may neither be a fan of advertising award shows nor of what is said on award shows. But if there is one thing I like about them (beyond drinks and food) it is well designed powerpoint slides. All of us have seen a couple of really ugly, undigestible slides in their lifes. So check out these PPT posers that were just presented in Cannes… (via)

Ideas. In Memoriam to all that have not made it.

Juni 14th, 2010 • View Comments Ideas
Tags: Agencies, Brands, Cool, Creativity, Fun, Funny, Ideas, Truth, We like, World

Brilliant!

This year Argentina’s Lapiz de Platino Festival made an advertising dedicated to those ideas that are no longer with us. It is basically what all of us know condensed into 3.40 minutes.  Thanks to the strategy web for the link. Reminds me very much of Truth in Advertising.

Nike. Write the Future.

Mai 21st, 2010 • View Comments Ads, Brands
Tags: Ads, Agencies, Brands, Cool, Creativity, fifa, Fun, Funny, Ideas, Lifestyle, Media, Nike, soccer, visual, We like, wieden & kennedy, World

Okay Nike. Nice one.

The sportswear brand really becomes a web video specialist. After the last couple of really cool, entertaining commercials Nike brings the fun back into advertising (and to be honest – I don’t care whether a commercial entertains me on TV or Youtube, as long as it’s fun to watch.) ‘Write the Future’ is an inspiring ride, featuring some of the greatest football stars of today. Its topic is the one moment when a player is in control of the ball and whole nations start to scream and shout or start to cry.

The new commercial was created by Wieden & Kennedy and was directed by director and producer Alejandro G. Iñarritu (21 Grams, Babel). It stages stars like Cristiano Ronaldo, Didier Drogba, Wayne Rooney, Fabio Cannavaro, Franck Ribery, Andres Iniesta, Cesc Fabregas, Theo Walcott, Patrice Evra, Gerard Pique, Ronaldinho, Landon Donovan, Tim Howard and Thiago Silva, with guest cameos by tennis legend Roger Federer and basketball superstar Kobe Bryant. Homer Simpson completes the star-studded cast of appearances. The film will be shown on TV for the first time on May 22nd during the European Club Final.

You will like it.

Via Fubiz
.

Zombie Campaigns. The old Award Show Problem revisited.

Mai 16th, 2010 • View Comments Allgemein
Tags: ADC, Agencies, Awards, Business, Creativity, Experimental, Germany, Ideas, Strategy, Truth, visual

Once upon a time there was a man named David Ogilvy who said something very true about advertising – ‘We sell or else’. We all think that this is the mission of advertising agencies (however you define them). No matter whether we talk about selling in a sense of branding, customer services, hard sales – we need to help solving our client’s business problem. Form follows function. Advertising does not end in itself.

We all know pretty often this is not the case. Not always but often advertising ends in itself. Especially when it comes to ad awards. Many of you know the rules of the game – the more awards you collect as an agency the more creative you are allowed to call yourself. That’s the currency of the advertising industry. But this currency follows a bizarre distribution logic – the most important awards worldwide do not reward effective campaigns and ideas. They reward funny concepts designed for awards shows without an effect on clients, markets and brands. Most often nobody has seen these ‘campaigns’ at all simply because they do not exist except on award shows. Zombie campaigns.

No, not every piece of marketing communication which has won a gold, silver or bronze nail at last weekend’s ADC (Art Director’s Club Germany) congress in Frankfurt and other award shows falls into this category. But some do. Zombie campaigns can easily be identified by doing a campaign reality check. Just ask yourself these questions.

The Zombie Creation Checklist

• Does the awarded campaign look like a fancy idea as trigger for a good marketing effect? Or just like a good idea?
• Does it look like something driven by an agency or by the client?
• Is the client an unusual small brand in comparison to the remaining client list of the agency?
• Is it technically feasible (if interactive) at all?
• Was there any real audience? Or were the only platforms to stage the concept ‘blogs’?

Read more »