Think Hard


New work

Me and the boys at 60 Watt have been developing a new advertising campaign for themselves that will be running in full page format in The Scotsman and Scotland on Sunday.

It challenges the notion, full on, that advertising in a recession is a bad idea and instead encourages clients to be bold.

The first ad went out on Friday.

60w-first

And this one runs soon.

60w-second



20 of the best

This is the presentation I’ve been making about great advertising. It’s only my personal opinion but I’ve chosen to share my views on what makes for 20 of the most interesting ads/campaigns and commercials that I could lay my hands on and these are they…

The Avis campaign is 40 years old now and was created by the peerless DDB. Surely no agency (and one man in particular, Bill Bernbach) has made a greater impact on the history of advertising.

avis_3

This is a wonderful example of both a great strategic insight and a brilliant execution in the world of social marketing.

This is best ad I’ve seen this year. In a sector where you’d least expect to see creative genius it’s a revelation.

Is this the most talked about ad ever? It’s a great example of Picasso’s view that bad artist’s copy, good arists steal. Show me the truly great creative that has no love of music, film and art and I will buy you a Picasso.

I loathe this ad. It is vacuous and is a true case of style over substance…

My all time favourite political poster is this one, done by Yellow M in Edinburgh.

bliar-poster

The Ology ad, part of the long running Maureen Lipman campaign for BT is just brilliant populist TV that demonstrates the wonder of the telephone call.

This is a great leap of thought and my favourite VW ad in a long line of great ads…

And this is it in English!!!

This is another great VW ad with an amazing tone of voice..

Scotland’s greatest ever commercial? I think so.

One I was involved with myself. For Gold Bier, God knows how I gotr away with it…

This ‘ad’ has swept the boards at this year’s award ceremonies and rightly so, and it wasn’t even done by an ad agency.

125_edinburgh3jpg-jpeg-image-1600x1200-pixels-scaled-62_1226664210415

Apple Mac 1984. What can you say. Brilliant. That’s what you can say…

But I actually prefer this as it captures the user’s values far better…

And see how brilliantly it has been spoofed here. That is the sign of greatness in advertising.

Alka Seltzer ran quite stunning demonstration advertising in the 1960’s, again with a fantastic tone of voice.

A great insight into defining your audience and creating empathy is seen in this wonderful Levy’s Rye bread campaign (yet again, I think, by DDB)

levy31

levy4

levy5

The recent Dove ‘Evolution’ campaign is a wonderfully empathetic campaign that eschewes the traditions of beauty advertising in favour of promoting its benefits to real women…

And this is magnificently planted in the mind of the target audience. Utter empathy. Utter brilliance.

adidas

And finally, the Blackcurrant Tango ad is another great tone of voice commercial.

And finally, finally. A momentary lapse of judgement. A 1576 house ad from the 90’s.



Solid gold
November 14, 2008, 9:45 am
Filed under: advertising | Tags: , , , , ,

I’m indebted to a great advertising website for revealing this ad to me. Scamp is written by a creative guy at BBH and it’s festooned with advertising creativity, with some crossover to my own ramblings. I know little of the background to this ad but it appears to have been a little controversial.

Anyway, once you’ve had a look I’ll tell you what I think…

It’s verging on genius I’d say. A brilliant observation about non-observation. Although the strategy is to raise people’s awareness of cyclists whilst driving I’m more inclined to think it’s just a general ad about being a better all round driver. The number of idiots that can’t see past the car in front bemuses me and this takes one right back to one’s driving lessons where it was drummed into me to look way ahead, as far as you can see in fact, and be ready to take evasive action should incidents present themselves.

A brilliant ad, it really is.

And its predecessor is equally brilliant.



check this out
June 25, 2008, 10:33 am
Filed under: advertising, web2.0 | Tags: , ,

This is complete and utter class from a London online ad agency called Lean Mean Fighting Machine.  They aim to become the first ‘great’ agency.  On the basis of this they might have a chance.

http://www.leanmeanfightingmachine.co.uk/#0120