The Power of dreams

10 minutes ago Honda aired the first ever, modern day, live TV ad on Channel 4.

It was brave. It was creative. It was kinda flawed, but in a good way.

A bunch of skydivers jumped out of two planes and joined up in formation to, letter by letter, spell out H, O, N , D , A.

The cynics will snipe. I thought it was great though. Why?

Because it was all, ALL, about risk. Only risk-taking clients get risk-taking ads. Only risk-taking ads make you famous.

Honda is famous and gets all the great ads, as a client, that it deserves.

That’s why it is the UK’s best client.

I salute you Honda.

The shame is that the ad said check it out at Honda.co.uk. I did. It ain’t there. Or at least it ain’t very easy to find. Doh.

Think Hard in the press

A project that I am working on at 60 Watt got really good coverage in our local newspaper, The Edinburgh Evening News, at the weekend.  Really nice creative work and a great client which we developed identity, name, advertising and a shopping guide for

You’ll need to click through on the image to read it.

If

Breaking news.

Based on Rudyard Kipling’s iconic poem the new Irn Bru commercial has landed.  Set in various locations across Scotland and somewhere abroad it features some lovely vignettes.  Some work brilliantly, like the Loony Dooking pensioners (at 33 seconds) which struck a real chord with me, also the kissing Celtic and Rangers fans, the despondent Scotland fan with his wee lassie and the way folk choose the wrong descriptor for their meal times are all great.

Others are a less succesful and I’d question Martin Compston’s voiceover.

I feel the whole campaign suffers from being shackled by a weak strapline.  Phenomenal does nothing for me.  It’s unphenomenal frankly.

Overall it’s a nice , rather touching return to form.

But judge for yourselves.

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Scottish IPA AGM

I went along to this on Thursday night and it was a great event.  Particularly because Alfredo Marcantonio showed us a reel of commercials that were all low budget, but brilliant.  To demonstrate that in a recession when budgets are tight we don’t have to compromise on the quality of the idea.  He used a few of Adrian Jefferty’s old ads for The List and Radio Scotland to illustrate the point but I wish he’d also used an old 1576 classic series for The Scottish Claymores.

Here are a few of the ads he showed.

I’d never seen this VW Karmann Ghia ad before but it really is a classic.

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He showed this too.  Which made us all laugh.

And this cracker for Carling Black label.

He showed a different ad from this one for the x show.  But this is a pretty good alternative…

Is this the greatest TV Commercial ever?

I think it is.  Unfortunately it’s the German version but the voiceover is short and very very sweet.  It says.

“What does the man who drives the snowplough drive to get to the snowplough?

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Blast from the past

Got a nice cheeky note from an old friend and mentor, Roger Stanier, who now works at Lowe in Londinium this morning.

It made me laugh.  The cheeky monkey.