livingbrands

Yeo no!

OK, so Toyota's Swagger Wagon is clever, funny and well observed, not least because it has people in it who look/behave like real parents (but can rap), and because it builds on a real insight: the complex mix of power and embarrassment you feel cruising the hood in a pointlessly large automobile...

The new commercial from Yeo Valley, on the other hand, isn't...not only because it features a bunch of models pretending to be farmers (who look embarrassed 1. to be in the countryside not Hoxton and 2. to be rapping...badly), but because it's based solely on the lame-tastic insight that Yeo sounds like yo! (get it). All cringe-worthy in the extreme...

With people who were (or at least looked like) real farmers it might have been funnier (if not funny). But the 'insight' would still have been a shocker.

When social media goes wrong

Great overview of social media bad practice (from SMI via Brand Builder)...

 

View more presentations from Social Media Influence.

The James Bond airline

New Virgin Atlantic commercial. Call me shallow, but I know who I would like to fly with!

My only question is why they felt the need to 'gag' it up at the end.

When the making is the big idea

Wrote recently about the new Ikea commercial, and how I actually preferred the 'making of' to the ad itself: found it more interesting to watch, and felt the idea of an experiment into the behaviour of cats, and where the felt at home, was both more on-brand and said more about the product (even if, strangely, this was not really explicit in the final film).

Well, here's another example of the same thing...

Again, I like Dentsu's new Canon work (maybe more than Ikea), but still prefer the 'making of'.

Although unlike Ikea, where the making said something explicit about the brand/product (at least to me), this is more about technical interest. Which is no bad thing, as I probably wouldn't be thinking of Canon printers otherwise.

But then, having said that, the attention to detail and colour maybe does say something important about the brand.

 

Incongruity of analogue thinking in a digital world

 
(Sanjuro5846)

Peter Buck had the following to say when asked how many tracks would be on the new REM album...

"My guess is 12 would be the most. Sometimes I'll get an album, put it on in the car and I'll look around and go 'I've driven 90 miles...how long is this record?' Maybe I'm old fashioned, but to me 17 minutes a side - 18 at most - feels pretty good".

Love that he still thinks about albums in terms of sides.

And maybe it's just something that applies to people of a certain age but, in our fluid 'have it anyway you want' digital world, I do still hanker after the fixed 'things' of the analogue world, and their concrete 'this is the way it is' perfection.

Probably why I still buy all my music on CD (would get vinyl, but just too expensive/unavailable), even tho 90% of my listening is on the PC/MP3 player.

FutureScoping 88

Just to let you know, the latest edition of my trends newsletter is now out: "emerging trends, new ideas and general thought stimulation"...or so it says on the cover.