A gem from Giffgaff (and special guests)

This is a peach. Thanks to Albion for this.

There's logic behind the lunacy. Their "Unlock A Phone, Unlock A Chicken" campaign is a neat metaphor, and although Orville may be a duck, the human-avian pairing is the perfect medium for the message.

Oh, and it also works in the real world. Who doesn't want to free a battery hen? And it's a great product too, the low cost of a contract with the flexibility of pay as you go (yes, I use them, it's great).

Oh, and it's got Keith Harris rapping. What more do you people want?

My work - Toyota Auris Hybrid

Here's a little spec work I produced at school with my parter Olly Wood.

There's definitely room for improvement. I think the fantasy idea can be made more dramatic and exciting in the actual ads, though that's partly down to execution. We also need to make sure they're not too similar to a couple of ads that are already out there. But generally I'm happy with the creative strategy and think this one could end up in the end-of-year portfolio.

Crowdsourcing adverts

We had a mentor round at SCA the other week, who was starting up a website where brands could invite anyone to pitch creative ideas, and get paid if their ideas were chosen. Exciting stuff, although it turns out there is a site in America running along similar lines called poptent.net - it'll be interesting to see how they differ.

Here's an example of one of these crowdsourced ads, for Jolly Rancher by a director called Olivier Agostini.

There's a neat idea in there - that a crunchy outside and soft middle could be represented by a turtle. But after that insight, he lets logic go walkies and the ad descends into tedious "surrealism". It's also unclear whether the acting and editing were intentionally bad or not.

As Jolly Rancher are made by Hershey's, a giant in US confectionary, one can only assume that crowdsourcing an ad like this was more of a PR ploy than a serious strategy. Let's hope that our friend's as yet unnamed site will be taken more seriously in Britain.

Things Clicking Into Place

It's amazing how long you can go learning something without actually getting it.

I learned and played guitar for years and years, but when I gave it up recently (or at least gave up being in a band), I felt I was only just getting what it was all about - playing the right part at the right time. That's all.

It's not something you can really teach. I'm sure I could teach a kid to play guitar OK, but who really wants to hear "this is how you keep time with the drummer" when you can learn cool solos to impress your friends?

Well it's the same in advertising. We're well into Term 2 and I'm only just getting what it's all about. It's not about great lines (though they help) and it's not about sudden flashes of inspiration (again, not to be sniffed at, but not always necessary).

It's about finding a Creative Strategy. Once you've done that, you'll produce work that will look to outsiders like a flash of inspiration without breaking a sweat. It's this illusion that adverts are created in a sudden lateral brainwave that is the equivalent of kids wanting to learn guitar solos before they can play rhythm.

As King Charles I once said, "don't rush to execution".

What The Shitting Fuck #6 - VW Beetle Star Wars Fuckwittery

OK, I know I'm just adding my voice to a general chorus of disapproval, but this effort by Deutsch LA (made for the SUPERBOWL, for god's sake) just had to go in the WTSF category. I mean, do they really think we're that stupid?

Suffice to say that the Star Wars section is about as welcome an addition to the advert as Jar Jar Binks was to the Star Wars franchise.

Unbelievable Brand Personalities

Following on from a talk by Mark Palmer from Maverick Planet (and former Head of Strategy at Bates, OMD, WCRS, and BMP), I found myself getting nostalgic for my own job.

He'd been speaking about how brands can establish a personality - but that this identity must always derive from a genuine aspect of the company's activities. Tango, for instance, could credibly lay claim to being a "fun" brand, as drinking sugary fizzy drinks tends to bring out the best/worst in your average child.

The problem lies when a company just decides to adopt a personality that has no relevance to their product or working methods - usually because they've seen an unrelated organisation (Apple and Innocent the most likely culprits) achieve success and praise and want to emulate it.

As an Account Manager I used to work for a train company, who had somehow decided that they wanted our marketing to make them quirky and fun, showing us marketing from Ben & Jerry's as the style they wanted to go for. No-one seemed to have the heart to tell them that eating ice cream is fun, whereas nothing in the process of travelling on their trains remotely approached it.

They even asked us to add animals (zebras and giraffes) to the illustrations (of a train in the English countryside), because they liked the cows in Ben & Jerry's marketing. Again, no one felt it appropriate to mention that cows and ice cream have a close connection that isn't exactly present in zebras and trains.

Why more people - actually working in Marketing - don't get this kind of simple education is a mystery.

Durex - classy condom ad

This one is a beauty. A great idea and a simple message that's sexy but not smutty, well executed with straightforward semiotics - the pink and blue, the records spinning in sync when it goes well, etc.

It's from Euro RSCG, and clearly they've decided to position the product as sex aid rather than just contraception. Kudos to them for doing it with such wit and class.