Where Out Of This World?

Like Muller before them, here's another client spunking what I can only imagine is a truckload of money on a massive big brand tie-in (though I note that they have to plug the new Star Wars DVD, too) - with little thought actually going in to creating a memorable ad.

It basically consists of "imagine if Darth Vader was the boss of PC World", and that's it. None of the ideas are especially amusing, from the crushed car to the boiling drink (note the obvious cutaway) to the haircut.

"Perhaps I can find new ways to motivate them" says Vader of his staff. The scriptwriters clearly couldn't think of any, so just said something about a laptop and left it at that. Surely someone at M&C Saatchi could do better?

I'd suggest how to improve it, but I've never seen Star Wars, so I'm not the best person to ask.

Simon Pegg has seen Star Wars though. This is what he thinks.

Smile For London poem

A little creative writing for once. It's done in a bit of a hurry, and it's possibly very bad, but I'm pleased with it under the circumstances.

The "brief" was to write a short poem for the Smile For London campaign, which puts up adverts in tube stations  to cheer up commuters - starting on the so-called saddest day of the year.

I'm waiting to hear if my poem is selected, and if so, what visuals they'll put with it. Anyway, here goes.

Find a London Victoria train
That passes over Coldharbour Lane.
Just at the apex of the track
Look left, and you'll be looking back
To own the parks, the homes, the streets
Where stories start and moments meet,
To declare your victory foursquare -
A second's term as London Mayor.

Miracles of the Future (from 1950)

Been a bit slow with blogging as very busy this week and internet connection in the School has been intermittent, so time to get back to it.

I just love this kind of thing - it's a bit of a truism how visions of the future are always more interesting for how they reflect the fashions and dreams of the present, but it's fascinating nonetheless.

Click here to read the article on Retronaut. They must be surprised to discover we're still using cream and razors to shave our hairy faces, and that disposable soluble plates are not the norm. My particular favourite is the method of cleaning rooms - hose everything down then dry it all with a blast of hot air.

Of course, being a 1950s vision of the future, the cleaning is all done by a "housewife".

And no one ever predicts the internet. It's like the Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy - in that book, roving researchers make entries for a galactic encyclopedia, but the book, though electronic, is not remotely updated - you have to go and buy the new one.

It just makes you wonder - what is it that we're not predicting?

Ad Breaks, Tweet Breaks, and Zeebox

Sometimes ideas are right under our noses.

I've been watching TV with a laptop on my lap for ages now. I get Guardian minute-by-minute or over-by-over commentary while watching sport. I even follow the X-Factor live blog while watching the programme. I follow #masterchef while it's on. For many, following the twitter debate is an essential part of BBC Question Time, though I find the most essential thing to do is turn it off.

It's called the "dual screen" experience. And a new app / site for laptop and iPad (and soon iPhone) called Zeebox aims to take advantage of that. It shows you the most popular TV programmes by social networking activity, then shows you a Twitter feed filtered by hashtags. With certain TVs you'll even be able to use the app a as the remote control.

You can comment at any time and it automatically adds a hashtag and posts it to your twitter feed - and you can also reply to tweets. However, somewhat weirdly, it connects with Facebook and only lets you connect and chat with Facebook friends - which in my case are quite a different set of people to those I interact with on Twitter.

Its founder, Anthony Rose, has noted that twitter activity spikes during ad breaks. We tweet while we watch and  watch while we tweet. He's got a team of former BBC iPlayer employees, and a deal struck with a charming new TV show called Desperate Scousewives.

But I don't think this is the tipping point for a Social TV revolution. Nothing that it offers is anything you can't fairly easily achieve yourself within Twitter - and, as in my examples above, it can't bring in liveblogs and comment from popular websites.

The extra features revolve around "zeetags" - the site explains: "when it picks up references to things on a show, like Tom Cruise, armadillos, Late Victorian sideboards or Usain Bolt, it puts them up as zeetags. Hit the zeetag and it brings you the lowdown, from Wikipedia, Google or anywhere else you want to go on the web." However, it doesn't yet offer more than you could get by, you know, searching on Wikipedia or Google, and Brand Republic suggests that the real purpose of these tags is to measure the immediate effectiveness of product placement by offering "buy now" links for goods mentioned onscreen.

More thoughts on dual screen coming soon...

Now I'm DEFINITELY in the festive mood...

...and it's all thanks to Euro RSCG London, who've produced a series of sponsorship idents for Christmas programming on UKTV and Dave.

Why? Because unlike the vast majority of idents - see the much complained about Aviva ads for Downton Abbey and the execrable Phones4U slots during Harry Hill - it's simple, unobtrusive, doesn't try too hard to be funny, and gently makes a point about the product each time.

God bless us, every one!

This will definitely help end poverty.

"Anti-poverty campaigners are parodying the life of George Osborne in an internet comedy series that follows the "bumbling" chancellor as he takes street-dance lessons and struggles with fad diets."

No.

No no no no no NO.

Hard to know where to start, but perhaps with the mild suggestion that they should have made it funny.

Secondly, I would gently venture to suggest that making puerile attacks on the Chancellor of the Exchequer isn't going to make him any more likely to do what you want - and will make a lot of people think that your campaign is simply a politically-motivated attack rather than a genuine attempt to alleviate poverty.

Lastly, there's barely any connection between the sketch and the message - so if you make it to the end, you just have to read the rather lengthy pay-off.

The film should be part of the solution. This just adds to the problem.

RKCR, you are really spoiling this product

Actually, I suspect what is going on here is a client problem. You can't just re-position a brand when it's, erm, ambassadorial image is so ingrained in the minds of the public. But someone somewhere decided that a 30-second ad slot could convert Ferrero Rocher from a kitsch gift to a sophisticated middle class party delicacy. It's actually more preposterous than the original.

It's also about 4 times more boring and 7 times less memorable than the old ads.

Can't we have a Christmas ad with some speed metal or really dubby dancehall, or something? I tire of these winsome ballads.