OCT/NOV AD PICK

Welcome to October/November's Ad Picks. I've been saving up ads for my blog over the last 2 months to share; these posts are now becoming every other month to give you more content.

A simple illustred ad, that's much bigger than an ad. It's a simple signal for those who need help from domestic violence, who can't ask for help. It's worth sharing, you could save someones life.

I love this Japanese ad. It is a beautifully crafted illustration to sell combs. I don't know what it says, but I don't care. Keep it simple, stupid.

This next ad hits a great insight, if you're watching a movie at home and you're doing something else (usually on your phone) at the same time, you always seem to miss the key scenes and the execution backs it up.

In this scenario a man is trying to iron a shirt, but keeps missing the key dying scene. It's played out by the actors in the scene with them reacting to him as if he's an annoying director. 

Now Amazon's Alexa can rewind the TV for you too. Brilliant.

Calm have recruited Joe Marler (England Rugby Union Prop) to share this message, at first you think it's just a nice graphic approach to what he's talking about, until you go back over the timeline to see the encrypted message. A clever use of YouTube.

Sony Playstation's remote graphics are their USP, so who else could do this clever ambient idea changing up some of the London Underground signs? It's a shame they're running when the UK is in massive lockdown again, but it seems to be getting some well deserved exposure online.

See you next month for my Christmas edition.

AUG/SEPT AD PICKS

Welcome to August/September Ad Picks. In these last two months there's been some of the best future award winning ads I've seen this year. So here's my picks.

Tourism New Zealand have created a walkthrough game to show off the amazing NZ. The craft is sensational and it's nice to see some real perspective shots in a tourism campaign (not another drone shot).  

It's a good structure to show off a lot of other assets and existing content that's on their website too.

I just wish it was a real game, that you could actually play.

This ambient campaign for KFC, 'you won't ever find 2 identical tenders' made me smile. I hope this was plastered along a whole street near a McDonalds.

I wish my commute to work on the train was this fun. This ad for Adobe Photoshop has some lovely details showing off the amazing artwork created in a virtual world being brought into our real world. The music track tops it though.

This next ad from Saatchi and Saatchi Australia is breathtaking in how this was achieved. I met this creative team on a course in Sydney last year and I'll take my hat to them; this is one of those ideas you really wish you'd done. This will be cleaning up award shows when everything is back to sort of normal.

I'll leave you this month with an actor who has never aged, Paul Rudd. Telling you to wear a mask, but in the most engaging way possible.

I hope you enjoyed reading my AdPicks, please share it with a friend or colleague if you liked it.

NEW WORK - PERTH ZOO

The West Australian newspaper brought back its popular 'Best in the West' creative competition, after its last outing in 2012. The brief was simple, showcase how good press advertising can be. Here's our concept for Perth Zoo. 

We didn't win, but it was a fantastic competition with some clever press ads. Rare won, congratulations.

JUNE/JULY AD PICKS

The last couple of months have gone super fast, so I've merged June and July's Ad Picks. Enjoy.

This first spot has the best music track I've heard for ages on an ad. It feels like a Wes Anderson spot, rather than tucking away the brands hero yellow colour, bringing it to the forefront. It's a different perspective from previous AA car breakdown cover ads and I love it.

This print campaign is beautifully simple. Not need for any explanation. I'm sure we'll see it popping up a lot on the awards circuit over the next year.

Paddy Power ads always make me laugh and this is another good one. If you saw how Liverpool fans celebrated when they won the title during COVID, it was crazy. 

They put fans in human hamster wheels, to keep them social distanced. I love the guy celebrating with his beer and getting absolutely covered in it.

I enjoyed the tone in this next one for KFC France. Our deal on Tuesday is so good, you won't want to eat much the day before. I would like to know if anyone took them up on their other offers.

I'll leave you with this cute spot for London Zoo. A lot of the zoo's are struggling for funding without people attending and their running costs are still the same. The zoo enlisted some famous British comedians to voice the animals to spread the messaging in a positive and engaging manner.

Bill Bailey was my favourite (the monkeys hair helped with it a little too).

I hope you enjoyed this months Ad Picks, see you next month.

MAY AD PICKS

I hope you've enjoyed reading my Ad Picks, as much as I enjoy writing them during COVID and beyond. It's time to sit down with a cuppa (or a beer) and enjoy May's Ad Picks.

Coors beer are having a lot of fun with all the Zoom, Teams, Skype... backgrounds in meetings. They've created a virtual background of yourself, so you can go and get a beer during a boring meeting and no one will know.

Your repeated background will have you nodding and even smiling, just make sure you don't agree to do all the bad assignments without you knowing.

Who doesn't like eggs right? This brightly coloured illustration video with fun animation and a catchy tune to make people eat more eggs is something to smile at. It's well crafted and kept me hooked for the whole 2 minutes (not many ads do this at the moment).

Burger King have brought social distancing to their stores reopening in a new light with them reimagining their famous crowns. I'd love to get my hand on one of these and I just hope the agency haven't just created these 2 for awards purposes.

People are loving jigsaw puzzles right now, but here's one you still wouldn't have completed by the time the next pandemic comes along from Heinz.

I've seen a few clever missing people campaigns trying to be seen without being invasive.

This is another clever one for missing children in Korea. It uses packaging tape in offices and post offices, so the possible spread of the campaign is massive. I hope this can help families find their missing children. I can see this being well awarded next year.

See you in June.

APR AD PICK

I hope everyone's staying safe and sane at home.

I'll start with an old ad that's been remastered recently. Everyone loved the original Budweiser 'Wassup' ad and they've tweaked it to check in on a mate 'Buds support buds'. One of the best lines I've heard for a while.

 

Children's safety in cars is one of the most important things ever. I have a young son and his car seat has markers on it, when to change it the strap height and when he should be forward and backward facing.  I know you then put them in a booster seat, but for how long?

Well the Transport Accident Commission over in Victoria have created this very clever media placement on kids clothing tags to help with this. I hope someone like Target or Kmart pick this up and apply this to their children's clothing ranges.

We now all know IKEA's recipe to their meatballs. I love the simplicity following the style of their manuals. I might try it out, would you?

Stay safe and I'll see you next month.

CAMPAIGN BRIEF AWARDS 2020

Earlier this week on a normal quarantined day at home the Campaign Brief Awards 2020 took place. Not like the normal show at Crown Towers this year, but instead hosted online. Well done to Martin Trevaskis for pulling it all together with everything happening right now.

We picked up Best of Year, Out of Home for our work for PTA - Trains come out of nowhere stunt (check it out below if you haven't seen it before) and also a Finalist in the Out of Home category for the Violence in Schools campaign.

Both campaigns were a massive team effort by everyone at Gatecrasher.

MAR AD PICKS

Hello from lockdown. What a crazy world we live in. Sit back for 5 minutes and enjoy this month's Ad Picks. As you can imagine, Coronavirus ads feature quite heavily, I could almost have called it 'Ad Picks: The Coronavirus Edition'.

The first one this month is this billboard campaign I saw this morning, done by Miami Ad School. Some countries aren't following the rules of staying in as much as others, so they've come up with the Spoiler Billboards.

If people don't stay in, these billboards will ruin the endings of some of Netflix's best shows. I really hope Netflix picks this ups and runs with it.

This is another proactive ad for One Minute Briefs that the brand should run with. Especially how much free PR Guinness are getting from it. At least send the guy some Guinness.

Here's a break to step away from Coronavirus for 10 seconds. These ads bring together 2 of my favourite things: football and type. These beautifully crafted type posters bring these stats to life in a stunning way. Messi's stats are incredible.

Time for a stat shocker from this next piece.

They've created these screensavers to add to your phone to remind you that your phone could be another way to spread it. They look artistically scary. Clean your phone now people.

Add them to your phone by clicking here, if you're interested.

What's everyone's thoughts on the brands logo's doing social distancing? Some work better than others.

One of the best that isn't social distancing, instead swapping around the words is the NHS 'Don't send our NHS backwards', stay home now. Well done to the NHS and all the medical professionals around the world, you're doing an amazing job.

Hopefully we're all out of lockdown next month and things are slowly back to normal.

Stay safe.

FEB AD PICKS

Welcome to February's Ad Picks. There has been a lot of good work released this month, so I've shared a couple more spots than usual for you to enjoy.

I feel you may have seen this spot for Jeep. I don't know if you've seen the full 1.45 version though, with even more gems. Persuading Bill Murray to star in his first ad would have been tough, but they couldn't have done it without him. Though the groundhog does steal the limelight, even over the impressive new Jeep.

'It's not personal, it's just a game' is my favourite line. How about yours?

  

Tesco, the UK supermarket giant have just released plasters for 3 skin tones. It integrates the product nicely in this simple headline driven ad, playing on what everyone thinks when they heard the news.

The next ad doesn't even show the product, which is a very hard sell to the client. Apart from the classic Coke Cola bottle and McDonalds arch's are there any other brand who can do ads like this?

We were all shocked when the NBA legend Kobe Bryant passed away at the end of January.

It's a pure graphic lead ad with audio clips from his career. I knew he was an NBA legend, I wasn't aware of some of these other impressive things he did before now, in this touching spot which came out on the day of his memorial.

This ad has been doing the rounds on every ad site last week, so I assume you've seen the video. The outdoor campaign promoting Burger Kings burgers have no artificial preservatives is extremely gross too and well crafted.

(I'm sorry if you're reading this over lunch).

I'll leave you this month with a crazy Skittles ad, that only this brand could do. This ad is promoting their yogurt covered Skittles. I would have loved to see the creatives present this idea to the client.

JAN AD PICKS

Hello 2020. Let's jump straight into it.

How frustrating is it when you're waiting to cross a zebra crossing and people just speed through it?

Well, it seems SAAQ had a lot of fun making this zebra crossing a real barrier. There's been lots of really good ads using zebra crossings in the past, but I've never seen anything like this done before.

Broken toys are usually thrown away and pile up in trash yards, as there are no spare parts for them. This brand have cracked this problem creating 3D printable parts to fix your toys.

I know, I did think it too, I don't have a 3D printer lying around. Well no excuses France, as they have a map of people who have 3D printers who can print parts for others.

It's a shame it's only in France for now. I do hope they roll it out. Click here to check out their site for more info on this project.

The next ad is also trying to create a sustainable future. I never thought about this tennis ball problem before and this Kiwi ad has brought it to our attention in this very funny and engaging one minute video.

It's a perfectly timed with the Australia Open currently on and I would love it if they were selling the balls at the tournament too. Are they, Melbourne readers?

I'll leave you this month with my favourite Super Bowl ad so far this year. Pringles have jumped on the Rick and Morty bandwagon and created this crazy ad with Pringles taking over the world.

If you've never seen Rick and Morty you'll probably think 'what the f**k is this'. It's hitting it's demographic really well though.

I've already watched it about 5 times already, I just wish it was slightly longer.

See you next month.