BRITAIN IS SHIT

'The Drum' are running a competition in conjunction with 'The One Minute Briefs' asking the creative community to create a 'Britain is Shit' campaign. 

Here are my entries with Kat (a designer friend of mine). Please vote for ours.

MY AD OF THE WEEK .03

I watched this ad for the first time this morning, and it immediately deserved this weeks 'Ad of the Week'. It's well acted by Peter Stormare, who plays a tough guy that fills in for men, whilst the men can enjoy more Call of Duty game time. Well done 72andSunny.

The character reminded me a little of 'The Wolf' from Pulp Fiction. What do you think?

MY AD OF THE WEEK .02

This week I'm sharing a digital project/game by AKQA called '10 Minute Madness'. Do you remember last year there was 'Heineken Star Player', if you can't or haven't seen it yet, check it out first. This is again a real-time two-screen campaign to convert fans watching into gamers, it's for 'bwin' the online gambling company in conjunction with 'Euroleague' Basketball competition.

There's no videos yet, that I've found. But I'll update the post when one appears. It's a game where you predict, the team to win, which players will score, etc, whilst your watching a live game (in real time). You will win points for correct guesses and points mean prizes (including merchandise and VIP Courtside tickets) which will make it pretty competitive. It looks an ace game and it will be worth keeping my eye out for it.

I've just signed up to play one of the games. Sign up yourself at: http://www.10minutemadness.com/

MY AD OF THE WEEK .01

I'm going to start sharing an ad that stands out for me each week. It might be something that you've missed or it deserves to be seen again. 

I know this ad has been around for a few weeks but it's so disgusting it has to be shared, it's very well executed and if I was a smoker I wouldn't want to pick one up again, you'll see:

Job well done DARE. I'd like to see how many people stopped smoking because of this ad, interesting thought.

FLICKR

I've recently started reusing Flickr. I've added quite a lot over the last week including my favourite Instagram photographs, all my inspiring quotes and my illustrations (which if you haven't seen yet, go and see them now) and some photographs from my work shown twice in 'The Serco Prize of Illustration' at the London Transport Museum. Add me as a friend to keep updated with my photographs.

You can see my digital experiment too 'The deep fried broccoli poem'. The first page of the poem (below).

INSPIRING QUOTE .12

To start the new year, I've got an inspiring quote for you.

Read the whole article about a lady called 'Stefani Germanotta' (Lady GaGa), it's a good read.

PRIVATE VIEW PART 2

Scrooge

Christmas has been and gone and everyone’s gutted to be back at work soon, so what better time to remind you all of 2012’s overly rich and sickly Christmas adverts. My first viewing of a seemingly-feature-length Christmas ad from John Lewis (1) was enough for me. All the mushy, sentimental ‘festive goodwill’ smeared over what seemed like an age was too much.
And another thing: whilst getting to the shops at Christmas must have been a gargantuan effort for the snowman, he only bought a hat, scarf and gloves. Despite some solid acting to mask it, I’m sure his other half was infuriated. Will we see her returning to exchange the gifts in the sales this month?

Waitrose (2) and BBH did manage to steer clear of the Christmas drivel served up by most, but their effort wasn’t faultless. Whilst the charitable sentiment of customers deciding which local causes Waitrose’s ad budget went to couldn’t be quibbled with, the ad’s execution could.

They neglected a fancy, frilly effort to instead give money to charity, which even Scrooge can appreciate. But what about the outlay for the ad space? And the studio? Credit where credit’s due, though. They didn’t spend on the actors. They can’t have done based on those performances.

Next up was Barclaycard (3). What was this ad all about then? Toys… or so it seemed until you got to the closing stages. What BBH cleverly did was present an extravagant, Toy Story-esque ad, but use it to show the contrast between finding the right gift (tricky) and paying for it (easy).

Hang on. Scrooge is being a bit positive here isn’t he? Fret not. The saturation of toys just reminded me of kids and presents, so naturally this ad was a write-off.

An interesting idea ran through the eBay (4). festive ad by Venables Bell & Partners: Dad bought the wrong present with calamitous consequences.

Now, other Christmas ads drew criticism because they suggested the stereotype that Mum does all the work at that time of year. But this ad implied that when Dad tries to take over, the house comes crumbling down (almost literally in this case). That’s not fair either is it?

‘But you’re Scrooge, you don’t care about fair.’ You may be right, but damn it, I feel compelled to stand up for the Dads who correctly buy their daughters toy ponies instead of the more-expensive real ones.

Finally, we come to Go Compare (5). This ad got past the first hurdle with consummate ease; there were no saccharine, Christmassy overtones that slapped me in the face. Unfortunately, it failed at the second with the inclusion of another of the world’s most annoying characters, Louie Spence, alongside Gio Compario.

Those two were enough to ruin anyone’s Christmas… and when I think about it, I am actually eternally grateful for that. Thank you Go Compare and DARE for giving me the perfect note to end on.