MY AD OF THE WEEK .108

How many times have you seen that annoying and rubbish ad on a YouTube pre-roll?

Well D&AD have an answer, created the 'The Ad Filter', a free extension that will only show you the best advertising ads (that can be watched again), compared to some of the ads that appear. I'm about to instal min now. Download it for free.

MY AD OF THE WEEK .107

Try not to yawn at this simple digital billboard stunt for the Brazilian coffee brand Cafe Pele. Yawning is contagious, so showing a person yawning will make people yawn and feel sleepy too. They reveal their new coffee at the end of the ad, as the answer to want to wake them up.

MY AD OF THE WEEK .106

WWF have launched an interesting way to raise money in their new campaign using Twitter. Transforming 17 real world endangered animals into emoji animals, that you can tweet. Every time you tweet one of the animals, you'll donate 10p to the charity. I hope they get loads of donations, in this stand out campaign.

Join in at their Twitter account @WWF

MY AD OF THE WEEK .105 MOTHER'S DAY EDITION (FOR AUSTRALIA & USA)

I wanted to share this simple and funny ad for Samsung to celebrate Mother's Day (in America and Australia today), reminding us how bad our mums can be at texting. I know they have got a lot better, but I still get a few messages like these, especially the really long ones occasionally. Are there many you still receive? They could do a FaceTime one next year.

MY AD OF THE WEEK .104

Here are two funny ads for the Guardian paper in the UK, that show how easily others can steal all the weekend fun with the continuation of the brands message 'Own your weekend, or someone else will'. I've enjoyed the whole campaign so far, finding them very true, good lengths and well put together.

I've almost been the guy watching my partner run too, thankfully not in the mud and rain.

MY AD OF THE WEEK .103

This spot is about a boy who needs fuel for his big days, delivering phone messages to the towns people from the only phone. It's a quirky, very fun ad for this Icelandic yogurt, that's beautifully shot in some great locations. Well done W&K London.

MUMBRELLA PERTH

Recently I went to the first Mumbrella Perth and it was a great day, with many interesting talks to take in.

The keynote speaker of the day was Jon Steel, the WPP group planning director, who talked a lot about research, saying it’s time to hit the reset button, go back to basics and do meaningful research to find real insights. He mentioned that he spent most of his time outside of the agency, taking the research to people in their natural habitats.

He spoke of the time when he judged the integrated category at an awards show, saying he spent hours listening to “this many twitter followers, hashtags, etc” but what should have been shown is more genuine research, not meaningless numbers. “If somebody believes that excited bloggers represent return on investment then I think the apocalypse is well and truly upon us. And if the answer is always Twitter, it must have been a really stupid question”, he said.

He told us all to remember the fundamentals that stay the same even though things like Snapchat, Twitter and phone sizes change.

1) Be clear of the problem we are trying to solve. We have to push back and identify the right issue.

2) Always look at the problem in the context of life. He gave an example of an empty jar sitting in a café with a note that says ‘tip’, but another jar that’s full says ‘Mexico 2014’.

3) Resist the accountability mindset that affects so many companies today.

4) Keep things as simple as possible. Just because you can do things, doesn’t mean you should. Simple works when complicated doesn’t.

5) Keep it personal.

6) And never forget that you are talking to people.

“I’m not saying just go back to the old ways and don’t embrace the new, I’m saying embrace the new, but do so while remembering some of these fundamentals.” Jon Steel.

And another speaker I really enjoyed was Travis Johnson, who talked about the future of technology and how cities like Barcelona are now connecting everything that can be connected. They are one of many cities creating new experiences with sensors and he asked us to think of new experiences we could create.

We heard some interesting facts about ibeacon, a wireless technology that sends you messages/information as you walk past a transmitter. Currently 1 in 5 people who receive one of these signals interacts with it. There are still a couple of problems with them though, in that you need an app to receive the signal and it doesn’t work through crowds.

An amazing fact I took away from his talk was that ‘each household currently has 8 connected devices on average (include Xbox, TV, laptop etc) but by 2017 it will be 20’.