broken window

I'm not getting my five a year...

Hmm. I quite like their approach, using the ironic-birthday-card angle.

Flattery gets you everywhere and all that.

It might have been nice to back up all the flattery with a special offer or something though - to make 'we'll do whatever it takes to get you back' sound more like sincerity than a load of hot air. Or hot html.

Truth be told, I've been looking at tripadvisor more to book trips away recently, trusting the reviews first and the tempting deals second (whoever sells them).

How about a free holiday?

Clever PR or just a coincidence?

I read This last week, about a guy who set up his phone to automatically upload photos to Flickr when they're taken. His phone then got stolen and he then had access to all the thief's photos, which he promptly posted online.

The story has got Flickr and Shozu (the phone application that does this) lots of online publicity. I'm a bit suspicious though, I read this morning somewhere that the guy works for Yahoo, who own Flickr.

Anyway, the point is that the story made me try out Shozu. Have you tried it? It's very good. So I really don't mind if I've been PR'ed or not.

Unlikely brand ambassadors

Pee Wee Herman Dunks SB | NiceKicks.com - Air Jordans, Nike Air Force Ones info & release dates.

found on Boing Boing

Nike are releasing limited edition Pee Wee Herman trainers as part of a new 'fallen heroes' range, that includes footwear tributes to Milli Vanilli, MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice. I like the way they've put a hidden story of the featured celeb's undoing on the insole.

This shoe tells the story of how Pee Wee got caught masturbating in a dirty movie cinema, an unfortunate tale that crippled his career when the media got hold of it.

I think the reason this idea is so interesting is because it zooms in on our negative associations of the featured celeb (with his permission or otherwise?) instead of the tried and tested positive stuff that usually makes endosements so samey and cliched (see Beckham etc). Pee Wee wasn't even sporty.

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Technorati Tags: branding, endorsement

Gideon

Friend of Figtree, uber-copywriter Gideon Todes popped in this morning to show us the new venture he's been working on - he's developed a copywriting course that he's been 'beta testing' in ad agencies around London (Gideon wrote Economist ads for years, so knows what he's doing).

He's on a mission to rid big companies of internal politics, lazy thinking and coercive communication by improving everyone's writing skills:

Professional copywriters take classes of 5-15 and teach them the kinds of skills and ideas that would take years to learn any other way. Participants learn to write simply and powerfully and in a way that inspires action rather than sounding bossy or haranguing. Most of all they learn to achieve a complete clarity of thought.

All of which sounds great - check out his wiki thing and get in touch if you'd like to know more...

In praise of low production budgets

Great post at The Next Wave that highlights the Apple PC / Mac campaign as a great example of the power of making lots of (well written) stuff over single big, expensively produced spots.

I like the way that Apple have taken a stance against a conceptual enemy (PCs in this case) and translated this attitude into lots of fun executions that, taken together, become more interesting (to me anyway) than one off megaspots with their glossy, expensive high production values (eg Guinness ads etc).

There's loads of user-created spoofs over on Youtube too.

Some early thoughts on the implications of this:

As marketing evolves to join the '2.0' world, I reckon it's probably the job of we brand agencies to create more flexible visual identities, where the elements allow for more of these 'quick and dirty' productions to be made (while still retaining a coherent style), and far less of the overly restrictive and impractical CI guidelines that are of little practical value to whoever's in charge of making the communications.

Other creative industries - people like Block Architects or Adjaye have been doing this for years - elegant solutions arising from using limited resources cleverly, with the emphasis placed on good thinking over polished production values.

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Jargon buster

Buzzword Hell ('define, destroy') is a fun site that lets people condemn annoying jargon they hate. A useful ally in the ongoing war against cliches, a bit like a social version of bullshit bingo.

So true...

...given my recent experiences. I love Hugh's cartoons.

Ignore the warning in this one at your peril.

Yes it's me. No, I'm not a guerilla marketing stunt

I was trying to avoid posting about this, but word seems to have got out online, so I might as well roll with the punches and talk about it a bit. Such is life in the new, open world.

You may have seen quite a few of these around if you live in or around E2. Several fellow bloggers certainly have. I have a feeling that some of them have quite a lot of readers too. Thanks to John, Will, Kate, czechOUT for picking up on it. Katcha's is my favourite though.

I should admit that I kind of deserved the posters. I did a bad thing, that nobody should ever do in a relationship, although I can't pretend I wasn't stunned by the 'shock and awe' response. You can probably guess what it was that I did wrong. I'm very sorry for hurting her feelings, and not just because of all the unwanted publicity either.

In case you've taken the posters a bit too literally, I should stress that as well as being a liar and a cheat (more one-offs than actual character traits), I'm quite a nice guy really.

It feels quite weird being the subject of what's shaping up to be a promising viral campaign. I'm told that 400 posters went up, although on the afternoon I spent scooting round Shoreditch and surrounding areas tearing them all down, I could only find about 100. Friends have been helpfully assisting in the 'de-advertising', but I gave up trying to supress it once the story hit the radio here and here. The ubiquity of cameraphones is giving the posters a second life online, which is interesting.

Assuming my ex used a photocopy shop, I reckon her media spend was about £6. She should win an IPA Effectiveness Award or something.

Would any communications strategy types care to do a quick analysis on reach, frequency / pairs of eyeballs or have any other plannerly metrics we could use to work out the campaign's effectiveness? Faris, I'm thinking of you!

That's all for now. More updates if / when the 'campaign' progresses...

Client-agency relations 101 (Slight return)

Just found this, slightly more grown-up and detailed version of my last post.

Client-agency relations 101

It's always important to establish what the client needs:

Then they'll trust your opinion when you have outlandish ideas that might just work:

Issue four of the excellent Modern Toss is apparently out soon.

Buy it!