This time of the year is mainly good for receiving some nice Christmas cards sent around by the creative industries. Keen to impress their clients, potential clients and anyone who’s interested in watching/reading, companies are spending some quality time and money on these ‘cards’.

A friend sent me this cool one, from agency AKQA, but Creative Review have collated the nicest ones from their mailbox here and here. 

So have a great break and here’s to an inspiring 2009. 

I never mentioned it here and I didn’t manage to vote, but Volvo, Vice Magazine, The Independent and Yahoo ran this competition called Creative 30, to find the leading creative think-ers and do-ers in the UK. The winners have just been announced and the jury chose artist Katie Paterson, while the public vote went to milliner (isn’t that a beautiful word for hat-maker) Will Chambers. Paterson’s pieces are particularly intriguing. She makes various sound sculptures, influenced by science and nature and general cookie-ness. Charming stuff. 

But have a look at the other 28 nominated creative talents and check out their profile films. I particularly liked the work of photographer Jonnie Craig (see picture above), illustrator Mimi Leung, the beach chairs from furniture designer Max Lamb and ‘possible sculptor’ Daniel Mort.  
Nice initiative and interesting to see that a brand like Volvo wants to spend some money on this (Paterson wins £10,000 - Chambers a Volvo).

While the advertising world is still wondering just how cynical, colonial and faux-real that new Whopper ad/documentary is, I prefer my campaigns to be a little more subtle.
Have a look at how agency BBH is trying to revive interest in Tango with a campaign called Do the Can Fist. The full-length ad is here or on production company’s Knucklehead’s website, but also check out the Save Tango website, which seems to complement the whole vibe pretty well.  
I’m sure Tango wasn’t even doing that badly, but that underdog role suits it just fine. Made me smile.  

Two weeks ago I wrote about how I liked the Transport For London ‘Do The Test’ campaign. And it seems like the Observer liked it too, because they did a half-page spread on it in last week’s paper (online version here). That’s pretty good column inches for an ad campaign (is this what they mean with blurring the boundaries between advertising and PR?). 
But in the article, Fergus Adam from advertising agency WCRS (who created the spots), says that this kind of viral marketing is pretty much over, because people are less likely to forward clips and jokes. 

Does anybody know of any statistics that support that statement, because this totally surprises me. I agree with him that clients asking for “a viral that gets 5 million hits” are a bit naive. It’s not that simple. And I also think that the word ‘viral’ still gets used to justify lower production budgets (”but it’s only for the internet”). 
But if something’s good, surely it’ll be passed on, talked about and shared? No matter what platform it was originally made for. No matter whether it was ‘marketed’. Sharing has become such an easy part of communication that if you have a good product or make something that’s worth watching/reading/listening to, then I’m gonna tell my friends about it. 
Surely?

A very clever and creative piece of advertising/awareness raising for Transport For London. It was created by agency WCRS and directed by Chris Palmer at Gorgeous Films, who also did this similar TFL film a while ago.

I just wonder if there shouldn’t have been more of a digital side to the campaign. Some kind of interactive quiz or game element that allows people to pass on the film without actually giving away the answer. Something that builds up over time. There is a website for the campaign, but it doesn’t really add that much, does it. 
Still, very enjoyable piece of communication.

We recently moved studio and one of the guys that I bump into every now and again in the kitchen is Noah Harris, who just finished this rather lovely ad for Ford Fiesta - This Is Now. It took him a good 7 months to finish, but it’s well worth it.
In good Web2.0-open-collaboration style, he got a bunch of designers/animators on board to create all the gorgeous visuals that show in the screens. Very now indeed. 
Now, I would have thought that Ford would include all the individual pieces on some microsite, get people to comment etc etc, but nope. They seem to have a microsite for this car, but no films. Instead they’re all on YouTube and you can watch them here.

Another rather talented director that sits in spitting distance from me is Tom Haines, who made this lovely music video for crazy Texan band White Denim. It has just been picked as video of the week on 6Music and it was criminally ignored for a nomination in the category Best Indie/Alternative video at the UK MVAs.

I’ve always floated around the music industry in some shape or form and I’ve always been surprised how un-creative the environment (and its output) is; despite the fact that there are so many talented people involved.

When I was commissioning music videos (I still do the odd one), I always felt there were quite a few other ways of translating music into moving image or into a (dirty word coming up) ‘campaign’. But there weren’t many examples and everyone kept making music videos; some great ones, lots of disposable ones.
But it seems the music industry is coming round and is no longer completely averse to exploring non-traditional routes. [Read more]

I’ve worked on a few pro-social and environmental video campaigns, trying to bring across a message that no one really wants to hear. So I know it’s not easy to come up with something efficient, let alone creative. Because in the end, the client just wants to show polar bears or big lumps of ice falling into the sea. 
But this film-slash-installation by director Tim Godsall tackles that challenge pretty well, me thinks.

And a YouTube link, just in case the Quicktime version is taken down at some point. 

This ‘music video multiplex’ for Pop Levi is already a few weeks old, but at the time I hadn’t started the noble art of blogging yet, so I thought I’d post it again. In case you hadn’t seen it. 

Although I really like the idea, the execution isn’t overly great. So it won’t be long before someone really explores the interactivity opportunities. I’d like to see more screens. And why not more moments where you have to pause/play/rewind to complete the video. Or make your own version for that matter. 

I reckon this could be something for director/artist Roel Wouters, you know: him from the live-installation trampoline concept for the rather fantastic zZz video.

Which by the way has just been re-used for this car ad. Quite badly re-used, I should say. Bit missing the point really.
Does anyone know whether Roel got to make that himself? It’s the same music, but I heard that he declined.