Angus Whines

Thwack

Well whaddya know? Another lovely ad. Crazy.

Stan's right, great use of 'thwack'.

Monkeys

Lovely ad for the Lisbon Zoo.



Via Darryl

Shelving

Fabulous desktop organiser from IKEA.  Great idea.

Television

I love Dan.



Via W+K

Overnight Test

What a fabulous blog post:

Pretty soon, The Overnight Test became the Over Lunch Test. Then before we knew it, we were eating Pot-Noodles at our desks, and taking it in turns to go home and see our kids before they went to bed. As fast as we could pin an idea on the wall, some red-faced account manager in a bad suit would run away with it. Where we used to rely on taking a break and “stretching the eyes’ to allow us to see the wood from the trees (too many idioms and similes? Probably.) We now fell back on experience and gut-feel. It worked most of the time, but nobody is infallible. Some howlers and growlers definitely made it through, and generally standards plummeted.

The other consequence, with the benefit of hindsight, is that we became more conservative. Less likely to take creative risks and rely on the tried and trusted. The familiar is always going to research better than the truly novel. An research was the new god. The trick to being truly creative, I’ve always maintained, is to be completely unselfconscious. To resist the urge to self-censor. To not-give-a-shit what anybody thinks. That’s why children are so good at it. And why people with Volkswagens, and mortgages, Personal Equity Plans and matching Lois Vutton luggage are not.

The rest of the blog is well worth a read - he's a fabulous writer going through a tough experience.

Via Stan

Vacation

These are quite sweet too.  Well I never.





By JWT via This Is Awesome

Glue

Wonderful ad for Superglue.  I hope it actually ran.



Via Darryl

Marrow

Graham Douglas, who works at ad agency Droga5, has come up with a unique way to get more marrow bone donors: he's included a sign-up kit inside a bandage box. When someone cuts their finger, they can easily dab some of their blood on a swab and drop it in an enclosed envelope and put it in the mail to the lab.

Of course it was Help Remedies who agreed to include the registration in their packaging - good on them.



Via Good Business

Moving

Oh my lord.  Brilliant.







By M&C Saatchi via The Hidden Persuader

Trap

Look, good on them for actually using a leaf to tell the story.





Via Colossal

Touch

Lovely Sydney ad agency Host has created an interactive Christmas card entitled 'The Butt St Choir', featuring staff performing Tchaikovsky's 'Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy'.  Love it.

Sausages

Aren't men wonderful?

Puppies

This ad ran in a women's magazine.



And this ad ran in a men's magazine.



Cute.  Via Darryl

Bonds

Lovely.

Checkout

Fabulous.



Via Charlotte Cramer

Lloyd

What a fabulous idea.

Sick

Personalised 'Get Well Soon' Heinz cans as gifts.  Love it.



Via We Are Social

Rolls

It should come as no surprise that I love these.







Via This Is Awesome

Women

Wow.  Just, wow.



Via This Is Awesome

Deadly Diet

Lovely.



Via inspire me now

Green

Moss graffiti.  How lovely.



Via Design Mom

Dripping

I like the idea of a dripping fountain to sell Naldecon, an antihistamine decongestant.



Via Darryl

Taint

Paying for people not to wear their clothes.  Brilliant.

Happy

I wish I'd had this stamp handy at my last job.



Via Ben

Gulp

The world's largest stop-motion animation, shot on a Nokia N8.

Hay Bales

Well, I love that the farmers thought to do this.

Farewell

I too would benefit from one of these fabulous napkins, while sadly farewelling the lovely Kat, as she rudely leaves us for a well deserved adventure in NYC.

Wurst Face

Seriously, why wouldn't you want your face on some wurst??  Genius.



More detail here, via Darryl

Yuck

Oh dear god...



Nicely spotted by Escapology

Luggage

Cute.



By BBDO Dusseldorf via The Hidden Persuader

Manifesto

God this makes me laugh.  I don't miss writing these.



Via kim mok

Self-Affirmation

Interesting.

"[One study showed] people who were given a self-affirmation exercise were more likely to consider new information than people who had not. In other words, if you feel good about yourself, you’ll listen — and if you feel insecure or threatened, you won’t. This would also explain why demagogues benefit from keeping people agitated. The more threatened people feel, the less likely they are to listen to dissenting opinions, and the more easily controlled they are."

The Boston Globe via Something Changed

Escape

Right, this makes me ridiculously envious:

"We've packed up our house, freecycled a load of our 'stuff', rented the house and gone to live in a treehouse on the pacific coast of Costa Rica for 6 months."

Lucky bastard.

Parking

How you say something is so critical.



Via Lost at E Minor

Old Spice

A helpful Old Spice infographic.



Via Tom

Think of England

"Combining the strength of a Prince with the yielding sensitivity of a Princess-to-be."

As seen on the packaging of Wills and Kate commemorative edition condoms. Excellent.



Via Stan

Pink Ponies

Inspiring (tongue in cheek) stuff.



Via AdFreak

Honestly

Things real people don't say about advertising.  Truly funny.

Butter

Seriously, are W+K the only agency that understands brand voice and can (a) make it straddle print and TV and (b) make it last longer than one year?

2010

The highly respected NP has kindly tagged me to answer Rob's five questions on the year almost gone.



1/ Best single thing [personal &/or professional] you did/achieved in 2010?

Throwing in the towel.

At the beginning of the year I decided to prioritise my personal life and, as a result, temporarily quit ad world, rented out my place and set off to the beautiful Fleurieu Peninsula.  T'was blissful.  For a while there I ran the front bar of a small pub in the hills and worked in a little shop selling beachy knick knacks by the seaside.  Strange but true.

For various reasons, the rest of the year remained transient and involved at least seven different 'homes' and a lot of compromising of my 'career' in order to ensure other areas of life were rewarding.   It was an adventure, and it led to some fabulous results.

I'm not big on 'everything happens for a reason', but there was certainly an element of 'if I hadn't done that, this wouldn't have happened, which wouldn't have led to that, which resulted in this, which is awesome'.

2/ Most shameful thing [personal &/or professional] you did/achieved in 2010?

It's not shameful but see above re compromising myself work-wise.  It was a chance worth taking.  But, at times I worked for and with some complete and utter idiots and I'm hoping 2011 brings more professional satisfaction.

3/ Ad industry scandal or scoundrel of the year?

It's hard to beat the Heather LeFevre Great Reveal.

4/ Your overall rating for 2010 out of 10.  [1 = shit / 10 = showoff]?

Personally, 9 out of 10.  Professionally, 4 out of 10.

5/ What do you think will be the most overhyped advertising related subject of 2011?

I love NP's answer, but over and above that I think a lot of people will wank on about location aware services without really understanding their limitations or potential.  At least it'll potentially mean people are making more of mobile, but I envisage a lot of bad, token, concepts.

On Yer Bike

Nicely spotted by Stan.

DIY

The concept of IKEA having a DIY banner appeals greatly.



By Grabarz & Partner via Amnesia Blog

Fun

Sydney agency Droga5 has placed an ad in The Australian, complaining that the industry is less fun than it used to be and that the industry’s new year resolution should be to have more fun.  Indeed.

Cup Size

Oh, how sweet.  Merry Christmas in advance.



You can fool around with the Cup Size Choir here.

By Karmarama

Trophies

I love what W+K have done with their awards.





Via Ben

Desks

The desks of creative people.  Worth watching.



Via Doobybrain

Dare

I miss working at Dare.  It's still one of the best office cultures I've ever had the pleasure to experience.

Tissues

Fascinating article about physical media leaving a deeper footprint in our brains.  Sounds logical, but it's interesting nevertheless:

"The research project used MRI brain scans to show that our brains process paper-based and digital marketing in different ways, and in particular that paper ads caused more emotional processing.  According to the study, physical media left a “deeper footprint” in the brain, even after for controlling for the increase in sensory processing for tangible items."

"...physical material is more “real” to the brain. It has a meaning, and a place. It is better connected to memory because it engages with its spatial memory networks."

"The study also found that the tangible materials involved more emotional processing in the subjects, important from a branding and ad recall standpoint."

Via Russell

Walking

The legendary Marcus starts his seven day, 800km walk through Germany tomorrow, on a quest to meet a man he admires and would like to potentially work with: Dr Peter Figge of Jung von Matt.

You can see live feeds of the walk on Marcus' blog.



Good luck Marcus.

Herding Cats

IKEA released 100 cats into one of its UK stores to see where they'd snuggle up and film the results.  Odd, but true.



Via Doobybrain