Via @GuyKawasaki, Well Medicated and Pink Ponk

I’ve been a crap blogger recently, if you subscribe to my feed you’ll probably notice that I haven’t given you much to read. I haven’t packed in the blog, I’ve just busy been reading, observing, analysing and thinking.

The Ad/Media world has turned into a circus over the last 6 or 7 months. Budget cuts, new agencies and departments popping up everywhere, and of course everyone is now a “social media” or digital expert.

I’ve been reading all the various debates occurring on the blogs of the Ad world celebrities, and there really have been some excellent p**sing matches going on. Also there have been some great examples of people trying to turn themselves into celebrities by adding valueless minutia to some of the debates that I have been reading.

I think it’s great that the Ad/Media world is more connected through things like blog’s, microblog’s and feed’s. Unfortunately I sometimes get the impression that there are some really over confident personalities out there, who appear to be forgetting that people are quietly taking notice of what they’re saying.

Increasing the reach of your voice shouldn’t mean you decrease quality of what comes out of your mouth, or speak negatively about your industry peers or other disciplines in advertising.

Add value, disagree with respectful reasoning or just shut up!

Some of the best blogs I read are written by quiet people who blog infrequently, but when they do blog their posts are always amazing. You can tell they are methodical thinkers who spend time thinking about what they write. They don’t need to build their own brand by trying to make themselves visible everywhere, they just write great content which keeps people coming back naturally.

Anyway rant over.

Aside from all the standing back and watching the recent good weather gave me an opportunity to test out my new macro lens, which I bought aaages ago and the picture above is one of the first few test shots.

I’m a massive supporter of any anti-drugs campaigning, however, above the line anti-drugs adverts have always lacked a degree of “cred”.

Finally the new FRANK ad has changed this. It’s just damn clever!

I’ve been busy recently, what have I been up to?

Errmm…doing site audits, working on pitches and taking trains to Manchester.

Manchester is cool, lots of construction work under way and old boarded up buildings, which were full of character and plastered with graffiti.

On the way back to London I bought a packet of chocolate covered Sun Maid Raisins, I’d never seen these anywhere before.

If you were a child of the 80’s like moi, you’ll probably remember The California Raisins ad’s, TV show and songs.

How cool were they? All the kids at school use to watch the show and munch on the raisins, not because they tasted fantastic (without chocolate), but because raisins were cool.

That show and the ad’s were pioneering examples of brand entertainment, contentainment or whatever you want to call it. I don’t know about you guys, but thanks to those ad’s I’ve always subconsciously associated Marvin Gaye with dried fruit.

God I love this ad! Stupid, pointless and just plain funny! I hope these guys play on the characters throughout the rest of their offline/online comms. Possibilities are endless and I expect to see more of the same humour in other channels and formats.

Genius!

Apple strike again with another really well made iPod ad. Apple have become renowned for using bands such as The Fratellis and Feist in iPod ads of days gone by. This time Apple have enlisted Chairlift; who have an easy, Vampire Weekendish sound.

Apple are clearly another brand that have successfully piggybacked their marketing and advertising off good music, the use of new music from innovative bands is a good sign that Apple understand their core audience really well.

Other well known brands that are tapping into the music scene come in the form of the mobile networks.

O2, Orange, T-Mobile and Vodafone are all sponsoring events and music based marketing initiatives in order to get closer to younger audiences.

I was on the Vice website and saw this yesterday. Yes I know, I know, I read Vice. What can I say…I like the quirky photo journalism.

I think it’s great how Volvo, Yahoo, Vice and The Independent have come together for this brand mash-up concept.

All the underpinnings of a good social media exercise seem to have been ticked off. I’m sure this concept will go viral like wildfire, giving the brands involved lots of exposure from a very young and enabled audience.

This concept is also another grenade from Volvo’s arsenal, who seem to be working hard to change their brand image and make it more, dare I say “cool”.

Poke seem to of had some sort of involvement with this whole project and Mr Waterfall is also on the very cool panel of judges for the design competition.

I’ll be watching this one evolve.

We’re in an advertising era where two way dialogue and brand conversation seem to mean everything.

Is interrupt marketing dead, inefficient or ineffective? I don’t think so.

Some recent TV advertisements have been creative and entertaining to the extent of gaining viral distribution and word of mouth recognition. Take for example the Cadburys or Britvic Drench ads, I know friends who have been emailing links of them to each other just because they are entertaining.

Above the line planners and creatives are quite clearly working harder to be more innovative and I think the focus is now shifting towards TV ads which have real viral capability and the ability to spark conversation.

Why?

Sky+ and Digital TV empower people to skip through ads and flick across TV channels.

There are more ads and TV channels than ever before, modern ads have to cut through all the choice available in cluttered market in order to command a viewers time.

Due to these factors TV advertisers now need to find alternative methods of getting people to watch their ads.

How?

If adverts are being seen by smaller audiences it is important to make the quality of the ads as good as a mini productions or something that warrants conversation or recommendation amongst audience peers.

The next time someone sees brand X’s TV ad they might just sit all the way through it as they had it recommended to them as good entertainment.

One good ad that I’ve recently liked is the M&S fairground ad. The classic David Bowie song and cinematic grandeur of the fairground really make it stay in my head, you also wouldn’t think it’s an M&S ad the first time you watch it either.

It’s not gimmicky either, no Gorillas playing drums or Thunderbird’s dancing; It’s just a good, well produced Ad.