[ paul isakson ]

Embrace Your Ugly

One of the things I want to do with this blog is recognize brands with courage. This is my first of such recognitions and it's for a local company. Crocs is showing some real teeth here (bad pun intended) by taking a jab at themselves and recognizing that most people do call their footwear ugly. I don't know many brands who would even think about admitting something negative about their brand in a meeting, let alone in an ad.

Thank you for being honest with us and yourselves Crocs!

campaign by tda advertising & design, boulder, co.

Viva La France!

Thanks to Adrants for this gem from Manix Condoms in France. Be sure you have your volume level at an appropriate level. If the above video doesn't play, it is on their site. You just have to decipher the French.

OOH Night Light Board

Was just going through my old photo files and found this one. I forgot about it until just now.

It ran in Denver in August of 2004 I think. I thought it was a great idea then and still very much do. It absolutely delivers on the emotional benefits of Children's Hospital - comfort, safety, security, caring deeply about children. At night the night light lit up and illuminated the entire board. (Lesson learned to always carry my camera.) The background was of wallpaper or paint that you would very likely see in a child's room.

created by cactus, denver, co. (thanks for the info jay)

The End of TV Advertising?

The cover of December's Wired is anointing web video as "the end of TV advertising." And that's one of the underlying themes of the article on YouTube by Bob Garfield. (I guess TiVo dropped the ball on that one so now we're looking for something else to kill it? Hold on, wasn't the advent of the VCR supposed to do the same thing? Wait. Sorry, back to the subject at hand...) I have to admit, I can't blame them for making such a claim. Not with all the buzz around YouTube these days. But I don't agree that it will make TV advertising go away. Not by a long-shot. Nor will it replace network and cable TV shows. (And an article from last January's Economist mostly agrees with this stance.)

Instead I think, and hope, that YouTube and it's siblings will help bring about a much needed shift in TV advertising and the programming/shows we currently find there. A shift that forces it all to become better. To become more engaging. To become more compelling. To make people want to actually watch it.

re: musicovery

Russell has found another gem. This one is all about music. It's a site called Musicovery. Be sure to check it out and his post about it.

And if you didn't hear about it already, be sure to check out Haystack as well. I'm just starting to play around with it and like what I see so far.

Rising YouTube Star?

I love this video. It's simple yet brilliant.

And apparently I'm not the only one who thinks so as it's become quite popular. Back on November 14th, a friend sent me a link to this video by Lasse Gjertsen. At that point it had somewhere around 250,000 views. Now it's at 1,266,737 views and counting. I also like his hyperactive video. If you take a peek at his MySpace page, he's got several videos posted there and some creative pictures.

There are a few copycats popping up but none yet compare to the quality of Lasse's original. I wouldn't be surprised if this little video influences some agency produced TV spots or online videos soon either. Or possibly lands Lasse some work from an agency if not at one.

Whether or not Lasse can or can't play either instrument, this is a great idea and great piece of work. It's funny, engaging and thought provoking. I look forward to his future posts and will be watching to see how far up the "All Time" views list this one goes.

Well done Lasse Gjertsen. Well done.

re: Transmedia Planning

The subject of this post won Russell Davies' Post of the Month for October. (Congrats Faris.) A very deserving win in my opinion.

I think this idea is spot on. Especially with the way people are consuming media today and their short attention spans.

My gut tells me that when the general public sees the same message plastered all over their world across various forms of media, it becomes easier and easier to ignore each time they come into contact with it, in which ever form that may be. And with each passing point of contact, it becomes more and more likely that the message is further tuned out.

If we consider the idea of transmedia planning though, this should change. The brand message would then start to become something of a puzzle or maybe even a sort of short story. (Imagine that!) This then would seem to be more engaging to the consumer and rather than insult their intelligence by hitting them over the head with one message, it invites them to play along. Not only could it be more engaging, but also have greater social currency as Jason points out quite well.

Anyway, thank you Faris for this smart piece of thinking. I'm going to keep tinkering with it and will definitely be putting it to good use.

re: good idea

Over on Russell's blog, he's got a quick post about a belt he found at Howie's made from recycled bicycle tires. It is a good idea.

And it reminded me of these Freitag bags that a store in Belmar sells made of recycled truck tarpaulins, seatbelts and such. You may have heard of them already, but if not, now you have.

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.

When I drove by this the other night, I had to take a picture. It made me think of quite a few things.

And the quote in the headline seemed a natural fit for one of the thoughts. It's sad that it is so true in how often people abuse research to "prove" themselves right.

So True, So True.

Which one would you choose?

Fredrik posted a quick blurb about a video from YouTube that made me laugh. And it's funny because there's a lot of truth to it. It also reminded me of a game we tried to get a client at my former agency to quickly brand/sponsor and approve to put up on their site (they were a beer brand) so consumers could have a little fun themselves. (They wanted a game on their site and had minimal dollars to spend on it so we had to repurpose an existing game.) Of course they wouldn't approve it. They didn't want to link their beer to the result of it when your body is through with it. Instead they approved some boring air hockey game I think. Oh well ...