Everyday Football Fouls and Flops

Footballers diving and feigning injury has been done before:

but not as well as this, from Fourgrounds Films of Canada, via NPR:

If we all reacted to contact in our everyday situations like football players by a film and video production company in Niagara, Canada. http://www.fourgrounds.com

 

World Cup 2014 – Best of the Best Ads

I love the World Cup. The best players in the world, the roar of the Three Lions, the heartache of England losing on penalties. The ads which can cross over into popular culture.

Nike shows a journey from footy in the park to the pinnacle of the world. One of the best things about world cup ads is that the boot manufacturers get to show off all their best sponsored athletes and we get to see them doing amazing skills.

Whereas adidas focuses on just one player, but what a player he is:

An inspiring, tear-jerking, emotionally charged piece of film brought to you by Powerade:

Samsung pays homage to one of the great series of Nike ads, “The Mission“:

ESPN makes Brazil look pretty tempting about now:

Whereas back in the UK, ITV plays on the emotions we footy fans face (well, all sports fans):

 

Life imitating art

Well, politics imitating art.

Kevin Spacey did it first

Julia Louis-Dreyfus did it again

Will Kerry Washington do it next year?

I bet he drinks Carling Black Label

We were talking about this ad at the office today – an oldie and a goodie from the UK. Its amazing to see the power of a great execution of a powerful brand idea, with evocative music.

I remember seeing the “behind the scenes” on a science show when I was younger and it was fascinating. The team trained the squirrel to move along the course over a series of weeks by placing the nuts at sequentially further spots throughout the course.

Music trends in advertising

Young female singers covering songs by older white men…and advertising agencies using them to make a strong emotional connection with “mom”.

Lilly Allen covers Keane’s “somewhere only we know” for John Lewis

Ellie Goulding covering Elton John’s “your song” (one of my favourite songs ever) for both John Lewis and Kraft Peanut Butter

Trend or observation?

 

If this is the future of social media…

If social media becomes bad photoshop with tenuous copywriting (aka “real time marketing”) and brands talking to other brands, I quit.

Private Eye on 'brand banter' on Twitter: the future of digital communications is brands talking together, alone pic.twitter.com/Pt2TTRzLt3

— Matt Rhodes (@mattrhodes) April 22, 2014

 

Radar 10am One Thing: April Fool’s!

The following is this week’s 10am One Thing that I wrote for the DDB blog.

Tuesday was April Fool’s Day or, as those of us who are immersed in digital culture call it, the worst day on the Internet. Every year it rolls around and every year we dread being fooled (and subsequently publicly shamed) by something is just too good to be true.

This year, AdWeek collected the best some of the pranks from brands that hit the internet which you can peruse at your pleasure below. Interestingly, Samsung and HTC, and Sam Adams and Stone both released the same pranks with tech-enabled gloves and helium-carbonated beer respectively.

But our favourite was from Bonobos, an apparel manufacturer who created TechStyle, a line of socially connected wearable tech clothing:

As with Real Time Marketing, we believe that for brands, participation does not automatically lead to relevance. Its a tough trick to get April Fool’s Day right, especially when everyone else is trying to do the same. Kudos to those who did get it right but Denny’s, like Oreo at the this year’s Super Bowl, may have done it best by simply not participating at all.

Prank idea: don't.

— Denny's (@DennysDiner) April 1, 2014

Hey guys…enjoy the game tonight. We’re going dark. #OreoOut

— Oreo Cookie (@Oreo) February 2, 2014