The good isn't always the enemy of the great.

Permanently secure in the annals of common trivia, the often-posited myth that The Great Wall of China is the only man-made structure that can be seen from space isn't the only falsehood surrounding the architectural feat. Ironically, the very legend itself cunningly reinforces a greater lie about The Wall: that the wall is in fact a wall.

It isn't. What it is is rather a series of (admittedly in some cases extremely lengthy) walls, though often with quite significant gaps in between.

From a cursory look at historical accounts, it seems that where hillocks and crests prevailed various dynasties largely (and lazily) got away with leaving chunks out, giving the impression (from a distance at least) of wall where in fact there was none – a technique that has lead to more than one long-term Beijing expat friend trying to put me off visiting the (tourist part of the) site, contending that it's a bit of a cheat, not that exciting and therefore ultimately only actually worthy of being called 'The Good Wall'.

Good here is though really truly great, with this illusion of defence deserving of going down in history as one of the most effective pieces of tactical communication ever – bar perhaps the Greeks' Trojan Horse. For a smaller than apparently necessary investment, the Chinese have done well. Even if The Great Wall hasn't always been entirely successful at keeping the Mongols out, the structure has kept enough tourists and Trivial Pursuits gamers in awe over the last century or so to be worthy of the title.

Thanks to heavyweight, Think Tank-winning blogger Tantramar for jogging my memory.

Free-lancing.

Working freelance or as part of a small creative collective or even boutique agency puts you at the mercy of larger corporations, with their in-demand demeanor, unflinching, hard-faced approach to negotiating, archaic, bureaucratic finance departments and sluggish payment processes.

Bullied exasperatingly so by bigger corporate fish, one is left wondering how ludicrous this vendor-client power play would seem if translated to other sectors – and that's just the thought that motivated this Scofield Editorial film.

And while this does leave you wondering how many of the production crew worked on the job for nothing, it is spot on, nonetheless, and therefore a great use of their free time – really.

Sharp thinking?

O&M Bangkok won Silver at Cannes this year for a campaign for Wusthof knives...

...after not winning at Cannes (but everywhere else) last year with the same ad for Black & Decker.

Pizza rebut.

Lack of authenticity has long been a personal grievance of mine, so often and so vast is the chasm between advertising claim and actuality, but in the case of Pizza Hut (Thailand) it is how the corporate giant pays for the promise that is preposterous.

As obvious and dull as it is as a USP, speed is mindlessly wheeled out again in this category, only of course in the capital, Bangkok, legendary traffic and tropical thunderstorms make delivery an impossible proposition to deliver on – though that doesn't stop Pizza Hut from offering (proudly and aggressively via print, web and call center) this deal: if your delivery's late, you get your total order for free. Which is fine if the company foots the bill, but they don't – they only pay half; the delivery guy or girl pays the rest.

And herein lies the trick. It's a corporate gamble, but the odds are heavily in favour of Pizza Hut, as in most cases their almost unanimously Buddhist, 100% superstitious consumer base will react to the fawning self-pity of the failed delivery guy or girl at the door with either sympathy, compassion or เกรงใจ.

Whatever one's response the late arrival of one's pizza leaves a tremendously nasty taste in the mouth – either in the knowledge that the delivery staff (who earn little more than the national daily Thai minimum wage of between 148 and 203 baht or between 4-6 USD) caught in traffic or rain will be docked up to two day's wages or because you the consumer are left eating cold, paid-for pizza and feeling cheated.

Either way it is a scam – a scam that has been going on since 2003.

And this is from a parent company awarded for personal staff development.

Brands that favour their consumer base at the expense of their underpaid staff or that cheat their consumer base with guilt need to be exposed.

Let this be the beginning of a boycott – until the company can pay for tardiness themselves.

Easily hooked.

It's easy to get hooked by good design.

Designed by Ransmeier & Floyd.

Via Droog.

Star Lores.

Under normal circumstances you realise I leave film criticism to the likes of Philip French, Xan Brooks, Jason Solomons, or even Adam and Matty at Filmspotting, but by boldly going where no captain of any Trek narrative has gone before, Abrams has forced me into comment.

By adopting the fairy tale functions of Russian formalist Valdimir Propp, Abrams slickly propels what would have been a trek into a skywalk. Having Roddenberry's science fiction cast reading from Lucas' fantasy script is genius and tantamount to having The Beatles playing The Stones, though it's his adherence to Vulcan logic that's clearly his masterstroke: featuring Nimoy in cameo and therefore dovetailing the film with the 60s series. The love triangle between Spock, Kirk and the now lovely Uhura adds romance where before there was only bromance and leaves the audience begging to know who will be star-dating who in the sequel.

No bull.

While over at The Musings of an Opinionated Sod a brand of bog roll really not to be, er, poo-pooed boldly presented itself.

Initially art (not novelty) and now a fully-fledged FMCG, Jed Ela's ShitBegone is really no bull. As the Poop Report so clearly states "ShitBegone is art masquarading as commerce, and is succeeding in both worlds", and as Jed Ela himself tidily explains in perfect marketspeak, the piece, essentially a by-product of Duchampian readymades and commodity-art, is now in full "commodity stream" – while fulfilling one of the key contemporary functions of modern art: operating as a "system for the production of knowledge."

Capping the occasion.

Seeing as I actually do have all my best ideas in the bathroom – something I've attributed to both the sudden physical shift from my working space to the smallest room in the house, and to the intense, fiery red walls of my own hong nam – I decided to celebrate the enlightenment (elevating the process to a contemporary creative custom) with a 'Brain' shower cap from Bangkok's quirky product design studio Propaganda.

That's as far as it goes though and so the purchase of a Dive Slate will just have to wait.

Delete.

We've seen the street fight back before in the shape of pockets of Brandalism, but now direct volunteer action has reached an unprecedented scale – with NYC collective New York Street Advertising Takeover (or NYSAT) whitewashing 126 unregistered (and unsightly) bill boards that were up until now being used illegally. And the good news too is that in most cases the replacement imagery is more pleasing to the eye than the typical corporate clutter that it's supplanted.

Via social media master Neil Perkin.

Snatch Wars.

I don't usually bother with Youtube remixes but this is quality.

Brick Vader, 'London's Lord of the Sith', stars in a mash-up collision of the East End and our favourite galaxy far, far away.

Via Igor.

Real bite.

After the recent furore concerning Middle Eastern/Asian scam work, (covered here by Anibus, here by Scamp and here by the Opinionated Sod) it's great to see some work from the region with real bite produced for a client that actually belongs to an agency.

And not only does this work tie in nicely with our penchant for pink/brown art direction, our continuing Easter chocolate theme and at least one other post featuring work involving teeth, it's also another, er, shining example of boundary-smashing stuff for Colgate.

If this runs, then really hats off to Y&R – for turning you back on interruptive/distractive advertising, putting creative before media buying and for taking on the logistical feat of embedding a piece of communication within the product of another brand. It was worth every gram of fat you put on chewing through however many Haagen-Dazs or Hershey's you did to get to the idea.

Via the consistently enlightening Angus Whines.

Sweet design.

Candy for the eyes or aural pleasure in the shape of sexy, sultry, anthropomorphic phone calls featuring the Chocolat Factory product offering telling you how much it wants you?

Either way, instant online gratification is all yours from a bold but tasteful brand that offers more appetizing bites than chocolate body parts.

Ultimately more a functional factory than a steamy site; cute rather than hot – but, of course, less fattening than the real thing.

One product range that deserves the axe.

I've been lobbying clients for the alignment of product and brand communications for some time now, and truly believe that it's often the product that needs tweaking (read: overhauling) as much as the communications. The metamorphosis though must always be based on an authentic, compelling and resonant insight. And with the Axe Dark Temptation it isn't.

My initial instinct was that this range had an odd, er, flavour, and from my cursory check of on online opinions hundreds of others (mainly women) appear to agree; but in real terms the strategy flaw is this: as much as (mainstream) heterosexual men want to be attractive to women, they also want a fragrance that doesn't compromise their own sense of masculine identity.

And if you're a gay man, then the proposition (more chicks) doesn't have any pull at all.

A futher issue is that the product reeks of desperation. Do potential consumer targets also purchase genital-enlargement pills, I wonder?

As an Easter gimmick, I'll give it to you, the Axe chocolate line is certainly more original than some of the Cadbury's Creme That Egg entries, but ultimately the over the middle and long-term a chocolate deodorant is really going to start to smell off.

And I'd usually some credit to an idea that seemed to make perfect sense in the shower but then not in the real world, though I somehow think that wasn't even the case here.

Showing teeth.

Visually strong problem-solution illustration for a dentist by Michael Hane & Remo Caminada.

Via the appropriately titled SeeSaw blog.

Black is the new green.

Google's more cosmetic response to Earth Hour though reeks of greenwash.

Earth-moving?

Call it purely symbolic, but it still shows some kind of strength to withhold your product offering in the name of environmentalism, as Nat Geo did last week in suspending all programming for exactly 60 minutes during Earth Hour.

No hope.

I spotted this Japanese brand of cigarettes for sale when on one of my jaunts in Cambodia recently. Hope takes the grand prix for ironic brand names.

Thanks to John Allman for the image.

An untimely departure.

Just as the wise are beginning to accept a need for a full-on toxic flush and just as the rest of us are finding frugality in fending off the temptation to shop, this shamelessly evil monster of a campaign enters into the arena. Never before have I reviled such a piece of marketing. Puma's Hello seemed a bit limp conceptually but was generally fairly harmless, but this beast is both bereft of ideas and guilty of pure and wanton voracity; evil also for its sheer size, garish design and unrivaled ubiquity.

In a world where only the fittest brands will survive, success will ultimately come from participatory, consumer-centred, non-disruptive communications with utility and bite – but in the meantime corporations are preying on the weaknesses of the consumer, seeing them more as a victim than a citizen. One could argue that there's never been a more vital need for money and therefore Visa are offering a valid service, but really in this climate such giants ought to be demonstrating tough love and offering to slash your debt, not wildly offering to increase it. The financial success of any credit operator rides on their ability to get their clients to borrow and get into the red. Their strategy is fundamentally of getting you to lose money. They call it 'money management', but however it's phrased it's tantamount to an increase in credit and therefore an increase in debt. However you look at this stuff, it's untimely and evil.

She didn't do it.

Usually I leave film criticism to Philip French and others that have made a profession out of it – even though filmmaking is a large part of what I do – but I am, occasionally, forced to comment. And this is one of those occasions.

A big fan of Danny Boyle – and in particular his early trilogy of Shallow Grave, Trainspotting and A Life Less Ordinary – I enjoyed his recent Slumdog Millionaire, as clearly much of the world did, sweeping the boards at the Academy Awards and the BAFTAs as it did, but felt the film was marred by a couple of gaping flaws.

Firstly, unless one is Luhrmann, Gilliam or a melodramatic Bollywood director, one has to choose between fantasy or social realism – or risk fusing them awkwardly. (And just because your film is shot in Bombay doesn't make you a Bollywood director.) The naivety and level of education attributed to the protagonist in Slumdog so far exceeds that of a boy with Jamal's slum background his meteoric rise seems just too implausible – no matter how many didactic, life-revealing experiences he has had.

My real contention though with Slumdog is with its title. To give away the outcome of a film in the film name is to have the dénouement unravelled before you've even bought your cinema ticket. And this is exacerbated further by the fact that the film is being toted as 'the feelgood movie of the decade' on posters the world over. If the title didn't give it away, at no point during the movie is anyone unsure as to the conclusion – especially as the film is feelbad until five minutes from the end. In short, calling the film Slumdog Millionaire is tantamount to calling Othello She Didn't Do It.

Low-cost living.

I owe McDonald's some lovin' after pointing you to this corporate intervention and this sick subvertisement.

This very witty and laid back spot – shot by maverick LA-based director Jayson Moyer (one half of Thunderbird, the team behind Little Joy's Unattainable) – isn't McDonald's most recent TV work but quite perhaps their most portentous as every sector of every industry (including low-cost tanning) is really now beginning to feel the pinch.