No bunny.

When I visit Sony's HQ in Bangkok I might be looking at colourful posters of bunnies, but I'm asked to sit at an empty desk and to talk on a cheap office phone to a hollow foreign voice from a dusty storeroom somewhere possibly on the same compound. (This is just the second step in a multi-step process and it's obviously a fairly standard procedure I gather by the way no one bats an eyelid.) 

The point is that the experience leaves a far sharper imprint on my mind than any of Sony's ads. The two and a half hours I spend there increases my total life interface with the brand by about 700% – and now my overall experience with the brand is suddenly really not very good. The 12 minutes 27 seconds (over 33 years) I had spent being persuaded by their carefully crafted copy and impressed by their flash lifestyle layouts is all wasted. They are constantly begging me to listen to what they've got to say and when I finally turn up, they're not interested in having a conversation. They had a big chance to impress me and they blew it.

Every single interface that consumers (participants, citizens or whatever you want to call your target audience) have with the brand ought to be part of the 'product'. We should be in the business of unearthing authentic, unique and resonant insights and dramatizing our discoveries in terms of product and service (working with the client to make the very nature of what they do intrinsically more relevant) – so when the client spends millions of dollars (or baht) promising the world with brand communications, the brand experience lives up to the claims.

A deep-seated problem.

More (very hard) evidence of ill thought out 'branding' – this time from the airline with the 'smooth as silk' strap line sponsoring truly uncomfortable (and totally underused) solid concrete benches in the Laoation capital of Vientiane. 

When will brand guardians cease to believe they can bludgeon their way into the public psyche with brazen, interruptive, pointless and soulless communications?

In simple terms, the problem with this piece of communication is that it says absolutely nothing.

THAI should have least snapped up something a bit softer – like the grass – but unfortunately Lao Telecom beat them to it, but kept the lush stuff off-limits to the public – perhaps, as a telecom company, wary of the maintenance involved. 

If only Laos Telecom were consistent with their choice of hosts though. This last iPhone snap in the set speaks volumes about the crappiness of their service and the stupidity of their media purchasing.

S(h)in City.

As this beached taxi demonstrates, the popularity of Thaksin has not been totally obliterated by Chamlong and his mob. The livery of Frank's English plaything I have seen stuck on taxis, bikes and T-shirts several times in the Thai capital over the last couple of weeks or so. And in spite of his dwindling status as a 'fit and proper person' in the UK after skipping bail and fleeing Thailand, it appears that evil Shinawatra will aim to continue to bankroll City in some capacity – with or without his 800 million pounds of until-now frozen cash.

Don't judge a book by its cover. Or its trailer.

Douglas Coupland's Glove Pond has been top of my Youtube favorites for weeks and weeks now, but somehow (strangely as I'm both an avid reader and a fiend of the digital world) I've ignored the growing phenomenon of the book trailer – appreciating this particular piece of work simply on its merits as a superb bit of motion graphics.

My passion for beautifully designed covers (Tony Meeuwissen's cover for Waterhouse's Billy Liar and the design group Bently/Farell/Burnett's Evelyn Waugh covers for example) has caused me to add several more Penguins to my shelves recently – Seven Hundred Penguins to be precise. Mostly though this passion causes me anguish. 

I have over the years passed on a number of (especially secondhand) books when the cover wasn't to my liking and quite recently I took umbrage to the particularly nasty looking dust jacket of The New Rules Of Marketing & PR, ripping the cover off and leaving the book sitting there punished and bare. (The thing is unquestionably hideously art directed for a book that's supposed to be all about new media and communication.) 

My real issue though with the book cover is not with design, but with representation. Well written text is designed to trigger imagined worlds brimming with complex and colourful characters – all of which is extinguished (every time the book is picked up) by glossy, sacharine modern photography designed purely to shift the the text off the shelves.

I'll probably (mostly) have similar issues with book trailers but for right now I'm revelling in stuff like the Coupland spot – and the knowldege that until book trailers appear on book review pages and literary forums (if they haven't already) most titles will be preserved – as whether you view the trailer will be pretty much up to you. 

Via The Guardian's Media blog.

Dead on joker.

Just spotted this example of powerful and poignant communication on the blog of British advertising legend Dave Trott.

The same logic is of course at play with a slightly more famous funny man just as fond of elaborate pranks – though obviously with this second case it's the studios and not the star who stand to profit, from both the PR of the death and the Oscar if it is awarded to Ledger posthumously. 

Work that does more than just put a smile on your face.

As a follow-up to my last post I'd like to pose a couple of questions: How do we wake up second and third-world TV-dependent nations from their couch stupor? And how do we direct digital natives to our content?

Well, this Young Guns student work for Colgate gives us a large part of the answer.

Rather than wildly expecting citizens to participate in seemingly meaningless authoring of web content or duplicating the content of a social networking site and attaching a logo, the key to resonant brand communications is to offer people authentic and innovative functionality.

As Crispin, Porter + Bogusky CD Alex Burnard pointed out so clearly at this year's Adfest, we have to invent.

People will only ever need one Facebook at a time – no matter what brand you dress it up in. And why rely on the involvement of thousands of participants to drive your site (by posting, chatting and blogging) when you wouldn't even expect most of them to read a headline and a short paragraph in the offline world? We have to do more than educate or entertain. Our communications need to be more than just funny or emotional. There has to be some genuine benefit (in the original sense of the word) if we want our audience to truly engage.

This can be a digital tool or application like the Colgate idea above or something much wilder but it must be authentic, innovative, relevant and memorable – like all great advertising really.

Digital is clearly the future, not just because it allows for an infinitely broad impact for a minimum media-purchase – a bigger bang for the buck – but the kudos of doing/having digital isn't in itself enough. Successful ideas online have to be as big as (if not bigger than) anything we'd do in the offline world.

Thanks to Judee my friend and mentor for the link. 

The new corporate drug?

As this poppy banner stat from their website suggests, Profero are well aware of the addictive nature of the digital world, championing its existence to clients in their drive to market to the world.

I am a member of their church of Digitology. I am one of the converted. I worship daily. (And admire their work – particularly for Channel 4.) But as much as I'm an ambassador for the digital revolution, I'll always be at heart a New Realist (and not just because I live in a 100-year old shophouse in Bangkok's Chinatown and eat rice noodles in dusty local stalls for breakfast) but because I believe there's currency in sometimes viewing consumers as something other than participants – which is the current trend among shops (and blogs) all over. 

As much as people desire to actively engage, contributing to the self-authored contents of Web 2.0, they will always just want to skim or surf through whatever it is that is put in front of them, kicking back and vegging out, selectively consuming, ignoring a lot of what they see on the way – especially when it takes them forever to do so as it does still in many markets of the world. People just often want a (sometimes seemingly profound) dramatic pay off but without the investment of time or exerting effort or energy. And just because we are all into it, doesn't mean they are all all into it. 

As David Mamet astutely points out: "We take pleasure in music because it states a theme, the theme elaborates itself and then resolves, and we are then pleased as if it were a philosophical revelation – even though the resolution is devoid of verbal content. Like politics, like most popular entertainment."

And that obviously includes the web, but Youtube rather than Twitter, Hi5 rather than some hip aggregate site, as large chunks of our target audience – especially in narrowband paid-for Wifi second and third worlds – are still happily mainlining TV or just beginning to withdraw from half a century of its addictive presence.

A new mall?

The constant bane of the Bangkok art world has always been that there's no sizable modern art gallery in the city, and now they've got one the collective moan must surely switch to the tasteless appearance of a venue many thought they'd never see – that is until the true function of the place becomes apparent.

Massive in terms of size and location (five stories plus on the corner of Phayathai Road and Rama 1) the Bangkok Art and Contemporary Culture Centre, as it is named, has borrowed its form and features from the ugly Siam Discovery Center across the way so as to fit in with the showiness of the surrounding malls. Both boast, literally, shiny hi-tech metallic columns and a nasty faux alabaster trim. 

What's more frightening though than the building's tasteless outer appearance is the proposed plans for the place. According to one art world insider, retail spaces will be let out on each floor, which means tat like this will be rife – in spite of Governor Apirak's claim that "The centre will aim to offer a cultural alternative for urban individuals, especially the youth, who often spend their leisure time at shopping malls in this area."

The quandry of being an advertising creative.

To have or to be? That's the question this pavement stencil steps away from Paris' Gard du Nord asks all who walk by. And as a self-proclaimed activist for authenticity and at the same time a clog in the nasty wheel of the machine of advertising, I at once lap up the spiel I spin and reject it outright, caught I am between wanting and just being, the whole bloody time.

It's probably the same for everyone, but being in advertising, the irony is more profound. 

Never bank on smiles.

So rare have my positive customer service experiences been in Asia, I've been close to telling a client or two that if they're serious about building a resonant brand that perhaps they should funnel some of their marketing budget into staff training – especially as their communications output often consists of pointless super-saccharine spots and bleached out lifeless print. 

A far richer brand experience would be had with the original ambassadors of the brand (and the first or even only point of contact for many) delivering a truly premium and memorable service, bringing consumer interface with the brand inline with the (often outrageous) claims made in their advertising. Lack of service has, of course, as much to do with cultural conventions as anything else – but in the search for a unique identity service might not be a place to start.

The bottom line is that brands cannot be advanced by communications alone – especially when the behaviour of their key ambassadors is as wretched as the Kasikorn Bank teller in the Youtube clip above. 

Via Punk Planning.

You pay peanuts, you get monkeys.

The Cannes Lions 2008 Film Grand Prix winner might have very successfully employed a gorilla, but this monkey offering from BBDO Indonesia is enough to make anyone go apeshit.

Thanks to adsoftheworld for at least providing some light relief.

Knob off.

Rather than screeching to tell unwanted guests to go away or hanging a conspicuous 'Do Not Disturb' sign on your door, there is a more subtle and sophisticated answer to keeping unwanted visitors at bay – a doorknob that says it for you. 

Pull the sleek, pulley-activating handle on the inside and everyone on the outside will know to leave you alone. And if they don't get the message, they won't have much joy breaking in, as the door – dubbed the Doorknob Connection by designer Arnaud Lapierre – is made from super-strength industrial steel.

This piece of design and communication gets top marks from me for being equally strong conceptually and functionally.

Via Geekologie.

Nothing to Singha about.

With alcohol advertising in Thailand outlawed in all its forms, the mission to increase brand visibility is limited to events in pubs and clubs and the like – with brands like Beer Singha hosting shows featuring big name international superstar DJs and numerous other nights featuring local musical talent.

But for all the cash they plough into such events (current statistics show that Singha sponsor more than one event every single day of the year) reports on the ground claim the Lion of Asia are not reaping the benefits – with brand recall (and beer sales at these events) according to one unnamed insider at worryingly low levels for a market worth at least 2 billion USD. 

It's been alarming enough that image-conscious consumers continue to snub Singha for international brands in neutral venues on Thai soil, but completely soul-destroying for Singha that they're providing their competitors with large crowds of premium alcohol-hungry hipsters and fashionistas (with the events they are organizing). These crowds, it seems, while enjoying free top-notch entertainment from Singha, sup mostly on Heineken.

Backslapping.

I'm sure there's been at least a little bit of backslapping going on at Cannes this week and because I'm not there I'm going to slap myself on the back right here – by shamelessly pointing out how much I'm on the money.

Self-congratulatory Grand Prix:

In his comments on BBDO New York's Outdoor Grand Prix winning work for HBO, jury president Prasoon Joshi points out that what the jury were looking for were ideas that "tried to capture the sense of the medium." This was exactly what I was saying (just not with these words) in my post only 24 hours earlier.

Love this stuff, by the way, but think that 'Voyeur' would be totally paradigm-shattering if (a) the scenes that were projected were projected onto a variety of buildings and even transparent billboards (in different types of location) relevant to the content of the clips, and (b) the footage projected was actually footage shot on set (with a camera from a hidden POV) at the time of filming the HBO shows. This might sound logistically tough, but BBDO new York have just raised the bar and so what else do you expect?

Further support of what I'll dub the 'media-last' approach comes from creative godfather David Trott's agency CST. In their Response First principle they underline the point that a channel can only be selected effectively when strategy and message are locked down.

Thanks to Nonny for the graphic.

Powerful print.

Admittedly I'm out of sync chronologically with the real world here, but when this copy of the Evening Standard fell on my lap last summer while on the London Underground I didn't feel that my day had been interrupted I had been negatively distracted; I was very pleasantly surprised. And as I didn't have a blog then I'm forced into telling you all about it now. 

Media strategy too often comes as a pre-requisite on a client brief and media purchasing decisions are too often made by media buyers who have no idea what the campaign actually demands. Free airtime and the lure of barter cloud the vision of advertisers, who tend to make hasty (but seemingly efficacious) business decisions rather than thinking what type of media would serve the message best. 

I'm all for strategy that minimizes effort and maximizes impact, but reserving media before the creative has been sold is putting the cart before the horse. If the message, for instance, doesn't need motion images to carry it then then why waste money doing a big budget TV commercial? Why not establish a longer term relationship via two-way discourse through blogs and forums instead – or at least split the media budget and funnel some funds into a real online presence as well? Communications here (if authentic and crafted well) will be seen as a contribution rather than an interruption.

Perhaps this work for Ecotricity is a fluke (admittedly though the ad is strong also because it appears genuine and personal, being signed off by the company's CEO) but for a pseudo-public announcement tied to a particular date (the day Brown went into office) press is clearly the most apt format for this message – a message that's resonated in my mind for nearly 12 months now – and that's what gives this ad its real power.

Canon can do.

  

In most new markets these days brand ambassadors are citizens who are paid to talk up a product or service openly and honestly or otherwise, not overpaid starlets who receive vast sums of cash to be associated with the brand – though still in some parts of the world, where fame is everything, celebrity endorsement is thriving more than ever.

At the age of seven years old I wasn't taken in by Steve Davis' endorsement of a reduced size snooker table in the Argos catalogue. I wasn't particularly marketing literate at that age – I  just didn't believe that Davis actually practised on a three foot table in preparation for the Embassy World Championship final, or even that his son would have unwrapped a table anything like as small as that on Christmas morning either. And even if this lack of authenticity largely worked as part of the slick overkill of the 80s, I find it hard to believe that there's currency in such flagrant endorsements in the marketing-savvy Noughties.

Currency there might not be much of, but amusement there is plenty. And what's particularly risible about all of this is how the gulf between market leaders and wannabees is exaggerated by the status of their ambassadors, with the smaller brands simply failing to attract anyone of any fame as these stand ups from Bangkok's IT mall Fortune Town show. If you're Canon you can do (pun intended), but if you're the ominously titled Asus you're stuffed. Claim all you want about being "number one in quality and services" but when the only ambassador you can attract is some spotty orphan in a tartan dress no one's going to have any of it. The same can be said about the no name printer ink girl – she's B-list pantomime circuit material at best.

But perhaps the strategy adopted by these challenger brands in the Tiger economies of Southeast Asia sidesteps fame altogether in favour of something much bigger and ultimately more persuasive, the oldest marketing tool in the box – sex. And if that is the case, one can only assume that with the broad range of ambassadors being employed (in places like Fortune Town), marketeers are spreading the net very wide indeed, attempting to appeal (worryingly so in some cases) to a diverse (read: dubious) audience with a range of tastes.

Your choice.

Choice is ironically both the privilege of the few and the biggest bane of digital denizens the world over – though not only is there an overwhelming amount of digital content available online, but such a plethora of aggregate sites around these days that one might be forgiven for seeking an aggregate site to link them all together.

The Filter, Peter Gabriel's new recommendation engine, is one service that is promising big in this department – in claiming to act as a "life jockey." Drawing inspiration from computer scientist Bill Joy, who in describing the service claims, "The first wave of freedom is of choice and the second wave of freedom from choice", the site brings together applications such as iTunes, retailers such as Amazon and Flixter and social music platforms such as Last.fm, while also enabling you to add word-of-mouth recommendations from people you know in the real world, too.

It might sound like they're having their cake and eating it, but try out The Filter's new aggregate service yourself if you want to – or don't go near it if you haven't got the time. It's, er, your choice.

Via The Guardian's Tech Weekly podcast.   

Strategic positioning.

Spotted this absolute beauty of a photo on the W+K London blog of an off license next door to an undertaker's office. Enough said.

Don't get drawn in.

Although scam work in the world of advertising is rife and shows no signs of abating (even with the presence of numerous digital, peer-congratulatory forums like Ads of the World), it's unusual to see anything other than faux stuff at school – unless of course you initially claimed that the work was in fact the real thing.

Getting someone else to do your homework or other such schoolboy laziness is more common, and even though I admit I thought that I'd seen it all at the age of 14 when I witnessed two kids at the school I attended catching the bus during our annual 3.5 mile cross country run, the following classroom cheat is on an altogether different scale.

In order to create what he hoped would be the biggest drawing in the world, Swedish design student Erik Nordenankar handed DHL a suitcase, inside of which was a GPS tracking device, together with exact instructions of where to take it. By tracking the device through six continents and recording the route on a map, Erik created the largest portrait the world has seen – or at least that's what he claimed. 

He later admitted – rather unnecessarily you might feel – that the case never made the journey, citing lack of funds as the reason; but Erik grassed himself up because as a hoax the tale was far hotter. In less than three weeks the story has created a viral storm boasting more than 1 million Youtube hits and plenty of blog coverage – which has all helped to raise the piece to a higher conceptual art form and gain the artist added anarchic kudos. 

I am just left wondering whether he got any extra credit at school for all his efforts and his cunning use of new media.

Check out his website for a personal confession. 

Via Creativeinlondon.

Wonderful stuff.

Although I'm finding print advertising increasingly more and more offensive as it trudges ungainly through the Noughties, interrupting and obstructing the lives of citizens – for whom many control, choice and contribution are the norm, powers that are exercised freely in their digital cosmos – this Wonderbra work from last year reappeared on my radar recently and I felt it deserved a nod, if only for its audacity.

When the work that global planners demand you must produce will surely be doctored by local censors, self-censorship is hard to avoid. And so actually building this obstacle into your strategy, basing your creative mechanism around it – while taking a jab at the censors themselves – is an approach truly worthy of note and must be applauded. What's more, as this type of local tailoring is often executed off-brand, it's wonderful to see some stuff that's so Wonderbra.

Via Adblogarabia.