Soda - Keeping Curious

Too busy for Christmas tags? Emotionally crippled and unable to express even the simplest of feelings? No problems, simply slap one of Together’s pre-written gift tags on your present and reap the rewards of a heart warming message.

Don’t say we never give you anything here on the Together blog. Think it, just don’t say it.

Merry Christmas from all your chums at Together.

The duracell bunny is the marmite of battery ads. Like it or hate it - there’s no in between. I hate it. And, I can think of hundreds of different ways to end it’s stupid, smug rock climbing, race running life.

However, the duracell bunny fusion ads, print and press, have really caught my eye (although it does stick in my throat to say that). For some reason an animated pink bunny has so much more personality than it’s fluffy counterpart and the idea of lots of them coming together to create something amazingly powerful is a really nice touch. The ads are clean, fresh and clever - all the things that the original bunny ads aren’t. The track’s pretty good too. All round, I like it.

Glass and a half full have been at it again. Their new ad sees a giant animated, cocoa bean like wooden head inspire the people in an African township to dance, sing and have a good time. Obviously the crux of the idea is that dairymilk is fairtrade and that the farmers growing the cocoa beans get a fair price for them which makes them happy (we can see that), but you could be forgiven for missing the fairtrade logo at the end.

However, although I could wax lyrical about the ad creative till the cows come home that’s not what really excites me about this. If you watch it and pay full attention at the start then you will notice ‘Glass and a Half Full PRODUCTIONS’ has been replaced by ‘Glass and a Half Full RECORDS’. Cadburys have used this platform to release a record, ‘Zingolo feat. Tinny’, which is available for download on iTunes and which all the profits go to Care International. Genious!

We know the face of television advertising is changing and that people are more sceptical and savvy than they used to be, so anything that brands can do to grab your attention is definitely a plus. And we know that records can have huge success off the back of use in an ad (think Jose Gonzalez and the sony bravia commercial), so to combine the two and do this is a clever concept and to top it off a charity benefits off the back of it.

I thought the guys at Cadburys had set a bar for themselves after the gorilla ad (and to be honest the 2 that followed didn’t really hit the mark) but this time they have definitely scored with me. Sorry Galaxy but I’m back on the Dairymilk.

Those famous primary coloured interlocking bricks were always my favourite toy back in the 1970s, there is something incredibly satisfying in placing those bricks together and creating something.

I inherited a big box of loose Lego in various shapes and sizes from my brother. I never had one of those fancy kits so I built without any instruction I just kind of went with the flow and generally it ended up as some kind of flying device like a plane or helicopter…I only had one design rule: It all had to be made in the same coloured bricks (usually red or yellow).

I’d like to think it was what set me on the way to what I do now.

Anyway here’s a couple of movies capturing the joy of Lego and remember…smiles for the good guys, scowls for the baddies.

I came across this the other day and just love them! They’re from a Germany and are not on the market yet but I’ll be amongst the people queuing up to buy them. There’s the royal set of tea bags featuring certain members of our royal family and the Democrat Tea set which has heads of state from various countries. Just brilliant. Why not an English Football Team set next with Beckham chilling in your cuppa? Or could that be contentious after 1966?

Whether you’re looking for highlights of the X factor, searching for a video of the worlds fattest man or want to watch an over-pampered pooch howling “I want my mama” at it’s owner, Youtube has got it all, and the only excuse you have for not knowing this is if you have been living in a sound proof broom cupboard all of your life with a paper bag over your head and only a hairy spider for company.

It’s fair to comment that most of the videos uploaded onto Youtube, especially those outrageously annoying video blogs (Vlogs), are cheap and worthless to say the least. However, if you have the patience to wade through all the crap, there is often a very bright light at the end of the tunnel, be it in the form of a wonderfully insightful advert or an exemplary piece of digital work.

Both of these examples can be found below. The first is entitled “Her Morning Elegance” and is part of the new Directors Showcase 2009 for Saatchi and Saatchi. Every time I watch this particular video I smile at its innovative brilliance. And the woman is a red-head like me which automatically makes me a fan.

The second is an advert for sulekha.com, where some bright fellow came up with the idea to combine an ancient cartoon style with the contemporary computer arrow to emphasise both the tradition and the forward thinking of the website, which is a sensational concept.

Enjoy.

For all of you that don’t have the pleasure of popbitch every week, here is something that every designer (and those in the industry) should have a nose at. I was doing very well the other day until supposed cheese expect, Mr Boulton, decided to give me a hand. Oh well, it’s hours of fun so give it a go. Let me know how you get on!

http://bit.ly/p301M

3M, the clever people behind Post-it notes have recently launched a Pictionary-style Post-it game where visitors join a room (much like a conventional chat room) and start playing against other players. Since its launch, over 6 million games have been played, so it’s clearly popular too.  Fun brand-building idea, and well executed too.

I have recently been reading a fabulous book written by Kevin Roberts, the CEO of Saatchi and Saatchi. At first I thought it was going to be another long-winded account of how one person in the world somehow managed to work their way up to be the big cheese of a majorly successful company, but in actual fact it’s turned out be an interesting and remarkably inspirational read.

So far, I’m half way through and I’m really enjoying what Roberts has to say about the marketing world, so much so that I decided to search Youtube for more examples of successful television adverts created by Saatchi and Saatchi. I wasn’t disappointed.

At the centre of all the fantastically creative ads, I found the masterpiece of a campaign called “Beware of the Doghouse”, which advertises the jewellery from JC Penney. It’s the kind of campaign that both men and women alike can easily relate to and find hilariously funny. Check out the short film below and you’ll see what I mean…

You see – incredible! And the fun doesn’t stop there. If your upset by something your partner’s done, you can visit www.bewareofthedoghouse.com and put them into the doghouse along with all the other guilty parties.Legendary.

Lists of things we ’simply must do’. How would we survive without them? Er, probably quite well actually…

10.
100 cheeses you need to try before you die

9.
25 amazing ways to tie your shoes

8.
Top 5 shellfish for throwing through car sunroofs

 ‘Lob a lobster’

7.
101 ways to dig a hole

6.
99 places in Britain to illegally buy a monkey

5.
Britain’s all time top 50 slices of toast

4.
50 diseases you probably don’t want to get (and how you can get them)

3.
30 best places to meet people who won’t like you

2.
10 brilliant new ways to blink

1.
100 more exciting things you could actually be doing with your time other than reading lists about exciting things you could do with your time.