Creating Value from Nothing: Diamond Shreddies

Here’s a nice example of the use of marketing to create value out of nothing:

A brilliant way to create reconsideration for a 68-year-old brand.  Apparently the ‘fake news’ idea of turning squares into diamonds was originally a response by an intern to a client brief to redesign the back of the cereal box. The agency and Kraft realised [...]

Cannes Lions 2009 - My Personal Top 5 Titanium & Integrated Picks

1. Obama/Biden 2008: Obama for America

This year’s Titanium Grand Prix winner was exemplary in its use of integrated and participatory multimedia to create a cultural movement for change - setting a new best practice benchmark for political campaigning.
2. Jewish Council for Education and Research: The Great Schlep - Droga5, New York, USA.

In an example of shrewd targeting, this campaign [...]

Cannes Lions 2009 - My Personal Top 5 Outdoor Picks

1. The Zimbabwean Newspaper: Fight the Regime- TBWA/Hunt/Lascaris, Johannesburg, South Africa.

Extremely hard-hitting and intelligent commentary on Zimbabwe’s political and economic crisis, from exiled newspaper, the Zimbabwean. These billboards were produced using trillions of real Zimbabwean dollars, which were in fact a cheaper alternative to paper, and the perfect medium to raise awareness of the newspaper and [...]

Cannes Lions 2009 - My Personal Top 10 Press Picks

1. Latin Stock: Boxing/Napalm/Tank - DDB, Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Simply a nice, thought-provoking observation - well demonstrated with suitably iconic imagery.
2. Alka Seltzer: Bear/Paparazzi/Magician/Mafia/Prison - CLM BBDO, Boulogne-Billancourt, France.

Big fan of the left-field analogy of Alka Seltzer being able to handle anything you throw into your stomach - thereby ‘dissolving your problems’. Appropriately refreshing in tone [...]

The Pink and Blue Project

Nice visual commentary from South Korean artist JeongMee Yoon on gender differences and materialistic obsession.

I originally spotted this exhibition in May this year in a tiny gallery in the very laid back (and relatively little known) surfing town of Bolinas, Marin County, CA. You can see more of JeongMee Yoon’s work on her personal website.

Charitable Baby Dragons Find Their Den at Kiva

Here’s an inspiring non-profit business model that I heard about on the latest edition of BBC’s Click.
 

 
Kiva is an innovative charity that is attracting the attention of budding venture capitalists with its innovative peer-to-peer lending model; allowing small lenders to support low income entrepreneurs in developing countries with ‘microloans’.
Lenders visiting the Kiva website can browse [...]

Scrabble - The Beautiful Word

There’s a really nice thought behind the intriguing art direction of this campaign for Mattel’s iconic Scrabble game, developed by Ogilvy Paris.
It seems to do a very good job of injecting some life into the 60-year-old brand, whilst intelligently dramatising a well-observed truth about the enjoyment of playing the game. I imagine cut-through will also [...]

Inspiring Books: Life’s a Pitch (paperback) - Stephen Bayley, Roger Mavity (Corgi, 2008)

This book caught my eye in the Design Museum shop in London a couple of months ago. I’ve seen loads of books of this type in the past, but its straight-talking conversational style held my attention whilst I was flicking through it, and I quickly found myself unable to put it down, which is usually [...]

Cape Farewell Presentation

I attended a team conference last week during which we had an inspiring presentation from Cape Farewell - a charity that encourages cultural responses to climate change by inspiring creative people to communicate the urgency of the problem.
The charity has been running expeditions to areas that are directly affected by the impact of climate change and has been [...]