Inspiring work from 2011

It’s been such a busy year that I’ve found it impossible to post regularly, so here’s a round-up of just some of the business/brand/communications/design ideas that caught my eye in 2011.
1. O2 Academy TV
Having recently become a Dad, it’s been difficult to get out to see many gigs in 2011. O2 Academy TV has been [...]

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 10 Cyber Picks

1. Warner Bros/The Dark Knight Film: Why So Serious? - 42 Entertainment, Pasadena, USA.

Epic! I’ve discussed this Grand Prix viral already in an earlier post.
2. Fiat: eco:Drive - AKQA, London, UK

Given the complexity of Fiat’s eco:Drive system, I think the main success of this digital tool is its simplicity. I also think that the strategy of positioning eco:Drive as a ‘no brainer’ in [...]

The Next Wave of Social Networking from Google

Looking forward to having a play with this new communications platform from Google. Even at beta stage, it’s already massively hyped as the rival to Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed and possibly also Webex in the business community.
Put very simply, the platform is a type of live chatroom with a facility to share/amend/display documents to participants in real [...]

SixthSense: Paving the way for a new type of brand interaction?

MIT’s Media Lab have unveiled their take on ‘Minority Report’ style technology in the form of ‘SixthSense’. Notwithstanding the mixed film references, the wearable technology is pretty clever: allowing the user to merge the ‘real world’ with the ‘digital world’ by projecting interactive content onto the surface of virtually any object.

SixthSense is essentially hybrid of [...]