Rethink Scholarship at Langara 2010 Call for Entries from Rory O’Sullivan and Simon Bruyn on Vimeo.Isn’t this such a good start to today?

Vitamin Water has been working hard to capture the energy of the Olympics in its marketing lately with bus stop take-overs and clever writing.  I’d definitely give it a sit.

I have to say, I’m a little nervous about the Sprite Spark program launching in March.  No doubt they researched, spent good money, and tried really hard to make an amazing integrated social plan.  At the end of all of this research they have determined that “fresh ideas and experiences are important social currency for teens”  to which I wonder if the person who delivered this expensive bit of news was dressed in a Captain Obvious costume.What Sprite has cooked up is “Innovative TV commercials, an online …

I’m surprised.  Surprised that I’m actually spotlighting a breakfast cereal for their cool concept when honestly, there hasn’t been much of anything really interesting or progressive going down with cereals in a while.  Cereals were king of the television ad.  They almost all have mascots like tigers, elves, vampires, and all sorts of other animated beings to get kids attention.  Because that’s who eats cereal right?  Kids?Wrong.  Case in point: one meal I made on a first date was in fact Fruity Pebble rice krispy squares.  I think there’s a …

Skittles made a lot of headlines when they changed their homepage to be their Twitter feed.  It was new, interesting, and got them a lot of attention.  Now, they’ve gone and changed the site again.  It’s hard to talk about it unless you’ve seen it so go and look at it here.  I’ll wait.It’s pretty odd right?  It’s both full of social media and strange as all hell. It’s got lots of video, pictures, and links to their social pages which is usually a good thing.  What I’m interested in …

This post is one I’ve been thinking about for a long time and now that some agencies are pushing to retain creative rights to their ideas throughout the process, it’s doubly relevant.  I really suggest you read the article in Adage, it’s clearly a growing problem.  When you’re a creative team or shop and you make your money by crafting and then executing ideas (designers, social media folks, artists, etc.) it’s hard to know how much to give clients in order to show off how great you are and what …

 
photo FairyFaye
I hear a lot of talk lately about “doing an online contest” as a way to crowdsource, do something playful and interesting online, and because people think it’s easy.   Having done my fair share of those let me be the first to say that it is NOT easy.  If they aren’t successful, you worry about getting votes, entrants, and publicity.  If the technology isn’t planned out correctly, you will worry that the votes aren’t being counted by the interns correctly or that people are uploading submissions but …

Laterbro is a cool tool for people who travel, go off the grid, or write a lot of cool clever lines at one time but don’t want to post all at once.

Obviously, we don’t set out to make mistakes in our work.  We don’t want to hit rough patches, low traffic times, factual errors, planning errors, or even typos but they happen.  They always have happened and they always will.  Sometimes it’s small like a number typed wrong and sometimes it’s an idea that seemed really good but turned out not so good (United not responding to United Breaks Guitars).  In social media there’s a lot of room for the latter type because to be perfectly honest there’s a lot of …

I can’t believe it, but they may just be starting to make commercials that are more interesting than their money saving bit that makes me yawn every time I see it.