Singing in the shower

This is the second post with girls wearing not alot this week. Don't worry, it's last one.

Anyway, this is a new campaign for Burger King in the UK called 'Singing in the shower'. Every morning a lovely lady hops into the shower and sings a song. You choose the song and the bikini she wears.

Just so you know guys, there's not a 'No bikini' option.

It's silly and a little removed from Burger King, but it will get visits because there's a hot, naked chick....sorry, lady singing everyday.

Singing in the shower is here.

While we're on naked girls in creative we might as well mention this banner. It's 10 mega bytes big and has a girl stripping. We won't ruin the suprise anymore!

It's here if you really really need to take a look.

Complete Bayhem

Victoria Secret advert directed by Michael Bay.

Interested? Of course you are.

Michael Bay is all about less plot more action, girls and explosions. Kudos to the guy to some extent because he does what he does very well.

Hire a gimp and get free calls and text

Exactly....why didn't we think of this?

Someone in our office stumbled across Giff Gaff, a new phone network. They are promoting their service in a slightly different way to say Vodafone or O2. They let you hire out different 'tools' to get a free calls and txt sim in return for making a video of your experience.

This is their mantra which is why we have ended up with a Gimp in our office.

"To introduce the world to giffgaff, the first people powered mobile network, we’ve created Tool hire. We think it’s a nice expression of our people powered ways and general back-scratching mentality. Hire a tool for free, make a great video, and we’ll give you a SIM card providing you with free UK calls, texts and internet for a year.

So, the Gimp was one of the weird and wonderful things you could hire. Take a look at the rest of their tools here.

Giff Gaff are hoping that the 'tool' are mental enough that people will blog and post their experiences on youtube.

I think it might have worked.

Oh, forgot to mention that we made him dance just before he left. Below is the remix, aptly named The Gimp Groove.

Star Wars on Facebook

Geeky...but funny. So they are alright in our digital space.

The Sun 4.0

The Sun has been the best handheld for 40 years.

Bohemian Rhapsody + Muppets =

Funny!

Annoyingly good idea using Facebook

A blast from the past

Whispa. Back from the 80s

Adidas "Runners, yeah we're different"

These press ads just went round work. Remember these gems?

'STUPID' CREATIVE ADVICE OF THE DAY!

YOU CAN'T POLISH A TURD.

BUT YOU CAN ROLL IT IN GLITTER!

You know you want to!

Not one but two great ideas!

Red bull Project X

Toshiba Space Chair

Red Bull Project X

First up is an amazing idea from Red Bull. They take the world's best snowboarder (Shaun White) and make a secret half pipe in the middle of nowhere for him to try and make up new tricks.

The scale of the project is the impressive thing here. The ramp they've built is insanely big and some of the tricks Shaun White is pulling off are almost beyond belief.

The ramp also has one of the biggest foam pits ever because even Shaun White sometimes needs a few practise runs to get a trick right.

Toshiba Space Chair

Let's send an arm chair into space, what a brilliant idea. Really like the way this is executed too, it's clean, minimal and really striking as the chair floats above earth.

The 60 second spot is probably a bit more punchier than the 90. but that's just knit picking.

The line is good on the TV ad as well 'Arm chair viewing, redefined'.

Indeed.

The similar thing about these campaigns is the focus on the making of's as well as the idea. When you do something out there and crazy it makes sense to create more content for people to view and get involved with.

Both ideas come with interesting video's that explain how the projects were made. The Red Bull project X has packaged this content better.

They haven't opted for a straight 'making of' video but chopped the video's bite sized pieces and let the user navigate around the half pipe to view them. It's just makes the Red Bull site slightly more engaging.

Digy Roy and Big G do art

Anish Kapoor - Tall Tree and the Eye

Adam Neat - Self portraits using mixed media

Adam Neat - Madonna

Adam Neat - Sculpture

We got the chance to go to the Adam Neat and Anish Kapoor exhibitions today. Unforntunatly they didn't allow camera into the Anish Kapoor exhibit so we could only get photo's of the sculpture outside.

Check out some more of the photo's we took here.

Plus, there's more about Adam Neat here and Anish Kapoor here.

Enjoy!

There's another Big G out there...

...and he's a mascot that can really knows how to entertain a crowd.

Via Seriously Randumb

There's a fake app for that

Russian Roulette app goes wrong

Nude it app

The Apple adverts say there's an app for anything apparently. So there's no point coming up with real ones anymore.

Could this be the a viral trend of people making up fake iphone apps on youtube?

MAN POINTS!

Using a huge chainsaw. Major Man Points!

Clint Eastwood. Automatic Man Points.

A man points background to add your man points image.

If you've ever done something manly or feel that someone deserves a man point accolade why not use this template to show it off.

Just click the image (but only if you really want to!) to get the bigger version.

Man points can be anything from...

• Using a giant drill.
• Digging.
• Lifting heavy objects.
• Knocking down walls.
• Sawing.
• Holding a gun.
• Doing a wheelie on a motorbike.
• Driving a pick up truck.
• Just looking damn cool!

This list isn't exclusively it. To claim man points the image just needs to be testosterone filled.

Adidas Teamgeist

This is the new website from Adidas football where you play the Germany team's world cup finals in a simple 'chess' type strategy football game.

It's nicely wrapped up with a simple comic book narrative that explains how you need to reclaim the three stars from past world cup wins. No budget has been pulled for sure. The production level is through the roof on this one.

You can spot the art direction influence a mile off too. It wreaks of the film Sin City at the start. Even some of the shots are just copied. The really good bit about this website is the music. It has a big epic Amphitheater feel to it. It gives the whole experience a more exciting edge and pace.

The biggest frustrations though, is realising you've successfully helped Germany win three world cups again. A bit of kick in the face being from England.

Take a look here.

Portmanteau's

There’s something quite cool about smashing two words together to create another meaning. We do it all the time. Sometimes it starts for ball rolling on a new idea. Other times it’s just funny.

According to the digital info bible that is Wikipedia this idea first cropped up in Lewis Carroll's book Through the Looking-Glass. Humpty Dumpty explains to Alice the coinage of the unusual words in Jabberwocky. E.g "‘Slithy’ means ‘lithe and slimy’ or ‘Mimsy’ is ‘flimsy and miserable.’

Some good ones we found are…

Wedsite - A wedding website

Bromance - A phrase for friendship or a close bond between guys.

Framily - A group of friend you consider a family.

Mandana - A bandana worn by a man

Any other good one's? Drop 'em in the comments.

Take one for the team

The Cadbury's Nibbles Boutique

I was walking to work and saw a billboard advert about a binge-drinking programme for ITV. The line was a question like ‘Is binge drinking ruining Britain?’ and it has three good-looking girls in police uniforms smiling at camera looking a bit tipsy.

Now, I bet it didn’t start like this. I reckon the creative team would have wanted to be harder hitting with the image. Something like people passed out or running about with traffic cones on their head.

It looks like the client has watered down the image because they are worried about offending someone.

So, the take out of the billboard is more like ‘this doesn’t look like such a bad time to me. Looks like good fun’… and that really shouldn’t be the take out of an advert about binge drinking.

My point is that it might be good to get more creative types to convert to the client side. If someone who has a creative mind is buying the work, they’re more likely to understand where the creative team is coming from.

Awards would be won. Champagne would be opened and the advertising world would be more in harmony. But that’s a maybe!

For instance, Cadbury’s has got a very creatively minded client at the moment (previously from the Stella account) who obviously wants to buy good ideas e.g Gorrila, Eyebrow’s etc.

Their latest piece of work called the Nibbles Botique is very good indeed. The agency Hyper set up a pop up store on Carnaby Street in London that could only be viewed from the outside. Inside the store were scarf’s designed by a top designer and modelled by the very famous Caramel Bunny. The only way of getting one though was virtually.

People had to hunt on certain sites for banners that said that the shop was open. When they clicked through they were put into a virtual queue and then actually served by one of the shop assistants in the store. Apparently women were going mental trying to find the store banners to get one these limited edition scarf’s.

This idea is great that it goes online and offline. It floats my boat.

The website is here and more about it is here.

So, there must be creative types that will take one for the team to keep doing work of this standard?

Shotgun not me!

Excuse me, but there's a fly in my idea

Dead fly art

Banner flies

Flies. Their not usually know for their creative qualities. However, these two ideas seemed to have used them quite well.

Admittedly these ideas border on the down right weird slash insane area, but that's probably what makes them work so well.

The two images at the top are titled 'dead fly art'. This is simply drawing humorous things around dead flies. Get it?

The next two images are part of a more complex idea. But not by very much. A German agency attached small banners to flies and had them fly around and land of people. It's a different way to advertise for definite.

The PR stunt seemed to work quite well. It getting good praise on this blog for sure.

The really clever thing about this idea was that the banners were weighted just right so the flies could only go so far before they had to land.

Also, i would love to know how they tied the banners on the flies in the first place. If anybody can shed light on this it would be ace?

All I can hope it that the flies were paid a good hourly rate for their time.

Take a look at the article and the flies in action here.

Friday fun times with Xtra normal

This site is great. You can create really short movies really quickly. You type out your script and it says it back in a Stephen Hawkin esc voice. That alone is pretty funny, but it gets even better when you start adding camera angles, hand gestures and emotions.

Waste two hours doing it. It's worth it.

The example above is a bit of a parody on the art director. Have a go here

Twoyoutubevideosandamotherfuckingcrossfader.com

It might just be the URL that drew me to this. Check it out at...

twoyoutubevideosandandamotherfuckingcrossfader.com

Internet crazies. Got to love 'em

The 200th Post

Bit of a milestone today. 200 posts since we started this blog.

Woop Woop!

So, to celebrate here's a link to a slide show called '87 cool things' from google. It's worth a look as there are loads of interesting ways people have been using google's API. It's application mash-up heaven!

Take a look here.

Someone finally hacks google street view...

... and it's a band and not a brand!

I'm quite taken back by The Editors use of google street view to promote their new album.

There are various points to click on a google map. Each position relates to an area that inspired a song on the album. When you reach a specific point in Street View a special arrow appears, and takes you to a night scene involving the band. The Street View scene with the Editors still uses the same Street View navigation to explore it, which makes the whole experience mesh together nicely. Now i'm not a huge fan of the band. But, it is nice to hear the song playing as you look around the area which it was written about.

It's about time another band challenged Radiohead for thinking of new, interesting, ideas and channels to promote an album.

I take my digital hats off to The Editors for trying something new and all the dev team that made it happen!

The url is here. http://www.editorsofficial.com/streetview/

Good stuff.

Get a 'go to' blog

When the idea's stop (usually just after lunch) i usually go to a blog where i can get some inspiration and a bit of a brain re-boot.

I see it like having a blogging mentor.

You admire their writing style, they inspire you to think a little bit harder or they just find cool stuff from around the world.

It's a blog that gives you an extra creative push to get you to the end of the day.

If you haven't got that 'go to' blog, there's a couple of good one's below.

Notcot - The Yoda of ideas.

Dave Trott - The Mr Miyagi of advertising insight.

Bad Banana - The Mickey of graphics and design.

The most testosterone fueled film EVER!

The new film 'The Expendables' from Sly Stallone has just had it's first trailer released.

i'm not sure if the trailer is meant to be badly edited to get across some 80s action man nostalgia. It seems to give away a lot of the action, and to be honest that's all this film seems to have going for it. The plot seems to be a minor detail here.

Anyway, lets blow some more S**t up!

The last place you want to go

Nice insight. Cool art direction and some well written copy.

The one thing we have spotted is that it could work for amazon.co.uk, kelkoo.com, pricerunner.co.uk etc.

But Dixon's did it and well done to them for having the creative balls to slag off three of the biggest department stores in Britain!

Really good music video's

Peter, Bjorn and John - It don't move me.

Justice - Let love rule.

What's great about music videos is how creative they always are. They don't have to have too much message take out apart from...'that was cool!"

There's a great scene in Almost Famous (Directed by Cameron Crowe) where the guitarist Russell Hammond says to the young wannabe reporter William Miller "Just make us look cool."

i think that's essentially what Musicians want from their promotional stuff. Wouldn't advertising be simpler if clients were the same!

Perfectly in sync

These guys are great. They would work really well for a computer or mobile phone service that want say they could keep you life in sync. Anyone?

80s pop videos yooouuutuubed

MC Hammer - Can't touch this

Peter Gabriel - Sledgehammer

Michael Jackson - Billie Jean

These all came from a site called Yoouuutuube.

It splits a Youtube video into frames and makes a crazy mosaic pattern from them. These 80s pop videos work particularly well with it.

Via Crack Unit

Webcam face tracking goodness for Toyota.

Head up display takeover

We recently completed a campaign for the launch of the new Toyota Prius.

The image above is the Yahoo full page takeover for the Head-up-display ad. The 'HUD', which we got used to calling it, projects on the drivers windscreen.

The ad gives you an 'in car' experience of the ‘head-up display'. We used webcam face tracking technology so you can move the graphic scene with just your head movements. You can use a mouse though if you computer isn't hooked up to a webcam.

Take a look and have a play here.

The Puma index

This is a novel idea for Puma. The male and female models take their clothes off as the stock markets go down. So when the stock markets crash the models get down to their underwear. Very clever. Very engaging. Take a look here.

It's good that it's an idea that links into a subject that is very current news. Admittedly, it does have a hint of what Uniqlo are doing but it's still a decent enough way to showcase Puma's entire range of clothing.

40 million people Rick rolled and other awesome stats

Friday afternoon art direction

This x-ray effect is really cool. Simple, yet detailed at the same time. The photographer is Kazukita Kamatsu.

This comes from Yes Studio. Really like the simple use of shape and colour in this one.

This has got 'poster' written all over it. Love the simplicity.

This photographer is a guy called David Sykes.

This could easily run for a brand like Walls to promote their low fat range, if they have one anyway?

There....i fixed it.

Some 'lateral' ways of solving a problem.