Favourite TV ads of 2010

What a year.

Ikea Herding Cats

Skittles - plant

Instant Kiwi

Chrome speed

Logitech Revue with Google TV

Sussex Road Safety

Agadir

No good reason. For some reason they have stuck with me, I've enjoyed them or they have made me think past my safe little circle.

I hope you have all had a year of amazing ads - to the point where I hope they negate the bad ones.

See you all again in 2011.

Mon xx

Respect

Before I move on to my last post of the year, I want to talk about something that is very important to me.

Respect.

Respect is an amazing thing. We all want it. We all have the ability to give it. But for some reason or another, it seems to be something that so many of us seem to overlook.

Everybody deserves respect in one way or another. Whether it is the president of a large country or the person that empties their bin at night, both of those people deserve respect.

Within an agency it is just the same. The Interns deserve respect. A receptionist deserves respect. The Accounts people deserve respect (theoretically they deserve the most respect as they make sure you get paid). The Creative team deserves respect. The Media team deserve respect. Production/The Art Department deserve respect. The Suits deserve respect. And Management deserve respect.

The Clients deserve respect.

I've probably missed someone out.

The point is, we all need each other. Without Clients, none of us have a job. Without Suits, Creatives have to deal directly with the Clients. Without Creatives (and of course the Art Department) there is nothing beautiful and amazing to show the world. And without Media there would be nowhere to put that amazing work.

We all need each other. We all have our role to play in this game we call Advertising and if we don't have each others back and respect one another, then what a sad sad world we live in.

This Industry is not easy. People are constantly putting down our work (if you don't believe me, read Campaign Brief) and rejecting our ideas. The thing that makes it better is the people that we work with. The ones that tell us that we're great, even if it didn't pan out. Hey, we all have to start somewhere, keep going, you'll crack it; or you'll write the brief more concisely next time; or you'll remember to check the material deadlines and make sure they're manageable before promising something to the client.

We're all still learning. Whether we've been in this game for 25 years or 5 months. We're all here because we were given an opportunity and we grabbed it with both hands because we knew this was the most amazing Industry to work in. For that, we all deserve respect.

So I'm going to put this out there:

Think about how you deal with the people you work with everyday. Do you show them the respect they deserve? And if you don't, do you have a fair and just reason not to?

I know that the world is not perfect and I tend to live in a bit of an idealistic bubble sometime, but if the pure and good feeling you can get when you treat people with respect is not enough for you, let me put it to you this way...

One day, you might be asking them for a job.

Taking on Fonterra

Greenpeace are doing some interesting work taking on Fonterra at the moment. Well, actually this is a few weeks old now, but still interesting nonetheless.

First photo is at my local Countdown in the juice asile. Obviously executed guerilla styles as I don't think Countdown would really allow such a thing.

Second photo is just a paste up along K rd.

Now, I'm all for street posters and guerilla tactics, love it, but what is with the non-consistent URLs which they are driving people to?

The first drives to this site, greenpeace.co.nz/milk:

and the second fonterra-secrets.com:

Now, they seem to be pushing the same message, so why aren't they going to the same URL? Surely it makes more sense building just one site? Costs less, one hub, one united front. Wouldn't look like the people who are doing this are working in silos and have no idea what other people in the same organisation are doing? (Which it kinda does now)

By the way, the ad is horrific:

Makes me glad I drink mostly rice milk.

Vegan Vandals

Now to do something I never do. Talk about work from the agency I work at. I don't push anything that we do because I don't believe I need to, the work talks for itself. However, this I could not let pass me buy.

WE WERE VANDALIZED. Well, some of our work. What really gets me is that these vandals come from a group of people that I would not anticipate as the vandal kind. Vegans.

In case you haven't seen the campaign, this is how the billboard actually reads:

When did vegans become such badasses? Was it when I was eating that chicken wrapped in delicious bacon? I was a bit distracted at that point in time. I may not have noticed.

What gets me, is that these VV's (Vegan Vandals) are now targeting the campaign. This billboard doesn't even mention veganism:

Are Vegan's even allowed to drink beer? Is this an endorsement?

I actually Googled the question - lots of people ask it. It even turned up on Auto Complete:

I'm sure I have seen the vegans I know drink beer. Google doesn't seem to want to give me a definitive answer.

Maybe the VV's thought the first billboard was so funny that they decided to endorse Ranfurly?

I think that it's all a little hilarious and luckily the client isn't overly concerned (although those vegans can pay for the reprint and re-install!) but of groups to vandalize a billboard, vegans were not at the top of my list.

So, Monica's top tip for the day: Keep an eye out for Vegans. While they project this environmental caring/not eating living things persona's, they'll deface your property. Especially watch out for the ones with spray-paint cans.

Trying too hard Streets

Have you seen this ad:

Or maybe the 30 second version of it, or one of the billboards?

Now, do you have any idea who any of the people in this ad are?

If you answered no, then I'm going to pick that you are not alone. From my understanding these people are all 'bloggers' of some description or another. Isaac from Isaac Likes is one of the many in there, but if you're not the type that follows bloggers, then you're not going to know who those people are. So what relevance do they have? And what was the point of naming them?

What REALLY gets me about this, is that they're being so cool and hip and online; well, this is meant to be the 'endless summer' campaign, so if I go and try to find out more info about who the feck these people are and Google 'Streets Endless Summer' I get nothing.

Way to go Streets. I think what you have proved through this campaign is that:

1. You are trying WAY too hard

2. You're too easily led by someone who said that bloggers were cool and so you assumed everyone thinks so

3. You actually have NO idea how to do online when you completely failed to have a findable online presence. I'm not saying it doesn't exist, but you made it way too hard. Don't make me work so hard to find you!

Not good. I think (other than working on your SEO) that the one thing that could have made this just SO much better, if you hadn't named the people. It would have made the campaign so much better in my opinion. The cool kids that know who these people are would have recognised them and would have had a sly smile while they thought "cool, Streets are hip" and the rest of the world would have just appreciated the fact that they showed real people rather than parading stick thin models who have never eaten ice cream on our TV screens.

Nice try, bad aim.

Budget Online

Can someone please sort out Budget's online advertising.

Yesterday I was on Trade Me where I saw a Budget ad and thought 'spin the wheel - cool, sure, this will be interesting. Wonder if they are going to do this within the ad or take me to a landing page?'

Now, I understand that there is a button on this ad which says 'Spin Now' but I wasn't paying that much attention so I just clicked on the actual wheel in the ad. Took me straight to a new tab which told me that it was "bad request - invalid verb". At this point, I took a screen shot of the landing page and emailed my Trade Me rep and suggested they work out what is going on.

No idea what they did with this information, but they thanked me for it.

So, today on TV3 page, I see the Budget ad again:

And again I click on the wheel instead of the spin now button and yet again, I get this:
Now, this could be a Chrome issue (I can't be bothered finding the ad again in Firefox and playing with it) but I do wonder, who is building this creative for them? I am pretty sure it is possible to make sure that the rest of the ad doesn't click through at all, if that was what they were going for, or more to the point, make it so that everything but the button clicks through to their site.

What is going on?

What did Trade Me do with this information? Did they pass it onto the agency/client? Let them know what was happening? And if so, how come new creative which doesn't go to an error landing page hasn't been supplied to all publishers running this ad?

This is one of the reasons why it is so hard to get clients into online. They start with a sample of 1 (themselves) and decide that no one clicks on online advertising, so what's the point? Then, once you convince them to consider online, they start playing a little more and clicking on ads and this sort of thing happens.

Someone is letting the side down here. I'm not sure who, but you're not helping the rest of us by not caring about your advertising.

Legs Eleven

Interesting little promotion that welcomed me as I walked down Queen Street to work the other day. Pair upon pair of legs attached to trees. Attached to lamp posts. To walls.

Being the curious lass I am, I went in for a closer look:

So, it would seem they were looking for Facebook fans. I picked up a pair of discarded legs that were lying on High Street and took them back to work (I knew the boys would enjoy them) to find out what this was all about.

Now, at this point, the legs with stockings on them called "Queen Of..." my guess was that this promotion was either something to so with stockings OR there was a new 'Queen' bar opening up on Queen Street. Either makes sense to me.

In actual fact, however, it was seem that Queen Of... has something to do with razors and shaving apparatus. When I followed the instructions and went to 'Like' their Facebook page, they had a grand total of about 30 fans. The instructions on the legs were to then post the unique number onto their wall to win get prize.

So, there are 2 problems that I can see with this campaign.

1. That's totally against all of Facebook's rules on how you run a competition. Posting on a wall to win a prize or competition, big Facebook no no. You need an app for that sort of thing kids!

2. Not sure if the promotion really worked:

It seems like a lot of work for only 100 additional fans. The stockings alone would have cost a decent amount of money, let alone the man power to dress the legs and place them around town. Not sure this exercise will have paid off for them, considering the investment for the promotion and then what they gave away:

Of course I claimed my free razor. Yes please. But how many did they give away? Obviously no more than 100, but still.

It will be interesting to see if the product is any good. If I saw this sitting in the supermarket next to a Venus, I will go for the 'feel like a goddess' line every time, not the razor for a 'Queen'. I just think that there is something a little off with the packaging and marketing on this product.

Beautify Your City

There have been a few nice little ambient promotions done recently.

This was lovely:

All about not littering, I believe. Well, the sign reads "Please Don't Dump Your Rubbish Illegally" so I can only assume that this is something to do with the city council?

They actually built the planter boxes and installed them around Auckland. Well, this was up from High St and I saw one in Vulcan Lane also.
Only problem with ambient is that you can't control what people do in public spaces. When I went to take a photo of this promotion, this is actually what I found:
Illegally dumped rubbish. Not so beautiful.

Otherwise though, very cool idea.

And then there was Prime

The final season launch today was Prime. Celebrating 5 years since it was bought by Sky, it has done well over the last few years. I find Prime a very brave channel when it comes to their programming and each year they have backed shows which have been renewed for more seasons creating a nice little stable.

Now, these shows are by no means the general population, mind-numbing crap that you get on the other channels. Instead, I always think of Prime as programming for the thinking viewer.

Shite, that's a big call. I guess one of the reasons I think this is because when I talk about TV shows with my father, more often than not the shows are on Prime so I suppose I associate it with that level of intelligence. Granted, my father also likes Skins, but hey, he's allowed to have good taste in shows as well as being a thinker.

At any rate, they will have True Blood back again next year for Season Four. That's enough to keep me happy, but also Doctor Who, QI, Top Gear, Weeds and everyone's favourite Antique's Roadshow.

The shows that are missing for me are Secret Diary of a Call Girl, which in theory has been commissioned for a fourth and final season and Mad Men whose fifth season will commence in 2011 in the States. I do, so so much love both of these shows and do hope that they will return o Prime as well.

Onto the new shows...

Obviously the relationship with HBO is paying off (FOTC, True Blood) as surely the flagship show for 2011 is Boardwalk Empire. First episode directed by Scorsese and starring Steve Buscemi and Michael Pitt, I am loving this show, all about the time of Prohibition:

Three Hungry Boys looks interesting

Junior Masterchef Australia looks ADORABLE

I have high hopes for Running Wilde simply because it is from the creators of Arrested Development, and we all know how amazing that show is:

And then they have some lovely looking mini-series including The Kennedy's and David Attenborough's Life series.

I do enjoy Prime new season launches because they don't ever try to be a channel they're not. They know that they bulk out the schedule with re-runs of crazy old shows, but that is what allows them to take a punt of some of the riskier programmes. Good on them I say. Nice looking 2011.

Groove Guide, Groove Guide

So, I kid you not, I just smeared black newsprint all over my face this evening.

So much so I had to bust into a friends house and get it all off my face before we went for a drink.

Why you may ask? This:

I may regret this later - but at present I've had a few drinks, so, you know - I'm not wearing anything under this Groove Guide. The new, improved, A4 sized Groove Guide which is so big, and beautiful and ON NEWSPRINT which I picked up on the street just tonight while walking home I had to inhale as much of it as possible. Hence the newsprint black on my face.

For those of you who don't know me well, the Groove Guide has played a large part of my life for the last few years. It's a great publication. I do think that it is sad that Real Groove has gone, but Groove Guide has always been in the hearts of those on the streets, and taking it out of the glossy high street arena and putting it back on the streets as a newsprint publication, is where it should be.

Been drinking. That is all. Go forth and read Groove Guide. Seriously.

2011 New Season Line Up

Couple of weeks ago was the Mediaworks' new season launch which saw the network unabashedly declare that they were going to take on TVNZ with all they have. Good on them too. Mediaworks has always kinda been the poor cousin (they didn't have a rich father/mother bank rolling them) but with Jason Paris taking the lead, and Linda stepping up, the network really does look like it is going full steam in the right direction.

With the announcement that they are changing their channel target audience to AP25-54 for TV3 and turning C4 into FOUR (a more entertainment focused channel) with an AP18-39 audience, they are directly competing with TVNZ's channels. And they weren't apologising for the direct nature of their announcement. They meant business. Anyone who was following my tweets that particular morning know how incredibly impressed by this presentation I was. It is the first time (I think I have been going to new season launches for about 4 years - so still a youngin) I have walked away from a new season launch from either network so excited about what they were doing. Not only the enthusiasm of the presenters, the network direction, but also the programming that they are pulling in.

My highlights for Mediaworks next year include:

Community - I can't say enough good things about this show, and the fact they have picked it up just shows how onto it the programmers are. This is brilliance:

Outsourced - This is kinda my pick of the new season from the US. Love it. Smart humour:

Other shows to keep an eye out for:

Terriers

Almighty Johnsons (click here for a peak)

Bigger Better Faster Stronger (whoever had the idea to put Greg Page in FRONT of the camera is a genius)

Graham Norton Show

Gruen Transfer

Supercity

Plus all the usuals - Californication, the CSI/NCIS', The Good Wife, Glee, Top Model etc.

Then, today we had the TVNZ launch.

Now, I'm the first to put my hand up and say I am not TVNZ's biggest fan at present. They cause the the most headaches in my day to day working life and when you couple that with the arrogance of the 10% commission bullshit, well, they doesn't help them climb any higher in my opinion, that's for sure.

So, first things first. The kapa haka group who performed were awesome. Very very talented. The fact that they performed Te Rauparaha's haka, well, the irony wasn't lost on me, let's just put it that way.

TVNZ did what TVNZ does. They put on a show. Paul Maher made reference to revenue being up and how tight avails are in Oct/Nov. but "we still want your money, we'll find a way to spend it". I think he needs to talk to the people on the ground, as I have found it very hard to spend money on TVNZ in the last couple of months. The fact that they have shite programming in Q4 is kinda besides the point, there was just nothing there, and apparently I'm not allowed to build a national spot with regional spots anymore. Since when?

Onto the programming, gotta say it, not that impressed. First up on the One list was North - the follow up to Marcus Lush's South. Now, that was actually in the schedule to run this October, but got pulled. Hopefully we actually get it next year and it's not the flagship for 2012. There are a couple which look good including Enlightened and Body of Work, but they were the only 2 that did anything for me in the new line up. Trying to push Shit My Dad Says when it's already bombing pretty hard in the US potentially isn't the best idea and raving about securing one of the potentially most hideous concepts for a TV show I've ever seen, The Walking Dead. Ah, not for me:

But, TVNZ will have all the returning big names to TV2 - Greys, Desperate, Brothers & Sisters. The bankable big hitters which the general public love, gets them the ratings and therefore the $.

So, that is a very quick rundown. I think what Mediaworks are doing is ballsy and awesome, but they have a huge job ahead of them to rebuild C4 into the mainstream commercial channel that they want FOUR to be.

One thing I hope both Mediaworks and TVNZ do better next year, is give their new shows a chance and let the audience actually know that they are on. A number of shows which I really do think could have been freaking amazing raters this year, were just not promo-ed enough. Very lightly promo-ed on air and practically nothing off television. Human Target, Hawthorn, Sons of Anarchy, Castle - all have the potential to be great shows, I just don't think the audience know/knew they exist, so haven't found them. Anarchy isn't doing too badly, but I think this is by default as there simply isn't anything else on, on a Wednesday night.

Right - that's it from me. Any comments anyone? Did I get anything seriously wrong? Do you need to me to explain why I think performing that particular haka was ironic?

TVCs for pondering

So Bruce asked me about my thoughts on a couple of ads - so I shall share these thoughts with everyone. How lucky.

This is for 10:10 global trying to encourage people to cut their carbon emissions.

I personally think this is horrendous. It's not clever, or funny or endears me to the cause in any way shape or form. It actually makes me a little mad. Negative consequences, more to the point negative consequences which are fictitious don't work for me. Yuck. I would change the channel to specifically get away from this ad.

Next ad is for the Windows Phone:

This I quite like until the last the last 10 seconds when the commercial makes NO sense at all.

The first 50 seconds are so so true and funny and clever and I can see myself and MANY people I know it a number of those situations. The issue, is that I don't believe that a phone which is capable of more would ever fix the behaviour which is shown. No way, no how. I became like some of the people represented in this commercial once I got my android. More access to more information, all the time = non-stop phone fiend.

On a related note, this is a nice commercial touching on some similar themes:

Hat tip to @Designpimp for the video above.

That's all I have to say. Anyone else got any thoughts??

Bad Request

Invalid verb.

I wonder what the verb was?

Human bus panels

What the?

I am intrigued and in love all at the same time. Who came up with this idea? BRILLIANCE.

Hat tip to David Farrier for the link.

Petrol advertising online...

I find it quite interesting that a petrol station is advertising online. Petrol is such a grudge purchase - if you have a car, you need petrol. To be honest, most people I know decide on their petrol station dependent on discount vouchers or loyalty programmes, but that might just be the people that I know.

At any rate, Shell have some blah blah blah fishing something promo on at the moment so this morning (and yesterday morning also) there was a charming expandable on Stuff homepage:

What you can't really see is that the page is moving like water is ontop of if all wave-like. Nice touch. However, my issue with it, is why are they using a really OLD screen shot of the Stuff homepage? I'm sure that I have seen people build expandables which use the current homepage as the basis before they break it. Instead, the expandable disappears and you're left with a different homepage and different lead stories:
Hate to point this out to whomever built this, but you forget that the bulk of NZers are not 100% switched on. If you need proof of this, just look at the audience numbers for Police 10-7, Road Cops or shit that hit the fan with Paul Henry (I am a Paul Henry supporter, and I will no longer watch Breakfast as he is not on it). What was my point? Oh, right - this sort of thing - the double homepage, will confuse people. I hope Stuff haven't had too many complaints on this one.

What if, for a change, we cared about something

I have been a little quiet on the blog for a while as nothing has really grabbed my attention or elicited enough excitement for me to care.

Things change though and it is not necessarily that I care about something this time, it is an admiration for people who care enough about something to do something about it.

What on earth am I talking about?

A friend of mine, Adrian and his friend Mat are taking on the CureKids $10 challenge. It’s a pretty epic challenge, requiring the team to raise $7,125 before the event even begins and then they have to make it from Queenstown to Auckland on $10 THIS WEEKEND.

Now, I am all for helping out a worthy cause and getting my hands dirty every once in a while, but this is quite above and beyond the call of duty if you ask me and I am well impressed with everyone taking part in this event.

Why is this relevant? Well, being a developer and into the whole Twitter thing, Adrian has built a site which allows us all to track their progress and I have no doubt that there will be many a Twitter update over the weekend from @AdrianwithaW. It's always nice to see Twitter used in a good way - to communicate the good things that happen in this world rather than using it to bitch about things i.e. Paul Henry.

So other than going to some of their fundraising nights, this is how I am hoping to help – to spread the word a little more, congratulate the guys and encourage you lovely people out there in the interwebs to donate, because if you think about it, that’s the easy part – these guys are doing the hard yards.

How many expandable banners do we need?

Seriously? How many.

Story today on Stuff:

Not only do we have this charming expandable for Vodafone:
But the freaking Vaio ad explodes over the entire screen as well, covering the top of the Voda ad.
2 expandables, one covering another. I would not be a happy camper if either of these were my clients. Personally.

Expandable banners annoy people at the best of times - two on one story? That's just overboard.

I knew there was a reason I RSS everything and don't bother going to the actual sites anymore.

Shake it up baby now

So I have been MIA a bit recently. There are 2 reasons for this:

1. I like Auckland, I like the nightlife. I also like to boogie. Haven't been home much to actually write anything for a while.

2. Nothing has really deserved writing about recently.

Considering the above, I am now going to do a bit of a round up of everything that doesn't deserve a post all to itself.

Mini.

Initially, I liked the Mini Soho campaign. Now, I was basing this solely on the giant billboard and I will stick to that, I LOVED the massive billboard. Unfortunately I think that the rest of their campaign they tried to be too clever and it just didn't gel for me.

For a start, I saw very few of the actual ads (I know that a 3D cinema ad is cool kids - but if the only movie you can play it in is Shrek, is it really worth it?) and I am totally going to admit it, the online ad which you had to enter you IQ, wouldn't let me in. Not because I necessarily have a low IQ (I probably do), but because I do not know (or care) what my IQ is enough to find out, let alone what may be high or low. Hows about we make it relevant?

If you want to read all about what they did do for this campaign, read last months AdMedia. I think.

Then, once the Soho campaign was over we get this:

Yawn. Is anyone else bored? I'm pretty bored. Mini bores me. Sorry. The one with the dog is worse.

Also, balloons for the Ponsonby Street Fair... whatever? Ugh. Why don't you try harder?

Orcon.

Then there was the Orcon banners which everyone talked about. You can read about them here.Honestly - the cover that these damn banners got, I don't understand. So it's a multi-video banner which was shot specifically for the banner. Cool. I mean, it's novel, but I don't think its the be all and end all to save online advertising.

TVNZ

There was a rant here about TVNZ which I think may be better not to share. Let's just go with I think TVNZ are jumping the shark.

OK - there is a lot of negativity in there - sorry kids. I just think that there is a lot of uninspiring work out there at the moment. Nothing has made me step back and go WOW for ages (except of course the amazing work my agency does, but this blog is not about self importance. Much).

It is a shame.

iPad

To end on a positive note however - I had my first play on an iPad the other day and the Herald app. Freaking aye - now that is cool. Really impressed with what the crew at APN have put together for that, and I think there is a really nice balance of advertising in there too. Not too often, but often enough.

The Yellow Page ad - that WAS uber impressive. Very cool ad. You kinda have to see it to understand (if someone wants to screen shot it for me and email it though, please do and I will upload the pics).

EDIT: Ask and you shall receive - the lovely Donna from APN Digital just sent through screen shots for me.

She's all very happy:

But turn the iPad sideways and... Opps!

I think it's great.

But if you have read my blog before, you will know where this is going.

I would like Yellow's advertising better if they would FIX THEIR FREAKING PRODUCT.

I will admit, it is slightly better than it was 6 or so months back, but if I search for Save Mart I still get a butcher.

That is all. Hopefully something amazing comes creeping out of the woodwork and I can write about how inspired I am again.

Note - I wrote this post a month ago in late August and there hasn't been much happening in the meantime, so you guys get an old post. Stink. Sorry about that.

Ikea - Herding Cats

AMAZING and beautiful ad for Ikea made by Mother London who released 100 cats (and we're not talking professional cats here, just family and friends favourite felines) in the Wembley Ikea store.

I haven't seen such a lovely commercial in ages.

Incase you care, the following commercial for EDS is my other favourite cat commercial:

A Few Of My Favourite Things

In one ad.

Street Art, Guerilla Advertising, Banksy.

Epic.

Exit Through The Gift Shop was one of the MANY films I didn't get to see at the Film Festival. I am so so glad that it is up for general release. Check out the trailer below: