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.