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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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:
For a long time I have bitched and moaned about how websites or certain online advertising does not work in Chrome. Being such a Google child I have used Chrome for quite some time and am not a fan of other browsers. Now, as a reward (I feel) Google have started Chrome Experiments which run ONLY on Chrome. As a part of Chrome Experiments there is The Wilderness Down which involves none other than one of my favourite bands (whose new album The Suburbs is awesome) Arcade Fire.
So, you enter your hometown and then it kindly asks you to close down other applications as it takes a bit of processing space apparently.
Now, I wasn't sure what to expect, and I can't explain it in full to you, but it is like taking a multi-window journey into your hometown in a way that you probably thought wasn't possible.
I'm not going to lie, it is not 100% and some of the graphics are a bit naff, but overall it is a beautiful concept set to amazing music.
Where you even get the opportunity to interact and contribute yourself:
Visually stimulating and incredibly engaging - I can only encourage you to click on the link above to take part yourself.
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.
