Why you shouldn't do things in-house

Now, I am a big fan of Mediaworks. The people I deal with, what they're trying to do with FOUR, but they NEED to put creative back into an agency. Stop doing it in house. Please.

There was the small rip off issue of a Playstation ad which saw Dai Henwood go underground on Twitter for a while until it blew over and now this:

Don't get me wrong, because I actually think that this is really nice and I think that John Campbell is awesome HOWEVER...

What the feck were they thinking using a taxi which was a Holden when Mazda is sponsoring the show? What are you doing? If I was Mazda (and/or .99 who look after them) I would seriously unimpressed.

Quick - someone photoshop the Holden logo out of that shot.

Agencies are more attuned to these sorts of things. We're quick risk diverse as a general rule. I'm not saying it wouldn't have happened if it was done by an agency, but at least Mediaworks would be able to blame them.

Hat tip to Dan News for the visual.

Sorry

If you picked that last post up through RSS.

Blogger-droid fail. Wrong blog.

I'll be back with more (hopefully) interesting advertising. In the meantime, enjoy these little gems from Jordan's Museli.

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.