It doesn’t get much more beautiful than this. Something I really notice more when bubbles are this big is how they burst -- seems a lot slower than you’d think..
Ah, old times. An era of no-nonsense, straight to the point and PERSUASIVE advertising. Social media, blah, co-creation, blah, democratised information, blah who needs that drivel when you’ve got corkers like these to spread goodness about your brand.
Slick, sassy and effortlessly cool, ‘True Originals’ is a somewhat mysterious campaign from London based creative marketing agency ‘Think Espionage’ . The videos follow a Prada adorned ‘Euro-man’ across the world in pursuit of the world’s finest bartenders. Each one seems to be an expert in their field and able to create some seriously awesome cocktails with of course…Bacardi. Thankfully you never get to see a single bottle though, the videos are all refreshingly unbranded which instantly makes me nod in smug approval. Kudos to Bacardi for signing that off.
So what’s it all about? Well, following on from the experiential Bacardi bespoke platform they rolled out a few years ago, this campaign seems to be aiming to bring to life the experience of Bacardi -- but with all the benefits of a digital platform. Whilst Bacardi Bespoke was a very cool idea, its only problem would be a lack of reach. I am sure they intended to target ‘influencers’ but anyone who is anyone should be wary of nonsense like that. This campaign seems to be largely rooted in Facebook and with no dedicated website -- which is really interesting. These videos look super expensive; if there’s cash for execution, where’s the cash for the media? A great example of content-over-media and an indication that Bacardi must have faith in social.
The only gripe I have is that there’s definitely a touch of the Man from Delmonté going on about the narrator, but the quality of the production and the nicely cinematic storyline make up for it. I’m really keen to see where they go with this campaign, hopefully some bad-ass cocktail tournament a la Enter the Dragon or something.
Anyway, enjoy (responsibly), the ‘Outsider’ or the ‘Samurai’ are my favourite vids of a very cool campaign
‘The Samurai’
‘The Hummingbird’
‘The Apothecary’
‘The Outsider’
Take one measure of very enthusiastic blogger, a splash of voyeurism and pour liberally into glass rimmed with the frosting of Social Media du jour and voila, Dan 3.0′s latest “crowd-sourced social project”.
In case you don’t know, Dan 3.0 is a videoblogger from some off-the-map town in the States. Scruffy hair, witty retort and it seems, a significant number of followers on his YouTube channel. Now, there are many videobloggers out there, some are producing interesting content and others are just one of many annoying and pointless entities in the Social Media universe. I find Dan 3.0 both interesting and annoying. Watch the vid above to hear it straight from the horses mouth.
Got it?
So.. he’s planning to let the Internet browsing public determine what he is to do in his day-to-day life, for a whole year. And whilst there’s some ground rules (he won’t do anything illegal or morally reprehensible) the public are supposedly to have total authority on his everyday actions. He is essentially, relinquishing his free-will and crowdsourcing his own life . Exciting as this seems, this is nothing new -- this has been happening in marriages since time incarnate. But with Dan 3.0 this is more fascinating than predictable.
Dan 3.0 makes some valid points about the Internet which I find comfortable acquiescence with. One thing the Internet has managed to do incredibly convincingly has drastically altered how information between communities is created, organised and transferred. The Internet has become a very productive environment where collaboration has driven major changes in productivity. For a great view on things like this I highly recommend reading anything by Clay Shirky and if you’re feeling averse to paper -- watch his TED talk. He’s got some wonderfully elegant and optimistic techno-social ideas about the future of society in a connected age; the Internet connects people, people are social, so in essence the Internet IS social. This sociability coupled with an assumption that humans are fundamentally altruistic is cited by Clay as precursors to how we can make the world a better place by using the technology that the digital revolution has precipitated. It sounds extremely fluffy and before I go and admire my iPad over a latté trust me -- it’s a nice concept. Go read it. Anyway, we digress..
So, Dan 3.0 and his crowdsourced life. Yes, crowd-sourcing in a digital age has worked before, and continues to do so. And better than working, we could argue that it has in some ways made the world a better place. Some points in case? Wikipedia - created by knowledgeable people, for knowledge seeking people. Linux - created by techy minded people for, techy seeking people etc… the list goes on.
So what is this crowdsourced social experiment from Dan 3.0? Is this for his followers, for a greater good or even heaven forbid… for himself?
Remember what happened to David Blaine when he decided to make a perspex box his home by Tower Bridge? He was baited, teased with burgers and even had golf balls pitched at him. More often than not, anyone that indulges in wild and public gestures of ‘self’ deprivation, will often find themselves subject to backlash. Or maybe this is just a British tendency?
Anyway, I’m trying hard to see what will come of Dan’s latest adventure in Social Media. He mentions ‘cool’ a lot. This is fine, but I can’t help but feel that the ‘coolness’ of it all and its veneer of ‘social exploration’ is a rather unsubtle attempt to disguise an elaborate attention seeking campaign -- and with this number of potential viewers -- commercial attention is more actual than probable. If we do end up seeing him engage in something out of the ordinary or socially constructive then this might become a successful and potentially insightful excerise both in terms of social media and in terms of what it is to be human. However, all I can fathom is that we ‘ll be seeing him fry some more eggs on his hob.
Am I going to watch him time to time?
Maybe.
Am I going to submit a wildly outlandish suggestion that involves pliers and his genitals?
Definitely.
There’s been building work going on on that side of Covent Garden for ages now, so it’s refreshing to see a teasing use of the temporary fixture. Apple Store, coming soon I guess?
Oh my god this is epic.
It’s long. Sooooo long, but please find some time to watch.
Where did we come from, where have we been and where are we going….Enjoy.
From blublu.org via BBH
BIG BANG BIG BOOM – the new wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.
A fascinating and beautiful journey into the psychology behind motivation and how you can get the most out of people.
Source : HYC
Love them or hate them, they have surely made World Cup 2010 memorable in a very distinctive way and gifted the online world with a plethora of memes, which can only be a good thing.
My entry for #makeachartday
One week on and its been a busy week of argumentation and exposition over England’s doomed journey in South Africa, culminating in our comprehensive spanking from Germany. For a read, check out the Guardian‘s article on the travesty.
Of course, I’m absolutely gutted (as always). I’ve experienced England’s failure for most of my formative years but I find this year to be particularly interesting. Whilst no football statistician, I do know that on paper we have some pretty good players -- but as a team something just didn’t work together. The performance as a whole didn’t tally up with the performance of the individuals and in some sadly perverse way, they played even worse. What we would have wanted was to see some teamwork, some play that was greater than the sum of its parts…in other words, some magic. But magical play isn’t something you can conjure at will unfortunately, it’s somewhat more elusive than that. But some thinking about networks might provide some insight..
Undercurrent strategist Mike Arauz discusses how the success of advertising agencies depends on both their ability to tell stories AND their ability to be create tricks, making a great analogy to magic -- read here. In short, you can be an agency that does great tricks or you could be an agency that is particularly adept at story telling but those elements alone will not precipitate a good (and ultimately successful) advertising agency. I really like this idea that a central outcome can only ever be created by two seperate processes and it’s something we can use as a framework on pretty much everything.
Take music for example. I’m a music producer. I use computers and synthesisers to produce music and it is often a very technical process. But after a while of producing something happens that is kind of hard to describe. After a while I no longer hear the musical elements, I no longer hear the percussion, I no longer hear a vocal line…I hear a song. The elements combined in the right way create something that is both unexpected, quite random and entirely dependant on its component processes - it is in essence, magical. The third element if you’d call it that. And something sadly we didn’t get to see in England’s performance.
I read a great book recently -- Connected : Amazing power of social networks and how they shape our lives. If you find networks interesting then you should definitely have a read. It’s not entirely popular science tripe -- they’ve gone in great depth to scientifically model how networks are structured, how they transfer ‘contagion’ and what the implications are for small groups and larger societies. I need to dig back into it a little more but it’s fascinating -- essentially a large part of who you are is not mutually because of you and your actions, you are who you are because of everyone else in your network. Strikes a very similar chord with a campaign for Orange I worked on a few years ago -- they were quite ahead of the game it seems.
Nicholas Christakis spoke earlier this year at a TED conference -- he covers some of the major points in his book so if you don’t have time to read, have a listen here
