Project creative, entry #2

This entry comes from Facu, from Buenos Aires.

Here is his personal blog: http://alwaystrytogowithsomethingelse.blogspot.com/

I will keep on gathering entries this week (if we get any more that is? Who’s next?).

Coke Zero

Life As It Should Be

The Fair Revolution

Unfairness can present it self in many ways, it’s Portugal’s Ronaldo getting a red card at the Euro or a beautiful amazon jaguar getting skinned by poachers in the jungle, it’s cake that makes you fat, it’s the guy who cut in front of you at the cue because “he knew” someone.

Yes, life is unfair. We all know it , Coke Zero too.

ENTER / Coke Zero’s Fair Revolution.

A campaign where Coke Zero provides an ear to all the unfairness of the world. And at the end, action, try to make some things fair again by it’s own means and by sponsoring those unknown heroes that do it everday.

TELL / TheFairRevolution.com

A space where Coke Zero’s audience can share the unfairness in their lives and the world around them.

As people enter The Fair Revolution it will start to come to life. Like the earth’s exhaust where the people of the world can share their stories and know that other people and Coke Zero are listening.

Websites, videos, articles, pictures, illustrations, blogs all in one place, saying one thing: this isn’t fair.

/ ACTION

As TheFairRevolution.com will display the stories of unfairness by rating, this meaning that all the users can rate the stories of the others, the highest rated would be the story the most people relate or feel solidarity towards.

Coke Zero will take action with these high rated unfairness stories and try to make them right, make them fair, with in all of it’s power and limitations of course.

SPONSOR / Unknown Unfairness Fighters

Coke Zero can sponsor the Unknown Unfairness Fighters, these are the heroes, the “brand celebrities”, the unknown unfairness fighters.

Coke Zero would help them economically but also tell their stories, what they do to make the world a little more fair, short documentaries that would go up on the web to open the debate.

Conclusion

This campaign is about taking action. Now a days, saying something isn’t enough. Brands have to get out there and do something real, and I’m not just talking about bringing people together, but doing it for a reason, this is Social Responsibility, the UN’s Global Pact, being green.

I think A Fair Revolution from behalf of Coke Zero works well conceptually. I’m not going to get into the execution ideas at this point, but Coke Zero should be the bad boy of Coca-Cola company. It already has the aesthetics, the attitude, now let’s bring it to life and do or try to do something for people’s lives, for real.

I don’t know to what extent this brand can get involved politically with some issues, but I think that would be a great way to go. An involved way of being a brand that says: Life As It Should Be.

Again, saying something isn’t enough, let’s double that bet and see what Coke Zero can really do for their consumers and all people who share it’s vision of life.

Creative project Coke Zero, first entry

This comes from Ed Smith, and looks pretty good. (btw Ed is looking for a job as a digital planner…).

Again, there is no right or wrong at this stage. I will collate more entries next week.

Coke Zero

‘Life As It Should Be’

Coke Zero Universe

Welcome to the Coke Zero Universe. A campaign where the audience don’t just participate in it, they create it. By unifying the Coke Zero’s target audience and gathering all the interests of the young 21^st century male together to create their Coke Zero Universe. The twist is that instead of the brand telling the target audience who they are, they can tell us. This is life as it should be…

Part 1

CokeZeroUniverse.com and Coke Zero Remote Control (for internet browser)

The Coke Zero Remote Control for your internet browser is a free to download application which acts as a remote control to browse the internet (this will fit in internet explorer). Like the Stumbleupon.com application you can vote on each page you visit whilst it also learns what you like by recording your favourites. When everyone does this The Coke Zero Universe will become a world of websites, youtube clips, articles, blogs all collected and shared by Coke Zero’s target audience.

Also in the style of Digg.com you will be able to add a Coke Zero Universe icon onto your website, blog or article which will direct traffic to your site and in doing so will also help build the Coke Zero Universe. This will allow people to rate your site, article etc – Zero being the highest score, naturally.

Using your Remote Control in your internet explorer you can navigate to these sites via categories or using the ‘Channel Flicker’ to randomly select a page.

Categories can include for example:

Sport

Funny Stuff

The Weird Web

Girls

Cokezerouniverse.com will act like a magazine of what people have found and shared whilst it will also display the highest rated sites, articles, videos etc displaying exactly what the Coke Zero target audience like. This will also be where you can get the Universal Remote Control for your Mobile (see part 2)

Part 2

Coke Zero Universal Remote Control (widget for mobile phones)

Turn your mobile into the Coke Zero Universal Remote Control. With Coke Zero’s free to download widget, your mobile can become the young male’s personal lifestyle guide. Bored and stuck on what to do? Turn to your Universal Remote to find out what’s on near you.

Your Universal Remote Control, just like your sky remote at home, will be split into several categories with each displaying a list of what’s on around where you are, e.g.

All Channels

Entertainment

Sport – e.g. football game or sports club

Culture

Activities

Movies

Music – e.g gigs

Still can’t decide what to do? Like the remote for your browser another feature of the Universal Remote Control will be the ‘Channel Flicker’. A system that will pick at random an event/place/shop etc. for you to go and check out and rate.

By visiting cokezerouniverse.com you can add to Coke Zero’s offerings on the Universal Remote Control by adding anything you think people should know about from a piece of graffiti to a summer festival for example.

This is a remote with intelligence, delivering personalized content tailored to the user’s own tastes and localized to their present location.

How will this work?

GPS technology will track the mobiles location thus the Universal Remote Control can filter the content to events in your present location

Working in the same way as Sumbleupon creates a memory based on how you rate each event/place/gig, the more you use it the more personal the service becomes

Visual style ideas

I’ve put together a few examples of visually how this campaign could look. Bellow is the work of Eric Tan. I feel his work is perfect for the campaign, its fun messages and attractive to the target audience.

Also I found this poster for the film Metropolis which in a strange way summed up whole campaign and too could be inspiration for the visual approach.

Summary

This campaign allows it’s consumers to embrace and be apart of the coke zero culture by involving them and allowing complete interaction. Also this campaign, particularly with the Universal Remote Control provides a perfect platform for Coke Zero to launch any other marketing initiatives for example an event. The remote control and the mobile phone are the 21^st century’s young male’s gadget/companion/best friend/life support and are utilised for them to create a culture around Coke Zero, which they, the audience choose. Life As It Should Be.

Robinsons – return to Tastebuddyland

It’s Friday… And I’m procrastinating more than usual.

Thought you might want to waste 5 minutes too.

Have a play at our new online game for Robinsons. It’s obviously targeted at a young audience, but it’s cute and entertaining. Well done Rich, Andy and Johan.

http://www.raisethemonrobinsons.com/buddies/

(I have one little doubt about it, let’s see if you find it)

Creative project take 2 => Coke Zero

Christ I’ve got a lot of work on! But here’s some more information about the creative project. I talked to a few friends and colleagues about it and reactions were various. Some old school creatives got quite insulted that I would do such a thing. Which made me smile.

To the point, this project is about:

– Doing what we can’t always do at work. There is no client or internal barriers here, only our imagination, so let’s see what we can do without these limits.

– Being creative in the first place.

– Think without ‘media’ in mind. You don’t have to produce anything. You can produce everything.

– What’s the big idea? Let’s not go to executions straight away but crack that big idea first.

– Having fun.

Provoking thought starters:

– Coke Zero is like Coke but without the sugar. “It’s like the good things in life without the downside!” is a red herring here . This is this ‘insight’ that has led to the average work. We need to find another one.

– Life as it should be. That’s interesting. If you believe the ads, what the perfect life for this audience is having everything immediately, without doing any efforts for it. Not having to do anything to get what you want (celebrity, girls, money…), seems to be what our culture is about.

What if ‘life as it should be’ was actually the complete opposite? Life should be about hard work, dedication, deserving, sweat and blood. Because you can’t appreciate anything when it’s given to you.

‘Life as it should be’ is about challenges, dedication, perseverance. These are the values I would champion.

If you haven’t done anything today you don’t deserve your Coke Zero. You can f**k off and come back when you’ll have achieved something.

There is nothing you will appreciate more in life that winning, or getting what you always wanted, after having poured your heart for it. If you get the girl without working for it, you lose interest. If you had to work for it, you’ll fall in love. Same goes for pretty much everything.

This is what ‘life as it should be’ could be. ” Anything worth having is worth working hard for”.

I can be totally wrong, i’m putting it up here as a thought starter. I don’t even know how to move that forward just yet, as I realise it does not say: “it’s like coke but without the sugar”. But does it actually?

Feel free to disagree, comment, debate, push your ideas and opinions. Remember there is no right or wrong, everything is good.

I will start putting stuff on the blog on Monday.

You can be anonymous if it’s a problem regarding your work.

Project new creative, take 1 => Coke Zero

So here it is, it’s the official kick-off of who wants to be a (digital) creative.

I’ve chosen Coke Zero as the guinea pig.

Why? because it is actually quite ‘easy’ to understand the situation and context (Disclaimer: I’m not saying it is easy to produce great work for it or that I’m better than anyone).

Our goal will be to create some work as if we were to launch Coke Zero in Europe. ‘Advertising as it should be’ (ha ha). I agree we shouldn’t restrict it to digital. Let’s just be creative.

The product is marketed at young men, under the promise that it tastes like Coke, only without the calories or sugar.

Sounds simple, but they’ve managed to produce some quite poor ads (in my humble opinion) if it wasn’t for the huge budget (apparently one of the most expensive drink launch ever in some countries), I’m not sure it would have got great results.

Let’s look at the ads for a second.

The last one of the ‘life as it should be’ series: The break-up.

That followed the one with the guy meeting his ex in a convenient store.

And the online game, ‘football as it should be’, that has nothing to do with football apart from the chance of winning some tickets to the Euro.

More spots have been produced in different markets (those are the good ones). Most notably the ones from W+K that just won silver at Cannes, and the CP+P ones of Coke suing Coke Zero, you can watch them here, but I’d like not to focus too much on them. But despite all these different executions, good or bad, I don’t think they really nailed the campaign.

The problem I’ve got with the other European one ‘break up as it should be’ type of things is obviously their lack of subtlety, their idiocy and insult to the opposite side.

It’s also too close to Axe, but without the cleverness and fun of it.

They are a bit too literal and offensive to girls.

I think the ‘life as it should be’ as potential. Not sure about the ‘great taste, zero sugar’ though.

Anyway, as a project, before we start being ‘creative’, we first need to agree on the big idea.

– Do we think we could get to better work while keeping this idea? (life as it should be)

Starters for 10:

– The audience is young guys. But does it have to be about girls?

– How do we get creative in the media? With so much money, why doing a classic TV campaign + online game?

– We know their masculinity is an issue, they need to be feel like this is a drink for real man.

– What does this audience want nowaday?

– This needs to be European, let’s try to see what unify this audience, insights that they resonate with all of them, no matter what countries they are from.

– How can we make like as it should be for our audience, rather than telling them? Free stuff is always a winner but how can we make it creative?

– How can we turn this idea into something more active and participative?

It’s the first project so I’m not 100% sure of how doing it or what to use (Wiki…) so feel free to give me suggestions.

Deadline: This week we can see who’s up for it and we can start thinking about it.

I’ll start putting stuff up there next week and we’ll review everything, next Friday.

Share the love if you know people who’d like to participate. The more, the merrier.

Cyber Lions

Every year, I’m always excited to see the Cyber Lion winners. It’s the time to see what others have been doing and to be blown away by new use of technology or just really clever thinking.

Last year certainly didn’t disappoint with Dove and Nike+ as grand prix winner.

So what about this year?

Uniqlo, for its Uniqlock was one of the well-deserved winner of the grand prix of the category as well as the Titanium award.

As well as the live banner for an online magazine and the immersive ARG for nine inch nails that was featured on this blog a few months ago.

But let’s go back to Uniqlock, as I’ve been in love with it since I first came accross it last year.

It’s the most original piece of communication of last year, for all media and accross all categories. This is just the best piece of advertising our industry, worldwide, has created in 2007-08. Period. (HBO voyeur does come a close second). Uniqlock is not just well integrated. But also so clever, artistic, beautiful, fun, charming…

It has been accessed 100 million times, in 212 countries. Proving that top creativity can reach a global audience online. And they plan to invade your mobile phones this year…

I love everything about it. The product integration is so cleverly done, the fact that the clock is updated constantly to reflect the seasons, with the dancers’ clothes changing, from t-shirts to cashmere. The details in the execution, the characters, the moves, the music…

How they used the web to launch it as well is incredibly clever. Caveat: please note here that this success wouldn’t have been achieved if the advertising in itself wasn’t so good. But their strategy to spread the content on blog AND give them the tools to do it was very clever indeed.

This is definitely the one I wish I had done. Watch the summary on the Cannes website.

Now, I have to confess I was slightly underwhelmed with the rest of the winners. Especially in the gold category. It feels a bit like style has been priviledged over substance.

I feel we privledged tricks, bells and whistles and specially technology, over ideas. A big budget definitely helped, hence the Coke Zero winning silver.

Some of them feel quite small. They are all clever. But they feel small. Small little things that will be quickly forgotten.

I feel like the winners are big favourites among us, advertisers, but not among consumers.

There are exceptions of course, like the BK freak out and the Samsung, how we met, the Domino build your own or simpsonize me.

Is it the end of the viral video, Ronaldhinio touch of gold style?

Where is the next Nike + application?

Do these categories actually make any sense at all I wonder?

And why is it mainly biased young geeks, and mainly male? Everyone is online nowadays, is there not a clever campaign out there that is a bit more mature?

Now, I’m not saying the jury did a bad job. They did pick the best out of the lot. Only we, as an industry, have rested on our laurels this year. We haven’t pushed the media further. But, we can do much, much better than that.

So let’s get cracking. Starting now, I’m concocting a plan.

Lastly, for all the fuss created by R/GA this year, the debate about old vs new cretive, etc. they only managed to get a silver. Disappointing?

long weekend

I’m off for the weekend.

I leave you with the crazy dude who plays drum on a keyboard. “This is rock and roll”. Very good.

I’ll be back on Monday with hopefully something to say about the slighlty underwhelming Cyber Lions.

And I hope to get more participation to the creative project below.

Have a good weekend all.

more shameless self-promotion

Axe ‘get in there’ wins Silver at Cannes for best of “Best Use of Internet/New Media, Including Mobile Phones, PDAs, Etc.” (what a weird category name).

Anyway, I’m super chuffed as this was the strategy that won it (in this case, the idea that we should provide guys with ice breakers) not just the executions. 🙂

http://www.canneslions.com/winners/media/win_3_2_01692.htm

But they had to mispell my name…

Who wants to be a (digital) creative?

I have a few points to prove here. And you might wan to join in.

I’ve always thought I was good at being a creative. Not your John Hegarty type of creative, with amazing craft skills. More of a Bogusky / Droga type (I’m not comparing myself with these people here), the kind of ‘great stuff’ skills.

Anyway, as a planner / account man the worse thing you can do at your job is probably try to write the ads that answer your brief. And as soon as you put starters for 10 on the table, they are likely (in most agencies) to be ignored because they come from you!

As a traditional creative, you might have heard of all this digital non-sense, and that it looks like it might finally stick around. But you don’t know where to start with it, a bit embarrassed to present or even judge ideas at your day job.

Even if you are a top digital creative, chances are that most of the stuff you put accross is too good to be actually understood by the client.

Or you are just trying to get in digital but don’t yet have anything to show.

Almost everytime when, for various reasons, I had to play at being a creative, I actually managed to get some decent ideas accross, but more importantly I was jumping with joy like a 4 years old with a box of painting tools.

Actually having to use my creativity made extremely happy. And because we don’t always have the opportunity to do it in our day to day job, I thought I’d try to change that.

So, I’ve come up with the following idea: the digital brief. (I will need help for the name). It’s inspired by the account school of planning Russell started, I think, and is now carried out by Rob.

How it could work:

– I will put a brief up here (frequency to be decided). A real brand that doesn’t do any good work and could do with a bit of help.

– The goal will be to answer the brief with digital work only. The more creative and digital the better. It’s not about writing 30 sec or posters, but the opposite. Exploring interacticity, technology, social media and see how we can mix them in advertising.

– No budget problem, no client, only the limits of your imagination (!)

– You can only present one idea by person, in any way you want (it can be a word doc, pictures, a presentation, a collage, whatever suits you). It needs to be electronisable though so I can put it up here.

– I could get some judges to decide on the best work, but I think it’d it go against the purpose. We should all be judge of it.

– I want to encourage collaboration, so actually everyone should be able to build on anyone’s work. You don’t get a yes or a no as an answer to your idea. Someone might find it interesting an build on it.

(Someone’s probably tried to do something similar but I haven’t heard of it. Yet). I actually tried to see if a course like that existed but I couldn’t find anything. Feel free to point me in the right direction.

This is the opportunity for everyone who’s a bit frustrated at their current job to have a bit of fun and more importantly, BE CREATIVE. Because you are not just creative if your title says so.

You don’t need anything to participate apart from:

a/ Imagination (I know…)

b/ A good understanding of the web

The points I want to make:

– You don’t need to have done St Martins school to be good with ideas (although it sure helps for executing)

– Anyone’s creativity can be encouraged and stimulated. Agencies’ structure are strangling creativity. It needs to be liberated

– We can do as good a work with ‘non-creative’ people collaborating than most agencies’ creative department

– We can get clients to be more excited by doing digital work

– We can be better at our jobs (whatever it is) by understanding the creative process and digital.

– It will actually be a lot easier to understand digital if we ‘do’ something tangible for a brand as opposed as talking about brands without focus

– If we actually know the right people, we might even want to try to build or create one or two of the ideas that get generated. And we win the Cannes Titanium next year 😉

Does it sound like something you’d like to be part of? You actually need to leave me a comment. If you are just thinking it, I won’t know and I migh not start it.

I’m gauging interest here, and if there is enough, we’ll get cracking. I already know which brief I want to give you.

The art of engagement

Not much time at the moment for blogging. And I’ve got to rush to witness France and Italy elimination of the Euro 2008.

But if you’ve got some time and want to understand what engagement planning is all about (or EP as we lovingly call it) you could do a lot worse than listen to Jason Gonsalves, Head of engagement planning at BBH London.

His presentation on the new communication landscape is fun and challenging and not full of the boring bits you might expect on the subject.

Jason is one of the smartest person I’ve had the chance to work with and probably one who really understands the new communication landscape. Yet we manage to disagree very frequently. But we love each other dearly. 🙂

Anyway, here it is on Knitware.