Archive for December, 2010
Cherryflava 2010 report card: Our year in review
Posted on 22. Dec, 2010 by Jonathan Cherry.
The end of this year feels like the 5km mark of a half marathon – there is still a long journey ahead, but by now the muscles are nice and warm and the system is awake and rid of the all the starting sluggishness.
The new Woodstock Cherryflava HQ
As a company we have grown considerably in 2010. We moved premises from our small office in Claremont to a much bigger production studio in Woodstock. The Cherryflava HQ now includes a prototype production laboratory, which is rapidly growing in business. We also took on two new team members, Isabeau Joubert on the creative side and Stefan Boshoff as our in-house industrial designer.
It's all bells and whistles in the prototype lab
This year once again has been about fine tuning our area of speciality, which is brand experiences. It’s an emerging field of marketing specialisation, but a powerful tool for brands to use to manipulate the consumer’s perception of reality and radically enhance those all important brand touchpoints.
Our philosophy is that brands need to present themselves as authentic and respectful and approach their marketing strategy from a holistic perspective in which the lasting brand experience needs to be a remarkable one so that the rest of the good work that the other layers of communication do, doesn’t go to waste.
We were lucky enough to have done some really innovative work with Steenberg Winery, Woolworths, Dimension Data, British American Tobacco and G2 this year.
Saving Grace – the internal alternate reality game that we produced for Dimension Data, was a huge success and we certainly revelled in playing the puppetmaster for 400 extremely enthusiastic IT professionals as they made their way through a two-week journey inside the dark recesses of the Internet.
Recognition wise 2010 was an exceptional year. We were honoured to be awarded the Ogilvy Best Media and Marketing blog trophy at the 2010 South African Blog Awards and the Men’s Health Game Changer of the year.
As far as industry commentary is concerned, the platforms of the weekly Cape Talk Ad Feature, the Cherryflava segment on MFM92.6 and the monthly Cherrypicking segment on the ETV show Maggs on Media as well as this daily website, continued with verve this year.
But 2010 wouldn’t have been possible without the collaboration of a number of highly talented people. There are so many people that make what we do possible, but we’d like to particularly single out some of them for their awesome contribution:
Lauren Beukes and Sam Wilson as well as Graham from Pixel Warrior for their inspirational work in making Saving Grace the enormous success that it was.
Rayno from Rind Routing, Alistair from Active light and Dionne at Reflex Plastics for all of their immense help on the prototyping production side of things.
And a huge thanks to all of our clients this year, in particular Nina and Dan from G2, Anetha from Steenberg Winery and Nicky, Vicky and Natasha from Dimension Data for having the guts to experiment and innovate with your brands.
For the first time ever, we will give ourselves a deserved rating of an A for 2010. Next year is already set to be a very busy one for us as the demand from corporate South Africa for maximum return on marketing budgets gets stronger.
The blog will take a bit of a break over the festive season, but we’ll be back to a daily schedule of posting by the 12th of January.
Peace.
Nothing To Fear
Posted on 17. Dec, 2010 by Jonathan Cherry.
Great animation – however the story is mildly suicidal, but the moral of the tale is sadly accurate.
2010 – a year of films
Posted on 15. Dec, 2010 by Jonathan Cherry.
If you haven’t been able to catch too many movies this year – you can get the summary of all of them by watching this six minute synopsis. Patching together 270 films into one video, kinda gives you a good snapshot of pop culture in 2010.
This ad’s intended meaning is unclear to us
Posted on 15. Dec, 2010 by Jonathan Cherry.
Body copy:
To all those who took home a bird this year all of us at the SABC would like to say
Congratulations for finding a way to make your obsession pay off.
—-
Save, copy, paste and undo -all well used. What does it mean? Is it the industry’s apparent obsession with re-doing work that they are referring to? Surely that is a waste, rather than something the SABC should be highlighting as their perception of the industry that [together with the taxpayer] finances their organisation? That just means that the brief was poor or the original strategy changed for some odd reason.
BMW literally burn their logo onto fan’s retinas
Posted on 14. Dec, 2010 by Jonathan Cherry.
In news that is just a tad disturbing – BMW have created a cinema ad that literally burns their logo onto your eye – so that when you close your eyes afterwards, and later that day…and well into the night – their damn logo is superimposed on everything you see. Why? Well because you bloody well better remember that it was a BMW ad and never forget it.Clearly the recession is taking its toll on BMW sales if they have to go to these lengths.
First ad ever to be shot entirely by cats
Posted on 14. Dec, 2010 by Jonathan Cherry.
If the following footage for Friskies cat food was indeed shot by furry felines, Keith Rose may soon find himselves out of a job. Cats only ask for a bowl of warm milk and a head scratch as payment and are very good at the quick ‘jump shot’ that kinda looks like a transitional scene from a Fringe episode.
The ‘fight’ scene is also very authentic – something only a skilled animal handler would be able to deliver realistically.
[thanks Cara]
Cape Town’s Cratefan gets a twist for Christmas
Posted on 13. Dec, 2010 by Jonathan Cherry.
Cape Town iconic ‘Cratefan’ – who’s real name is Elliot BTW – has gotten a Christmas make-over for the holiday season.
There’s even a nice reference to other attractions that visiting seamen can enjoy in the Cape Town harbour over the festive season.
Now with the ‘Wheel of Excellence’ and a new and updated Elliot at the V&A Waterfront – there is no excuse to put yourself through the torture that is Canal Walk this festive season.
There is however no truth to the rumour that the Joburg Cratefan in Newtown will get a handgun for New Year.
[thanks Porky]
Cast of the Spud movie get legless at Nu Metro
Posted on 13. Dec, 2010 by Jonathan Cherry.
Missing and weirdly shaped legs seem to be the order of the day in the Spud movie. Perhaps it’s a new advertising trick?
[thanks Eric]
No hawks or chickens at Chaos
Posted on 13. Dec, 2010 by Jonathan Cherry.
If all of this animal archtyping that’s going around is confusing you and making you just wanna roll up and do something really bad for your health like watch Sex and the City [the movie] – then you can always avoid it all at Chaos. Apart from the obvious advertising humour – that deal looks pretty good.
[thanks Fred]
Stoute boudjies: ‘n SA fliek from the zef side
Posted on 10. Dec, 2010 by Jonathan Cherry.
If Die Antwoord and Jack Parow had to drink a case of Klippes and Coke and get handed a video camera after polishing that off with a giant bong – the result would be the movie Stoute Boudjies.
As punishment for not cleaning up after themselves in the kitchen – we may just send somebody from the office to watch it. The trailer looks dangerous, but if the success of Die Antwoord in the US is anything to go by – this has Oscar written all over it.
