Archive by Author
Oakley HQ
Posted on 15. Mar, 2010 by Jonathan Cherry.
At Defon 3...
About 10 years ago we read articles about Oakley and their internal game where everybody in the company believes that they are fighting a war. The head office was reported to look like a military bunker, situated in a desert with most of it underground. Today we see pictures – and even if it is more than ten years old, it’s still a pretty rad place to spend your offices time as an employee.
Ready to engage
The bar at Oakley HQ
This ad is ruined by the library crowd cheering at the end
Posted on 15. Mar, 2010 by Jonathan Cherry.
It’s such a pity when sound engineers insist on reusing sound effects in movies and ads that have been used over and over again.
For example the classic baby chuckle that gets used in just about every scene featuring a baby with a faint smile on its face.Or the predictable car tyre screech, which you’ll easily spot whenever speeding cars are filmed. It’s the same sound effect, ripped from the same library CD.
Our other favourite, is the canned applauding crowd sound [found in this ad at 0:48]. We were so enjoying the story up until that point, at which it transformed this ad into a channel-changer for us.
Did the budget not allow for an original recording of happy people? Surely for a beer company it couldn’t have been that hard to find a crowd of people dying to emitted a cacophony of delight.
Please – burn that bloody CD and go record your own sounds. It makes a perfect well-filmed commercial seem cheap.
For a Friday: Brand new Lady Gaga’s “Telephone” featuring Beyonce
Posted on 12. Mar, 2010 by Jonathan Cherry.
Filled with loads of product placement and roughly 47 costume changes – this, is the brand new, nearly 10 minute long Lady Gaga video. It’s like a stylized Quentin Tarantino pop flick that’s been edited by a Mexican street gang. This is where we are – right here, right now.
And we didn’t even realise that there was a need for this kind of innovation
Posted on 12. Mar, 2010 by Jonathan Cherry.
All together now
Frankly, this too is disturbing. What happened to just the plain old simple condom? Now you have to have them with an audience at the ready to deliver applause? Then again, many hands make light work and you’ll be done and dusted and back to the Super 14 in a jiffy.
Steenberg Vineyards using Twitter to include you in their annual Flagship Tasting
Posted on 12. Mar, 2010 by Jonathan Cherry.
Not your average 'chop and dop'
We’ve always wanted to be involved with a Twitter Tasting so are particularly looking forward to one of our favourite wine estates, Steenberg, hosting their annual tasting of flagship wines – on Twitter.
The live event takes place at 18h00 on Tuesday 23 March and the cool thing about it is that you can buy the pack of four Steenberg wines [which includes recipes and suggestions for the snacks that will be paired with the wines on the night] from the farm, invite your friends around to your place [to help you compare notes and drink the wine] and follow the entire thing live on Twitter.
The pairing will be hosted by Steenberg winemaker JD Pretorius and chef Brad Ball from Steenberg Vineyards, who will share their tasting notes via updates on Twitter while welcoming your online feedback and comments as the tasting progresses. Much like visiting the farm, the event is meant to be fun, tasty and a laid-back affair for those that can detect asparagus in a Sauvignon…and those that just know that wine is made from grapes.
The special Steenberg Twitter Tasting box costs R560 and can be ordered now from the estate by sending a mail to Lida [lida@steenbrg.co.za]
Follow Steenberg on Twitter here
South Africa’s own Capitec bank named as one of the world’s top global ‘Great brands of tomorrow’
Posted on 11. Mar, 2010 by Jonathan Cherry.
Capitec doing damn well
Lately we’ve been hearing a lot of good things about Capitec bank. And it seems like their investment in innovative thinking is paying off, ’cause Capitec have been named, along with 26 other global brands like Facebook, Uniqlo, Apple and Hyundai, as one of the global ‘great brands of tomorrow’ by Swiss-based financial group Credit Suisse.
Capitec is the only African brand to crack the list.
According to the Credit Suisse document on the list:
Using our framework and global network of analysts, we identified 27 Great Brands of Tomorrow at various stages of development that we believe will significantly outperform the market over the next three to five years as they build and leverage brand equity to grow in size, scale, and profitability.
Although we’ve never been huge fans of brand lists and stuff like that [after all Toyota was ranked 8th best brand in the world last year] it’s still a great confidence booster for Capitec and South Africa to have at least one brand being recognised as being innovative and having good future prospects by an independent research institute.
Here’s a link to the full Credit Suisse report on 27 Great Brands of Tomorrow (11mb pdf!)
New from Biblioteq
Posted on 11. Mar, 2010 by Jonathan Cherry.
Blood or mulberries?
Copy: Feel Inspired
It’s advertising because it was created by FoxP2, but…but…?
Feels like the punchline to a potentially brilliant joke was just delivered in Latin and we’re the only ones without an LLB in the audience. Please, somebody, deliver us from our ignorant, arrogant, poorly-educated hell in which we reside.
Update: Mystery solved. The answer is Paradigm Suicide [thanks Fred]. Through the enlightenment of literature the work represents the suicide of the old-self and the emergence of a more inspired, educated self. If we’re getting this much secondary bleeding just from the ads, we’d better get down to the shop and completely kill ourselves.
Blood or blueberries?
Murder of mishap?
‘Art Of Can’ – Red Bull’s extreme art exhibit
Posted on 11. Mar, 2010 by Jonathan Cherry.
In Africa practically every traffic light is an art gallery featuring wire windmills, 3D township landscapes and hessian lion’s heads. But elsewhere – the stuff we try our best to ignore is regarded as ‘art’.
On March 4, Red Bull’s “Art of Can” exhibit opened on Miami’s tony South Beach. The show consists of 47 art pieces inspired by, and made from, Red Bull cans. The striking pieces include a Medussa head, a Hermes foot and a “Fab-redbull-ge” egg, among others. The event also incorporates couture, featuring designs by former contestants from the popular reality show Project Runway. The exhibit runs through March 14 and then again in Dallas, TX, in July. [via]
Makes us wonder what other ‘innovations’ we take for granted would be see as remarkable in the First World? Meerkats…mechanical meerkats?
The story of stuff
Posted on 10. Mar, 2010 by Jonathan Cherry.
Society is filled with stuff. Stuff you want, stuff you need, stuff you’re told you need and stuff that makes you feel better about you – all the while cluttering your life and our planet. If you think about it rationally – it’s a pretty ****** up system, but it’s our system so we gotta own it and be responsible for it.
Up until now – marketing has had a lot to do with making this system work, so it’s no wonder then that the industry is under just a bit of pressure as the kind of thinking, outlined in this 20-minute movie, spreads. So take the time and make yourself acquainted with the treehugger’s argument. It’s fairly compelling stuff.
This has suitably freaked us out
Posted on 10. Mar, 2010 by Jonathan Cherry.
Wys jou muis
Heard of something called Chat Roulette? It’s similar to the Russian version of the same name, but far more dangerous. Chat Roulette is a random generator of video chat that connects you to a world of sweaty geeks, slurping of Big Gulps in small mid-western town in the US. It’s a pretty scary place.
French Connection UK [FCUK] however have a challenge for you. They’re offering $250 worth of clothing to anyone who can successfully seduce a woman on the Chat Roulette platform and provide proof that you’ve done so.
Considering that just finding a real woman on Chat Roulette is a miracle in itself – FCUK are obviously fairly confident that their $250 vouchers are safe.
Nasty – need to go wash our hands now… [gag - shudder]
Chat Roulette [NSFW - not suitable for those sensitive to nasty]
Cherryflava Projects
Live Talkshow
