Genius

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When I saw this and when the super appeared I laughed my head off. This is so beautiful and well shot, the cast and music, everything I love it. Hat tip to the director Jonathan Gurvit (Mercurio Cinematografica) and the creative's @ Italian agency Armando Testa.

Ideas- it makes you think

Read brief, read brief again - Go for a run, swim, walk, play monsters with the kids, read brief again, read books and blogs, watch films, watch everyday people going about their everyday lives, sit with the cat, read brief, eat cake and drink coffee. Then I begin to doodle, if I'm relaxed, ideas then flow- I usually start by word mappiing - then doodles - then ideas, then scamps.Read brief, read brief again - Go for a run, swim, walk, play monsters with the kids, read brief again, read books and blogs, watch films, watch everyday people going about their everyday lives, sit with the cat, read brief, eat cake and drink coffee. Then I begin to doodle, if I'm relaxed, ideas then flow- I usually start by word mappiing - then doodles - then ideas, then scamps.

Us and US - XL and XXXL

We all know the US have the highest food consumption in the world and Australia is wobbling close behind. Just looking at the stats below it's scary to think we are all eating ourselves to death, we need to start putting a 'fat attack' plan in place, what would you start doing now?
Created by: MedicalCodingCareerGuide.com

Kraft very much Likey

Now here's a nice simple idea that me likey very much, I like when brands reward people for their interaction it's much warmer and you like the brand even more. Kraft asked fans to “LIKE this post” and told them that they “never know what may happen”. Almost 5,000 took a punt and liked the post and in return Kraft said thank you with the aid of The YellowJackets a capella group. They called it “Likeappella – Mac & cheese likes you back”. The brand posted the video in a follow-up post: “We LOVE it when you LIKE our posts. So we’re showing you some love back with a song personalized for you, our fans.” Nice work Crispin Porter + Bogusky. Like it alot, enough of the like gags.

Cool Tool for Social Media Monitoring

Whether you want to do research on a current topic or track a future event, Hash Tracking is your tool to do it. Let’s say you are going to Blog World. Simply enter the hash tag and Hash Tracking will start tracking as the conversation with that hash tag starts. But you can also run custom reports on hash tags, like “networking”:

With the data reports you can see who is using that tag, total tweet impressions and reach, total tweets and a complete transcript of all tweets. Who should use Hash Tracking and why: This is another great tool for the marketing professional who wants to gather information in tweets and links from the social web on a particular topic, who the influencers in that topic are and seeing the reach for that topic. Insights might lead you to plan where you will focus your social campaigns.

Creative Data teams

Last night I was over at LBi shiny new offices for our monthly IAB Creative Social #cs, it was very inspiring and thought provoking, with our key speaker Chris Clarke the ECD from their London office, sharing his thoughts over pizza and beer with much of the talk around how digital is shaping up. One topic that we touched upon was around the subject of 'emotional storytelling' and how as clients and agencies the old model of rational responses really doesn't stack up anymore in the digital arena. (I personally never really bought into that approach from the start). Instead people will be more than likely react to something purely on an emotional level.
but what was interesting was the fact that as agencies we must as creatives embrace and harness data. For us to truly get the big slices of the pie when it comes to the marketing dollars, we need to work our ideas and thinking around the data that others collect, it will be our job to dovetail that into our thoughts, the double edge sword for all agencies is that this can be expensive, and very time consuming, just trawling through the amount of data out there is such a massive task for agencies and client, many feel they are been swapped with the data, the trick for us; is how can we decode that data, and attach our thinking around the data. It’s that moment when people are at their most receptive and have that emotional pull towards a brand. That for me is the next big challenge for many agencies. And no I don’t just mean producing infographics and doing straw polls they don’t count, but mass data analyst does.
Other points that I took out:
• People aren’t in control, platforms are the ones in control - the likes of Facebook and co dictate how you see things.
• According to Paul Adam at Facebook 70% of our conversations is talking about other people (negative and positive)
• People haven't the mass group of friends that they can influence, in fact the opposite is true, for example the average Joe, you and I have only really 5 friends that we share and can influence.

Makes you think

I will leave you with a truly inspiring read that was read out at the IAB Creative Social last night. This is for all you creative's who sometimes need reminding why we do what we do- if you feel the urge to read out aloud at a client meeting then feel free.

We are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams.
World-losers and world-forsakers,
Upon whom the pale moon gleams;
Yet we are the movers and shakers,
Of the world forever, it seems.

With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world's great cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire's glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song's measure
Can trample an empire down.

We, in the ages lying
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself with our mirth;
And o'erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world's worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth. T

William Edgar O'Shaughnessy