New Smarties Ad

Thought this Smarties ad was quite sweet and firmly seems to follow in the credit crunch / Natural Confectionary style trend for lo-fi communications that postively don't shout 'we spent loads of money on this ad even though you've probably just lost your job'.



There's been some chat on the interweb that it may have "borrowed" heavily from the American poet / author / cartoonist Shel Silverstein... and yes there is a resemblence. However I'm not sure that you can claim to own 'line drawing' or 'the quest for love' as your intellectual property.



Personally if I was to critique this ad it would be more on the endline. I don't think that the story that is being told is really anything to do with imagination (which to me would be an add that shows lots of different Smartie arrangements)... its about love. Maybe an endline like "The colours of love" (for example) or "All the colours of life" would be a closer match?

Either way though... not bad for a sugar coated candy snack (or whatever the EU make them classify it as!).

The Quest for G

Quite enjoyed this parody of Python parody from Gatorade.

The 8 minute film sees the merry band of "questors" seeking out the holy "G" which, of course turns out to be Gatorade.

I think it's a brave move for a brand to spend as much as they obviously have on filming undistributed content like this. However personally think that the humour could have been sharper. If you're going to parody great comedy... you need to be more funny than the original or what's the point?

Skittles Website

The new Skittles website seems to have got people talking. Personally I think it's great.

Yes... Modernista did it a while back. But I'm not sure that they can really claim to 'own' this use of technology. It's content syndication, not something creative. To me that would be a like Alan Emtage in 1990 telling people that no-one else is allowed to create search engines because he'd already thought of it.

The point to me is that, whilst some brands invest £100k's investing in websites that enable users to upload photos and videos about their brands... these guys realise that actually, if you let them upload their content to the sites that they're already uploading them then you're not having to create such a shift in behaviour.

Additionally, by staying in the conversation but allowing the conversation to happen in neutrally managed spaces (i.e. Flickr, YouTube)... they're giving a much greater credibility and trust to the content.

If Skittles are smart about the way they choose to use these information streams, I've no doubt they'll be able to do some really interesting things with this site.

Cautionary tales would be to:
a) Brands that are unpopular - do you really want to be streaming content through your own site that is more negative than not about you? If there are big PR issues then you might want to consider how you fix these before exposing yourself to quite this extent.
b) Brands that are not well-known - this site is only interesting because of the rate at which new conversations develop about the brand online. If your brand isn't well-known either there won't be the source material out there to suck in to your site to make it interesting... or at least the rate at which your site updates will make it feel like your brand is not a very dynamic one.

New Boags beer ad

I really liked this new ad for Boags from Publicis Mojo in Oz.

Really simple, clear benefit i.e. "made with special water"... translated in to a funny, but also warm story that really plays strongly on the feeling that this is 'locally made' beer by people that care.



a) I now know where this beer comes from
b) I like the people that make it
c) There's at least a vague reason (i.e. pure water) why I might choose this beer over another that complies with alcohol communications legislation!