Metamorphosis of an idea

7.2.11

Publicis Renault Clio Va va voom

Painlessly slick and impossibly sexy the new Renault ad by Publicis features Dita Von Teese, Rihanna, Audrey Hepburn and, of course, the brand ambassador, Thierry Henry. The undulating tones of Claire Maguire singing Ain't Nobody in the Breakage Remix format was a clever move on the part of Publicis in blending increasingly popular dubstep with provocative images and a line by the ultimate contemporary sex icon, Rihanna.

What is has to do with cars, I'm not so sure. But if advertising is about creating a buzz in this modern age, Publicis have succeeded in an almighty manner. They have managed to totally rejuvenise the Renault brand image, portraying it as desirable and sexy. Top marks.

http://www.theautochannel.com/news/2011/02/07/517725.html

6.1.11

The Future of Advertising: The Guardian's Predictions for the next 25 years

5 Advertising: 'All sorts of things will just be sold in plain packages'

Advertising in Tokyo. Photograph: Mike Long / Alamy/Alamy

If I'd been writing this five years ago, it would have been all about technology: the internet, the fragmentation of media, mobile phones, social tools allowing consumers to regain power at the expense of corporations, all that sort of stuff. And all these things are important and will change how advertising works.

But it's becoming clear that what'll really change advertising will be how we relate to it and what we're prepared to let it do. After all, when you look at advertising from the past the basic techniques haven't changed; what seems startlingly alien are the attitudes it was acceptable to portray and the products you were allowed to advertise.

In 25 years, I bet there'll be many products we'll be allowed to buy but not see advertised – the things the government will decide we shouldn't be consuming because of their impact on healthcare costs or the environment but that they can't muster the political will to ban outright. So, we'll end up with all sorts of products in plain packaging with the product name in a generic typeface – as the government is currently discussing for cigarettes.

But it won't stop there. We'll also be nudged into renegotiating the relationship between society and advertising, because over the next few years we're going to be interrupted by advertising like never before. Video screens are getting so cheap and disposable that they'll be plastered everywhere we go. And they'll have enough intelligence and connectivity that they'll see our faces, do a quick search on Facebook to find out who we are and direct a message at us based on our purchasing history.

At least, that'll be the idea. It probably won't work very well and when it does work it'll probably drive us mad. Marketing geniuses are working on this stuff right now, but not all of them recognise that being allowed to do this kind of thing depends on societal consent – push the intrusion too far and people will push back.

Society once did a deal accepting advertising because it seemed occasionally useful and interesting and because it paid for lots of journalism and entertainment. It's not necessarily going to pay for those things for much longer so we might start questioning whether we want to live in a Blade Runner world brought to us by Cillit Bang.

Russell Davies, head of planning at the advertising agency Ogilvy and Mather and a columnist for the magazines Campaign and Wired

Source: The Guardian

Worst advert commercials of 2010? (According to adturds.com)

Source: Worst Advert Commercials of 2010, Adturds.com

A fine line between inspiration and plagiarism.

When I started my career in advertising I was told that the best way to make good ads is to watch them. And so I immersed myself in whatever “inspiration” I could find. And when I started my agency, I told all my young fresh copywriters and creatives to do the same. I believe all over the world, creatives look for inspiration in the same manner. Yes, we tell our clients that we dig deep in consumers' hearts, which we do; we look where other agencies don’t, which sometimes we do; but at 2am with a pitch at 9am in the morning and no light-bulbs flashing, we often resort to frantic Google searches.

And this is where the thin line between plagiarism and inspiration gets blurred. In my fourteen years in advertising, I have never heard any adman say "I was inspired by this ad…" I have heard of inspiration that comes from all the right places: music, a conversation with a lady on the street, an encounter with the unexpected, an art piece… but never another ad. The reality is we watch ads like we smoke cigarettes - one finishes and we are searching the next, never satisfied, always wanting more, always wanting the next one to count more.

And when you live in a creatively obscure place like Pakistan, where so many feel that the next person has not spent enough time Googling, and where short cuts are a way of life, unfortunately so is plagiarism.

Here are some examples of campaigns that have run in Pakistan - plagiarism or inspiration? What do you think?

Left-hand picture from a Pakistan telecoms provider; the one on the right comes from Apple's iconic iPod campaign.

Logo on the top is from a website that helps provide inspiration and instructions on designing logos; one on the bottom is the latest logo for a new campaign by another Pakistani telecoms company.

You can see more pictures by visiting the album on a Facebook group I run:http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/group.php?gid=154145821283420&v=photos&so=15

Look for titles with the words 'Chor Police' (chor = thief in Urdu).

By Sabine Saigol

Source: Brand Republic