Sunday, September 23, 2007

Leggo my Ego


Answer the following question:

Given the enviable choice, which of the following options would you pick?

a.) Sleep with the most beautiful woman that has ever lived, but be able to tell no one.

b.) Sleep with the second-most beautiful woman that has ever lived, but be able to tell anyone you want.

Think about your answer. Think about why you chose it. Does it relate to good creative? To working in advertising?

Sunday, September 16, 2007

In Preparation for Tuesday...

For all those who know.

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Flowers for Hours

New York City yellow cabs will soon be covered bumper-to-bumper in these weather proof flower decals, most of which were hand painted by area elementary schoolers. The work is part of Portraits of Hope, a foundation that works to provide creative therapy for terminally sick children.

I wanted to draw attention to this for four reasons:

1. This is a good idea. Any product or company could have done full cab wraps and (assuming it was done in an attractive way and on a large scale) gotten some good buzz.

2. Everything cool happens in New York.

3. If I won the lottery tomorrow, I'd become a conceptual artist and dream up things like this all day.

4. Some of the comments posted below the story are pretty funny: "Pointless, worthless, mindless, garbage." Way to let those terminally ill kids have it!

Via the New York Times.

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Snickers and Garfunkle

This week in our Creative Thinking class, the assignment was to write and perform a song about Snickers, Ford or the Virginia Paint Company. Here's my effort. Please save your applause for the end.

Tristan Smith - Feelin' Hungry

Thursday, September 6, 2007

Mark 12:9

My first tastes of failure have prompted me to link this inspiring post in Fenske's, Mark blog. Don't read into how I felt it relates to me. Just enjoy.

Monday, September 3, 2007

Babum Babum Babumbumbum

Great effort out of Fallon London on behalf of Cadbury Milk Chocolate. The strategy is "There's no clever science behind it - it's just an effort to make you smile, in exactly the same way Cadbury Dairy Milk does." The execution is, well, just watch it. It's great. Via Adfreak.

Sunday, September 2, 2007

He Whistles and Plays Violin...



I stumbled across this well-written spot for Australian job site Seek.au and noticed that it uses a song by one of my favorite musicians, Andrew Bird. Besides eliciting a smile, the ad reminded me of my love of good music direction in any piece of non-static media, television commercials in particular. Music (and art in general) is the substantiation of an artist's experiences and feelings; when you consider that statement in the context of advertising, there doesn't seem to be any easier way to establish an emotional connection with the consumer than with a perfectly chosen song. I don't know how music direction works in an agency, whether there are people whose entire occupation is to flip through MySpace and record label websites searching for the perfect 30 second clip, but I'm certain that if I'm ever given the opportunity to, I'm going to try and save myself a thousand words by exploiting the passions of sound.

Off the top of my head, other spots that have excellent music direction: the use of ELO's "Mr. Blue Sky" in VW's "Bubble Boy" ad; Modest Mouse's "Gravity Rides Everything" in Nissan's "Mom's Have Changed"; Karen O (Yeah Yeah Yeahs) and DJ Squeak E. Clean's title song for Adidas's "Hello Tomorrow".

Finally: The song in the ad is titled "Scythian Empires". Andrew Bird is coming to Richmond on September 30th. Definitely worth the price of admission.