Very helpful podcasts

In iTunes there are some really useful and helpful podcasts dealing with creativity, photoshop tutorials, cool-hunting, and other related topics. Just open up itunes, go to the itunes store, click on podcasts and browse the different categories. I've been using the Chinese podcasts to brush up on my Mandarin. Warning: these podcasts take up a lot of hard drive space.

Xbox "Gears of War" with Donnie Darko music

McCann-Erickson San Francisco is the agency of record (AOR) for Xbox. They had a recent Xbox commercial that when I first saw it, I dropped my TV remote; it was that hauntingly amazing. And that's saying a lot because I don't really watch TV shows or commercials when they're on TV (I download commercials to my computer to watch). Here it is in all its glory along with insight from the creative team. More background info can be found at Duncans TV.



Credits
Agency: McCann-Erickson, SF
CD: Scott Duchon, Geoff Edwards
AD: Nate Able
CW: Matt Burnell
Producer: Hannah Murray

Every other video game commercial I've seen (I haven't seen a lot though) doesn't have a soundtrack. Why a soundtrack for this particular one?

Nate Able says...
Because every other video game commercial you've seen doesn't have a soundtrack. Actually, We've seen game spots with tracks on them but not many. And those we have seen didn't do much to connect you with the characters or story. Usually it's just some fast, intense track trying to reinforce how fast and intense the game is.

We thought a more unique approach would be to take a bloody, action shooter like Gears and connect the viewer to the main character with more of a mood piece. Let the viewer feel the hopelessness and despair of the situation. The song has got despair in spades.


How did you choose the song?

We knew the song from the movie Donnie Darko. When the general idea of avoiding the usual cutty, action trailer kind of spot led us to doing a moodier thing the song came up pretty quickly. The spot was pretty much written with the song on repeat.


In my humble opinion, I really think the music is what makes the spot so hauntingly amazing. What do you all think makes the spot so good?

Yeah, it’s pretty much the music. And it doesn’t hurt that the game looks sick. The game looking so good helps make it possible for the viewer to connect with Marcus. Layer on the despair you feel in the song and you practically want to blow your brains out by the end. If a commercial for a video game can actually make people feel something that’s saying something.


Generally speaking, is it hard choosing soundtracks, voice talent, production companies and directors for ads?

Every project is different really. The perfect song for a spot might never come along and you wind up settling for something that’s just ok, or it could be the first song you think of like it happened for Mad World. Same goes for directors and the rest really. In general though, the better the work is the easier it will be to enlist top talent to help you get it done. We were lucky enough on this one to find talented people that had love for it and wanted to be involved.


How did the idea for this TV spot come about?

Long story short the client said, “show us the game. Don’t be clever. Show us the game.” Usually we would start anywhere but just showing the game because that’s what everyone does. But the game looked sweet so we started thinking of ways we could do it and make it unique. Judging by the reaction it has been getting I think we were able to be just clever enough to make something a bit original.


What's it like working at McCann and living in SF?

San Francisco is a great city. Love it here. As far as McCann goes... Well every agency has its issues but, we work with a good group of people on Xbox and we’ve been getting to do some fun work so can’t complain too much.

Make a Dorito's Super Bowl commercial

Goodby, Silverstein & Partners launched a contest a while back, along with Yahoo!, where everyday people could submit their commercial for a Dorito's super bowl commercial. I didn't really think much of it because I assumed, wrongly, that a lot of the videos would be "youtube-esque" (i.e. someone just gets out their cell phone to record their dog doing a normal task like eating and uploads that).

Well, I just saw the five finalists for the contest. And I am amazed by the quality. They are really cool although some of them were made by people who work for commercial production studios. If you read the finalist's bios, a lot of them just used their home computers and some software to edit the spots; the gap between amateur and professional is rapidly closing.

Another neat thing about it is that people vote on the commercials. What if agencies actually did this with their work? I know there's pre-testing and screening of commercials but that's usually in a formal, structured setting. Are there any agencies that have websites where regular, everyday people can comment on their work?

My personal favorite is Mouse Trap. What's yours?

French "9/11 ad"

Click on image to enlarge.


Wow.

From Houtlust. Go there to read more about the background behind this ad.

Audi TV ad and AdGoodness top ads of 2006

Frederick Samuel runs an amazing advertising/design blog called Advertising Design/Goodness and he had a top work of 2006 section. It's rather inspiring and neat to notice the outstanding work. However, it appears that some of the work is meant for awards shows and not for actual use. What I mean by that is how many times do you see those award-winning ads actually appear in Time, CNN, ABC, and other mainstream media venues? Also, some creative directors don't want to see students with "Lurzer-Archive" type ads in their books but then the "almighty" awards shows reward those type of ads. So what's a jr. creative to do?

Here is a foreign Audi ad I saw from El Mallat shift's blog linked to that post. I found it to be very, let's just say different, than the usual American automobile advertising.

Audi Designed To Thrill
Uploaded by firat

Critique Please: 1-800-flowers

Nancy Jeng, CW/AD
Matt Crump, CW/AD

Flawless GPS

I'm not a big fan of their ads, but this one came out of left field.

Click here to watch spot.

Alumni Showcase: Ben & Jerry's cute TV spots

This is the first post in a new section entitled "Alumni Showcase." Hopefully, this section can inspire the current students to continue to think "outside of the box" and to the power of big ideas. Ernie Schenck thinks you should think "inside the box" however. TX Creative alum names are in bold.



See the other three spots here.

Agency/Location:
Amalgamated/New York
Executive CDs:
Jason Gaboriau, Doug Cameron
Creative Directors:
Kent McCall, Kent Stephens
Art Director:
Shaun Bruce
Copywriters:
Rebecca Renner, David Roth

Read rest of the credits here at Adweek's best spots of October.

How did y'all come up with the ad? Why the animation?

David Roth (CW) said:

"By the time Shaun and I got there, the frame for the spots was already
in place – ten seconds of "theater" and then a flavor to pay off the
action. It was very much the Texas Creative formula of leaving the
circle open a tiny bit. In fifteen seconds, only one thing can happen,
so we listed countless scenarios. Seeing that we were interns and got
the assignment our second week, we got as lucky as you can get.

The idea to do claymation came from our strategist Doug Cameron. Ben
& Jerry's prides itself on homemade folksiness, and Doug pushed for
spots that embodied those qualities. The most inspiring source
material was a paper maché cast of Ben and Jerry sent by a Vermont
grandma to their Burlington office. The folks from their marketing
department showed it to us, and it had an endearing, carefully-crafted
yet naïve feel to it. So we went for imagery generated by grandmas,
not computers."

The Hispanic market is growing but did you expect this?

The Hispanic demographic is growing by leaps and bounds and is no longer going to be a minority population (according to the US Census and Time if I recall correctly). Several Hispanic marcom (marketing communication) agencies, such as Dieste Harmel, LatinWorks and La Comunidad, are helping to lead this new "Hispanic consumer wave." But I never expected something like this to happen. Monica also previously talked about this next big thing in marketing.

edited: Original post said that Hispanic population growth is going to exceed Caucasian population in the next five-ten years. Refer to comments below although anonymous didn't provide a URL. I am flattered that someone would take the time to verify my post though.

Dallas-based food chain to accept Mexican pesos
10:11 AM CST on Saturday, January 6, 2007

By KAREN ROBINSON-JACOBS / The Dallas Morning News
Starting Monday, patrons of the Dallas-based Pizza Patrón chain, which caters heavily to Latinos, will be able to purchase American pizzas with Mexican pesos. Restaurant experts and economists said they knew of no other food chain with locations so far from the Mexican border offering such a service. "We're trying to reach out to our core customer," Antonio Swad, president of Pizza Patrón Inc., said Friday. "We know they come back [from Mexico] and have pesos left over. We want to be a convenient place for them to spend their pesos." While U.S. restaurant chains have stepped up their marketing to Latino consumers and incorporated Latin flavors in the menu, it's unusual to see that outreach extend to the cash register.

"I think it's a very interesting idea," said Ron Paul, president of Technomic Inc., a Chicago-based restaurant market research firm. "They are catering to that audience." But Mr. Paul said he did not see other chains rushing to emulate the program, in part because of bookkeeping headaches...

Nintendo targets your mom

Remember Tupperware? Your pantry probably overflowed with it fifteen years ago thanks to the climax of the Tupperware party—a direct marketing getup masquerading as a social event where women (and a few men?) gathered to buy brightly colored crap. Since then, companies selling other brightly colored crap (notably makeup, lingerie and sex toys) have lifted the idea and enjoyed similar results.

Now, Nintendo of America Inc. is attempting to generate precious word-of-mouth for its new Wii console by emulating the Tupperware party to—you guessed it—sell even more brightly colored crap. Part of Nintendo’s current marketing strategy is to expand its client base to include unlikely gamers… like the alpha mom. She knows how to work a digital camera, use the Internet and even send text messages, so watch out—chances are your mom’s one.

The party plan effort was started by a buzz-making trio of LA alpha moms who invited 35 other LA alpha moms to the always classy Chateau Marmont to experience the Wii firsthand. Nintendo has since expanded its party planning crusade to Boston, Chicago, Denver, Miami, San Francisco, some place in Kansas, and right here in Austin.

I know what you’re thinking: Intuitively, this target is all wrong—isn’t it? Most normal moms are inherently anti-gaming, even alpha moms—nagging their kids to give the console (and their eyes) a rest. It just doesn’t make sense for Nintendo to target them; that is, until you realize who’s making the purchase decisions. Who got me a Wii for Christmas? The tag said “Santa Clause”, but I’m almost positive it was my mom—and she hates that I play video games. Absurd? Maybe. But if Nintendo can convince the very people that hate video games (but buy them anyway) to love video games, then logically, they’re going to love buying more video games and Nintendo’s profit margin will increase by a million-billion percent. It sounds like nonsense, but apparently it’s working.

One alpha mom who attended a Wii party said, “Most people were like, ‘I don't play games,’ [but by, like, the end of the night], everybody was playing it. People were working up a sweat.” Only in, like, America do we work up a sweat playing video games and have parties to buy brightly colored crap we don’t need.