21.01.2010 by Zoltan

Make your own Cameron poster

Very funny little Cameron mash-up from Andy Barefoot that allows you to make your own campaign poster for the upcoming UK general election. I especially like the fact that you have full control over the logo – some much needed respite for Cameron’s unashamed re-hashing of Obama’s ‘hope’ message which I simply can’t stand!

Whether you love or loathe the Tories, this provides endless fun.

via @mattyboomboom

19.01.2010 by Zoltan

Superbowl goes social via the Pepsi Refresh Project

Really interesting Pepsi initiative called the Pepsi Refresh Project. Not a new idea, but the sheer scale of it should turn more than a few heads. Not to mention the fact that they’ve redirected their entire Superbowl spend to this ’social media’ idea.

Is this the beginning of the end for adland’s biggest institution? Will be interesting to see how it shakes out and whether or not it lives up to the rhetoric of making the world a better place? Thoughts anyone?

via digital buzz blog

18.01.2010 by Zoltan

Creative Handbook goes free(mium)

In a somewhat unusual move, CR has just waived the annual fee for the Creative Handbook. Any and all flavours of creative can now use the site gratis as a proxy-folio, presumably with the hope that a fair portion renew their membership come the following year after.

I guess that gives you a year to see the value (or lack thereof). Either way, the barriers to entry have been removed, and you’d be nuts to let it slip.

via CR Blog

05.11.2009 by Zoltan

Cassette Boy strikes again

Cassette Boy brings some much needed clarity to Britain’s political landscape. Amen.

04.08.2009 by Zoltan

Tru Blood Is Much More Than a TV Show

Until now, Tru Blood was nothing more than a good idea on an addictive TV show called True Blood. In case you’ve been stuck under a rock recently, Tru Blood, the drink, is the central conceit of HBO’s wildly popular series: a synthetic blood-drink invented by Japanese scientists that allows vampires to enter mainstream society without fear of them gorging on hapless humans.

But all that changed last week at Comic-Con, when Tru Blood was launched as a real product – a bona fide drink made of blood orange (naturally) though sans haemoglobin, for the non-vampires of this world. Available from September 10 in your local bar and for pre-order online now, although only in the USA.

Obviously the fanboys and girls went wild at the chance to mark their allegiance. But when you consider that HBO is not historically in the drinks business, Tru Blood the drink suddenly stands as a watershed moment in the advertising and marketing industries.

It is a stroke of marketing genius mixed with a healthy dollop of business acumen. It inverts the traditional notion of product placement, and becomes all the more coveted because of its previous non-existence. Dare I say it: Tru Blood the drink represents the very future of advertising – unpaid media.

Imagine all the fake vampirism this drink will spawn: Facebook pictures, Youtube videos, and endless blog posts. Why buy media space when you can sell something that people will willing create content around, all the while turning a tidy profit for HBO?

Now this strategy is obviously not going to work for every fictitious product ever invented for TV and cinema. But it does prove that HBO realises that they are no longer confined to the screen. Creating culture in today’s world means being present in people’s lives in whatever way you can, even if it means entering the drinks business.

Pasted from the original article penned for blogcritics.org

17.07.2009 by Zoltan

Looking for more interesting work?

Aren’t we all? And especially with clients who are willing to put their nuts on the line for a change. Well so is IMC2 Dallas, and they’re doing something really really smart about it.

They’ve essentially created their own grant/fund that is open to clients. There’s USD$500,000 of their money in the pot – available in 50k chunks – which is certainly nothing to be sniffed at. The only condition is that said clients grow some balls before applying.

What a brilliant way to drum up the kind of new business that we’re all looking for. Now if they only applied the same creative thinking to changing their agency name…

via AdAge

06.07.2009 by Zoltan

Next time someone asks you for a viral…

…send them this absolutely fucking insane video and ask if they’re really prepared to make the same tenuous link of association between their brand and *something* mind-bending or unbelievable and of interest to their target.

And if their answer is no, then you can tactfully turn the conversation towards something like (ineffective) display advertising which is probably what they really wanted anyway…

03.07.2009 by Zoltan

Cannes 2009

I am not going to pretend to compete with all the clatter out there about Cannes.

Whatever you think about advertising, there are some pretty amazing examples and more than a few which make the hair on your neck stand up. We all get this emotional response when we come up with a good idea. Much more rare is that other people get the same feeling when all is said and done.

Either way get over to the Cannes site, watch the videos and get learned. Believe me it’ll be the most productive 2 hours of this year.

30.06.2009 by Zoltan

The Dark Knight ARG. A (necessarily long) Summary

Quite simply, The Dark Knight ARG was unique. A potent illustration of how deep the rabbit hole can go, given that rare confluence of the 3 C’s – content, cash and client.

It will forever mark a new chapter in (film) marketing history and fill fanboys’ wet dreams for years to come. If Lucifer himself decided to walk amongst us as an ad-man, I doubt he could’ve done better.

10 million unique participants across 75 countries and 500,000,000 (yes that’s half-a-billion) organic media impressions sets the bar against which we should all be judged. This is the future of advertising so often talked about and so infrequently executed.

The Dark Knight ARG is oh-so-much more than the 31 spoof websites shown above, and you could do much worse than read the Cannes submission that helped it take out this year’s Titanium Lion. Well deserved to 42 Entertainment.

30.06.2009 by Zoltan

Batman VS Joker BBoy

Interactive youtube vids have been around for sometime now, and whilst there have been some notable exceptions – boone oakley and Youtube Street Fighter – the majority of them are pretty crap.

Cue the ultimate BBoy battle between arch-enemies ‘the’ Batman and the Joker. It takes the Street Fighter concept several steps further in terms of both interactivity as well as out-and-out production values.

29.06.2009 by Zoltan

BillieTweets

I promised myself I wouldn’t do a MJ tribute post, but Billie Tweets is just too good…

Its definitely the coolest use of twitter I’ve seen in ages – basically a mashup of we feel fine’s keyword search and twitter’s real-time-y-ness with a good dose of MJ-rhythm for good measure – in short, Billie Tweets searches Twitter and then pushes the resulting tweets out word-by -word to the beat of Billie Jean.

Very very very good and brought to us by the talented kids over at 9astronauts

I wonder how long they were sitting on this idea before poor MJ (R.I.P.) kicked the bucket and they thought fuck it its now or never! Like the truth about MJ and those kids, I guess we’ll just never know…

29.06.2009 by Zoltan

100 fans on facebook!

I have a favour to ask everyone – please go to facebook and become a fan of boredomisyourfault so i can land-grab the username. I have 78 at the moment but facebook’s terms state that you need a minimum of 100 fans to get the facebook.com/username URL.

C’mon, it won’t take a sec…

16.06.2009 by Zoltan

facebook.com/yourname

If you haven’t already heard, Facebook has just released vanity URLs. They’re up for grabs now. Hit me up here facebook.com/zoltan.csaki, and make sure you grab yours before someone else does…

11.06.2009 by Zoltan

How deep does the rabbit hole go?

RabbitHoles 3D is some pretty cool tech, but waaaay under-utilised IMHO.

“The pieces are printed in the amazing form of RabbitHoles state-of-the-art digital motion holograms, which display 1280 frames of full-color, 3D imagery with up to ten seconds of fluid and seamless animation on a completely flat surface.”

Why is it that tech-leading artists have such a horrible aesthetic? The only artist that actually thought about the medium and what makes it interesting is Nape of the Neck by Jeremy Engleman (around 05:28).

Anyway it will be interesting to see if and how it gets picked up moving forward.

03.06.2009 by Zoltan

Laptop Friendly Cafes

Craig Barber has just launched a new service titled Laptop Friendly Cafes, which is quite simply “a website that lists great local spots to set up shop with your laptop”.

A good idea for sure, kinda like SF-Bay culture for the rest of the planet :)

I am however a little underwhelmed by the content. Not the list of cafes themselves, but what is (not) said about them. As they stand, the reviews are very functional.

But if I am going to use this site repeatedly, I want to know things about the cafe:
- What is the coffee like?
- Whether or not I can sit all day like a major tight-arse on 1 one coffee?
- Or if they have a 1-drink-an-hour policy?
- What’s the music like?
- Are the staff surly and aggressive or tree-hugging hippies?

IMHO this is the type of content that will make the site a success and make me want to come back again and again.