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18.01.2010 by Zoltan 
You can’t script this shit
or can you… i would love to know if this is pure unadulterated fan-art or if it’s got something to do with the reported USD$200 million marketing budget of what was a predictable rip-off of pocahontas, even if it was set in space (which automatically makes it awesome)? Any thoughts?
via @benshaw
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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 Yours truly joins the “sinister cabal” at blogcritics.org
I never actually thought of myself as a ‘writer’ – although I have always enjoyed it since my convoluted dissertation at university titled ‘The Narrative Nexus: Photography, Time and Identiy’.
Well anyway, I guess that all changed today when I was accepted as one of the “sinister cabal” of 2,500 writers on blogcritics.org. Head on over there to check it out. There’s lots of interesting stuff, and very little about the advertising microcosm although I hope to change that very soon!
My first article is going up today, so stay tuned…
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19.07.2009 by Zoltan Babel With Me
BabelWithMe is freakin’ amazing, and although its not a fish that lives in your ear, would make Douglas Adams himself proud!
“Communicate with anyone, anywhere in up to 45 languages. BabelWith.me is a simple, free group chat that automatically translates your conversation as you type.”
Welcome to the future!
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17.07.2009 by Zoltan Future Routers
Future Routers is a great little colab design project between Goldsmiths and Talk Talk (appalling customer service, even if they have interesting corporate comms projects) that re-imagines the humble broadband router into something nicer/smarter – essentially designed around people rather than technology.
My favourite is the snappily titled ‘Energy Saver’ above, which has 4 hooks for house keys. When the last person to leave home takes their keys, it switches itself off. Presumably it switches on again when the keys are deposited back, but it doesn’t actually state that anywhere :(
via CR Blog
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01.07.2009 by Zoltan Facebook Vanity URL = check!
Thanks to everyone who helped us over the 100 fans mark on the FB. We’ve now claimed our rightful vanity URL and can forever be found at facebook.com/boredomisyourfault.
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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…
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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…
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18.05.2009 by Zoltan Twitter by Modern Toss
There’s no shortage of Twitter-bashing going on at the moment. One of my personal favourites is this insight from Modern Toss
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11.05.2009 by Zoltan Best time to email
“The best time to send out an email campaign is between 2-3pm PST on Wednesday. People are most likely to open your mail mid-week, while at work, on a full stomach.”
Has anyone else found the same thing to be true? And if so, surely there is a little widget somewhere that would allow you to cue up emails based on territory to spam out at this most auspicious time? Anyone know what it is?
via hollrr
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11.05.2009 by Zoltan Back on the horse (well, hopefully)
Its been a very hectic 3 months since I started my new digs at R/GA. It almost feels like I’ve not actually seen anything amazing – but of course that’s not true. I’ve just not had half-a-second to actually digest/process anything other than the project I’ve been working on. But more on that when it launches later this year… Anyway I’m just glad to be back on the bloghorse :)
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02.03.2009 by Zoltan You Should’ve Seen This
This has to be one of those “I can’t believe no-one thought of this before” ideas – just a simple one-page site, lacking any pretence of graphic design, outlining the top viral phenomena since the birth of our beloved interweb. Check it out You Should Have Seen This.
I will always have a soft-spot for #68 “Aussie Party” :)
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15.01.2009 by Zoltan Back for 2009
The ever insightful Ian Stevenson gives us this beautiful start to the new year. It may not be good advice for all the struggling retailers out there but it made me smile. And if you’re not scared of losing customers to Aldi, you could do worse than to follow it as a differentiating strategy…
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15.10.2008 by Zoltan BAD08 – Poverty of ideas
Today is Blog Action Day, and this year’s theme is poverty. Rather than comment on financial poverty and helping the under-priviledged, I thought I would write a bit about poverty of truly original ideas in advertising because that is what I know (something) about.
Known politely as ‘inspiration’, and not so politely as plagiarism – largely depending on whether you’re the originator or not – our industry is driven by the fuzzy grey line between the two. There are countless examples, from Fallon’s bunnies to today’s news that BMB is being sued by the makers of iBeer for stealing their awesome idea and ‘recontextualising’ it as a piece of branded content.
The fact is that lot of good, even perhaps great, advertising is the recontextualisation or mashing-up of other people’s ideas for commercial purpose. Contrary to what most practitioners believe, advertising is not often at the cutting edges of creativity, characterised by a few flashes of brilliance in between long periods of failure (being anything but one of these flashes). We’re too concerned with the commerical imperatives of the client to be in the lucky position of being able to fail until we get it right.
In itself this is not necessarily a bad thing. What is a terrible shame is that the industry as a whole is just not very good at giving credit where credit is due. It could be fearful creatives desperately trying to defend their positions/process, or account men and women being good at their jobs to assuage the client’s distress, or project managers trying to manage their never-big-enough budgets. Or it just might be that the person who’s idea you are appropriating just isn’t interested in commercialising their work. And this must also be respected. But whatever the reason, this poverty of ideas – and in their vacuum, poverty of legitimate credit – has to stop.
I don’t have any magic pills that can change any of this, and I don’t think anyone does. Sure longer timelines would help. As well as not working with pedestrian clients wanting just a-n-other “one of those”.
All comments welcome on how we might address this? I’d love to know your thoughts…
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