Petr Bambasek

Sunset over HafenCity Hamburg. (at Hafencity)

Überseequartier U-Bahn Stairs. HafenCity Hamburg, Germany (at U Überseequartier)

Hitting the slopes at Tignes, France (at Tignes)

The Filadelfie Building, BB Centrum Prague, UniCredit Bank Czech Republic HQ (at Filadelfie)

Inside a subway tunnel construction (at Den otevřených dveří - stavba tunelů metra V.A (Metrostav))

Christmas Evening, magical night, and the room is lit with candle light

Best Buy – Gifts That Do: Finding Santa

You can do anything with your gifts - including track down Santa Claus with all of your Apple products. All things Apple. All at your local Best Buy.

This commercial can probably bring some customers to go buy their desired Apple gadgets or computers at a Best Buy store instead of an Apple Store. However, besides this, it is a pretty good commercial for Apple, isn’t it?

Sweet lighting, reflections and an interactive touchscreen - Audi exhibit at the AMS airport terminal. (at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol (AMS))

Which brand do you think has the strongest association with Christmas?

My take on a stoplight shot

simplifyyourlife:

LESS WELL DONE (via designeriphone)

Do you usually pay attention to pre-flight safety videos? 

Air New Zealand partnered with WETA Workshop on a brand new Hobbit inspired Safety Video. Weta Workshop is a multi-award winning conceptual design and physical manufacturing facility servicing the world’s entertainment and creative industries. Weta Workshop’s output came to worldwide prominence with director Peter Jackson’s film trilogy The Lord of the Rings, producing sets, costumes, armor, weapons, creatures and miniatures.

Air New Zealand marketing manager Mike Tod said the video was part of a major global promotion linked to the movie, which will premiere in Wellington later this month (November).

If the elves, hobbits and wizards don’t keep passengers (and YouTube viewers) glued to the safety video, maybe the built-in contest will: Count the number of Elvish codes in the clip, and you could “win a trip to Middle-earth and one of six Double Passes to the world premiere screening of The Hobbit in Wellington” next month, according to the Air New Zealand website. (Source: WIRED)

Hobbits rarely leave The Shire, but when they do, they fly Air New Zealand.

The Idea Writers: Copywriting In A New Media And Marketing Era
by Teressa Iezzi

In the third chapter of The Idea Writers, Teressa Iezzi touches on the ever-present importance of storytelling in advertising. Iezzi uses as an example a branded entertainment campaign for BMW, called “The Hire,” created out of Fallon Minneapolis. 

“The Hire” is an example of a compelling, successful series of short online films that offered two things: quality entertainment and a captivating narrative for the BMW brand. It is an example of advertising that cannot be called advertising in the old-fashioned way. It’s the kind of “advertising” that people seek themselves, that pulls them in and captures them, as opposed to something that just yells at them, no matter if they care or not. 

To go even further, Iezzi mentions campaigns that went beyond content—campaigns that became a reality, stories that were told and shared among friends, mysterious cases that people were eager to explore and engage with. There is no doubt that the copywriter’s job description has been greatly expanded and the range of mediums that copywriters can be assigned to write for is wider than ever before. 

My favorite citation from this chapter is this one by Mike Monello, @mikemonello, Partner & Chief Creative Officer at Campfire (By the way, Mike Monello graduated from the University of Central Florida with a BA in Motion Picture Technology.)

“I’m starting to see marketers consider something that’s always been a reality for me—that maybe it’s not the biggest audience we should be going after. If I’m trying to sell a horror story, what can I give to people who are really into horror stories that will give them context in which to spread the story? 

In other words, if I know you love vampire stories and I give you something that you like, you will run out and tell your friend in a way you know your friend wants to hear because you know your friend better than I do.”  

What I see again and again is another proof that this is the most exciting time to work in the advertising industry since the 1960s. Which is quite awesome, isn’t it?

The Idea Writers: Copywriting In A New Media And Marketing Era
by Teressa Iezzi

In the second chapter of her book, The Idea Writers, Teressa Iezzi briefly reminds the reader what advertising legends such as David Ogilvy, Bill Bernbach and Rosser Reeves said were good approaches to creating successful advertising.

Iezzi isn’t biased towards any of the approaches; instead, she makes a point that all of them were right, in a way, and that their key concepts remain true today—even though may need to be applied somewhat differently to succeed in the Digital Age. 

The media landscape is oversaturated, and even if the ads we make were perfect, almost nobody might have been able to really notice them. 

“The fact of the matter is that nobody reads ads. People read what interests them, and sometimes it’s an ad.”

Moreover, the consumer control era is upon us, meaning that consumers aren’t just consumers anymore. They are producers, critics, creatives. Brand storytellers either adapt this new reality or will be replaced by those who already understand where is the world going. 

“Creativity, not efficiency, will be the engine of economic growth.” 
– Daniel Pink: A Whole New Mind 

“Live in the real world. Make real things that real human beings care about and want to interact with.” – Rob Reilly, CP+B, @RobReillyCPB

“If this book has a philosophical point of view, it’s that you the copywriter are responsible for putting things into the world, and those things should be useful, entertaining or beautiful, or all of those things. They should make people feel better, not worse, about themselves, the brand involved and living in the world in general.“

Teressa Iezzi: The Idea Writers – Copywriting In A New Media And Marketing Era
Chapter 1: The Creativity Age

Ms. Ieezi’s book is close to brilliant. The first chapter of The Idea Writers explores the changes in the advertising industry and the related behavioral and societal shifts that happen as the world advances further into the Internet Age. Many factors caused the changes that advertising is going through, but technology and its impact on people’s everyday lives plays probably the most important role of all. 

When reading The Idea Writers, I have been thinking to myself that Iezzi did a spectacular job on discovering, compiling and formulating all these ideas and observations about what happened in the advertising industry. Iezzi succeeds at getting ideas from many leading voices of the industry, as well as many other thought leaders, and making a powerful statement about the present and the future of marketing and advertising. 

My favorite quotes from Chapter 1:

Clay Shirky: Here Comes Everybody:

“More people can communicate more things to more people that has even been possible in the past, and the size and speed of this increase, from under one million participants to over one billion in a generation, makes the change unprecedented, even considered against the background of previous revolutions in communication tools.”

Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman, Google:

“We now generate as much information every two days as was generated from the beginning of time to 2003.“

We are in the Age of Creativity—an age that can be golden if you want to it to be. 

WHY THE FUTURE (OR PRESENT) OF ADVERTISING ISN’T ABOUT MAKING ADS

Thanks to Deb, our wonderful teacher of Advertising Creativity, I am currently reading The Idea Writers—a book about the new realities of the brand-creativity process and working in the advertising industry.

Let me say upfront: I am digging this book. A lot. In some upcoming posts, I will highlight some ideas from the book that I find to be true, relevant, well-said, and fascinating, or quite often all of these things at once. 

A Brief Summary:

“The Idea Writers” offers an in-depth look at the state of copywriting and brand creativity in today’s marketplace. With insight on creative process and campaign development from the industry’s leading creatives, the book provides solid advice for copywriters at all levels. It also provides a detailed examination of the changes that have completely remade the advertising industry, and is a useful guide for anyone looking to understand brand creativity today. (Source: Creativity Online)