Here Be Monsters|blog

The power of the consumer

 

I present here, the most popular items sold by online retailer Amazon in the past few weeks. Sales are up 2300%.

Why?

Well apart from the obviously stylish nature of the tee, the great Amazon reviewing public have taken it upon themselves to share their personal opinons. Which range from,

This item has wolves on it which makes it intrinsically sweet and worth 5 stars by itself, but once I tried it on, that's when the magic happened. After checking to ensure that the shirt would properly cover my girth, I walked from my trailer to Wal-mart with the shirt on and was immediately approached by women.

To the less positive,

However, having owned this shirt for three weeks now and having tried it out in a variety of situations, both formal and informal, I'm beginning to believe that some of the benefits ---- as described by other reviewers ---- are exaggerated.

You can read more of the story here on the BBC website. And more of those rave reviews here.

It reminds me of all those great reviews, Jordan and Pete got for their album. Where did it all go wrong for those guys?

WTF!?

Let's be honest, we've all thought it. Within 10 minutes of getting a brief to advertise tea your first thought is always going to go down this route, nazi's, The Third Reich and then the man himself, it's little wonder it's taken this long for the idea to get bought by those logical client types who run tea marketing depts the world over. So three cheers to the Turkish ad agency, Art Grup, for convincing their client, Rasayana Teas to buy these.

Still who wouldn't have wanted to be in that's a presentation. If only to slap some sodding sense in to them.

     

Bastard

Meet Jonathan Harris, he's an artist and computer scientist and the sort of person that makes you feel perhaps you're wasting your life. Not that he's smug about what he's doing, it's just that it's so vital, full of energy and relevance that whatever it is you're filling your days with becomes a little more pointless in comparison

His work celebrates the world's diversity even as it illustrates the universal concerns of its occupants. His computer programs scour the Internet for unfiltered content, which his beautiful interfaces then organize to create coherence from the chaos.

Here he is talking about storytelling

And here he's the We Feel Fine site

Now, Murdoch, if your newspaper sites resembled something like his, you could put me down for a paid subscription
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Top post

There's a brilliant post on the equally brilliant Creative Review blog today all about plagiarism in advertising and how youtube has made it possible for "original inspiration" to be so easily found.

What makes it very contemporary is the complete lack of responsibility that most agencies or creatives take for their actions.

For the record, I have no issue with stealing, but if you are shouldn't you be using it as a starting point for turning it into something original and not just create a more expensive copy. Something touched upon here, in the post Where does an idea come from?, in Dave Trott's blog.

New roles in advertising

As we continue to move forward into the unknown somethings have already become clear. For example, current job descriptions are just not hacking it, which, as anyone who has read this blog more than 3 times is likely to know, is something close to my chest. So it's nice to see someone else banging the drum. I refer to the head honcho of Strawberry Frog, Scott Goodson, who has identified a few new key roles on the rise, on his blog.

And I don't even like Star Trek or Lost

But still I thought this was a great article over at The Guardian today about JJ Abrams much to be gleamed about popular culture. In particular this quote that I shall be using in forth coming meetings:

"People want to find magic," he says. "It's almost like a Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe thing. You want to find that secret. You want there to be some kind of portal between reality and fiction."

The truth from a fictional ad man

In our house it's compulsory viewing as we wallow in the realisation that the advertising industry really hasn't changed that much in 50 years.

'Look - there's Mark.' 'You know who he is, that's John!'  We scream at the screen as the cast reveal themselves as current day contemporaries. 

And every now and then you hear something so sharp and observant it's almost painful to hear.

Last night we were presented with a killer line, by Dan Draper, 'I sell products. I don't sell advertising.'

How many ad creatives can honestly, hand on heart, say the same?

Something for the weekend, a 2D audio mixer

And heaven knows we've always wanted one of them. Limited, but fun, so perfect for a bank holiday friday pm. Enjoy