Caligula director Tinto Brass plans first 3D porn movie.

Once upon a time it may have been a story in The Onion. Not anymore. According to Brass, "the time is right for 3D technologies to be used to create an erotic film." Indeed so. My only question is how will they prevent the 3D glasses from steaming up.

Then there's this story which isn't in The Onion either, but in the British equivalent called The Daily Squib. I think what we have here is a classic case of truth being just as funny as spoof.

A very moving read.

I recently had the pleasure of working with the good folks at Razorfish on a Ralph Lauren project that called for "cool digital shit". That was pretty much the brief, sans the word shit.

One of the ideas we came up with pushed the possibilities of augmented or alternative reality. A very fun (and strategic) idea it was too, which may yet become reality. But it turned an AR skeptic into a believer of sorts.

Well here is a sweet reminder that augmented reality isn't just for mad people. Its experience can be shared outside the realm of marketing too. Now if only Camille Scherrer can do it for "War and Peace".

Not appearing at Flashdancers anytime soon.

The detractors of branded entertainment will no doubt look upon this short film for Damaris Lingerie as proof that the genre is nothing more than masturbation for bored creatives and directors. It certainly requires a lot of deconstructing. I've seen it about twenty times already and still I'm not entirely sure of it's value as marketing content. But I'll continue viewing until I figure it out.

So what exactly is the message here. Sexy lingerie as functional garment? Make the everyday routine sexy? Perhaps the director, Justin Anderson can illuminate. "Whilst researching the film I spent a lot of time standing behind the statue of Aphrodite at the British Museum," says Anderson. "I felt that the backside of the goddess of love was a good place to start. I love the bottom - it is quite literally sculpture on legs." God I love branded entertainment.

(Sharing credit to psfk)

Silk Tricky

The interactive experience just gets richer and richer. Check out Silk Tricky. Not sure what to call them, but they're certainly pushing the interactivity/branded entertainment envelope. Perhaps we should credit them with being practitioners of "enteractivity" - hey ma I think I just coined a new term!

Their latest endeavor is called, "Bank Run". It's an interactive live action movie that extends to an online game as well as an IPhone game. You see these days it's not enough to do just one thing!

The full experience is coming in a few weeks, but here's the trailer.




(Sharing credit to jawbone.tv)

Brain-teaser Monday.

Which of these is not a real advertising agency?

• Brothers and Sisters
• DAA
  
• Drugstore
• Giggidy Advertising
• Jupiter Drawing Room
  
• Spinach
• Square Tomato
• Surgery
• Three Drunk Monkeys
• Try
• Wexley School for Girls

Answer to last week's brain-teaser: 144 (yes really. here's the full list if you don't believe me)

What's in a name.

I've just been reading that Alex Bogusky has a new title. He is from this day forth to be known as, "Chief Creative Insurgent" (CCI) of MDC Partners, the parent company that owns Crispin Porter + Bogusky.

"In his new role, MDC Partners will be able to leverage Alex's creative vision, marketing and branding expertise, and social media insights across the entire MDC Partners network," said MDC CEO Miles Nadal. Wonder if he's related to Raphael? Perhaps his older, nerdier brother.

So if Alex is the chief insurgent, that would make MDC an insurgency movement. Call me old fashioned, but I like my insurgency movements to kill, bomb, cut off the heads of people it doesn't like and generally cause mass destruction and terror. So unless MDC is about to radicalize, I remain skeptical.

In lieu of a clever title for this post.

In a new Nielsen viewer survey, 51% of respondents said they enjoy the Super Bowl more for the ads than the game. Given the sharp dip in the quality of the ads on show in recent years that's surprisingly high. Of course it could also say something damning about the quality of the game. But it got me thinking. If a majority, albeit slight come to the spectacle for the ads then how could advertisers possibly give them even more to drool over in future Super Bowls.

For starters, advertisers could strike a deal with the NFL to lengthen all commercial breaks. Half-time could be stretched a few more minutes too. By the way, this year's half-time show performers are a bunch of geriatric English rockers with a child-molester guitarist. Who?

Another good option would be to manufacture more timeouts thereby increasing the number of commercial breaks. Again, perhaps advertisers could work with the NFL to give the teams extra timeouts.

Players could also be "motivated" to suffer more injuries on the field, thereby creating even more injury timeouts. Needless to say coaches would be "encouraged" to use all of their timeouts and challenges during the game regardless of their merits.

More ingenious could be for the advertisers to create "on-field" incidents, thereby requiring forced television timeouts. For instance streakers, protesters or overly exuberant fans could invade the field momentarily stopping the game and forcing the network to break away so as not to give the offenders any publicity.

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What's your SPI?

According to a team of researchers at the University of Chester in England, we are all born with a "propensity to streak". For most of us, this propensity will be completely dormant, but a select few the impulse to steak burns brightly.

To discover what kind of streak propensity each of us has, these researchers created the "Streak Propensity Index" (SPI), a measure based upon a person's emotional and psychological responses to certain stimuli associated with streaking. The closer a person's SPI is to 100, the stronger their propensity to streak.

Researchers caution that more investigation still needs to be done, but there is now broad agreement in the scientific community that this is the quickest measure to determine if a person has what it takes to become a streaker.

Calculate your SPI.

Perspective watch.

As of right now, there are 411,249 fans of "I'm with Coco", the Facebook fan-page set up to support the plight of the poor, ravaged Conan O Brien as he battles the odious NBC.

In contrast, I looked at advocacy pages relating to healthcare reform. There a dozens and dozens of them, too many to mention. But they all have one thing in common - meager fan bases. Here is just a sampling:

• Healthcare Refom - 441 fans
• Reform Healthcare Now - 11 fans
• All I want for Christmas is Healthare Reform - 851 fans
• Universal Healthcare - 2,891 fans
• Public Option Please - 10,478 fans

Two points to draw from this. First, healthcare reform could have done with a SINGULAR, catchy name. And secondly, maybe if NBC threatened to take away Conan's healthcare, all his fans would now be fans of healthcare reform too. How about, "Coco wants his healthcare".

More Doritos trashing.

Here's Barbara Lippert's take on that affront to creativity known as the Doritos Superbowl finalists. While I don't always agree with Ms. Lippert she pretty much nails this one.

Brain-teaser Monday.

It's January 18th and there have already been two legitimate advertising award shows. One in Stockholm, the other in Paris. Over the next eleven months there will be countless more chances to win an award from places all over the world. Excluding my own show, "The Shirazys" (which curiously I have never won) just how many more advertising and design award shows will there be this year?

• 45
• 63
• 78
  
• 85
• 99
• 101
• 124
• 130
• 144
  
• 151
  

Answer to last week's brain-teaser: Fiorello H. Laguardia (from his election victory speech)

Product misplacement.

I was just watching CNN's live coverage of the Haitian earthquake. The grim scenes of suffering are truly harrowing indeed. When we broke away to the programmed commercial break I couldn't help but focus on a tourist spot for the Bahamas. The beautiful, idyllic images of calm turquoise waters, white sandy beaches, shiny happy faces couldn't have contrasted more with the grim reality. Talk about getting away from it all.

It's obviously not CNN's fault. These spots were placed way in advance. It still made for uneasy viewing though. And made me wonder if any of the advertisers would want their ads pulled at this time in favor of more live reporting.

It's my blog so I'll self-promote if I want to.

Here is a side side-project that started out less advertainment and more entertainment. Director Steven Oritt and I conceived a web based sit-com called “That’s Rich”. It centers around the misadventures of Rich Skidmore, an intrepid investigative reporter who will risk life, limb and utter humiliation to uncover the big story. We are currently talking to brands about a possible integration. In the meantime, enjoy the thirty second promo.

Solving the recommendation chore.

In these tough times with so many qualified candidates fighting for so few jobs, recommendations may provide that added spark to seal the deal. However, as has been pointed out to me, writing a stand-out recommendation on behalf of a friend, ally or work-mate is a pain in the ass. Maybe not as bad as doing the vacuuming, but still an unwelcome chore.

Sure, you'll probably labor through it out of sense of obligation, perhaps even mutual self-interest, but it still requires time and effort that could be spent on something far more valuable, e.g. smoking, drinking, looking at videos of cats playing in a bathtub of water.

For the really unmotivated, I'm currently working with some sharp minds to create a website, tentatively called "The Recommendation Generator". It will feature a catalog of recommendation templates for users to play with. e.g. haiku recommendations; recommendations from famous historical figures; recommendations from movie characters; recommendations that rhyme. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, here is sample recommendation template that will be sure to add heaps of attractiveness to any candidate. Just cut and paste, fill in the name and title of the interested party and incorporate into appropriate professional social media sites like Linkedin.

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Brain-teaser Monday brought to you by Merriam Webster.

Which New York City mayor got his words horribly wrong?

• Fiorello H. Laguardia.
• David N. Dinkins.
  
• Edward I. Koch.
• Rudolf W. Giuliani.
• John V. Lindsey.
• Michael R. Bloomberg.
• William Jay Gaynor
• Robert A. Van Wyck.
  

Answer to last week's brain-teaser: Kills all known germs - DEAD; I can't believe it's not butter; Drivers wanted; You're in good hands with Allstate; Put a tiger in your tank; Finger linkin good; Australians wouldn't give a XXXX for anything else; Please don't squeeze the Charmin; Keep walking; It's a Skoda. Honest; Beware the penguins; A diamond is forever; Capitalist tool

Let's try this again.

Here's a project by Canon that promises to be a real treat. A piece of branded-entertainment wrapped around a fresh center of crowd-sourcing. "The Story Behind the Still" is a film competition encouraging creative types to make their own short films based around a still image. It's the film version of one those cooking shows with a secret ingredient. Sort of.

Filmmaker Vincent Laforet kicks off the competition with the intro short film, which he shot on one of Canon's latest HD cameras. This is where the branded part comes in. Not sure exactly what cameras the crowd are supposed to shoot with, but I doubt it has to be a Canon.

Now I know what you're thinking. "Shiraz, you're a two-faced weasel. Wasn't it just twenty four hours ago that you exposed us to the ugly side of crowd-sourcing. Those so-called Doritos commercials will haunt us for the rest of our lives. And now you're pushing more of it."

So why am I so full of anticipation in this case. To put it bluntly, I believe the make up of the crowd will make for more engaging content. I may be wrong, but I'm pretty darn sure that this competition will attract a more skilled, creatively focused set of participants. Creating thirty seconds of "Doritos love" is one thing. An original short film is quite another. I should know, I've tried and failed horribly!

More importantly though, I believe, and I'm not the first person to say this and won't be the last unless the world ends NOW............So as I was saying, this competition should demonstrate that crowd-sourcing works best when the crowd is "niched". Or to put it another way, the more concentrated the pool with like-minded talent, skill and experience the better the content.

Kudos to Grey, Vincent Laforet and Vimeo, the folks behind the still.

(Sharing credit to jawbone.tv)

Crash and burn.

In an October 26th, 2009 post titled, "Advertising's Public Option" I said, "So no more sneering from me. I say let the consumer have their fun and flex their creative muscles."

The comment was in defense of consumer crowd-sourcing and related specifically to Doritos's 2009 "Crash the Superbowl Party" promotion.

Well, the six finalists for this year's (2010) competition have been announced and having just suffered through their viewing, perhaps I spoke too soon. The work is shockingly bad. I mean CACA. If you like ingesting fresh road kill then by all means have a peek. But don't say I didn't warn you.

Maybe I should retract by saying, "Consumer - stand back from all writing materials. Keep the power button in the off position on your cameras, you've done enough damage thank you very much. Asshole!"

Well, not exactly. I still believe in the value of crowd-sourcing. People had their fun. Doritos probably got the necessary branding boost they wanted. The fact is that from a creative content point of view crowd-sourcing will work better in some cases more than in others.

Off course, another indirect even unintended value of crowd-sourcing is that it may just illustrate clearly how difficult it is to create smart/effective/entertaining/original/challenging/humorous advertising. The truth is that it can only really flourish in the hands of a few.

Still one of the best ever....

It didn't make my top five of the decade, but it would have made my top six. One of the stellar viral campaigns of the early 00's. Kudos to The Viral Factory.

Where's the bollocks?

The Outdoor Advertising Association in Britain is feeling rather pleased with itself. They've just launched a campaign they hope will show that outdoor advertising still has relevance in the digital age. Especially since, according to Google research offline initiatives are still an essential catalyst for driving traffic online.

So, for the next two weeks controversial "conversation starters" will be tossed directly at the British public from buses, billboards and posters. The aim simply is to provoke them onto a website called britainthinks.com, where they can continue the conversation with their fellow opinionated citizens.

What a splendid brief. As someone brought up in the age of traditional advertising, I more than empathize with the need to constantly prove one's relevance. But more importantly, I live for eliciting  emotional responses from the public. Glen Beck, the poor man's Howard Beale, is my anti-hero. (remind me how Network ends again).

Imagine the letdown then. A headline like, "Career women make bad mothers" might seem snotty, but will it stir up feminist rage. Will working women of the UK rip of their panties in protest as they safari their way to britainthinks.com. Alas, I doubt it.

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It's my blog so I'll self-promote if I want to.

The brief was simple. Get potential tourists to experience New York City in a fresh way. The solution was to create a website built around an interactive film featuring two young lovers who explore and observe the city through their own eyes. At various stages during the film, the viewer can see exactly what they are discovering, thinking, feeling.

In the first six months after the website went live, five billion people visited New York City Visits to New York City jumped appreciably following the start of the campaign. And I'm not including my parents.

The film was directed by Mike Figgis. The overall concept was conceived and executed by the team at M&C Saatchi/NY including yours truly.

Brain-teaser Monday.

These famous taglines are all mixed-up. Unmix to restore them to their former glories.

• Kills all known Australians - DEAD.
• I can't believe it's not good.
• Finger wanted.
• You're in butter hands with Allstate.
• Put a capitalist in your tank.
• Charmin lickin good.
• Tiger wouldn't give a XXXX for anything else.
  
• Please don't squeeze the penguins.
• Drivers walking.
• Keep germs.
• It's a diamond. Honest.
• Beware the Skoda.
• A tool is forever.

Answer to last week's brain-teaser: b) my website