sparking curious mind

"Adobe's desktop brand system is a pragmatic & systematic approach to creating a cohesive functional visual language carried across our hundred products and their thousands of branded icons and screens. With a specific emphasis on clarity and legibility, this system expresses a singular focus of better enabling our customers and their work.
Our approach is pragmatic and utilitarian, literally "less is more". We have created a concise and coherent unified language in a deceivingly simple and highly distinctive visual system – from the branded desktop work through to interface and product design. Top-level point products (authoring environments eg. Photoshop, Illustrator, etc) follow a two-letter mnemonic 'nickname' system as their primary identifier... A product's icons are paired with a specific color, usually based on historical color association (Flash is red, Dreamweaver is green) and familied within a particular vertical. This color association is carried throughout the product's desktop brand in lieu of 'primary imagery', from install screens through app icons and reinforced through details on document and supporting icons." - John Nack on Adobe

Using video and authentic personal ads to promote jeans, Diesel and Wysiwyg employ Web 2.0 tactics. The page transforms into a real personals section. If the user is looking for a date, then he/she can send a photo and profile to the site gallery and, who knows, someone looking for a partner may contact them.

Gareth Kay (Modernista) and Mark Lewis (DDB, San Francisco) came out with this rather interesting list. They will elaborate on the subject at the AAAA Account Planning Conference in San Diego, next week.
I confess, I'm a sinner. Not because I commit the sins described above, but for not being good enough to help my clients understand that they are sinners, too.

via darkgate

I've stumbled upon this great Rudyard Kipling's quote. I think it should be in every planner's mind as a guiding lighthouse.

"I keep six honest serving-men (They taught me all I knew); Their names are What and Why and When And How and Where and Who."- Rudyard Kipling, The Elephant's Child (1902)

Odd dark future in which people still remain human beings and, despite all the technological advances, make normal human errors. Marcel, carefully built a new campaign for Diesel - "Human after all".








Advertising Agency: Marcel, Paris, France
Creative directors: Anne de Maupeou, Frederic Temin
Copywriters: Eric Jannon, Dimitri Guerassimov
Art directors: Nicolas Chauvin, Romin Favre
Photographer : Johan Renck

I haven't posted anything for a while because I'm going through a lot of changes lately. Mom underwent a difficult surgery last week. Everything went well and now she's recovering very good. Hopefully, she will be out of danger and on her feet soon enough. I have to give a special thanks to everyone which showed support and offered comfort. It meant a lot to me and my Mom! You guys, my dear friends, rock! I'm privileged to have you. I love you with my whole heart!

On the other, more positive, hand, I've changed jobs. As of today I'm the newest member of the great team of Grapefruit, one of the finest brand consultancy in Romania. I'm am very excited about this new adventure! Hopefully, we will produce some great work together. I know, for one, that I'll do the best work I can.

So, I'm back on track and with added energy and enthusiasm!

Web 2.0 is founded on seven key Characteristics: Participation, Standards, Decentralization, Openness, Modularity, User Control, and Identity.

Web 2.0 is expressed in two key Domains: the Open web, and the Enterprise.

The heart of Web 2.0 is how it converts Inputs (User Generated Content, Opinions, Applications), through a series of Mechanisms (Technologies, Recombination, Collaborative Filtering, Structures, Syndication) to Emergent Outcomes that are of value to the entire community.

more here

Three new ads from Dalbir, for British Council Budapest.

Love story, Treasure and Wanted.

Advertising Agency: Ogilvy & Mather, Budapest, Hungary
Executive Creative Director: Dalbir Singh
Creative Director: Gabor Spielmann
Art Director: Eric Napier, Dalbir Singh
Copywriter: Dalbir Singh
Illustrator: Melinda Szentpetery, Amsterdam

A range of 15 new wines is being rolled out to pubs using Carlsberg's distribution service.

Under the brand name Invenio, the portfolio is exclusive to Carlsberg's on-trade customers, and has been sourced from countries and regions around the world including California, South Africa, and Australia. Packaging features details of the country of origin along with the varietal, plus tasting notes.

Carlsberg UK wine buyer Louise Boddington said: "Invenio offers outstanding, reasonably priced wine. It gives our trade customers the opportunity to retail a range of Old and New World styles for their customers at outstanding value for money under an on-trade exclusive label."

SiebertHead has created the branding identity for Invenio, which is Latin for, "to discover", including the gold font and design for the product's red, white and rose ranges. Artist Ruth Palmer has created eight illustrations featuring landscape designs to denote the country of origin for each wine.

Invenio white wines are produced from three varieties of grape. Invenio Chenin Blanc comes from South Africa, Sauvignon Blanc from Chile and Chardonnay from the United States. Of the red wines, Tempranillo is Spanish, Montepulciano d’Abruzzo Italian and Shiraz Australian.

Tuborg, movies, parties, the right formula to chill your summer.

Is the new drink from Fosters worth dipping your hand in a bucket of snakes? Maybe if you're Cold Blooded enough.

According to the “Internet and Multimedia 2007″ report by Edison Media Research and Arbitron, the internet has become increasingly important to US consumers as a medium for information and entertainment, and is approaching the level of television in being “most essential”.

As you can see in the above chart, the internet already leads television among those age 12-17, 18-24, 25-34, and 35-44. Only above age 45 do any age groups still put television in first place.

“It is not a stretch to say that the Internet has become just as important as television as an important source of information and entertainment in the lives of Americans,” said Larry Rosin, president of Edison Media Research.

I bet that in five years time the internet will be the most essential medium for entertainment and info.

Does this says "tender" to you? This is a new brand from Transavia, a chicken meat producer from Romania. The brand name is Fragedo, suggesting tenderness, freshness etc. Well, at least that's what I suppose they meant to convey. To me it sounds more like green. It doesn't make me think of "fresh chicken meat". But that's me.

Brandient is responsible for the design and naming. Transavia expects(ro) a 20% rise in total turnover with the new brand.

What do you think about the new brand, Fragedo?

"Fear. The prevailing corporate climate is one of fear. There is a difference between fear and being afraid. It makes sense to be afraid because it can guide you to do the right thing. Maybe if you're lucky it pushes you into action because you are afraid to be mediocre. Fear, on the other hand, creates paralysis. And to be successful you have to have the courage to act." - Alex Bogusky, Chief Creative Officer, CRISPIN PORTER + BOGUSKY

This is a slideshow from a workshop at the Communication Summer School, oraganized by local AIESEC branch for their members and other students from marketing and communication disciplines.
I've been invited to talk about brand communication, ideas and the briefing process. I gave them some work to based on a brief. I've had a lot of fun, in spite of the heat. I like their enthusiasm, even though I expected them to have more courage and initiative.
All in all, a very pleasant experience.

If Marketing 1.0 was mostly about print collateral, then Marketing 1.5 moved to the web brochure, and Marketing 2.0 is about the entire online experience. In Marketing 2.0, you no longer have tight control of a polished, coherent message stream.

In effect, marketing is turning into a myriad of interlocking conversations between people inside and outside the company. Blogs and online communities give individuals a loud voice in conversations about products and brands, while keyword-based marketing is changing the way corporations disseminate their messages.

In truth, the conversations were always out there, in coffee shops, book club meetings, over the garden fence, at the corner store; millions of conversations are going on about hundreds of topics relevant to your company every day. The extraordinary thing today is that you can literally watch these conversations as they unfold online.

This an ad from Women's Wear Daily. It's a scathing letter from Chanel warning people of misusing the Chanel name or logo in any way. So watch your language! Their lawyers mean business.

via

This is a video made in Connected Ventures, a company that develops and maintains Vimeo, busted tees, Defunker, College Humor and Crazewire. Brilliant!

via

"You're going to have so many versions of ads, and you're going to have so many media decisions to make with the fragmentation of the media. How is a human going to be able to process that amount of information?"
- Mark Read, director of strategy for WPP Group

According to the data collected by Forrester, there are more "spectators" and "joiners" then "creators" on the internet. The web looks very young, the most active age groups are those between 18 and 26.

This pretty cool news! Just found out that Starcom Bucharest won a Silver Lion for their campaign "1 in 8 women - Breast Cancer Crusade" for Avon.
Congratulations guys! Well done! Especially if you think that Starcom is a media agency. Now let's see how this will affect the Romanian advertising. Hopefully will we have more innovative, inspiring and creative ideas.

Update: Second Lion for Romania. Bronze for Mandra milk, "The Note - 2". Excellent use of media. Well done GMP!

"Business managers seem to believe that, once they've clicked through a PowerPoint presentation showcasing their conclusions, they've successfully communicated their ideas. What they've done is share data."

- Chip Heath & Dan Heath, authors of „Made To Stick”

You feint! And made them look the other way!

Apparently I have good copy writing skills. That's according to Advanced Marketing Institute's headline analyzer.
They say that "Sparking Curious Mind" appeals equally to people's intellectual and empathetic spheres. I didn't know that I have such abilities :)

Precious little ad for Honda Motorcycles.
Directed by Alex Laubscher, and produced by Independent

I've just got back from the Idea Forum, a 2 days event about innovative theories in marketing, advertising, digital and media. Thanks to Cristi, I've had the opportunity to listen to the likes of Faris Yakob, Russell Davies, Iain Tait, Keith Lewin and Chris Jackson. Also there where a bunch of Romanian advertising professionals talking about their view on the shift happening right now on the way brands communicate. Or should, at least.

This was, probably, the best conference I've been in Romania so far. There were less PR presentations and lots of little things that inspired me a great lot. A wonderful experience!

At the conference I've got the chance to meet some bloggers I've already knew and meet knew ones which blogs I read but didn't get the chance to meet offline. A very fresh and pleasant experience. I will come back later with some notes from the event.