A Blog You Should Be Reading

Lunar BBDO has been returned to blogging after a brief hiatus and man are they ever back. I've always considered their blog among the best for thought provoking reading, but in the last week or so they've took it to a whole other level. Here's some samples from my favorite posts as of late:


What if we treated all art forms like advertising?
Here at Lunar, we think advertising gives itself a bit of a hard time. As we ambled to the loo this morning, we starting humming All Along The Watchtower and it occurred to us that Jimi's version is much better than Dylan's, and no one said he ripped it off. Music doesn't mind when you take one person's creativity (generally with credit and money involved) and add something to it to make it better. Imagine if you saw a nice little ad while on holiday in Lisbon, bunged the creators a bit of cash and credited them in awards, then remade their idea better. Happier clients, better advertising, the originators get a wider audience for their work and some extra pay. Where's the downside?

A small admission gains a large acceptance.
In The Copy Book, David Abbott condenses this phenomenon into the sentence, 'a small admission gains a large acceptance', i.e.: putting your own experiences into your work can result in a powerful piece of advertising because many people can relate to it more deeply. David mentioned that when AMV was pitching for a travel company, he remembered that his wife told him that she knew she was on holiday because one application of nail polish could last a fortnight (as opposed to when she had to do housework and the polish chipped off quickly). He turned that into a headline that helped to win the pitch

The difference between a great ad and a great creative.
When we evaluate an ad we often confuse the quality of the finished work with the quality of its originators. This can lead to derision of an excellent commercial because its origins are more obvious than those of other ads.

However, if we could take a little step back, we'd acknowledge the fact that D&AD rewards the 'most outstanding commercial 60 seconds or over' etc., not most creative team.

This distinction is crucial and, goddamit, we're going to explain why

So if you don't currently read Lunar BBDO's blog, you're missing out because If this is a blog then what's Christmas?

Not getting enough political commercials?

Maybe you're not inundated with political commercials, or maybe you want to relive a bygone era when commercials were honest (or check to see if they ever were.) In either case, check out The Living Room Candidate, which is an archive of every presidential campaign TV commercial since 1952. Enjoy or avoid, your choice.

Zeus Jones Upgrades Their Site

Zeus Jones of Minneapolis is kicking it up a notch in the agency website department. Their new site features live feeds (twitter, delicious, etc) from employees, something called "From the Head of Zeus Jones", and basically a whole bunch of information and fun stuff that is putting most other agency sites to shame. Agencies take note: no flash intro or lengthy mission / vision statements. Rather it's a real time look into the agency along with a source of some interesting info about Zeus Jones that you'd expect on a site. In other words, I actually want to come back from time to time to check it out and see what's changed.
(via AdFreak)

Things Younger than John McCain

Do you ever look at John McCain and wonder, is Buddy Holly younger? Well now you don't have to wonder anymore because the site www.thingsyoungerthanmccain.com is here!
(via View from the Bottom)

And just in case you needed a little more McCain in your diet:

New Karsh / Hagan site looks pretty good

Denver ad agency Karsh / Hagan has new site up and I like it.

...Oh, you'd like a better description than that? Well, for starters it loads quickly. I'm sick of agency sites with 30 or even 10 second load times. They're rarely ever worth the wait since once it does load you're subject to a masturbation of flash capabilities: "Look what I can do". But I digress.

So Karsh / Hagan has kept it simple and clean and it's all easy to navigate and read (text so big even a blind person could read it). So what are you waiting for? Go check it out!
(via Create and Connect)

Previously in websites: Topic 101 will blow your mind, The Arcade Fire: Black Mirror, Learn some fancy kissing moves

Topic 101 will blow your mind

Topic 101 is a research firm that specializes in surveying students. I'd found them a while back working on a project for class and now CA has gone and refreshed my memory. They also happen to have one hell of a website. They have random videos playing full screen in the background of menus and floating navigation buttons with still more videos inside them. If you view this on an older computer there's a 101% chance of it spontaneously catching fire.

NOLAF: Putting the FU back in Fun

NOLAF is a fantastic site developed by Mekanism and Element79 for Doritos / Tostitos. Their mission is to eradicate humor, and the results are pretty funny. (via Adrants)