No man can serve two masters

Testing colour to the limit

Testing colour to the limit, originally uploaded by Sony United Kingdom.

http://www.highdefinition.sony.eu/

Big Macs and Planners turn 40

Amusingly, it turns out that both Big Macs and Account Planners were invented 40 years ago exactly. Perhaps Steve and Stan dreamed it all up, gazing into each others' perceptive eyes across a burger bar on rainy Friday evening.

Hang on a minute, were Steve and Stan account men?

The withering rejoinder

The Media Futures conference I went to the other week, reminded me of a little phrase that a planner I used to work with (Abe) said was invaluable. The basic idea is that whenever anyone makes some claim or tries to peddle you a message, the immediate response to this should be 'so what'.

This 'withering rejoinder' as Dr Brian Winston put it, is the acid test for whether any innovation really is likely to change the society it goes into. It is also the thing that every person asks themselves whenever they see your marketing hyperbole.

Use the 'so what?' test next time. You will see it works.

UT Loop

Check out UT Loop

Now hear the word of the Lord... 2.0

Sorenta Shakedown - Sony Ericsson / Vodafone campaign

This is the final result of the little trip to Rome at the end of October. The site is live in across all the markets now, and the ads are live. The celebratory bottle of Limoncello will be breached shortly...

Some nice flash actionscripting of the shake function on the phone - I think it's called SenseMe. Get the old boy's hang-dog expression. I love it.

We used a tobacco filter on this shot. At least that's what they told me while I was busy carrying the bags, drinking coffee and scoffing Italian cakes.

Very pleased with the end result - especially amazing was the shoestring budget managed to stretch to about 15 crew on set, plus all the cast, a grade in the Framestore and subtitling in eight languages!

However, the project is unlikely to be contributing in any meaningful way into Mark Collier's holiday fund.

A mountain of meat

Following the immense amount of meat we ate on the shoot in Rome this week, this ad from Negroni brings back happy, albeit bloated, memories. With thanks to boredom is your fault.

Full ads available at I believe in advertising.

Lewis and Fernando: Dream Chasers

We've been working on this video podcast for the last couple of months, short videos from the pre-season build up with Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso - surprisingly it has picked up massively over the last few days. Not sure why.

You can find it at iTunes or via Feedburner

Is this exploitative?

Virgin Mobile in Australia have set up a site "are you with us or what" that is built almost entirely around photographs from Flickr that have a creative commons license.

I guess that's what you get when you license your photos for all to use as they wish, but is it a problem if a brand does it to make money?

Poster from Bath this weekend

Join us for a bit of son worship this summer, by mattyboomboom.

As seen outside a church in Bath city centre on Sunday. Note the 'Sure' style sun Jesus tan marks on their backs. Like they've been touched by tongues of holy fire.