Don't understand Social Media and don't want to read a long, boring explanation? The guys at despair.com have the perfect explanation in their Social Media Tee. Go have a look at their site, really funny t-shirts.
For those that haven't heard of it, What The Duck is a comic strip by Aaron Johnson in which the main character is a photographer duck. It's really cool and one of the highlights in my RSS feed every morning. It always makes me laugh and usually it also makes me think. I recommend it to everyone, but it'll be especially enjoyed by photographers, designers, painters, or artist of any kind.
I found this one particularly funny. Having been on both client and agency side, I have to admit I've been in this situation many times. On both ends.
As a client, you tend to kinda-maybe-sorta know what you want (although whatever that is may very well not be what you actually need), and you usually suck at explain what it is anyway. Oh, but you do need to know how much it'll cost right now so you can manage your budgets. It seems terribly silly, but there's a reason for that. Clients hire agencies (or freelancers) precisely for this reason. They have a vague idea of the requirements but rely on the artistic genius of the creatives to come up with the solution. On the other hand, the creatives either want the perfect brief or think they know it all and their "art" cannot be compromised, so they become a pain in the but.
In this create-on-demand world, creatives and clients that understand each other and respect each others strengths will always produce the best results. If only that was as easy as it sounds.
Anyway, direct link to the above strip is What The Duck #725: "Tap Dancing". Go visit. And subscribe.
Chanel N°5 has been doing a combination of short film and TV ad as a form of branded entertainment marketing for a while now. They've been pretty good so far, definitely much better than watching the normal 30 second TV ad that nobody cares for. At least these are beautifully shot, tell a story, and are actually entertaining.
These short films usually pair a good film director with a famous actor, and in this latest one it's Jean-Pierre Jeunet with Audrey Tautou, who worked together before in Amelie
Anyway, another interesting point (at least for me), is that there's a scene where Audrey is very obviously shooting with a Leica M8 digital rangefinder
The photography community online is all over this one and it seems to be getting quite a buzz in forums and blogs. Hey, I'm writing about it also. Seems to me like a much better way of marketing a product. Produce a very high quality piece of entertainment that's truly entertaining, put it "out there" on the web where people can watch it when they want to, embed it in their blogs and Facebook pages, and pass it on to their friends (as opposed to annoyingly interrupting a show on TV), and link brands to attract niche audiences at the same time. Maybe it's just because I'm into photography and I'm looking too much into it, but from what I've read online this ad has done a pretty good job of generating positive buzz for both Chanel N°5 and Leica amongst photographers, wether this was intentional or not. I'm sure many photographers will buy their partners Chanel N°5 for their birthdays just because of this film.
Interesting. I assume it was done for the web as it's too long for traditional broadcasting, which makes it even cooler. The best part is that they don't even try to pretend it's real, which makes it even funnier.
Over at the HotHouse Blog, Simon van Wyk posted a very interesting article about why Interactive agencies should stop trying to behave like advertising agencies.
Definitely worth a read.
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