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3 creative advertisements of 2011

There’s a great post on Pokkisam.com rouding up the year’s most creative adverts, there were some really funny ads and really creative uses of imagery. Here’s my top three:

Brilliant advert for band-aid, with one of my favourite characters Hulk.

Simple and amusing – “wi-fries” from McDonalds (see what I did there?)

Cool update of a KitKat ad which got a lot of attention back in 2008.

To see more creative ads check out the Pokkisam post.

Related articles

• Advertising Isn’t Dead – The Creative Process Is (kherize5.com)

The Trend of Precocious Boys in Viral Social Ads

This week has seen Google release an ad to promote the new Galaxy Nexus which uses Android Ice Cream Sandwich as its operating system. The ad features a precocious young boy trying to unlock the phone. The ad is quite cute and it seems to follow a recent trend in adverts with no dialogue, dramatic music and precocious children.

Step forward the Volkswagen Super bowl ad in which a young lad is practising his Star Wars power:

Further adding to this trend is the Christmas 2011 advert from John Lewis, showing a little lad who can’t wait for the big ‘C’:

And so finally to the Google Ad; boys and their toys?

I do think the unlock feature looks pretty smart even if I’m not a big fan of the precocious boy themed ad. The question is why is there this theme, answers in a comment below please.

Related articles

• Google Shows Soft Side in Ad for Ice Cream Sandwich [VIDEO] (mashable.com)
• UK’s favourite viral ads of 2011 listed (techradar.com)
• The Volkswagen Darth Vader Advert: Was It A Success? (epiphanysolutions.co.uk)

Featured image by http://www.androidpit.com.

The Five Minute Fondle [infographic]

The infographic that can help save your life, this takes a great approach to information on Breast Cancer, loads of fun facts about a serious issue on here, nice one CoppaFeel.

Social Commerce Psychology [infographic]

Social commerce is a big talking point at present, particularly now that brand pages have been released across most social media sites – Facebook, G+ and recently Twitter.

This infographic by tabjuice.com gives us some insight into the consumer buying behaviour for social commerce.

Finding websites

Image via Wikipedia

Anyone who works online will undoubtedly have used google at some point. Not everyone is aware of the different features available from google so here’s a quick overview of features that I find most useful for finding appropriate sites to advertise on:

related:  – This feature enables you to search for similar sites. This is ideal if you’re looking to place a widget or skyscraper banner, as you can find sites that will suit your target audience. e.g. related:www.yoursitename.com

~ (synonym) - This feature allows you to search for the keyword and its synonym’s, again this is useful if your searching a particular niche, for example ~car sales also includes van sales i it’s search results.

+ - not related to Google Plus, but this feature allows you to include a specific term, so if you’re searching for a term that must include two things such as salt+and pepper.

From time to time it is also useful to use a few different sources to find appropriate ad sites such as:

technorati.com - This site provides a list of top blogs based on any niche you identify, you can search by posts or by blogs.

Bing.com – Although another search engine, results often differ to that of Google, so you may find some decent sites that Google hasn’t referred you to.

Online Tools – Making Banners, Flash Ad’s & Buttons

A great online tool for producing pretty much any type of online ad banner possible would definitely be worth a look for businesses with smaller budgets, who perhaps can only stretch to media spend and not creative.

Fear not such a tool does exist in the form of Banner Snack. Simply sign up, or if you’d prefer connect via Twitter, Google ID, Flickr etc and then you’re all set.

The functionality is very straightforward to anyone who’s ever resized a photo, written a blog post, uploaded an image et cetera et cetera..here’s what i came up with:

Using Negative Space for a Logo

Bison Logo via Vector Tuts+

Recently I’ve been working on some logo’s for a consultancy firm who are re branding. Although not a designer myself, the concept and ultimately the creation of a logo for a brand is something that really interests me.

Traditionally a brand or branding involved ‘labelling’ your cattle with a stamp, and the term branding has evolved over the years from this to now standing for the identity of something. As written by brandingstrategyinsider.com a brand isn’t simply a logo, it encompasses a number of things: name, sign, symbol, colour, belief, even a slogan. Essentially the brand is the personality of the company, and forms the point at which a consumer can identify the product/ service or company.

How a company chooses it’s logo is key to how that company will be able to use the logo, and I think this is where a lot of SME’s fall down. The significance of the use of a logo when establishing a brand can often be overlooked by people wanting the prettiest or most contemporary design. Not taking into account the effect that a complex image has when reduced in size (as brands often are), it is at this stage when companies should be creating brand guidelines – not once they’ve got the logo/symbol etc but before they brief the graphic designer.

As shown on the Graphic Design Blog it is then the designers job to design something that stands out whilst ticking all the boxes of what the company stands for, something clean, simple and most importantly – memorable. One of the interesting points outlined in the GDB blog post is the running theme of using negative space in a logo to help represent what the brand stands for.

Top 3 Infographics

Having recently used infographics for a client I’m becoming increasingly interested in them and how they can visualise data and information. A great site for infographics dealing with social media and online marketing is Flowtown. Really useful for including in pitches/ interviews/ presentations.

Here are my top 3 marketing infographics from their site:

Addicted to the Internet

ROI of Your Mum

Everybody's Doing It!

Bacardi Confusion

Without doubt quite a few of you will have seen the latest campaign from Bacardi. The ad encourages consumers to make a status update in person.

Photo from Marketingmasterinsights.com

The version of the ad can also be seen at the cinema, and focuses on consumers avoiding LOL and OMG, by going back to our Homo Sapien behaviour. The interesting thing about the ad is that it suggests avoiding social media – perhaps Bacardi don’t want to join the social media bandwagon? However the call to action at the end of the film is for consumers to visit facebook.com/bacardi. This seems strange as this is exactly what consumers are told to avoid. Confused? Me too….

Watch the Ad at DCM.co.uk

Google Vs Bing – the infographic

This is a great infographic that I found on infogen. I found it relatively impartial….