You know when you were little and you went to your Grandparent’s house and listened for hours about what life was like, ‘in their day’? They used tin baths, outside loos and they didn’t have a telly. It sounded alien, especially the telly bit. I used to spend hours wondering just what they did to fill their time. Well, I suppose families were bigger back then.
It never occurred to me that stories I tell to my kids would make me appear just as archaic. I’m only 35, but it’s happened already. I was telling my 6 year old the story about how we didn’t have a telephone in our house when we were growing up. There was a phone booth at the end of the street that took 2 pence pieces and I used to organise my teenage social life from there. It would ring out and either be picked up by me at a pre-arranged time or by a local kid playing out. If it was the latter there would be a knock at the door of number 7, where I lived or a shout up at my bedroom window, “Helen, someone’s rung for you, it’s Louise.” I would put my shoes on and run down to the phone and spend hours racking up Louise’s Dad’s telephone bill.
Whilst catching some Xmas sunshine it was really interesting to see how South Africa is preparing for the 2010 World Cup in particular in the many townships.
The FNB is the national bank of South Africa a major sponsor of the 2010 Fifa World Cup, and in line with its sponsorship of the much-anticipated event, is transforming the skyline of several of the host cities. With some larger than life outdoor building wrap advertising campaigns in some of South Africas largest townships.
The most striking of these building wraps had to be the ones that I saw on my visit to Soweto – the largest township in South Africa. Here two of the four huge cooling towers, which belong to a currently decommissioned power station, carry FNB’s 2010 Fifa World Cup branding. The artworks are reproduced on canvas – about 12 800m2 of it – and the wraps weigh between 700 and 900kg each. Apparently the whole project took 12 000 litres of paint, and it took the team 720 hours each to complete their sections. Each tower is 60m high with a circumference of 120m at the bottom and 70m at the top.
What do you get if you cross Zimbabwean cave paintings, blaxploitation and elephant dung? Chris Ofili’s retrospective at the Tate, that’s what.
I went to see this exhibition a couple of weeks ago. I like to try and see modern art whenever I can. It’s one of the many ways I kid myself that I’m an intellectual. I like the challenge of standing in front of something I don’t really understand, and seeing what I make of it.
The Chris Ofili exhibition is certainly challenging.
Yes it’s still freezing outside, personally I’m getting a bit fed up of scraping my car every morning but not to worry, we’ve got something that might brighten things up a bit…
Marisota is warming up our living rooms and launching us into this spring summer fashion season with its new DRTV commercial. With a little help from Director, Simon Lewis and The Gate Films, we’re confident the ad will do the trick and shake you out those winter blues.
The summer season campaign is always hard to produce as the concepting, planning and filming all take place over the festive period, when the warmth and sunshine of summer couldn’t be further from your mind while you’re dithering in sub-zero conditions in Manchester. But with a team full of great ideas it wasn’t long before we cracked it and brought to life our theatrical-themed concept, ‘The Marisota Show’.
I really like reading. My problem is I buy books faster than I can read them. The drawers on my bedside cabinet are buckling under the weight of unread hardbacks, paperbacks, novels and non-fiction. I’ll be honest it’s starting to get me down a bit. Too much to read, too little time. Your customers have the same problem…
They’re bombarded with things to read every day. So if you’re planning on adding to their pile, you’ve got to make sure it’s easy to read. And there is one very simple way of doing just that.
About five minutes walk from our Manchester office in Salford Quays there is the fabulous Lowry Gallery and Theatre… not far beyond that, over a bridge, is the Imperial War Museum North which is currently showing a fabulous exhibition by the very talented Don McCullin, who is rightly regarded as one of the world’s best photographers.
For more than 50 years, McCullin’s images have shaped our awareness of modern conflict and its consequences. His courage and integrity, as well as the exceptional quality of his work, are a continuing inspiration and influence worldwide.
The search engines are always trying to find ways to tempt the user into using their specific site. After all, they are in it to make money, lots of money, buckets of the stuff in fact. Mark my words and mark them well. In the future we will all live and work at the whim of GoogleCorp… until that day, there is some competition in the shape of Microsoft’s oddly named Bing!
Now last year amid much fanfare and cries of invaded privacy (who can forget the poor guy caught leaving a house of ill repute) Google launched ‘Google street view’ a thoroughly marvellous piece of photo tomfoolery that allowed you to walk a virtual mile through any major city in the U.S. and then the UK and Europe.
Usually a weekend in London with the girls is messy, full of mojitos, dancing and cupcakes! However, last month we decided that we needed to immerse ourselves in a bit of culture and headed off to the Digital Decode exhibition at the V&A (after the mojitos and cupcakes). A brilliant afternoon and well worth a visit. The exhibition showcases the latest digital design sensations – everything from digitally growing plants to mechanical eyes that mirror your gaze. The exhibition was split into three: Code, Network and Interactivity.
When I was a kid I used to absolutely love spending time on the sofa, headphones firmly stuck to my head, listening to a wide variety of LPs that were stacked in in the corner of our living room. I’d spend hours listening to a wide variety of music staring intently at the album covers as the music drifted into my ears and allowed my mind to create stories influenced by the pictures on the album art in front of me.
Now… I’m not going to confess what albums I used to listen to as a child, although am sure if my sister read this she would happily divulge the musical crimes of my youth (Mr Roboto by Styx may appear in that list of crimes), but one of the many album artists that had a profound impact on my imagination growing up was the incredibly talented Storm Thorgerson.
Like a lot of agencies, at Red C we have some great ideas that never see the light of day… sometimes I think it would have been great to have saved up all the politically incorrect, subversive and downright funny ideas we’ve come up with over the years and put them on Youtube… but since we didn’t, I thought I’d make you smile and highlight some incredibly funny joke adverts that only a very brave client would dare to try and run.
First up has to be this classic Yellow Pages advert from the very funny 70’s film ‘The Grove Tube’. The ‘Groove Tube’ is well worth checking out for the hilarious Kramp TV Kitchen and the KoKo Clown Show, which if you have young children, will make you think twice about leaving them alone watching a friendly Clown on TV… think twice though before watching ‘Brown 25 from Uranus’.
You know when you were little and you went to your Grandparent’s house and listened for hours about what life was like, ‘in their day’? They used tin baths, outside loos and they didn’t have a telly. It sounded alien, especially the telly bit. I used to spend hours wondering just what they did to fill their time. Well, I suppose families were bigger back then.
Like a lot of agencies, at Red C we have some great ideas that never see the light of day… sometimes I think it would have been great to have saved up all the politically incorrect, subversive and downright funny ideas we’ve come up with over the years and put them on Youtube… but since we didn’t, I thought I’d make you smile and highlight some incredibly funny joke adverts that only a very brave client would dare to try and run.
