Honda Cog Ad: Isn’t It Nice When Things Just Work?

Simple ad by Honda…. or is it?

New York School Of Visual Arts: THINK Campaign

Cool, cool stuff. Always on your feet, thinking. While eating, thinking, While drinking, thinking. Even while taking a dump, thinking. Think harder! 

Created by KNARF, a US-based advertising agency, for the New York School of Visual Arts. Strategically placed in areas where people are most contemplative. It’s an interactive campaign that encourages whoever sees it to use and write on it. Awesome.

Advertising Agency: KNARF New York, USA 

Creative Director: Frank Anselmo 

Art Directors: Jeseok Yi, Frank Anselmo

Copywriters: Frank Anselmo, Jeseok Yi

Photographer: Billy Siegrist

*EDIT: I noticed that I’ve been using cool & great so much, I can’t help it. So much neat stuff out there. I’m trying to do some neat stuff in my own way, so hopefully I will have something worthy to post.

New Adidas Campaign: March Is A Brotherhood

For those that follow basketball religiously, y’all know what March is all about. Forget the NBA for a minute. It’s March Madness baby!

March Madness aka THE BIG DANCE, the term to describe the NCAA basketball championship tournament. 65 teams, one game each, you lose, you’re out.

Last year’s tournament was awesome, with the Kansas Jayhawks taking the big W over the Memphis Tigers. Mario Chalmers, now playing for the Miami Heat, hitting the clutch 3 to send the game into OT, winning over eventual NBA first pick Derrick Rose. This year shouldn’t disappoint.

In support of this event, Adidas came out with a new campaign. Again, in line with their Basketball Is A Brotherhood campaign, they put out videos of KG, Josh Smith, T-Mac and Dwight Howard, all of whom skipped college (love the irony), to represent their selected college teams. The videos were “candidly” shot, with the each player, save for KG, mocking the choice for the previous player/s. Funny stuff!

Oh, and T-Mac, should really stop doing these promos and get himself correct on his health.

Here’s the official press release, along with the videos: Coming off a year that featured three adidas teams in the Final Four, including eventual champion Kansas Jayhawks, adidas looks to take Brotherhood one-step further for the 2009 NCAA Tournament by bringing current NBA stars to the locker rooms of top-ranked college programs. Kevin Garnett, Dwight Howard, Tracy McGrady and Josh Smith are featured in four videos entitled “March is a Brotherhood”, sharing their admiration and respect for the college game. Although these players leaped the college ranks, they are now reflecting on the purity of the game and celebrating the NCAA basketball brotherhood. For the Tournament, adidas Basketball is also introducing the Mad Clima – a new court shoe designed to keep adidas’ elite schools lighter and cooler during crucial tournament play. The new design offers ClimaCool technology to keep players lighter and cooler during NCAA tournament play. The “March is a Brotherhood” program and product collection launches today.

Kraft Foods Undergo Rebranding

Having one of the most recognizable logos in the world, Kraft Foods recently underwent a global rebranding, unveiling a new corporate logo. Initally set to appear in this communications and offices, it will eventually trickle down into their food products.

The new logo features a red curved line which represents a smile, which bursts into several colors at the end. Each color represents the various divisions with Kraft Foods. Along with the new logo, comes the tagline, “Make Today Delicious”. Kraft Foods’ CEO Irene Rosenfeld says that the logo was meant to give an uplifting message in our current enviroment where there is a lot of pessimism around the world. The logo was developed with inputs from consumers, employees & various stakeholders.

Changing logos will always be a difficult process to undergo. There can never be any assurances that the public will be willing to accept the new logo or be comfortable with it. Especially for a big brand like Kraft, where their logo is easily one of the most recognizable out there.

I initally didn’t like the rebranding, the font used on the logo seems a bit too faddish and doesn’t have that ‘timeless’ feel. But after reading what some of the design elements stand for. I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. Let’s see where they can take this new direction towards to. Perhaps it’s the nostalgic in me, growing up with the old logos. Reminiscing those times where I used to enjoy Kraft’s crackers with cheese or their cheese slices.

More On Reading

During the latter part of 2008, I tried to allot more time for reading and during that time I was reading Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead. Unfortunately, while I was able to read a significant part of the book, I’m still just barely past halfway through. Part of the reason is because I picked up the Absolute edition of Watchmen over the holidays in preparation for the upcoming movie. So I figured for the new year, I would try to allocate certain units of time per day specifically to reading certain books and not only when I felt like it or reading certain books that I have preference for.

So here’s my list of books that I want to finish by January and the allotted units of time for each book per day:

1.) Currently Reading -

ABSOLUTE WATCHMEN – While in its truest essence not a book, I still put this in the list. I am almost done with this, with only about 2 chapters left. Normally it takes me about one to two sittings to finish a graphic novel, but the Watchmen has taken a week or two of my time and I’m still not done. Granted I wasn’t reading it everyday.

*Allotted Time – Weekends only (Saturday & Sunday) – 1 hour per day.

THE FOUNTAINHEAD – I really want to finish this book, and I think what’s making finishing it difficult is that I don’t usually read these type of novels. I probably can finish graphic novels, fantasy/adventure and detective type stories easier. I will try to do 2 hours per day, with the exception of Thursday, because of basketball night.

*Allotted Time – Weekdays only (Monday to Friday, except Thursday) – 2 hours per day.

2.) Start Reading -

ENTREPRENEUR MAGAZINE’S STARTUP:  START YOUR OWN EVENT PLANNING BUSINESS – This was a gift from my father during the holidays. It’s a good book about event planning and I think it will help me in understanding some parts of the business better. Most of the previous events that I’ve been part of, I just pretty much learned things on the fly. Hopefully by reading this book, I shall gain a better grasp on the basics of the business and in turn, it can help boost the business of my marketing firm. It’s also perfect timing as I have one potential client that we’re trying to sell a big event to.

*Allotted Time – Weekdays (Mondays to Fridays) – At least 1 office hour per day.

3.) Next on the List -

These books are the ones I plan to read by February. The first two are actually recommended to me by my father. The first one, was recommended by him a few years ago, maybe a decade ago even. I never got around to reading it. While the latter is a recent recommendation, which I haven’t touched upon either.

GUERRILLA MARKETING BY JAY CONRAD LEVINSON – Obviously this works hand in hand with my line of business and I’ve always had interest in guerrilla marketing techniques but only realized this the past 2-3 years.

THE 8TH HABIT: FROM EFFECTIVENESS TO GREATNESS BY STEPHEN COVEY – No idea what this book is all about but we’ll see soon enough.

GOOD TO GREAT BY JIM COLLINS – As mentioned earlier, this was recommended by my uncle. Again, haven’t gotten around to reading it.

ATLAS SHRUGGED BY AYN RAND – While in the midst of reading The Fountainhead, people who I’ve had a chance to talk to about it have raved madly (slight exaggeration) about Atlas Shrugged, saying that it’s a must read. So yeah, next up!

That’s it for now, we shall see by the end of January if I am able to follow the allocated times and hopefully achieve the end goal, which is to finish the books on the list.

Welcome Back!

Before anything, I’d like to give myself a warm and cuddly ‘welcome back’ hug.

So the past 1 month or so, I have been quite inactive. I would say that it has been a busy month, but in reality that’s not the reason. The real reason is simple, I was lazy.. perhaps even a little uninspired. Which is why I have decided to make this comeback different.

I started this blog to be write about stuff that was happening in my life, stuff that interested me, stuff that inspired me. Somewhere along the way, it went wayward, it became a showcase of products and culture. It was still the stuff that I found cool but it became impersonal. It simply became a presentation, a race for hits. I was forcing some of the stuff I wrote just because I was enamored by the number of visits certain topics illicited.

For the new direction, I have decided to go back to personal stories. Less product/culture posts unless it’s something that really has an impact in my personal life. I hope to be more honest and less of a try hard.

While I was lazy in updating the blog, I actually was doing something. I opened an integrated marketing company with my friends last September 11. It hasn’t been an easy start, getting clients are quite difficult and being an upstart company,  we need to build everything from scratch, from admin to finance to HR. It’s pretty exciting though. Everyday there’s a new challenge, something unexpected, something learned. We are hoping for the best and just try to get ourselves out there. It does get difficult at times because it’s my wish that we retain our identity as a creative thinktank, however whenever you are in a business of dealing with clients, it is our job to make sure that we do by what’s right for the client and sometimes being fun, playful or quirky doesn’t always work well in achieving that goal. I hope we can find some sort of balance between two sides though, but I can see that it’s always going to be work-in-progress.

I haven’t mentioned the company name yet, I couldn’t find the right timing in the paragraph above. So allow me to say it outright now. We are Fantastik! Manila. Why Fantastik! Manila? Well, in the process of developing names, I wanted to definitely include the exclamation mark, it just felt right, something with zest and vigor! The other factor was to include the word Manila in it as a representation of our city. My main reason for this is because I noticed that the major cosmopolitan cities were always properly represented in company names such as clothing company aNYthing/a New York thing or design guild Project Tokyo. I hope that by continually representing our own metropolitan city, we can eventually have the similar impact whenever people mention Manila.

Well, that’s it for me now. Please visit our site www.fantastikmanila.com. It is currently at version 0.5, while the 1.0 version is still under development.

This Is Us, Generation Flat.

Allow me to move away from my recent posts on people, products and ideas that I enjoy and post something more critical of our current situation.

We are the new generation. A generation that I have come to term as Generation Flat. Why is that so? Let me use this quote I found which best describes Generation Flat:

Everything is on the surface; there is no deep meaning to anything, including history.

This is the era of consumerism, probably the richest man has ever been in terms of money. We are bombarded left, right, front, center and back with information, with advertisements on a daily basis. Nowhere is safe, not even the sanctity of our own bedrooms. With the internet on hand, we as consumers have been more accessible than ever before. Most households in the world already have TV and radio, soon enough computers as well. And I stress on the “s” in computers, as most homes will have more than 1 computer.

How many of us have more than 20 bookmarks or websites we visit on a daily basis?  What we have here is sensory overload, it’s like you can’t even stay focused on one thing then another comes along. There’s too much things and you can’t take the time to appreciate and understand the context of whatever that thing is better.

Globalization has opened up many things, in terms of economy, travel and cultural exchange. This essentially is a good thing, but like most good things, it needs to come to an end. What we see now in different mediums that we devour on the daily is a bastardization of culture. It’s all mished and mashed without any clear direction. The whole hipster movement best describes that, a subculture that borrows from different eras and subcultures with complete disregard for the history behind it. This is why we are Generation Flat, we have no depth at all, we have nothing and we are moving towards the end of creativity, if it isn’t already over.

Look at the whole retro perspective, sure, critics would say that trends come and go and come again in full circle. Doesn’t that sound like just an excuse? Since the mid-90s, what we have done is to simply re-hash the old without acknowledging the past. We don’t encourage kids to dig into the roots of whatever they are getting into, they are simply jumping on and moving on the next.

That’s what we have become now, simply another face, another market. We are happy to be this way because of the feeling of stability. Face it, who wants to be unstable and unsure? We are this way because we are afraid, we have lived lives that are too comfortable.

And sure, while there are still people out there that are making something new and creative, they just get lost in the information struggle. They don’t stay in people’s radar long enough to make an impact. Maybe another reason is that because there are too many people in this world. I think we sometimes get lost in what is really creative, it’s almost like we have been brainwashed and while we think it’s creative, don’t you doubt yourself sometimes and think to yourself, “is this really creative? or is this just one of those things that the media has done to make you think it’s creative when really it’s not.” How can you discern that?

And yes, yes, I am guilty of this as well. I belong to this generation. Call me a hypocirte, call me whatever, but this is my opinion and you are free to share it as well. Really I’m not even sure if I make sense to you, I hope I did.

The Adidas Consortium aZX Project Primer: Superstar 35th & Adicolor

In one of the most exciting Adidas promotions since the Adicolor series in 2006. Last August 08, 2008, during the opening day of the Olympics, Adidas released the 1st batch of sneakers for the aZX Project.

What is the aZX Project? The aZX Project is a series of 24 adidas ZX shoes worked by 24 of the top Adidas Consortium stores. Adidas assigned each letter of the alphabet to a corresponding Consortium store, all are represent except for, ZX.

The ZX stands for the ZX series which the stores will use as their canvas for their collaboration with Adidas. There hasn’t been an event with so much hype since 2-3 years ago, first with the Adidas Superstar 35th Anniversary and the year after, the Adicolor series.

For the 35th anniversary of an Adidas classic, they collaborated with different sources of inspiration to form 5 groups of sneakers: the Consortium series, Anniversary series, Music series, Expressions series and Cities series. The Consortium series is similar the aZX project in terms of working with top Consortium stores such as Union, FootPatrol, Undefeated and Neighborhood, which become one of the most sought after shoe of this series.

The Cities series represented the top cities where Adidas has had deep cultural impact, while for the Expressions series, they collaborated artists from different background. The Expressions series also gave us the first glimpse of the Adicolor series and the new campaign branched out from the Adicolor version of the Superstar, where-in included in the package are 5 different colored laces which allows the user to customize the shoe to his favorite colored lace.

The Adicolor series which primarily draws from the shoe customizing culture during the 80’s. Kids wanted their kicks to look fresh and would paint or draw on their sneakers to have that sense of individuality. Since that time, sneaker customizers have taken customizing to another level, using different materials, paints and methods, even selling them at high prices, almost like art pieces.

For the Adicolor series, Adidas used 6 primary colors: white, red, blue, yellow, green, pink and black. And from that selection, took 6 different models and worked with different designed to put their own touch into it, with the limitation being they had to work along their color group. Another series not shown in the chart is the white series, which consisted of jackets, caps and shoes along with painting materials which allows the buyer to customize the item with their own preferred colorway. Other things that are customizable in this series aren’t visible much to the eye, some shoes allow the changing the color of the 3 Adidas stripes, sticking additional buttons/logos to the shoe, or being able to change the color of the tongue and laces.

So for this year, the buzz is around the aZX Consortium Project. The first batch, which consists of letters A-G, has already been released. The chart below shows the preview and I will talk more about this series in the next post.