Just seen this new campaign by DDB for the FT’s Weekend magazine which I think is pretty wonderful.

Nothing super fancy. Just a brilliant audience insight, executed with perfectly appropriate copywriting and art direction.

Nothing’s rammed down your throat here; you’re free to recognise the values you value.

So you’re a suit? Doesn’t mean you’re a stuffed shirt at the weekend too.

So you’re a creative? Doesn’t mean you’re not a smart business brain.

So you like a slightly naff gag that shows off your education and learning?

Yeah well, the world’s not short of smartarses. In fact, as target markets go, it’s probably a rich seam.

And it works for me so I guess I’d better count myself among them. So there.

Andrew

Fun, simply for the fun of it, isn’t something you see a lot of in banners. But it pays. I clicked every button on this amazing little video banner on Bannerblog to see what would happen. And you should too. It’ll make you laugh.

Ok, most of it has nothing to do with the product, but what the hell. Orcon brought me a little pleasure on an otherwise grey and miserable day. And there aren’t many brands queuing up to do that.

(Although they do have a totally terrible name. Orcon? Really? It sounds like some sort of get together for unjustly neglected Lord of the Rings characters.)

By Andrew

My Dad is one of those cooks who carefully arranges all his ingredients – correctly measured – beforehand. So that by the time he’s finished cooking, you’d barely know he’d been in the kitchen, but for the dinner now presented to you. And though I’ve inherited some of that culinary OCD, I’d draw the line at the kind of preparation suggested by the photos Carl Kleiner‘s taken for an Ikea cookbook.

I love that these look so different from the luxe-realism of most current food photography. And make for a smart representation of the quantities and proportions you need (so you never face the traumas Julian Barnes bangs on about in his neat little book ‘The Pedant in the Kitchen’).

Also great are the photos in another recent cookbook I saw featuring perky-looking stuffed animals alongside the dishes. But I can’t remember the book’s name, and Amazon isn’t being terribly helpful so I can’t find them. Alas.

Andrew

Video composed exclusively on animated gifs. Music, by Girl Talk, composed of god knows what all. I’ve just watched the whole thing and I feel like I’ve eaten the internet and it’s given me a funny tummy.

by andrew

… Well, I suppose I was pretty interested to see what Made By Many had been up to.

And I think I like it.

It’s consciously pitched on the MBM site as a ‘channel’. Its far from the first time that word’s been applied to website, but it seems particularly apt here.

The horizontal scrolling of the main site module and the careful jumble of content make for a very smoothly controlled magpie browsing experience.

It doesn’t feel like a site with a rigid architecture (even though my brain can’t quite comprehend how such variety is built in).

Instead – again the horizontal scrolling – like flicking through a magazine. Or rummaging through a drawer full of surprises.

There’s lots on the MBM site about integrating shopping and journalism. Which seems fair enough on a fashion site. And it’s elegantly done.

That said, at first I could figure out what the hell was going on. And the fact that the scroll arrows were placed over the ads was pretty confusing. Imagine my surprise when I thought I was going to be treated to some massive expandable feature of the entire John Lewis winter collection from the MPU I click, only to be catapulted across into another part of the site… Really it was discombobulating.

andrew.

Is it a music video, is it a website, is it a social media errr thing?

I’m sticking to music video. And it’ll make your eyes bleed.

From John

This is just mental. Plain cookies with a VR code on them which gives them flavor when eaten whilst wearing a crazy scent helmet.

From John

1970′s video effects are somehow well cool now.

From John

I saw this poster on the way to work. It’s awesome!

John