Barclaycard Waterslide Advert

Undoubtedly my favourite advert of the year and a great one to watch again and again. The concept of the advert is the idea of having a Barclaycard is like having no restrictions and offers smooth transactions. The advert itself is beautifully shot and has a really catchy soundtrack provided by the seventies song "Let You Love Flow" by The Bellamy Brothers. The shooting of the advert reminds me a lot of the Sony Bouncing Balls by Fallon London but unlike that advert the Barclaycard has managed to bring a personal feel to it by the use of it's feature character.

And now thanks to the clever people at Barclaycard setting themselves up with a youtube channel you can watch all the lovely edits and even the making of it...enjoy!


60 second original advert


Extended unseen advert


Behind the Scenes - Making Of...

Barclaycard YouTube Channel

Nanochromatic

The new iPod nano was launched last week and the advertising campaign focuses on the new colour range and not so much on the features. As ever you can expect Apple to have delivered on the design font, with the new nano's once again a product that people will want to have (even if they already have an old nano!)



The advert in my opinion is brilliantly simple and just focuses on the range available. I think the flowing paint at the end shows the brightness of the colour range and also the diversity. The natural flow of paint is very powerful and can create some brilliant visual images. This use of paint also reminds me of an Orange mobile advert that was aired a year or two ago (below).

Coke Zero Bond Advert

Here is a new advert for Coke Zero playing into the new James Bond movie Quantum of Solice theme. I'm not too sure whether i like it if I'm honest. I guess they have tried to make the advert like bond opening credits but not sure whether the brands fit together...I mean I can't imagine Bond going into a bar, forgetting his Martini and instead ordering a Vodka and Coke Zero...

On my scouring of YouTube I found another attempt to link the two brands, all the way back in 1987.

Drench - Iconic Branding

This advert has been mentioned before by others but the power of it's influence struck me today at work. Working at a radio station we have the radio on constantly and today, approx. 10 minutes ago in fact, Rhythm is a Dancer came on and my first reaction was Drench Water. Not only that as the song ended I went straight to YouTube and found the advert to have another look. The power of branding hey. Not too dissimilar to Cadbury but I kind of like the fact that it is, for the moment at least, a one off advert.

I even found this video of how they made the advert which is a pretty interesting watch as well.

Hovis Advert

This is the new advert for Hovis. I saw it the other day and felt compelled to go and find it online. It's a beautifully shot advert that takes the journey home from the bakers and turns it into a trip through the decades. Considering I hadn't even lived through the majority of the decades in the advert I was able to recognise the symbolism and events depicted and I found it an ad that you could really engage with.

Cadbury Remixes

Interesting that Fallon have released new remixes of the Gorilla and Airport adverts in the past week...it is just me or are they just pushing these a tad too far. Should they not develop more of a campaign rather than two adverts redone? It's hard to stay. In fairness the Airport version with Bon Jovi I think works better than the original. The Gorilla though was best left as it was in my opinion.

Watch Your Own Heart Attack

An advert aired by the British Heart Foundation entitled "Watch Your Own Heart Attack". The advert was very heavily built up on the radio with many famous people simply saying "I'll be watching" and mention the time it would be first aired which I believe was 9.47pm. (Ironically I forgot to watch it that night)

A very powerful advert that when listened to with headphones really did give an impression of my heart beat coming through the speakers.

New Guiness Advert

I haven't seen this advert on TV or anything yet but did come across it on the web. Seems a very extreme contrast to Guinness adverts of old. In fact fr me it just doesn't sit with the brand at all. Perhaps this is a time of change for Guinness in an attempt to broaden their market reach. They are market leader by far in their own stout market and perhaps this is an attempt to try and break into the younger lager market sector.

LSC Skills Adverts

I have been searching for this advert on youtube for a few weeks now since i first saw it. The idea reminds me of the Talk Talk adverts where a similar thing was done on a larger scale with people rather than hands.

All in all I feel this is a quite stunning campaign and an idea that has been well thought out and executed.



Watching the advert really makes you appreciate how a pretty simple idea can be executed to make you appreciate the potential of the design and advertising industry.

http://inourhands.lsc.gov.uk/

The website has different imagery created from hands in the various sections ranging from the tulip to a swan and mountain. The advantage of this campaign is already evident in the billboards that can be seen for this campaign where this imagery is used on a large scale. For anyone who has seen the adverts they can relate straight away whilst those that haven't see it for what it is, clever design.


http://www.mad.co.uk/Main/News/Articlex/bf02c24b75d04d8380f67e41f73da9df/LSC-gets-hands-on-with-new-ads.html

As mentioned in this article(above link) the advert is made by agency Leo Burnett whose website i have already talked about in my Glog. It came as no suprise to me that a company that impressed me with its interactive and innovative website could be behind this idea.

An interesting statement in this article is the idea that they "hope that it will generate discussion around dinner tables, pubs and water coolers across the country.”
Speaking from my own experience it has been a campaign so far that has been successful in doing this.



This advert, working under the same campaign, is for business customers but works again under the same principle.

Wimbledon 2007

Here is the BBC advert for this years Wimbledon Championships. Like the Bob Monkhouse advert mentioned earlier the advert has used computer generation to create a championship point that includes many of the great past champions. The advert is therefore successful in using nostalgia for the older audience as well as catching the younger audience with the newer players. It therefore relates perfectly to the historic nature of the tournament.

giveafewbob

The new advert for prostrate cancer featuring the deceased Bob Monkhouse, who died himself of the cancer 4 years ago.

The advert shows the advanced nature of TV advertising, especially in the field of charity advertisement. Bob's widow has said how she cannot watch the advert because it upsets her but she does not have any problem against it. It is after all a brilliant way of creating awareness for the disease.

Tyrannosaurus Alan - Volvic's latest branding

As part of Volvic's latest branding Tyrannosaurus Alan and Volcano George have been introduced. The adverts are appealing to the younger and older audiences but there has got to be a question about its life expectancy. Three commercials into the campaign and the product range has been promoted and it is hard to see how the idea can be stretched further.

Tyrannosaurus Alan is slowly becoming a cult legend though, something Volvic would have been hopeful of achieving from the campaign.

Audi A5 - A rhythm of lines

I saw this advert last night and thought it was a new take on a car advert. The simple use of classical music and lines is brought together to emphasise the curvy and sleek design of the car. A subtle advert that is easy on the eye and has a good "rhythm of lines".

Guinness "Chain" Advertisement

Whilst researching for my Dissertation topic I looked into the success of Guinness advertisements over the last 30 years. I was immediately drawn to this advert, "Chain", for two reasons. Firstly it was a fantastic success for the Guinness brand and was at the cutting edge of motion graphics when created and launched in 1994 by Ogilvy & Mather (Davies, 1998) and secondly because it was featured in the Pencil to Pixel conference in Prague.

Having looked into the advert and watching it a few times the complexity of the concept behind it is fantastically fulfilled by the agency. We imagine a "surreal journey" through the "heart of a pint of Guinness and back out again". (Davies, 1998) This creates a brilliant advertisement that draws the viewer in but it is the attention to detail that really interests me. The last scene of the advert shows the pint of Guinness in a room which is filled with iconic Guinness imagery, something that will probably go un-noticed by the majority of viewers. There are items such as a harp and divers helmet from previous iconic Guinness campaigns. There is also on the TV screen a shot from the previous Guinness campaign which had run for arund 8 years.

It is this use of semiotics and attention to detail that I take the most from the advert. Guinness as a brand have created this fantastic cutting edge advertisement yet have subtle use of visual imagery to really emphasize the brand and its values.

Bibliography
DAVIES, J. 1998. The Book of Guinness Advertising. London: Guinness Publishing.