An invisible problem

The strength and originality of this campaign was that Orcon actually used its broadband service to enable a world-first technical feat – connecting nine Kiwis from their homes across New Zealand to Iggy Pop’s studio in Miami, and re-recording the classic track 'The Passenger', live and online.

A photochain was created and showcased in TV, print and online advertising, which directed people to the photochains website. Here they could upload photos to continue the chain. They could also start their own photochains or join those created by others.

There is a small town not far from where Directory is produced called Sandwich. To prove Walkers can make absolutely any sandwich more exciting, a series of surprise events was designed to make Sandwich more exciting.

Instead of creating a normal advertisement, the agency’s suggestion was a guitar made to be destroyed, SMASH guitar.

Whilst we may not have won the Cannes Direct Grand Prix this year, I’m still feeling good about the state of direct marketing in Australia. Twelve Lions – including 4 Gold - is a fantastic result. And we still hold the #1 ranking in the world for direct marketing according to the (current) Big Won Report!

Welcome to Directory Issue 16, in which we look back across some of the great work recognised at the Cannes International Advertising Festival before looking forward with some of our case histories to next year’s award winners. Once again, the editorial section of the magazine is fatter than ever, with a mixture of analysis, opinion and quick one-page case histories of the major Direct winners. At Directory, we always worry that we will not be able to get in enough good work to honour our pledge to our subscribers to be “the bible of Direct”. This time was no different.

Nokia doesn't create content. Nokia is an enabler for others to create and share content. With that in mind, a giant signpost, 50 metres high, was built near Tower Bridge in London. People could submit a location to the signpost through text messages or by dropping a pin on the online map and within moments the signpost swivelled to display the direction and distance to that location.

In a world where information is shared so quickly and reputation is everything, I am amazed that any organisation can still think it can get away with bad customer service.

The MCCA, or the Marketing Communication Consultants Association, doesn’t mince around when it hands out its annual prizes. It calls them The Best Awards. There have been times in the past when that claim could have been challenged under the Trades Descriptions Act but in the last couple of years the standard of work has been high.

Other awards that caught the eye included Touch DDB’s work for The Financial Times which picked up for Best Business to Business Communication, Best Use of a Small Budget, Best Copy and BestDirect Communication.

My wife and I were travelling through India recently and we discovered a sure-fire bartering technique that is well worth sharing. We were on the lookout for saffron because it costs a fortune back home (nearly £100 for 10g). In India, every spice trader worth his salt had an abundance of brilliant, yellow saffron in stock.

As always, many thanks to anyone who submitted work to Directory 15 and if it didn’t make the cut I can only say, isn’t that great? It means direct is getting so darn good these days that even your brilliant work is finding it hard to get the recognition it deserves.

When Hope wrapped old books in cellophane and left them in bookstores with the message ‘An old book is a new book to someone’, they started a mass donation.

This article has been taken from Creative Social's forthcoming book 'Digital Advertising: Past, Present and Future'. See www.creativesocialblog.com for more details

iLingual lets you use your iPhone to speak French, German and Arabic phrases in flawless foreign accents.

Speechbreaker presented users with a fridge magnet-like array of words for David Cameron, leader of the Conservative party, for Gordon Brown, Prime Minister and leader of the Labour party, and for Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats.

China’s neither for the faint-hearted, nor is it for those without ambition. Within 5 years, it’s been forecast that the share of consumer retail sales, which currently stands at 1.98%, will rise to USD 144 billion. Don’t tell us in 2013 that we didn’t tip you off.

It was once observed that people tend to view the world through the lens of their profession - and I make no excuse for doing exactly that here. I have worked across the industry - ATL, BTL and all points in-between: brand planning, account planning, connections planning, digital planning and communications planning – all titles designed to suit particular agency disciplines.

‘How to Win Friends and Influence People’ was first published in 1936. Dale Carnegie, its author, died in 1955. Both dates put the creation of Facemash in 2003 well out of sight. Facemash, if you’ve not remembered or guessed, was the website that would grow into Facebook and do more than perhaps any other in the new wave of social media sites to force marketers to reappraise their approach to marketing.

In this issue of Directory we have, at last, some work from China. Not just two pieces from OgilvyOne Beijing but also a beautifully-written and observant essay from Kunal Sinha, Executive Director of Discovery at O&M Greater China...

The agency created a completely new medium in the credit transfer, transferring 1 Euro to other agencies using online money transfer systems which eagle-eyed accountants would spot.

Every year, Saatchi’s hosts the New Directors Showcase at the Cannes Advertising Festival.

Just as you use tearsheets in brainstorming sessions, so IKEA encouraged visitors to the site to ‘tear’ images and pages from the online catalogue and upload them into their own personal inspiration guides.

To position the car as exceptionally economical and environmentally friendly, the agency used a channel which would find its way into the hands of every single motorist at precisely the time and in exactly the place when the cost of petrol would man most to them.

To demonstrate the unhealthy ideals of beauty promoted by the media and fashion industry, a number of world-famous masterpieces were repainted.

Teams armed with powerful torch-projectors went to the movies and whenever an item of IKEA furniture or furnishings appeared in a scene, then they projected the price onto the screen for the audience to see.

Custom-made software was installed which recognized whenever an envelope was about to be printed. It identified the address in MS Word and then connected through to Google Maps.

Language is a dangerous thing. Ideas are embedded in the words we use. Outdated ideas persist because language influences us to think in ways that may not be fit for the way of the world now. Marketing and communications are replete with just such words and phrases, which are used frequently, and often not examined. Let’s just take four in common use.

“Don’t forget you promised to write something about inspiration for Directory”, Patrick Collister reminded me in full ‘editor with a deadline approaching’ tone of voice. So, here I am, faced with a blank white page of a word document with a cursor flashing, in search of inspiration.

The Big Won is the only awards analysis organisation to look at marketing services awards as well as digital and traditional above-the-line advertising and has been producing annual rankings of Direct and Digital advertising since 2003. These are the 2009 rankings, measuring agencies on awards won between January 1st and December 31st of the year.