She Writes. He Draws.

Attractive Struggling Artist + Internets = Magic

2009-04-19T15:38:00.000-07:00

Coca-Cola's recent partnership with YouTube and Facebook brings us a kick ass advertising/entertainment/social media collaboration for Sprite called, "Green Eyed World". This campaign includes 5 minute weekly webisodes that follow the journey of an up-and-coming musician named, Katie Vogel. During each video, viewers are able to sign on using Facebook Connect to comment, vote on the content and interact with one another.

Sprite gets to communicate its strong brand values and Katie gains a large fan base. WIN!

Innovative, engaging and wonderful branding. Check it out:http://www.youtube.com/greeneyedworld

Didn't Audi learn anything from Hitler?

2009-04-17T21:02:00.000-07:00

MissLava had a tweet about this a couple of moments ago. I'm aware that everyone on (and off) the internet has seen it by now but it got me thinking about a couple of things. One is the importance of tough, hard-sell communication in times of economic stress. It is a general rule that when consumers begin thinning out their spending habits you have to fight brutally for every inch of market you get.

The other thing it got me thinking about was; How big of an army do you have to have to be able to fight a battle on multiple fronts? Thus the title of this post. Audi has been using some serious head on positioning against the toughest of customers for quite some time. I can just see the board room table covered in images of all the competitors automobiles.

Subordinant#1: "Vich competitors ah vee goink to crush Mr.Vintercorn?" Then CEO Martin Wintercorn looks over the images slowly and grins maniacally.

Wintercorn: "All of zem!"

Firstly they took on the "boxy" Luxury SUV market and have been throwing mud at BMW directly for a while.

BMW as a brand doesn't really take the head on approach for it's primary strategy this was a purely spur of the moment flash of genius situation. When a category leader calls out the competition they run the risk of looking like a bully and compromising the brand's integrity. When they fight back with a wittier, "Hey kid, take it easy before you get hurt" approach they confirm their position of superiority.

A Blog! We has it.

2009-03-25T12:47:00.000-07:00

Hi! We're a young creative team from Toronto, Ontario, Canada looking to integrate ourselves into the advertising business. We became a team because we both highly respected the work of one another and also had a strong will to take our careers to lands beyond our native borders.

Well here it is. We've had this blog set up for a while but haven't written anything yet. We've equated this to 'losing it' everyone wants their first time to be special but sometime shortly thereafter you become grossly disillusioned with the fantasy of it all and you just want to do as much as fast as you can and hope that if you do it enough and pay attention to what you're doing you'll eventually get good or at very least tolerable. So this is it. That's another tricky thing about when you first start out you can never really predict or have much control over when the end is going to arrive.

As for what we plan on using this space for we're as unsure about that as where our careers are going to take us. We'll use this space to voice our opinions about the industry that we've fallen in love with. We'll also be documenting as best as possible our journey into the wonderland that is Advertising. Finally we hope to use this as a portal to our Flickr account where we will be housing our ever evolving online portfolio. So bear with us as we begin our journey, at very least we will be providing a handbook for young creatives on what not to do!

-SWHD