Will Knott

T’is the season of Christmas parties. OK, this year, subdued Christmas parties, but the “be careful on the road” message still applies.

Twenty years ago, the transport  accident  commission of Australia created its first television safety campaign. The video below is an edit of 20 years of campaigns. Be warned if you thought that the “The Faster the Speed, the Bigger the Mess” advert for the Republic and Northern Ireland was bad, 20 years worth will have you in tears.

Drive safely this Christmas,
Will

via Brandflakes for Breakfast.

Yup, its a video (you may need to click through to see them). An advertisement for Carlton Beer where they take the proverbial out of advertising. Similar to a British Airways one from 1989.

I wonder is an ad maker somewhere is feeling nostalgic.

take care,
Will

Handel died 250 years ago, and his death is being celebrated this week in a week long festival. Am I the only one thinking that its a mean thing to do? His birth, sure, the anniversary of the first performance of Messiah, great. His death?

Anyway, if you’re quick there are about 2 hours left to enter the competition on Culch.ie for a pair of tickets to National Concert Hall : Handel 250 with Our Lady’s Choral Society for tonight at 8pm.

As for the name of this post, well I’ve performed in Messiah. Its fun, but some of the phrasing is, well, daft. There is a passage where the entire choir sings “All we like sheep” then the organ chimes in for a bit, the choir in unison then sing again “all we like sheep” and the organ does its thing. Then, and only then do the lyrics continue with “have gone astray” and then it goes all fugue.

The first time its sung in rehearsals, the choir collapses in to giggles. And the first time audience member also has the same reaction. I wonder if he knew, I mean the organ solo is bloody forte, or is that something every organist has learned to do over time?

sing out,
Will

Dear Grannymar,

I don’t want you getting lonely, so would you like a toyboy to keep you company. One you can actually play with?

Meet Tommy. He’s a bit flash and a little slow… oh sorry that should be “he’s a bit of Flash“, and he’ll take more poking than a facebook account. He also seems to be allergic to shirts. Tommy is the “breast awareness guy“; the focus of a special website and starring in a tongue-in-cheek video which is also on YouTube (and embedded below).

The point of the video and the site is to teach you how to examine yourself for breast cancer (which also effects men, so its not quite as silly as it seem), and if you donate via his site he (OK, a server in Cancer Research UK) will send you an exclusive digital desktop calender featuring photos of Tommy. Shirtless naturally.

I wonder if the Irish Cancer Society would do something similar?

OK, its a little less pink than usual, but it almost fits the bill for Pink for October in Ireland.

take care,
and don’t play too hard,
Will Knott

The first I heard of Ronnie Drew’s death was when DeirdreMarie commented on this picture.

The photograph was taken as part of a visit to the Guinness Storehouse arranged by Lisa Fitzsimons and the Guinness Storehouse as part of the Guinness Storehouse photo competition. I’ll type more about this later.

I met Ronnie in 1984 in a production of “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” where he played Jacob. What I remember of him is a quiet man with a large greying beard and jokes mumbled in our presence. I suspect now that those jokes were not quite suitable for the children’s choir.

He died of throat cancer. No, I’m not going to go on about my idea this time; but to point you to a campaign for the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) called Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C).

Ronnie Drew 1934 – 2008

take care

Will Knott

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Dear photobloggers. I want you to do something. Raise cash for the Irish Cancer Society!

Most of you are at least aware of the internet phenomena that is Pink for October. This is a breast cancer awareness programme, where websites and blogs go pink for the month, and photobloggers show pink photos for the month.

However, it occurred to me that the one thing this internet outreach does not do is actually help cancer charities. So lets fix this.

Last time I was in Cork city I called in here…

my local Irish Cancer Society shop. I’m not sure if the Castle Street shop in cork city is unusual, but they tend to have big window displays. So I chatted with the manager (nice lady) about making a window display using pink photos for October. In Cork, the Jazz festival will have its own display, but since she hadn’t planned anything from the start of the month until the festival, she is willing to display the photos.

However it might be worth going one better… donate the photos to the charity not just for display, but to be sold and raise money for the charity.

And while photos of pink objects might sell, portraits will sell, to the subject at least.

My plan is to go to the streets of Cork with model release forms and approach people wearing pink (anything pink from a splash of pink lipstick, to a pink bow in the hair or a pink tie). Explain to the subject why I’m taking the photos and if they would be willing to pose and (under no obligation) buy the photo (I’m thinking €5 at most) from the Cancer charity shop and have the photo displayed online. With a bit of publicity I suspect there would be volunteers lined up on the streets.

Personally I would like to perform a selective colourisation on the photograph so that its a black and white photo with only the pink coloured, but that isn’t a requirement.

Then in the middle of September, present the collection of A4 printouts to the charity shop for display and sale.

So what am I asking you to do?

1. Go to your nearest Cancer Charity shop (In Ireland it’s the Irish Cancer Society, I’m not sure what it is in Northern Ireland let alone the rest of the world)
2. Ask the manager of that shop if he or she would be willing to accept the donation of photographs as part of the “Pink for October Breast Cancer Awareness Campaign“, display and sell the photos. You might have to explain the Pink for October story and that model release forms will be produced.
3. Take the photographs. Print the photographs. Yes some time and expense will be involved. Anything worth doing involves a bit of an outlay.
4. If you wish, do put some identifying marks (like a web address to the online version of the photo) on the printouts. A Pink for October logo and link should also be included.
5. Present the photographs (and at least offer the release forms) on (or around) Friday September 19 2008 to the charity shop so that the manager has time to display the photographs. (I can see Kilkenny photoblogers being a little later if they want to include a Podcamp Ireland photowalk)

So, is this a dumb idea?

At the moment I’m looking for a little help with this. Could you help me with…

• Commitment to join in. You have over two months to do something this year
• The wording for the model release form. I’m not sure how it should be worded and what details are required.
• Would I (or anyone else doing the street portraits) need a licence of some kind? If so where and how would I go about getting one?
• While I’m willing to print out my photos myself, does anyone know of a willing printer?
• Anything else I should know about?

Happy snapping,
Will Knott

update September 3 2008. The 2008 Pink for October Ireland portraits won’t be happening. Details in this post.

Well I said I’d review viral advertisements… and I’m choosing to start with this effort. The advert is called “The Key to Reserva” but if you do a YouTube search you might have to add “Martin Scorsese” and “Alfred Hitchcock” to the search.

Just to explain the format, I’m about to write spoilers now, so you might want to scroll to the bottom of the post to see the embedded video, follow the link above or do a search. I’ll wait.

This advert must have cost a fortune to make. Not only did they hire Martin Scorsese to direct but they had to clear the rights to Alfred Hitchcock’s posters and to Bernard Herrmann’s score to North by Northwest. All of this to market a wine by Freixenet, which sounds like its an online network provider, or a social network (based around wine?). If this is the start of a campaign then it has to be compared to the Hugh McCloud designed Stormhoek campaign.

This advert is an odd fish. The re-created fake Hitchcock movie clearly owes a debt to North by Northwest (notice the R.O.T. monogrammed handkerchief when Robert Thornberry (I read the credits) takes the hot lightbulb. The same monogram appears on Robert O. Thornhill’s handkerchief in “North by Northwest”). The look and feel of this movie feels like a Hitchcock, even the Kelly-like blonde (called Grace in the credits) seems right. The script surrounding the movie however feels like something Christopher Guest would write. With the plot of the piece, it would like to see a feature length version of the premise if Guest wrote it.

The advert, with a running time of a little shy of 10 minutes feels like an escapee rather than a viral. In fact, given the number of times the same advert shows up on YouTube, it might be. And a broadcast advert with closing credits has precedent. However if this is a viral it does make some sense. There are frequent rumours of drink advertising being banned from television, and while this format does suit age checked cinema audiences, an internet drive would get more viewers. The subject matter, namely Martin Scorsese making a movie based on a Hitchcock script is also not a subject likely to attract a very young audience. Plus, making the subject of the advert be the the MacGuffin of the re-created movie is an idea that Hitchcock might agree with.

Freixenet aiming for the same audience of most wines… those who like to wrap themselves in a little glamour (a crowded market), and maybe the film geeks. Stormhoek aims for the tech geeks. I’m sure that there is an overlap, but whichever is the more successful has yet to be seen.

As amusing as this advert is, I don’t care enough about the product. However I would pass this on to any movie buff friends I have… which may be the point.

Thanks Shane for telling me about the clip.

take care,
Will

tags : viral, The Key to Reserva, YouTube, Martin Scorsese, Bernard Herrmann, North by Northwest, Freixenet, Hugh McCloud, Stormhoek, wine, advertisement, marketing, Christopher Guest, MacGuffin

A while back Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz of For Immediate Release said that
a) You cannot design a viral advertising campaign
and
b) All adverts should be viral

This seems like a contradiction, but here goes…

b) first. All adverts should be put online in order to gain the potential of going viral. This seems like a no-brainer. If you want an advert to get maximum exposure, you need to cover all the formats (and have a web site for someone to go to).
There is however a problem.

Right.
Or rather rights.

If your advert (and I’ll assume television here, but this applies to radio) has music, you can get the cheaper rights to cover a small region (say the UK and Ireland, or Australia) or get the more expensive world-wide rights. The alternative is to commission music, but the composer can still negotiate world-wide rights at a higher price.

Then come writers, copyrighters and actors rights. In the case of up-and-coming you can probably get them cheap. Given that you’ll probably want to use phrases and still on your website, I’d advise you to go for the worldwide rights anyway. It’s cheaper than lawyers. Since it is now possible that an advert will run for the rest of time on the internet, you’ll probably need a landing site anyway.

In the case of a well know personality, well then things can get expensive. Thanks to the internet, gone are the days when an A-List actor will appear in an advert on the other side of the world where no one that hires them will see it, because everyone know that the bloody thing will eventually show up online.

Which gives rise to a class of advertising I call “the escapees”. These are adverts that fans (or rather “fans”) have put online by themselves completely independent of the advertisers or the product holders. Personally I suspect that they are slightly ignored for the run of the advertisement in its local market. But the advertiser is legally obliged to start pulling those advertisements eventually.

Which brings be back to a). “Escapees” are adverts that have gone viral despite the intentions on the creators. There are also a class of adverts which are designed to stay on the net.

These “potential virals” were created, at first, because they would not be approved for broadcast (I remember one series of condom adverts where the sexual nature of the adverts more or less guaranteed that they would be online only). Other times a viral is the long version of the advert, a TV spot is 30 seconds… an online advert, or a YouTube clip can go on for much longer.

However a viral advert must be linked to. Word of mouth must be created. People have to care about the bloody thing, either because it’s amusing, or very topical.

You can’t guarantee that an advert will be popular enough to be viral. You can try, but word of mouth cannot be faked for long on the internet. You can’t fool all of the people, because if they aren’t interested nor amused, they won’t tell others

So why am I typing about this… Well, given the number of adverts and wannabe viral adverts that have been crossing my screen, I’ve decided that I’m going to start reviewing them.

Wish me luck (and send me adverts)
Will

tags : For Immediate Release, viral advertising campaign, advert, viral, advertisement, online, Rights, escapee, word of mouth, review

Gentle reader,

Things I’ve learned today….

1) If its a cold morning, cycle behind a bus. Those things give off way too much heat… which is nice on a cold morning in shorts.

2) Berkeley are playing the Opera House on November to promote their ‘Follow Through’ single.

3) Katell Keineg is also touring in support of a single, ‘Shaking The Disease’ in this case, and hits Half Moon on November 15. I don’t think much of Keineg (I can’t remember if I’ve heard her play or not) but her support is Jamie Burke. I heard him play in support of John Spillanne, and he nearly out performed him. Yeah I’d go to a gig for the support act (not the first time either)

4) Soma is apparently a real drug if my spam is to be believed. The copyright holders of Aldous Huxley should sue the chemical giants for illegal use of a trademark (Soma is the fake drug used in the satire “Brave New World”). He died in 1963 so, thanks to the “Mickey Mouse” / Sonny Bono law, copyright was extended to 90 years after the death of the author.

5) “Damien Dempsey has recovered from a bout of Autumn flu”… I didn’t even know he was sick. Anyway he’s playing the Half Moon on Saturday (Oct 18)

take care,

Will