Ring ring

So I just learned a new word. Phonetography. I was looking at the trendhunter site

 (being the eternal trend hunter that I am and btw I work with an art director who is convinced that 

writers spend all day trawling the internet)  and there was a page of smart phone add-ons most of which had to do with using the phone as a camera. The was Will-i-am’s latest addition to the genre, i.am+ , which according to the article `takes amazingly crisp shots.’  I thought wow,doesn’t and shouldn’t the camera in the phone already do that?  It’s a attachment and an app that turns your phone camera into another camera. Again,wow.  In  more breakthrough news I saw that John Hopkins University developed the `HemoGlobe'  a small attachment for smartphones that can test for anemia. It’s a small sensor using small wavelengths of light to detect the levels of hemoglobin in a person’s blood. It replaces the need for needles. Now that’s a smart way to use a smartphone.

One other thing that caught my eye that I don’t literally want catching my eye is the pepper spray smartphone cover ( get an eyeful in the picture above). Perfect for New York City where the police have identified a whole new category of thieving street snatchers  called `Apple Pickers.’

Laugh time

The Super bowl is this upcoming Sunday and the ad frenzy is in full swing with the heavy hitters
previewing their spots to get advance interest. No matter what I think of the quality of the ads,every year I come away with the same thought.Why don't we approach every day like the Superbowl?
364 days of every day advertising and 1 day (a couple of hours actually) of over-achieving effort is a poor ratio. It also makes me think seriously about the tonality of what we do. People expect Super Bowl ads to be funny.They are the event's entertainment.  I work now and have worked in the past on advertising for categories that don't naturally lend themselves to giving you the snorts and belly laughs of beer and chips advertising.I always feel jealous of what those categories are free to do and come away determined to bring a laugh somewhere somehow to any aspect of my work that I can squeeze it into.They rarely make it past the internal judges but I feel that I tried. If all advertising had to be funny maybe people would be more tuned into it and the social landscape for ads would be completely different. Don't give us drama or demo's or real people reactions or Lord of the rings landscapes with cars accelerating over the horizon. Give us laughs.Trade in those consumer ah-ha's! for consumer ha-ha's! Some advertisers would find it impossible to live in this world but what  a wonderful world that would be.

Now,now!

Having ideas is easy. Having ideas at the right time when people are ready and receptive to them,that is an art. Or plain dumb luck. Jean-Jaques Rousseau and his `men born free are everywhere in chains' idea happened at the right time.Thomas Paine happened to have his social contract idea at the right time. Me with the idea of having a puppet camel run into a brick wall for a cigarette brand back in the day when I was a writer hanging on by my fingernails -ok I may be mixing in the wrong company with that example but you get my drift. How many times have you had an idea rejected or worse still scoffed at for its utter lameness only to see that idea a year or two later being lauded for its originality. Ideas seem to trend in cycles. Stuff I saw years ago and did myself years ago I see happening again and again,different products,different casting,same old shit. I saw something recently that brought this to mind. It was an idea for a brand who shall be nameless but involved a guy overhearing a conversation between a group of attractive women and he is fooled into thinking they are talking about him and his attributes only to find they were talking about the new packaging of said brand. When I was a group creative director one of my jobs was to act as advertising historian so when an idea like this was presented I could say it's been done,and done,and done,and done. So do something new. And there are new ideas to be had. The best ones are always the one's we're not ready for.