The Sell! Sell! Blog: December 2008

Introducing FoneGloo

FoneGloo is the latest innovation in mobile phone retention - a sticky gloop that will stick your mobile to your face so that you don't lose it on one of those boozy nights out.

We've just launched the FoneGloo campaign for our good friends at O2 to help them promote Bluebook - an excellent service which constantly saves all of your text and picture messages and your contacts in case you lose your mobile phone.

The finely crafted infomercial was shot by the lovely and very excellent Colin Gregg at Therapy. Also check out the suitably shonky FoneGloo website here. Oh, and you can phone the FoneGloo hotline on 0800 13 13 13 7.

Two Years Of Rubbish

Rubbishcorp that is.
A big happy birthday to our good friend Rubbishcorp, who is now 2 years old (although to be honest, he always looks a lot older in the flesh).
Keep up the good work doooood.

Amazingly, we found this picture we had from his first birthday.

Tilt Shift in motion

Great tilt shift video. The technique makes the monster trucks look like micro machines and the over saturated colours work well too.

Threadless HQ

Here at Sell! Towers we appreciate the value of having a good, fun, space to work in. We believe that an interesting creative environment is conducive to instigating strong ideas and producing great work. And judging by this video the people at Threadless think the same too. They have an amazing office space filled with all sorts of games and stuff. Brilliant.

Hat West

So NatWest have been running a campaign, 'SatWest', to promote that they're open on a Saturday. Even though it is fairly obvious that a service company like a bank would open on one of the few days when the majority of its customers have time to go in, at least they're doing it, so fair play to them.

However, although it's catchy, it could be potentially limiting if they're just thinking of using promotions that rhyme with 'Nat'. Okay, maybe they could do 'VatWest' - very topical, but after that it gets a bit more tenuous, here's a couple of thoughts...

CatWest - The bank gives a free cuddly cat toy to comfort people who are having their houses repossessed.

BatWest - Giving a free baseball ball to people popping in to open a new account - although it could cause a bit of confusion between new customers and bank robbers, which might be a problem.

HatWest - this is our favourite, survive the cold, bleak winter with a high interest savings account and a Russian-style hat made from real fake rabbit skin.

So here it is - HatWest...

NatWest, if you're reading this, you can have this idea for free, no worries. Consider it our gift to you.

Ahh, it feels good to give.

A young man called Chris

A young man called Chris from London wanted to buy a Christmas present for his new girlfriend.

They hadn't been seeing each other for very long and she lived in Scotland.

Chris consulted with his sister and decided, after careful consideration, that a pair of good quality gloves would strike the right note. not too romantic and not too personal.

Off he went with his sister to Harrods and they selected a dainty pair of fur lined quality leather gloves. His sister bought a pair of sexy knickers for herself at the same time.

Harrods had a free gift wrap offer but the assistant mixed up the two items, the sister got the gloves and Chris unknowingly got the knickers.

Good old Chris sent off his gift wrapped present in a parcel with the following letter.

Dear Maggie,

I chose these because I've noticed that you are not wearing any when we go out in the evenings.
If it had not been for my sister I would have chosen the long ones with buttons, but she wears shorter ones (which are easier to remove).

These are a very delicate shade, but the lady I bought them from showed me the pair she had been wearing for the past three weeks and I hardly noticed any marks.

I had her try yours on for me and she looked really smart in them even though they were a little bit tight on her. She also said that they rub against her ring which helps keep it clean. In fact she hasn't needed to wash it since she began wearing them.

I wish I was there to put them on for you the first time, as no doubt many other hands will touch them before I have a chance to see you again.

When you take them off remember to blow into them a little bit because they will be naturally a little damp from wearing.

Just imagine how many times my lips will kiss them during the coming year.

I hope you will wear them for me on our next date.

All my love,

Chris

P.S. My mum tells me that the latest style is to wear them folded down with a little bit of fur showing

Fraser Digby's Washbag

Danny Baker quietly regaining the 606 slot on Radio 5 live has put the fun back into football phone-ins (Remember David Mellor anyone?). I've caught this show a few times recently - his scattergun brain and quickfire approach always keeps things lively and his random themes never fail to strike a chord or raise a smile.

Recently, he's asked for contributions from listeners on footballers whose names sound like pirates (Dexter Blackstock and Muzzy Izzet in particular being my favourite suggestions) and he's now started a regular feature called "Fraser Digby's Washbag".

Apparently inspired by some relatively mundane anecdote from a bloke who claimed to have found the former jobbing Swindon goalkeeper's washbag, Mr Baker is now inviting his audience to send in new lyrics to popular songs which are then given a "Fraser Digby's Washbag" musical makeover.

Take a look at the latest rendition. It's a bit weird watching him on a YouTube clip rather than just hearing him on the medium in which this was intended for and originally broadcast. Nevertheless, it's definitely worth sharing. Doubt it will get the same coverage as Andrew Sachs-gate but it deserves to. Maybe Danny could leave a message on Fraser Digby's answerphone and Danny Kelly could blurt out "He used your shower gel" at the end. Or maybe not.

More Good Sense From The Campaign Couch...

Whenever I read the ad-tabloid Campaign, the first thing I always turn to is On The Campaign Couch... With JB. Jeremy Bullmore is a voice of good sense, reason and straight talking, that is sadly missing from much of the advertising business today.

In last week's column, someone asked the question "A Creative Director beat the best planners in London to win Campaign's Battle of Big Thinking. Does this worry you?"
Now, some of the questions to JB are daft, but this one is particularly stupid.
And thankfully JB's answer didn't let me down.
A couple of snippets:

"It doesn't worry me. Neither does it suprise me. If anything, it reassures me.
There is little more ridiculous, and little more likely to inhibit the emergence of outstanding advertising, than the relay-race model beloved of some agencies."
"The best creative people are instinctive, practiced planners - and should be encouraged to plan."

Well, I could not agree more, as regular readers might have realised from my earlier post: In The Ghetto (The Creative Ghetto That Is).

The best advertising comes from talented, stregically smart creative people, and savvy account people willing and able to dissect a client's business and it's objectives, working together.
It's simple.
It worked for years producing excellent, effective advertising.
Yet for some reason, accross the industry it's being overtaken by a bunch of pseudo-scientific, process-driven bullshit.

howies

We're big fans of howies, they make great quality clothes and do it in a really good way. Their catalogues have always been a treat, well designed and thought out. Each issue has a theme (Winter '08 is 'living of the land') with relevant photography, illustrations and interesting stuff on how they work. The recycled paper smells great too.

Introducing Sprinkles The Singing Dog.

Meet Sprinkles, the very talented pooch who stars in our latest bit of mischief for the Knock-Off Nigel campaign. Created with the smashing Mark Bethune and the lovely chaps at Gas & Electric. Coming soon to a (small) screen near you.

Kim White

Kim White specialises in handbags designed from vintage automotive graphics. In my opinion this is the best of the lot, lovely colours, bold type and I have a soft spot for the Camaro. If I had a spare $225, and was a women I'd buy this bag.

Vintage Advertising Characters

We love an advertising character over here. There's a great collection of vintage characters and ads, also TV characters and animation frames over on The Imaginary World. It's also the home of the work of Dan Goodsell (great name), including one of my favourites - Mr. Toast...

Big Tam the Mortician

A dead man is delivered to a Glasgow mortuary wearing an expensive,
tailored black suit.

Big Tam the mortician asks the deceased's wife how she would like the body dressed. He points out that the man does look very good in the black suit he is already wearing. The widow, however, says that she always thought her husband looked his best in navy.

She gives Tam a blank cheque and says, 'I don't care what it costs, but please have my husband in a navy suit for the viewing.'

The woman returns the next day. To her delight she finds her husband dressed in a gorgeous navy suit with a subtle chalk stripe; the suit fits him perfectly.

She says to Tam, 'Whatever the cost, I'm very satisfied. You did an excellent job and I'm very grateful. How much did you spend?'

To her astonishment, Tam gives her back the blank cheque. ' No charge,' he says.

'No, really, what do I owe you for that exquisite navy suit!' she says.

'Honestly, hen,' Tam says, 'it didnae cost. You see, a dead gentleman of your husband's size was brought in shortly after you left yesterday, and he was wearing an attractive navy suit I asked his missus if she minded him going to his grave wearing a black suit insteed, and she said it made
nae difference as long as he looked nice.

'So, I just switched their heads. '

Copywriting #1: The Bengal Tiger of Advertising

Great copy is one the most valuable and effective tools in advertising.
But as a craft it's under threat.
There are a number of different reasons for this.
Here's a few of them...

The incorrect assumption that because people lead fast-paced lives these days, flicking channels and pages faster than a speedy thing, quick, visual-led ideas are always better.

The incorrect assumption that no one can ever be arsed to read copy.

Creatives entering the business are increasingly coming from advertising courses, where they are encouraged to be ideas people but not pushed to become excellent at specific craft skills.

A lot of creatives aren't that interested in copy. I've heard of examples where some creatives let the account manager write the copy. Mental.

Everyone fucks with the copy. So good writers are discouraged from spending the time to do copy-led ideas.

Creative directors are obsessed with visual-led ideas, partly because of the first point, and partly because generally that's what wins creative awards these days.

The perpetual cycle of all of the above points over the last 10-15 years.

As we continually crap on about, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to all advertising problems. We are huge fans of using great copywriting and great copy-led ideas here, when we think it's the best thing to do. So we're going to cover this crisis in copywriting more in the next couple of weeks.

But for the time being here is a great post on writing by Suzanne Pope, Group Creative Director of Toronto-based ad agency john st. to get you started.

Cola Can Collection

Stumbled upon this great collection of sugary carbonated beverage containers this morning. The site's a bit crap and photos aren't great but still a cracking collection. It's good to see old and new packaging side by side, particularly with the recent Pepsi branding debate still fresh in the mind. When you directly compare the bold classic styles with newer designs, strong colours and clean typography win hands down.

Pepsi take note.

Festive wrapping fun

This year instead of using the usual Christmas tags why not distinguish your pressies with some bespoke typographic packaging. Presuming of course, you have a considerable amount of spare time. They do look great though, further instructions can be found here.

via Bugs & Fishes

Smart Cookie Wanted To Join Sell! Sell!

We're on the lookout for a smart Account Manager/Project Manager to join us at Sell! Towers.

We're after someone with one or two year's experience, a sharp, strategic mind, enthusiasm, attention to detail, and a love of all things creative, to work as part of our highly attractive* and hilarious* team across all of our projects and clients.

If you fancy working in a small, fast-moving, independent creative company, with the involvement, opportunity and challenges that brings, give us a shout at doubles@sellsell.co.uk

*in the eyes of our parents only

Indie Film Posters

A good post on Smashing Magazin e showcasing a range of independent film posters. Indie films have to work a lot harder with a limited budget compared to blockbusters yet most of the time their artwork always looks far more interesting and stands out from the usual Hollywood bumph. I've picked out a few we like here.