This week we unleash Senior Puntinho onto the world, to launch Football Bet, the new (you might have guessed) football betting app from our friends at the Racing Post. Directed by the tremendous Mr Tom King at Gas & Electric, it features our favourite London Comedy Bloke Tony Marrese as the Brazilian football and television legend. The campaign was inspired by the very pinnacle of football loving culture - 1970s Brazil. We recreated the classic Brazilian television look with the help of the talented people at Framestore, a process which included recording the finished spots to and from a decrepit old analogue broadcast tape machine machine to get just the right amount of colour shadowing and picture degredation. For a regular injection of Puntinho you can follow @Sr_Puntinho on the twitter, if you do that kind of thing.
A Taste Of The Illuminati? Sell! Sell! Outed As Fallen Angels.
Now, gentle reader. You might have been sat there thinking that we were just another dumb ad agency (yes you were). But no. We are actually evil, clever geniuses, sowing the propaganda of the freemasons, the devil and his fallen angels. As the nice man below has taken the trouble to point out...
If you enjoyed that lesson, it's worth reading the latest string of comments on the ad on YouTube.
If you enjoyed that lesson, it's worth reading the latest string of comments on the ad on YouTube.
A Ray Of Meaty Hope On A Cold, Dark Day
As winter closes in, thoughts turn to digging out scarves from the back of the wardrobe, and eating something warm and comforting for lunch. As luck would have it, to coincide with this, our friends at Upper Crust have created some smashing new meaty baguettes, just for winter. To bring them to the attention of the world, we again enlisted the help of ace food photographer Mr Gareth Morgans, and produced the campaign below, running as tube cards and press in and around London.
Some of our previous Upper Crust work: Start Strong, You Need Coffee.
Some of our previous Upper Crust work: Start Strong, You Need Coffee.
Delicious Christmas Goodness
Christmas has come early for our friend of Sell! Sell! Delicious Industries, who have been busily beavering away on their lovely yuletide goodies. They are all hand made or hand printed on a vintage press, you can see the full range here. They'll be available to buy at the AT open house in Brighton in the run up to Christmas (address and times here), but if you can't get there, you can still get them online here. Nice work DI.
Chicken Cottage Awards 2012
Regular readers will know that we're not the biggest fans of awards. But this is one ceremony we wish we could have attended. Thankfully, the whole world can now see this as someone has captured the majesty and glory of the evening in a way that does justice to the majesty and glory of the Chicken Cottage brand. Yes, it really is for real. Spotted on the always funny Robert Popper site.
Bill Bernbach Said #72 – The Final Quote
Number 72, and the very last quote in our Bernbach series is probably the very best of all. So often forgotten in a world of over-execution and production wizz-banginess...
“The magic is in the product.”
You can see all of the Bernbach Said posts here. And the original post that with the explanation of where they come from here. If you've been with us since the beginning of the quotes, thanks for sticking with it.
“The magic is in the product.”
You can see all of the Bernbach Said posts here. And the original post that with the explanation of where they come from here. If you've been with us since the beginning of the quotes, thanks for sticking with it.
Launching The Racing Post iPad App
This has been an interesting project for us, and has been heavily craft led, so it gives us a chance to talk about that a little bit. Since Apple launched the iPad there has been a lot of excited talk about what it could mean for publishing. Up until now though, iPad versions of print publications have tended to be redesigned version of the print edition, with a bit of interactive content or video here and there. Not bad, by any means, but not the revolution people were talking about.
Racing Post have come up with what I honestly think is a revolutionary iPad version of their newspaper. In the fact that it isn't really just an iPad version of their newspaper. It has all of the editorial content of their print edition, but as well as deeper editorial, the iPad version has loads of actual functional tools and usable pages. Things like fully interactive race cards for all the days races, with infinitely deep information about the runners and riders, that you can actually follow through to placing your bet through the app. And that's just for starters. The app brings together function and editorial in a way that only the iPad can, and is the best use of the iPad from an print media brand that I've seen. So a huge hats off the Racing Post, but quite a challenge to us to sum all that up in launch advertising.
One of the very first decisions that we made was that we didn't want to go out all shouting and whooping about how revolutionary it is. I hate that – it’s not believable, because too many people have said it about things that aren’t. But also, it's much more powerful if people make that decision for themselves. Much better to show fans of racing and betting what it can do, and let them make that decision for themselves. Testing of the app in development had shown that racing fans love it, and some even said they would buy an iPad just for this app.
So once we've made the decision to base the launch of the app on demonstrating what it can do, we face a new problem. That problem is the success of the Apple advertising. I think I've said it before on here, but I consider Apple's to be some of the consistently best advertising of the last ten years. That it doesn't get more credit in the ad industry is amazing to me. Obviously it's not hurt by the fact that they have great products to promote, but they do it very, very well indeed. So, one of the big problems, when you've decided to create demonstration-led advertising for an Apple-based product is - how do you do it well, without it looking like an apple ad?
We decided to take a type-led approach, which would take the viewer through different parts of the app, to help give a sense of momentum to the ads. Cutting between demo parts and the type would help us to control the tempo. And also this would help to differentiate it from Apple ads (they tend to use voice overs, not always, but mostly I think). We enlisted the help of our good friend and master on-screen art director and typographer Squa to help us develop a look and style for the typography.
Given the depth of the app, we decided to make one master 'launch' ad, which gave a snippet across the board of all the different, clever things that the app could do. Then a series of shorter ads which each showcased a particular aspect of the app. So whatever style we developed would have to be interesting enough to carry over many executions, but also not so gimmicky that it would be annoying. We wanted something that was bold and had an intelligence to it. We developed a look based on the HFJ Gotham typeface, which we would use reversed out of picture in a couple of different weights and styles, and also reversed out of blocks to emphasise different words.
Music would also play a huge part in the feel of the ads, as they would in effect be held together as campaign by the music and visual style, we wanted something that would add energy that would drive the momentum of the ads, alongside the typography. After trying out a lot of alternatives we went with the song Devil In Me by the 22-20s.
And last but probably most importantly, the visual style of the demos themselves. We were well aware of the fact that pretty much the entirety of these ads would be the demos, so we wanted something that would give us the variety of visual to keep them interesting. I'm a huge fan of Apple's simple, locked-off shots and white backgrounds, they work really well for them. But for us because we are showing quite detailed features within the same app, it would be quite easy for it to get tedious. We went to Tom King at Gas & Electric who has made some great commercials for us in the past (these, and some we can't share just yet), and who understands the technical challenges of shooting live demos. He suggested we go with backgrounds that felt they were 'on location' to keep the shots interesting, and give them a more 'live' feel than a studio demo. And also mix up the angles and distance we shoot the iPad from, for more variety and to help differentiate between cuts. We also shot live 'open' backgrounds for the type to be set against.
What was left then was days of craft in the edits, choosing which parts and what order, and how much time for the demo sections and type, to try to do justice to the app. Happily, so far since launch the app has attracted thousands of downloads and happy customers. If you're into Racing or a keen bettor, you should look it up.
Racing Post have come up with what I honestly think is a revolutionary iPad version of their newspaper. In the fact that it isn't really just an iPad version of their newspaper. It has all of the editorial content of their print edition, but as well as deeper editorial, the iPad version has loads of actual functional tools and usable pages. Things like fully interactive race cards for all the days races, with infinitely deep information about the runners and riders, that you can actually follow through to placing your bet through the app. And that's just for starters. The app brings together function and editorial in a way that only the iPad can, and is the best use of the iPad from an print media brand that I've seen. So a huge hats off the Racing Post, but quite a challenge to us to sum all that up in launch advertising.
One of the very first decisions that we made was that we didn't want to go out all shouting and whooping about how revolutionary it is. I hate that – it’s not believable, because too many people have said it about things that aren’t. But also, it's much more powerful if people make that decision for themselves. Much better to show fans of racing and betting what it can do, and let them make that decision for themselves. Testing of the app in development had shown that racing fans love it, and some even said they would buy an iPad just for this app.
So once we've made the decision to base the launch of the app on demonstrating what it can do, we face a new problem. That problem is the success of the Apple advertising. I think I've said it before on here, but I consider Apple's to be some of the consistently best advertising of the last ten years. That it doesn't get more credit in the ad industry is amazing to me. Obviously it's not hurt by the fact that they have great products to promote, but they do it very, very well indeed. So, one of the big problems, when you've decided to create demonstration-led advertising for an Apple-based product is - how do you do it well, without it looking like an apple ad?
We decided to take a type-led approach, which would take the viewer through different parts of the app, to help give a sense of momentum to the ads. Cutting between demo parts and the type would help us to control the tempo. And also this would help to differentiate it from Apple ads (they tend to use voice overs, not always, but mostly I think). We enlisted the help of our good friend and master on-screen art director and typographer Squa to help us develop a look and style for the typography.
Given the depth of the app, we decided to make one master 'launch' ad, which gave a snippet across the board of all the different, clever things that the app could do. Then a series of shorter ads which each showcased a particular aspect of the app. So whatever style we developed would have to be interesting enough to carry over many executions, but also not so gimmicky that it would be annoying. We wanted something that was bold and had an intelligence to it. We developed a look based on the HFJ Gotham typeface, which we would use reversed out of picture in a couple of different weights and styles, and also reversed out of blocks to emphasise different words.
Music would also play a huge part in the feel of the ads, as they would in effect be held together as campaign by the music and visual style, we wanted something that would add energy that would drive the momentum of the ads, alongside the typography. After trying out a lot of alternatives we went with the song Devil In Me by the 22-20s.
And last but probably most importantly, the visual style of the demos themselves. We were well aware of the fact that pretty much the entirety of these ads would be the demos, so we wanted something that would give us the variety of visual to keep them interesting. I'm a huge fan of Apple's simple, locked-off shots and white backgrounds, they work really well for them. But for us because we are showing quite detailed features within the same app, it would be quite easy for it to get tedious. We went to Tom King at Gas & Electric who has made some great commercials for us in the past (these, and some we can't share just yet), and who understands the technical challenges of shooting live demos. He suggested we go with backgrounds that felt they were 'on location' to keep the shots interesting, and give them a more 'live' feel than a studio demo. And also mix up the angles and distance we shoot the iPad from, for more variety and to help differentiate between cuts. We also shot live 'open' backgrounds for the type to be set against.
What was left then was days of craft in the edits, choosing which parts and what order, and how much time for the demo sections and type, to try to do justice to the app. Happily, so far since launch the app has attracted thousands of downloads and happy customers. If you're into Racing or a keen bettor, you should look it up.
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