Extra Salt & Sauce

The spellcheck on my copy of Microsoft Word doesn't like Google. It makes several suggestions for changing it, my favourite of which is Go ogle. Similarly it suggests that "Googling" is to "Go ogling". In fact going ogling is what you're actually doing when you're Googling for images with the safe search function off.

My previous all time favourite spellcheck suggestion was in a document that contained the phrase Annus Horribilis. The suggested change was to Anus Hairballs. This was some time ago and it unfortunately won't do this any more.

Another good one is our e-mail spellcheck's reaction to "creatives". It prefers "creamies".

It also suggests that "creds" are "cruds", "crudest" or "cruddiest".

Few brands that we work on generate the depth of genuine affection that is enjoyed by IRN-BRU.

And in these days of Web 2.0 and UGC, that affection manifests itself in all sorts of interesting ways.

Here are a couple of recent favourites. The first one shows that it does the job for our Aussie friends.

And here's a funny piece of opportunism from the IRN-BRU hunters.

Finally the IRN-BRU community on frappr is worth a look. Lots of people across the world, particularly the States, united by their love of the brand.

A somewhat belated post to confirm that the Blonde website is up and running. Blonde is a full service digital agency and a sister agency of Leith within Cello Group. Blonde is currently collaborating with Leith for clients such as Grolsch, Scottish Executive, First Scotrail, Velux, Coors Light, Sol and Standard Life.

My trips to Waverley station a couple of weeks back (to take a train, I hasten to add. I’m not a spotter…) were much brightened by the fact that two of our recent campaigns were occupying pole position on the ultravision sites above the main station concourse.

To the left (just above WHSmith) we had our brilliantly successful campaign for s1jobs.com, entreating passers-by to post their CV on the s1jobs database. (Feel free. You never know what might happen..?)

And to the right, above Boots and the baguette shop, we had the third execution in the series of posters launching parclife, a new housing brand in Edinburgh, named, designed and now promoted by ours truly. Looking gloriously sunny amidst the early morning station gloom.

To say it was the icing on the cake when the s1jobs animation appeared on the screen that runs the news headlines alongside the train times, might make you worry for me. But it was 7:30 in the morning and it did brighten my day.

Passing through again yesterday, I’m sorry to say that the s1 campaign has had its moment in the sun at the station for now. But you can still catch the parclife campaign. Enquiries to their website are going great guns as far as we can tell. Feel free to boost the traffic figures by clicking here.

Gawker are rather spitefully keeping tabs on the length of time that their so-called celebrity bloggers haven't blogged for. So poor old Malcolm Gladwell apparently hasn't blogged for 193 days now. 196 days actually - assuming their count is correct - as they wrote about him on Monday.

So I know that certain people who shall remain nameless in the advertising community up here take great delight in observing how long we haven't posted for. But at least we're doing better than finger-on-the-pulse get-paid-to-write-for-a-living social commentator Malcolm...

Reading my copy of Fast Company on the way into work this morning (geeky I know, but bettering that, our lovely department assistant Brieanna, is taking Time magazine on holiday with her this week. Not just a pretty face), I came across some interesting chat in an article on the renaissance of Al Gore.

When sidelined from politics, he took up an adviser-ship at Google and then a place on the board at Apple. And is now ploughing the vast amounts of money that he’s making on the speaking circuit into various new technology ventures.

One of them is a company called Current TV. Set up two years ago, today 30% of the aired content is viewer generated (VC2 apparently). Amateur filmmakers, some in their teens, upload three- to eight-minute documentary-style film segments, called "pods”, to the Current website. Online modules help aspiring filmmakers navigate everything from framing a shot to negotiating music rights. The online community comments on the videos and votes to "green-light" pods that they want to see on air. Makers of aired pods get $500. Current gets a library of content to use for free and forever.

I haven’t had the pleasure of watching the channel yet as it’s only available to view in the US. But according to Fast Company, it’s “surprisingly engaging and unlike anything else on TV”, covering cutting-edge bands and dogsled races, African villagers struggling with HIV/AIDs and dispatches from soldiers serving in Iraq.

They’ve also done a lot of work with advertisers to create viewer-generated commercials. T-Mobile have been using it as a "groundbreaking way to reach customers, and to encourage them to engage with our brand." (Well, according to the director of media marketing for T-Mobile at any rate…)

We’ll be getting it at some point this year apparently via Sky and Virgin Media. One to look out for, I think.

Lovely new website from Urban Splash for their latest Leeds-based apartments. Following on from their Manchester tower blocks named after suffragettes and Chimney Pot Park in Salford, there's no place like gnome uses a bunch of customised cheeky little chaps to promote the different features of the new development. They're putting up a shed in the city centre to pre-promote the development and promising to scatter the city with 'real live' gnomes to bring the premise to life. More marvellously creative work from the regeneration specialists.

The gorilla is not Phil Collins. It is an actor called Garon Michael. Clearly he was able to draw on method acting experience when playing his drumming part as he has previously featured in films "Congo", "Instinct" and a "Planet of the Apes" remake.

The campaign cost £6.2million to make and is intended to dramatise the moment of "pure joy" that you feel when you guzzle down a piece or two of precious Cadbury Dairy Milk.

It was put together by the Fallon creative director, Juan Cabral, who worked on the Bravia 'balls' ad.

The ad was viewed more than 500,000 times on YouTube in the first week of its release. Largely I'm sure due to the traffic that was directed there by posts on this here blog...

And it has now given birth to its own facebook group: "we love the cadbury's drumming gorilla". You saw it here first, gentle readers.

There's a really nice campaign running for an eco-friendly electricity package from utility company EDF in France at the moment.

The ads feature little corners of blue sky like so:

These are located in all sorts of places: in a postcard rack, in someone's back pocket, in a child's pram and so on.

Assuming my rough grasp of French has allowed for the true subtleties of the headline, this reads something like: because everyone is entitled to their own little piece of blue sky.

A quick scan of blogs (and again assuming my translation skills serve me right) suggests that the campaign launched with a DM drop to all households consisting simply of this little corner of blue sky with the line on the back reading this piece of blue sky is for (your name). No branding but just a telephone number - which gets you through to the EDF sales line.

A pretty neat way, it seems to me, of making something which many might see as dull, a little bit more charming.

The current issue of Fast Company is delightfully full of a bunch of articles making a case for the pivotal role of design within any self-respecting organisation seeking to stride through the twenty-first century with confidence. Sir Alan's dream come true.

Highlights include a feature on Wrigley and the latest invention of their R&D team: 5. Targeted at young adults, it's intended as a gum that "reflects who they are".

Dan and Chip Heath speculate about how you make an idea "stick" by using environmental triggers.

There's a brilliant article about a guy called Yves Behar who runs a design firm called fuseproject that appears to have a tremendously successful track record with huge corporations like Coke, Johnson & Johnson and Kodak and uses the profits they make doing this to experiment with profit shares for smaller innovative start-ups. It's called "All About Yves". Hard to beat as an article title for Marilyn Monroe fans.

A very interesting interview with Bob Greenberg who started out using CGI for Hollywood films but then turned his attention to interactive advertising and now works with Nike and Nokia amongst others.

And then perhaps my favourite. An interview with the grand master of design (Sir Alan excepted for a second), Philippe Starck himself. He shares a couple of glorious soundbites with us.

"Today, all buildings are very fancy, they are all narcissistic masturbation to the glory of the guys who design them."

(Don't know if David Chipperfield, master architect for the new BBC offices in Glasgow would agree with that.)

And finally, his formula for creativity:

"Every morning, take royal jelly and omega-3 oil, eat oysters and have a good sexual life. Don't care about anything and never listen to anybody. Be free."

Sir Alan, take note.

Found this site on psfk today. It's a cracking idea.

You choose - from multiple choice answers - the word which best matches the meaning of the specified word. (I think that's a suitably clumsy explanation...) And for each one that you get right, ten grains of rice are donated via the United Nations presumably to the hungry somewhere.

A brilliant example of advertising helping to achieve something both imaginative and really positive. And incredibly compelling for those that fancy themselves as having a bit of an extensive vocabulary.

Now this is what I call a hoarding...

I saw this in Paris recently. They're doing some restoration work on the building so covered it with this and turned into a public art project. Very nice.

I'm doing a lot of hunting for ads at the moment to demonstrate this or that strategy in action. Which means I have a perfectly legitimate reason to be spending a lot of time on a marvellous website called david reviews.

A chap called Jason Stone appears to make a living - or at least spend an inordinate chunk of his time - sourcing TV ads, posting them on his site and commenting on them. And what is lovely is not just access to all of these ads at remarkably bargainlike prices but his commentary on the ads.

So for example, he has a bit of a bee in his bonnet at the moment about the Dove 'campaign for real beauty' which he feels is exploiting the insecurities of those less than unnaturally beautiful to sell...beauty products. Hypocrisy, he would argue.

The supposedly unattractive models used in the ads are just "cunningly cast to ensure they are beautiful in a less obvious way than is customary". And so forth. You get the picture.

I don't consistently agree with his opinion. He prefixed the gorilla ad with a strident "we know you're going to love this..." But by and large, he speaks much sense..

The fact that he tends to love our IRN-BRU ads has absolutely no bearing on my fondness for his craft...

There's a lovely campaign running at the moment for Leonard Cheshire Disability, a charity that provides care and support for people in any way disabled and also campaigns to change attitudes towards disability.

Launched last week and featuring currently in bus shelters across Edinburgh (and probably everywhere else too), the campaign stars animals created by Aardman Animations observing that their disabilities don't stop them living a perfectly normal life.

The posters are charming and engaging. And caught my eye because they neatly side-step the problem of featuring photography and thus immediately pigeon-holing people. But I discover now that they have a rather fine website too. In another nice touch, they have the 'back stories' of all of the characters here. A great way of bringing the campaign message to life.

There's a remarkably intelligent graffitti artist roaming the streets of Leith at the moment. At the foot of Leith Walk, he / she has scrawled "I SENT YOU FLOWERS YOU SAID YOU WANTED CHOCOLATES".

Further up the road (exact same 'hand'writing): DANTE NAMED HER BEATRICE. It was this that really caught my attention as my ill-educated mind felt that he was trying to say something deeply meaningful but wasn't clever enough to know what that might be.

A little investigation reveals that Beatrice was Dante's muse - although they may only have met twice in their lives. And one of these times was when Dante was only 8. But he used her throughout his work as a symbol of God's love, of divine revelation, of Christ himself, of faith and of salvation. Clearly depending on what most suited his point at the time.

So Dante naming Beatrice may be some clever philosophical point. Or maybe just sounded good at the time.

Anyway, I pay particular attention to this guy as he has also seen fit to scrawl on one of our Ocean Terminal posters. Crazy anti-capitalist talk: DON'T BUY ANYTHING NEW THIS CHRISTMAS. I felt immensely irritated with this - as the poster visuals are lovely.

Almost (but not quite) worse - he dared to scrawl some cruel words on the giant Kylie album poster mid-way down Leith Walk.

So he / she may be a wannabe intellectual - and I don't mind him airing his thoughts on boring brick walls - but please Mr Grafitti if you're reading this - leave our posters alone.

Nice article in The Guardian on the rather unimaginative offering from most of the advertisers in this rainy land over Christmas.

NIVEA have been running a poster campaign throughout January that is a poorly concealed attempt to emulate Dove's esteemed campaign for real beauty.

The NIVEA campaign has featured 6 sheets with photography of laughing women rubbing their faces together with inviting lines such as "beauty is sharing", "beauty is being there" or "beauty is peace" (baby sleeping on an exhausted but attractive young father).

The portion of the website in which you can share what beauty means to you has died a death at this present moment. Perhaps it doesn't mean anything much to anyone (beyond adept application of make-up). Anyway, listen to me with my cynical Friday afternoon voice.

The point of this post is that today I am pleased to celebrate that this shamelessly derivative campaign has now - the happy 1 Feb - been withdrawn from bus shelters. Now that is beautiful.

I thought we were safe. But no. A whole new campaign up at the weekend from our friends at NIVEA. Now proposing that beauty is a smile.

Disgusted of Edinburgh

There's a poster up at the top of Portobello Road in Edinburgh, just next to Morrisons and just down from Meadowbank.

I say poster but actually it's a series of mosaic tiles, making one of those puzzles you had when you were a child where you have to shoogle the pieces around to make a picture.

It started off as a complete jumble about 3 weeks ago and it's almost got to its proper correct picture as we speak. And it's a Honda.

It fits beautifully alongside the TV ad. And is such a charming and imaginative use of a 48 sheet site. I'm delighted by it.

I tried to find a photo on the internet but even flickr isn't yielding anything. You shall have to go see for yourselves.

The Leith graffiti artist has obviously built up something of a following.

Dinner party chat on Saturday revealed that the son of a friend had seen what appeared to be The Graffiti-er arrested outside the baby Tesco on Leith Walk in the process of applying an anti-capitalist slogan to the Tesco wall.

To graffiti in broad daylight! What audacity!

Clearly a modern day Robin Hood who uses the power of words to bring down the rich and save the poor.

Nice animation here from Sergio Rossi. Only flaw is I don't believe that the beautiful red shoe would "engage" with the dirty white trainer. But I've always been too superficial.

My ongoing personal crusade against the gorilla ad took another battering this morning.

I see that weekly sales of Dairy Milk increased by 9% when the ad was on air.

Can't really argue with a drum-beating gorilla in which case.

Seems Cadbury's are running into a spot of bother for their rather disappointing follow-up to the Gorilla.

I love this job. Brand Republic today:

Viewers complain about 'sexist leery' Vauxhall TV ad
by Ben Bold Brand Republic 02-Apr-08, 08:30

The ASA noted that the woman looked delighted to discover the car had a bike rack, that the puppets did not behave in a threatening manner and that children were familiar with watching the exploits of puppets on television and that they would recognise the Vauxhall ad as a fantasy scenario. The complaints were not upheld.

Poor poor account handlers!!

Heinz are to launch a gourmet version of their ketchup offering a gourmet blend of herbs and spices along with twelve "plump" tomatoes.

Great quality control job.

5,500 whole chickens are thrown away every day in the UK according to this WRAP report on our slovenly shopping / eating habits. As are 7 million slices of bread. Every day.

Shop wisely this weekend.

This time at the Marketing Execllence Awards in Edinburgh on Friday. We scooped a glass star in the Advertising Excellence category for our IRN-BRU paper: How the Snowman took on Father Christmas and won.

Here we are grinning in double-chinned befuddlement:

Cracking article in the March issue (I know, I'm lagging behind) of Fast Company on the 50 most innovative companies in the US. Be sure to click through to the main feature on Google - snapshots of the roles of key people within the company. You will yearn to work there. But it's also a really interesting overview of the most imaginative thinking in American industry today. Nice little lunchbreak article.

Courtesy of Farm. Enjoy.

Russell Davies, guru of the planning world, blogger extraordinaire and generally genuinely interesting man, writes amongst other things, a blog about his favourite cafes. Which a few years ago was turned into a book.

I shall say only if you haven't got it, get one. A friend sent me a copy in the post yesterday. It's a cracking (geddit?) little book full of pretty pictures of greasy eggs, reviews of cafes with their quintessentially British "air of peeling miserabilism" (almost worth buying simply for being the only time other than a self-indulgent Pet Shop Boys track that I have seen the world 'miserabilism' in print) and various musings on the role of cafes in today's lazy fat society. All self-respecting advertising households should have a copy.

Two things pleased me today.

One of my friends (primary school teacher in Derby so sufficiently far removed from adland for it to mean something) sent me the lastminute 'unexpected performance' video on facebook. Knowing that I'm a theatre geek but not knowing that it was anything at all to do with my place of work. Truly viral. I like that.

(On the subject of theatre geekdom, I'm in Dangerous Liaisons in a couple of weeks. Do buy a ticket even if you don't intend to come as we need to sell loads to cover our exorbitant costs!)

The other thing that pleased me was the remarkable discovery that baby American goats are drinking IRN-BRU. Phil pointed me to Google Alert (several years later than most normal people got there) so I get daily bulletins about who's doing what where with our favourite orange pop. And today's surprise use was baby goat nutrition. A new market niche, perhaps.

Sir Alan read this - a eulogy to Dorset Cereals - and thought of me. Touching.

But he's right in that I do love the brand to the extent of paying ludicrously over the odds for a colourful cardboard box containing oats and a few nuts. About to tuck into their really nutty muesli now, in fact. So they must be doing something right.

I was careless enough to coincide with Britain's Got Talent last night. The girls up here have all been chattering about it and the early dregs of it were on in the gym so I sought it out when I got home as ironing fodder.

I spent the first 40 minutes in a state of disgust. Giant-breasted women flinging themselves up against each other in elaborate costumes maskerading as gypsies. (Cue lecherous Cowell: "I'd like to see those puppies again in the final". Surely hardly appropriate for effectively kids' TV??) A precocious child singing a terrible song written "by a friend of my dad's" so he gets the pity vote. An army of bewigged children skipping around in eye-searingly pink dresses pretending to be Shirley Temple. A weird gothic couple whose act consisted of him magicing candles from thin air and slapping her rump to spice things up a bit. You can tell I enjoyed it. I was pacing around ranting to myself in outrage (what has British culture come to? These shows should be banned. Waste of advertisers' revenue. Rant rant rant) when Hoop La La appeared, a slightly quirkier so almost charming 3 sturdy students wriggling around in hula hoops to a hi-energy dance track.

But then suddenly from nowhere, the perfect underdog story. An inner-city Billy Elliott who had risen from the gutter to teach himself to dance. And he did an absolutely magic break-dancing rendition of the VW Singing in the Rain ad. And immediately I was hooked. Check him out of for yourself here - though skip through the numerous shots of Amanda sobbing sobbing at his miraculous stoicism. Drench's next ad waiting to happen.

We have a corporate membership here for the Filmhouse Cinema. I'm a bit of a cinema junkie so have been to see all manner of rubbish courtesy of this membership. My high point (or low point) was a film innocuously called My Mother which culminated in a fine scene of simultaneous incest and self-harm. Films like this always scare me off the Filmhouse temporarily but Pavlov's dogs-like, I faithfully return.

And now and again, I see something really lovely. So last night for example, I saw a movie called La Antena which means The Aerial. It's an Argentinian film, made in Spanish, but largely silent so the language is pretty immaterial.

It's an extraordinary thing. Like a more optimistic version of Tim Burton meeting a 1940s silent movie and having a strange slightly surreal but adorable love child.

Most surreal of all, it's directed by a guy who started out directing Shakira videos.

It's about a city whose inhabitants have lost their voices. It also manages to be a cunning allegory for Nazi Germany.

I shall not say much more than this as I wouldn't want to ruin the surprise but catch it if you can. It's on for a precious couple more days I think and then it's gone. So be quick!

To Bolton and back sur le train today with Ed and Gail to see our friends at AG Barr. The train journey was notable for two reasons.

On the way down this misty morning, Ed suddenly gazed out of the window and declared that the landscape was beautiful. He must have believed that we were still in the Borders.

On the way back, a very entertaining man sat alongside us at the companionable 4 seating table and observed latterly that it was ironic that Ed and I were working so hard as I tapped tapped away on my laptop and he on his blackberry while Gail sat gazing into space. Gail replied reasonably that it was after half past five so technically down time.

She was unoffended - as she remarked on his departure at Haymarket that we needed more friendly strangers on trains. I wholeheartedly agree.

On holiday last week in mostly Lisbon and for a graffitti lover (as well as a good weather lover), it turned out to be a dreamy week. To illustrate..:

This latter one appeared to be very meaningful. I saw versions of it scattered across buildings all over the city. I await the bombarding of the blog with hate mail now that I've posted it.

So I'm sitting on the mid-afternoon train to Glasgow earlier today and it's chock full of meeting-stuffed commuters on their way home. I'm sat next to a young man who has his laptop on the table in front of him. I have my laptop on the table in front of me. The man sitting opposite (white shirt, blue tie, surely an accountant) is hunched over some secretive figures which he's storing in his lap for reasons best known to himself, scribbling away at them.

The young man plugged his earphones into the wrong socket and for a moment, we shared his crazy young people's hiphop muzak. The man sitting opposite snapped his head up and pointed irritably at his ears. The young man leapt to attention, realised why he couldn't hear anything through his headphones and rectified the situation.

Eager always to pour whatever you pour on troubled waters, I said, full of mock regret, "I was quite enjoying that." Man sitting opposite snapped "you were the only one".

The milk of human kindness. I love it.