Reflection: Frustrastion is Your Friend

Looking back on this year, especially after Junior Review, I cannot believe how much I have accomplished in such a short period of time. With great guidance and teaching I have learned and grown in my the area of art direction and copywriting. But I can pretty much sum up the year and my experience in two phrases: "nothing comes easy," and, "frustration is your friend." 


I learned this many times along the way when trying to execute things visually. Sometimes the ideas would just click, and others there would be times where I would literally have to shoe shop because my mind could not think of anything that was worthy to present. As for copywriting, well this for me is mostly frustration. I know now I can write good copy, it just takes longer for me to come up with it, and I can not let it defeat me. I just have to sit by myself with some trance music and just write, write, write. And I am sorry if there are spelling and grammar errors in here, because so I have been told it's the art director coming out in me. But one thing that we have been told since freshman year that sometimes, not always, makes execution in both areas is a solid concept. If you have the "big idea" it should be expandable into multiple areas than just print. This is still not always easy. After working on OfficeMax for Phoenix Ink, we had a solid concept, but some of the visuals and ambient were not so easy to come up with as was the copy. But after much frustration and hitting our heads, we fleshed it all out, and it looked amazing. 

If I could go back and do things differently, I would have started to put my portfolio and resume together over the summer. You do not realized how time consuming they are, and lets face it, if you are working and have other activities you eventually end up sacrificing something, and these are the things I sacrificed. It defiantly hurt me because I feel a tad bit behind. So for all freshman and sophomores start working on your logo, resume, and portfolio now. You will have more free time for you other AD projects and other activities. 

Next year, not going to lie, I am very scared. It is senior year. We are about to graduate and become adults. I know I am going to get great experience from participating on N.S.A.C. but I am still trying to think how I am going to swing my portfolio to make fashion agencies to want to hire me. I am not sure how I feel about this open assignment idea, due to the fact that I need some guidance. So we will see how it all plays out. I am though excited to be out in the real world, and use all the things that what have been taught, and I know that we are already know that we are doing work on an industry level. I want to give a special thanks to our teacher Vivan Owen. Without her our projects, portfolios, copywriting, and art direction would not be where they are today. I am very proud of all my classmates and how far we have all come, and I am excited for all of us to walk at graduation next year. 

Please Someone Put Me On Diesel Island

So as many of you know, and after writing the same thing on this blog many a time, I want to work for a fashion advertising agency. But of course, most of designers do their advertising in house, so in the famous words of Rebecca Black, "which seat should I take?" Well let me tell you, there is one seat I would defiantly like to fill, and that would be on the creative marketing and advertising team at Diesel. Now, if you keep up with Diesel you know they are always making trendy clothing for young adults, but also always pushing the boundaries of how they advertise their clothing. This is usually in the form of sex sells, but recently they have been selling their clothing in a humorous way, with a hint of sex. Their newest campaign "Diesel Island" for summer 2011, still plays off the previous "Be Stupid" campaign, but in a new way. The video below, a history of Diesel Island, is the perfect combination between witty humor and fashion. And Diesel made a few more of these videos that are equally entertaining. I would not change a single thing about these videos. The way they are filmed, down to the casting is spot on, so clearly, Diesel is anything but stupid.

Making a Zen Website

After reading section of The Zen of Social Media by Shama Hyder Kabani, there are a few key points that I came away with. Right away in the first chapter there was a methodology represented by the acronym A.C.T, which stands for attract, convert, and transform. This principle can be summed up as you have to get a consumers attention, make them into a loyal customer, and keep on turning that first attraction into an ongoing one, or a "magnetic force.

I also found it interesting after reading this part of the book, that in actuality the best site of conversion is the brands actual website. So everything you put out in social media should some point the consumer or client back to the website. In chapter two of this book, it continues this principle even further and states that your website the window to ones company. It also states that it is this way because everyone expects you to have a website and it can influence a huge audience of people, that may have not been possible without a website. Chapter two takes this concept even more in depth by saying, "Your website can't be good-it has to be great!" This concept it compelety true. I can think of so many times I have been to a brands website, or even a designer, and their website alone makes me either want to know more, or completely forget about them.  It continues to say that a "cool" website must do three of things: educate, market, and sell (EMS).  If you can educate, you will not be able to market your product well, and if you can not market your product well, then you can almost guarantee that your product will not sell well, at all. So how do you make a website that can do all of this for your brand and more? Well, according to Shama Hyder Kabani your website must have following: design, structure, content, and optimization. So all in all you must have what we call an "eye catching design" and it must be simple to use. Just because your website is really complex and cool, if it is not user friendly and easy to navigate, your website will, be considered a fail. And also it must be well built, and look good on the outside and function on as many platforms as possible. 
I found these parts about building a website especially useful not only for any social media project, but for me personally. Since I am my own brand, any of the principles in this book can be applied to me as a personal brand. In a world full of competition, this book has many useful tools to help me stand out.

Reflection on Bad Writing

I liked the film by Bad Writing quit a bit. It was just the same thing though we have been hearing since we were in elementary, "anyone can be a writer." So the age old message was nice to hear again, but it was no real revelation of knowledge that I haven't heard before. And I strongly felt this was the point of the film, just to tell you everyone starts at a certain point when writing; no one writes perfect pieces all the time. It takes a lot of revising, and re writing, or can be summed up as perfect practice makes perfect. Just keep practicing writing, and like a muscle, it will get stronger. The most important thing I learned from the film is if you love what you do, even it is for 25 percent of the time, it is worth doing. You may feel like you are failing sometimes, but do not let doubt defeat you. I defiantly feel this way sometimes when I am writing copy. I get so frustrated with words that I just want to burn a dictionary. But once I hit that moment where the words start to flow out on paper, I realize that I am not that bad at copywriting after all, and I need to be a little less hard, but still be critical of my work. I would defiantly recommend this documentary for people who are discouraged about their writing, or for someone who just needs a quick reminder things may come naturally to us, but they never come easy.

Bad Writing Screening

For tonight's blog, I will be screening Bad Writing, a film by Vernon Lott. During this live blog I will be giving commentary and insight into this film. Enjoy

Sealy Mattress Makes Me Smile

I think this next post will show that I am almost always on youtube looking for new types of music. And once again another youtube ad came up that made me smile, so I had to write about it. It was a superbowl commercial for Sealy matresses, but I had never seen it before. The commercial doesn't tell you what the product is at first, but the way it is setup with all the couples giggling and lauging makes you think it is for a personal lubricant. But the twist comes at the end revealing the product by saying ,"Everything is better on springs, no matter what you do in the morning." I thought this was clever, because in a way it uses the age old sex sells, but in a discreet and tasteful way. The commercial tricks you into thinking it is all about sex, but in actuality its just your own dirty mind playing tricks on you. I think this was one my favorite commercials I have seen, and to all my friends no it is not because there are two black men in it. Thank you Sealy for making me want to do more things on springs.

Orabrush

Whenever I am on Youtube, it seems there is always an advertisement before the video I want to watch. And almost every time, the ad is not worth my time. So naturally I mute the volume, and go on doing something else that is worth a minute and thirty seconds of my life. But today while I was about to listen to one of my favorite house songs on youtube, and ad came up that I actually stopped and listened to. It was for Orabrush. It is a brush that is built differently than a tooth brush and a tongue scrapper. It brushes and scraps all the bacterica from the back of your tongue that causes 90 percent of bad breath. Now the commercial looks very rough, like it was just shot from a HD camcorder, but the message, copy, and humor where enough to keep me watching the video, and not care about the low-budget production. I was so intrigued after watching this product, partially because it made me feel like I had bad breath, that I went to their youtube page and watched their other videos. I then saw a banner saying "get your first ora brush free." Now we all know it wasn't free, but all I had to do is become a fan of Orabrush on facebook, and only pay 3.99 for s/h. I saved 8 bucks, and for those of you who know me I really didn't care about that, I am just happy I can scrape bacteria off my tongue now. All in all, you know you have a good ad when it makes the consumer stop and go buy the product. Thank you Orabrush for making me buy something else I really dont need, and thank you advertising for making that possible.

Pharmaceutical Advertising

After working on the Gelusil project, I defiantly have more of an appreciation for pharmaceutical ads. They are not as easy to come up with ideas with then most other brands, because you have stipulations not only by the client, but by the FDA. But regardless of these hurdles, there are many good advertisements for OTC (over the counter) medications. However, the advertisements that do the best in this area of OTC medications are ones that are humorous, or do not show the "perfect life that everyone has" that you see in most pharmaceutical commercials. One ad that I found is for Nicorette, which use to be called Commit, and is used to help people stop smoking cigarettes. Now the premise of the commercial is mainly about the name change, but you still understand what the product is for. The commercial is sweet, to the point, and I love it. It makes me smile, and I think thats what the majority of people want from advertisements right now.

Protecting Your Brand Image

Now in Advertising, we are always told our brand image is one of the most important things to keep within the lines of social etiquette. What we do and say outside of our advertising can harm your career and brand identity if portrayed in a negative manner. Now, Gilbert Gottfried (for those of you who are not familiar with this man he was the voice of Iago in Disney's Aladdin) tweeted some inappropriate remarks that had many people saying thinking, "not the time." He was making or "quacking" some jokes such as "I fucked a girl in japan. She screamed "I feel the earth move and I'm getting wet," and, "What does every Japanese person have in their apartment? Flood lights." Now many of you may not know, this man is the voice of the Aflac duck. And Aflac does over 75 percent of its business in Japan, so you can imagine how Aflac reacted. So naturally, they fired him. Now this was the right thing to do, because Aflac needed to protect its brand name and identity. But the only question I have now is, what is the next bird Gottfried will be the voice of in the future.

Mercedes Benz: Left Brain-Right Brain

As I am sad to say, I did not go to the ADDY'S last night, so I am not going to write my blog of the wonderful events and awards that I heard about from so many people. But instead, I am going to write about some print ads that I Found intriguing on adsoftheworld.com. They are for Mercedes Benz, and the concept behind them is about something in art school we always hear about- the left brain and right brain. Now the images depict the clear differences between the left brain and the right brain. The three images depict the difference in the left brain and right brain between passion, music, and art. The copy is the same on all three print ads, and also contrasts the difference between the left brain and the right brain. The copy for the left brain reads ," I am the left brain. I am a scientist. A mathematician. I love the familiar. I categorize . I am accurate. Linear....", and the copy for the right brain reads such as ," I am the right brain. I am creativity. A free spirit. I am passion. Yearning. Sensuality. I am the sound of roaring laughter..."

Now, I love the visuals so much. They are so artistic, but so easy to understand. The copy is simple, but I like it as well. The only issue I have is there is nothing tying the whole left brain-right brain concept to the product itself. I am assuming that Mercedes is trying to say they are left brained- right brained, or that their cars are modeled in mind of both people. I am not exactly sure if that is the point they are trying to get across. There needs to be one line of copy tying the concept and brand together, that is larger than the other text so it keeps to the rules of hierarchy. Other than that I really do like these ads. The visuals are definitely a page stopper.  

Escape Old Luxury: Audi's Super Bowl Commercial

So I must admit, I still have not watched a single Super Bowl in my entire life. Even when the Super Bowl was in Tampa, I watched Trading Spaces instead. But I would always hear about the commercials, and thankfully because of modern technology such as youtube, I didn't have to watch the Super Bowl again and could just watch the commercials online the day after. Now I watched many, and heard from my peers about which ones they liked the best. But after watching them again, I must say my favorite one is the Audi Commercial for new Audi A8. They took their tag-line "escape old luxury" and showed just that, but in the most creative and funny way. The commercial depicts all these rich people in this outlandish prison, and too men are trying to escape. The visuals and attention to detail was amazing, and the casting for the people. You a perfect picture of the archetype rich person, who probably belongs to a yacht club. But my favorite part was when they "Hit em with Kenny G," it was absolutely spot on and funny. Another reason I liked the Audi ads where they did not get vulgar at all like the mini cooper ads, or did they seem like a ton of money for a week concept such as the Coke dragon Ad. Now I had many other favorite ads, but Audi was my favortie, and who knows, maybe I will start watching the Super Bowl because of it. Oh the power of Advertising.

Where is the wallah Wella?

So for those of you who are not into the world of hair, Wella is a professional hair product company that specializes in dye. And for those of you who know me and of my platinum hair, this is the brand of toner is use to keep my hair as ad-fagtastic as possible. Now when I usually see their in store ads and they are done very nicely. The hair, color choice, and style of photography is always modern and high-fashion. This is a screenshot from their online site of one of the ads that appears in professional stores.

Now when I was on Ads of the World today, I came across these new Wella ads:

Now visually form a graphic design and illustration standpoint, I love them as art work alone. They are very trendy are in the "now" in movements where graphic design and illustration merge. However, from a advertising standpoint, quite frankly, I think these are awful. First of all, the logo and the copy is so small that you are left wondering from the illustrations what this advertisement is for. And above all this does not want to make me buy the product because it doesn't show me that I am going to have beautiful hair that is seen in all the magazines. I think there are some things in the world of fashion and beauty where advertising should stay the same. The only reason I say this is because fashion and beauty advertising has never changed, but is still is one the largest markets out there. And that is one of the reasons I want to be in this world of fashion and beauty. It represents timeless beauty, and I hope Wella recaptures that in their next ads. 

More Companies Pull Ads from Skins

So the new television series Skins, which is just a remake of the British television series, has been getting a lot of controversy since its premier. It has cause so much controversy that the Parents Television as been asking people to boycott this show, and in so doing launched an advertising campaign against it. Now I looked on their site and everywhere else, and cannot seem to find the ad campaign against it. Skins is so scandalous and controversial to most people that many companies are pulling their commercials and sponsorship form the television show. The companies that have pulled their commercial so far are : H&R Block, Subway, Taco Bell, Wrigley, and GM. Mtv has no current plans of toning down the show. I had never watched the series, so to form an opinion, I watched the first episode yesterday, and I must say it was ridiculous. The whole episode was about sex, and trying to get a guys “v card” taken away. It was degrading to women, and to teenagers and young adults. It sheds a bad light on the life of teenagers, and personifies it in a false light. I can see why advertisers have pulled from the show. If your going to make a show about crazy teenagers, at least make it somewhat realistic.   

Audi's "Goodnight" Commercial

So many of you have been seeing all the new Super Bowl commercials that have been coming out in the past couple of days. As usual some of them are outstanding, but some leave you in your seat saying to yourself,"I don't get it." After looking through a few of these commercials the one that stood out to me from a visual stand point, as well as the writing, was the commercial for the new Audi A8. The copy and the the style of the commercial is based of the children's story "Goodnight Moon". The copy gives you the message of  how luxury has progressed. The spot says "goodnight gluttony,” “expected," "outdated” definitions of “old luxury”  and says hello, or good morning with the new  Audi parked outside. Now again i think the luxurious feel of the commercial is brilliant and the copy. I loved watching it over to see all the small details of every scene. However, most things are never perfect. The only thing I did not care for with this commercial was the ending. It seemed rather corny and visually unappealing to just show the new Audi in the sunrise. But other than that loved the commercial for its visual components and copy.  

Space Invaders and Fashion

According to the news in London, 80's fashion and retro games are what is in right now, two companies Kaywa and Office Lendorff teamed up to create a one of a kind QR scarf. The scarf has little space invader creatures on it. When you scan one side a message comes up that say "Game Over", but when you scan the QR on the other side of the scarf a message pops up that says "Insert Coin For Extra Life". That is the only thing the scarf does. You may ask why does it not do more? "You could go further and make a space invaders game which could be downloaded via the scarf, but what we did was more of a fun, simple project". They said what they did is more fun, but I would like a downloadable game where you have to scan the other side of the scarf to get a new life when you loose, but that is just my opinion since retro games are not my forte. 

The company does not plan to come out with any more of these products because they are too expensive to make, but there is one company that does: Emma Cott. The shirts and sweatshirts she designs are made to be used as self-advertising. When someone scans the QR code on from the apparel it takes you directly to that persons Facebook, which is very cool and makes "Facebook lurking" even easier now.  

I Would Like To Not Have A Concept... Just Once.

So in our classes we are always taught to have a strong concept or a "big idea", but to me it seems that the majority of advertising now for our audience has no point. For example the skittles campaigns. Pretty much the majority of them make absolutely no sense, but that is the sort of material that the audience these days love. 

Now I am not going to disagree, these ads are hilarious, and I see more people using this type of advertising. The one example I keep on seeing in Tampa are for Racetrack a gas comapany. Now it is quite odd for a gas station to use this method for these billboards, since this type of humor has nothing to do with the brand identity. These billboards are very humerous and make absolutely no sense, but you remeber them. So I guess my question is do we need a concept all the time? I mean if everyone remembers your ads and thinks they are funny isn't that enough? I would like to be able to test this out one day in a class project and be able just to use humor without concept. 

Please Be Absolutely Original.

So since one of my weak points in advertising is ambient and non-traditional, I decided to right another post about it. So going through Ads of the World, naturally these images popped off the page; the bright colors caught my eye. They are for Absolute Vodka (by TBWA), but to me the absolutely not original. They are a complete rip off of Ikea's transformation of a bus stop, but at least Ikea's made sense. Absolute's execution made sense, but the concept is still not clicking in my head. They are an alcoholic beverage company so why is there furniture being introduced? It has nothing to do with the brand, tagline, or the print concept behind the chairs. It looks like the people at Absolute thought, "Hey lets just put comfortable chairs out so people like us." I guess that is a good thing if they want to get across that they are luxurious brand. But still I do not get it, Absolute needs to keep more to their brand identity and feeling that they give off in their print. I feel strongly if you are going to do something that has inevitably has already been done before, put your own twist on it, and make sure there is a strong concept behind.

Women For Sale, Not Clothes

Now not many people know about the world of human trafficking, but it is a problem that effects every country. Woman are abused and sold into sex slavery.  Now since Advertising creates awareness, Shalmor Avnon Amichat/ Y&R in Tel Aviv decidced to use this power of advertising for good and inform the public of this issue in a way that the public coud not escape. The creatives of Y&R chose the mall where people purchase items to set up their ambient piece. The ambient piece had women on display with price tags as if it was a regular retail store. This made quit an astonishing image of horror to think that women were being sold like articles of clothing around the world. This is an example of how advertising can be used to better the world. I hope in my future I can be a part of some form of advertising that betters the world and changes the way people look at current issues.

Not Your Typical Playboy Bunny.

Well going through fashion advertising, I always love seeing advertising that goes away from the "sex sells" pitch, even though it is still one of my favorites way of selling clothes. The other way of selling clothes that has been becoming a growing trend has been more humorous headlines that embodies the spirit of a particular brand. The first brand I remember that did this, and they did an amazing job, was Diesel's "Be Stupid" campaign. http://www.google.com/images\um=1&hl=en&tbs=isch:1&q=diesel+be+stupid+campaign&revid=566407879&sa=X&ei=vNrETMGLJcT58AaCiOnXBg&ved=0CCMQ1QIoAA&biw=1352&bih=693

The next brand, which I stumbled upon recently, is FCUK, otherwise known as French Connection. They are know for their simple clothes and using their initials FCUK for many innuendo related slogans. This ad  produced by Fallon in London shows a man wearing bunny ears, a simple shirt, and bold copy that reads "man should be brave". It is simple. makes you smirk, and gives you a feel for the brand. FCUK me any day of the week.

Thanks Audi for the false hope.

Now going through Ads of the world last minute on a Sunday night, because as usual I forgot I had a blog, I came across this advertisement for the new Audi R8 spyder produced by Lowe Roche. This is luxury sport care that is well over 100,000 dollars. Now in the advertisement, it shows a picture of the car, and only has one line of copy slammed across the billboard, "Stay in school". Now on adsoftheworld.com  this billboard ad had very high ratings from the viewers, but I disagree. I do not think this idea is that clever, and on top of it, I get two different messages. The first being, if i stay in school then I will be making enough money to have anything I can pretty much dream of, which we all know in reality this is not true and most kids and teens are smart enough to know this. The second message i got from this made me think of stay in school campaigns used by the Board of Education, and made me think that this ad may have not even been for Audi, but just an almost "bait and switch" campaign, but a very poor one. So all in all, I have seen car advertisements before, and this one is defiantly missing the mechanics of a great advertisement.