Brazil is a funny country

I was half surprised to see two Brazilian agencies among the top three top agencies at Cannes 2009. Brazil has always been an historical advertising country and just talk to any Brazilian and you will see that they are all passionate about advertising in general. This is definitely not the case in some European countries where working in Advertising is seen as evil. (i.e. France, without mentioning it ...)

So as said, this year number 1 agency was DDB Brasil and ALMAPBBDO Brasil (where the legendary Marcello Serpa works) was second.

While I was writing this post, the most Brazilian of the non-Brazilians that I know (who happens to be a French guy with Israeli origins. I know, it makes sense) just sent me these videos that are apparently quite massively viral in that Latin American country. I have to admit that Brazilians tend to be quite funny.

Iran is a nation of Bloggers

Unless you were on a deserted island in the middle of the Pacific last week, you have all heard that Iran is going through very agitated times since its presidential election. It is true that I have never posted anything in relation with politics on this blog until now, but I have just found this very interesting video of with an overview of Blogs in Iran, and when you see the key roles Social Networking Platforms are playing in the current confrontation, (i.e. #iranelection on twitter) I thought it deserved a post on Consumer Is Boss.




At the moment I am mainly getting all the information through twitter, but I know the iIanian opposition has been very active on other platforms such as Facebook. Do you have any other examples of this 2.0 mobilization?

hahahaha.fr

Funny website created by atypical French agency Buzzman:

Click here


This site is creating a small buzz mainly around the twittersphere and its simple but funny content seems to have quite a high return rate. Did someone find the secret combo?

AC/DC Rocks the Office

To create a buzz around their new single "Rock N Roll Train", AC/DC just launched the world's first video on Excel. Yes that's right, AC/DC just turned one of the most boring software into a music video player. Your old spreadsheets just became a bit sexier. Is this the future of the Web?


Click here

Cannes Young Lions 48 hours ad contest

I know I haven't been posting for a while in this blog. The reason for this is that I am actually involved with a new project which includes an internal communication's blog. Adding this to my daily job and it was pretty much impossible for me to post anything these days.

But here I am. As passionate about advertising as ever and I wanted to talk to you today about this new contest put up by Cannes Young Lions. It already existed during the previous editions but this time it is open to the world through a partnership with Youtube.


The objective is to create a short viral ad in line with a given brief. The brief was given out last Friday at midnight (GMT) and the participants had 48 hours to upload a film on youtube. Now they have 2 weeks to make it go viral.

We tried to participate with a few friends, but since a major event was happening outside of the city where we live and since the stores there only open on Saturday (and only until 6pm) our two original and best ideas were just too complicated to come to life.

However, when we were about to give out, we came out with this idea, involving the most spotted dead legend worldwide: Elvis.

So tell us what you think about it and please vote for us here (Search: Violin)

M83 - We own the sky video contest

M83 (aka Anthony Gonzalez) is an electronica band from Antibes, France. To increase the buzz around its new single "We own the sky", M83 decided to launch a video contest for the song on youtube. The buzz around it was quite big. Actually, the demand was so big that the deadline was even pushed back.

The contest did reach its objective: I personnally never heard of M83 before and so did most of my friends who are now forwarding the video through facebook, twitter or their blog. Quite a good 2.0 PR operation.

Almost forgot to tell you that the winner are Young Replicants, a teenage director's label and design collective from L.A.

T-mobile copy?

In one of my notes written in January, I posted a video of the now well-known T-mobile Dance flashmob in Liverpool station. This ad was viral big time since it spread through the Internet, but was also used in traditional advertising too (TVC on British TV the next day). So it was a kind of surprise for me to see pretty much the same thing happening again and with such a big success... again!



The 200 dancers in Antwerpen Central Station were promoting the Dutch TV version of “in search of Maria“, a BBC format, staged by the Belgian commercial VTM network.


In my opinion, it is quite a bold bet to do this only a few months after T-Mobile's huge worldwide success. It is obviously not as successful as T-Mobile's flashmob, but it still works. Copying someone else's work is definitely not encouraged in the Advertising industry (Despite Luke Sullivan encouraging junior creatives to do this in his book "Hey Whipple, Squeeze this", as a start) but we have to admit that it can do its job in some situations. Two important things are needed though: the time factor (don't air it right after the original), and location (different market). Finally, it will also depend on the sucess of THE ORIGINAL. As an example, I doubt a new "Gorilla ad" would work anywhere. In the case illustrated here, none of these variables are respected. The debate about who was first is always a hot topic (just check the French website Joe la pompe, a database of "coincidences and/or copied work"). The fact that T-Mobile's idea is itself a copied from a flashmob "freeze" might give this new adaptation a justification. Because in the end, the objective is to make people like it. And people don't seem to get tired of these flashmobs.

However, if you think brand for a second, repeating someone else's idea might not be the best strategy (even just conceptually). Your brand needs to differentiate itself vs. other brands, and I don't believe copying someone else's work is the best way to achieve this objective.