I always try and make my business stories at least a little bit interesting. But this one is very boring. Or more to the point, about how very boring ‘very’ is these days. And how a bunch of other words and phrases like it just don’t cut the mustard in the world of marketing any more.

Things like ‘top brands, low prices’, ‘great service’, ‘best value’ and yes, even ‘SA/Australian Made/Owned/Operated’ are so generic they’re enough to put most people to… Zzzzzzzzzzzz…. Sorry, what was I saying? Oh, that’s right, they totally suck the big one. They’re rubbish. Crap. Boring as bat poo. Not worth the paper, or screen, they’re written on.

Our job as marketers is to capture people’s attention and imagination. To make an impression. And lame, every day promises just don’t do that. Even ‘Have a very Merry Christmas’ is nothing compared to ‘Have a totally ridiculously kick arse Christmas.’ Which, by the way, I hope you do.

And don’t even start me on what the morons who came up with ‘Very Premium’ were thinking. ‘Very Premium’? Seriously? That has to be the most un-very premium way of saying ‘very premium’ I’ve ever heard. Someone should be very, no, bloody ashamed of themselves for that (lack of) effort.

So choose your promises. Make them exciting. Make them original. Oh, and keep them! That helps as well. And whatever you do, have a ridiculously, awesome, mind-blowingly good Festive Season!

You'd have to be living under a rock in a fishbowl to not have heard about this week's dead fish fiasco. Advantage SA sent a few goldfish bowls complete with goldfish to various media companies around Australia with 'Be the big fish in a small pond and come test the water' printed on the side. Turns out a lot of the fish didn't pass that water test and they kicked the bucket. And of course, the media were onto it like a great white gnawing on a surfer's leg.

Ironically, the campaign has now captured way more attention than it would have if it had all gone smoothly, which begs the question, embarrassment aside, could this campaign actually be considered a success? I've heard stories of people planning a crisis so they can implement a crisis management plan and ride the waves of publicity off the back of it. Vegemite's iSnack 2.0 or whatever the hell it was called was most likely one of those times. Not exactly genius, but it certainly generated heaps of press and there probably wasn't a person, or goldfish, in Australia that hadn't heard of the product by the time they renamed it something much more sensible and less controversial. Romania's recent 'Rom chocolate bar' is another example of one done incredibly well and is definitely worth checking out if you haven't already seen or heard about it.

The challenge is, of course, to get the coverage without actually damaging your brand. Let's be honest here, having your CEO being sued for trying to shag one of the girls at work probably didn't do wonders for David Jones. So clearly, like most marketing, there's a nack to getting it just right.

Let's not forget the other important lesson from all this. Boring gets ignored. Every. Single. Time. A goldfish may not have been groundbreaking stuff, but at least Advantage SA made an effort to do something interesting that would get noticed. OK, it ended up getting noticed for all the wrong reasons, but you know what? Stuff happens. When you try something different, when you push a boundary here and there, sometimes things go wrong and innocent goldfish bite the big one.

Although if we're being fair, it's hardly a "stunt gone wrong" as reported by the papers. If they'd forced a goldfish to jump 24 buses while riding a motorbike and he'd died in the process, now that would have been a stunt gone wrong. This was something else entirely. It was someone having a go and it didn't quite work out. At least not as intended. Obviously it's worth thinking through anything you do properly, but the truth is we still need to take risks and it makes me sadder than the GPA (Goldfish Protection Association) to think that some people shy away from having a crack just in case something like this goes wrong.

Because no matter how hard we try, how much we plan and how careful we are, in one way or another, we're all likely to kill a few goldfish along the way to getting the results we're looking for.

It's no secret I'm a pretty enthusiastic Facebooker. Which means every day I'm bombarded with literally hundreds of ads – or sponsored stories or whatever the hell you want to call then. It goes without saying, I completely ignore most of them. But earlier this week I saw one I simply had to click on. It totally cut through the clutter with its product name alone.

For reasons I'm sure I won't have to explain, The Vagisoft Blanket caught my attention immediately. At first I thought the product name was simply an unfortunate coincidence, but I quickly realised there was no coincidence here… Softer than freshly laundered bunnies? Softer than the cotton fields of Heaven? Oh yes, this blanket promised to be as soft as… Er… Well, it promised to be Vagisoft on The Soft-O-Meter.

Apparently soft as a baby's bottom no longer makes the cut. In fact, they reckon this blanket is even softer than the anus of a silkworm, and while I can't vouch for how soft that is from personal experience, I can say it does sound really rather soft.

The truth is, despite having a fairly comprehensive look at this product on Betabrand.com I still haven't really worked out whether or not this is for real or not. (They also sell 'Disco Pants' and 'Nauseating Holiday Pants' so who knows?) But then, I thought the Snuggie (you know, the robe you wear backwards!) was a joke and I'm pretty sure someone made a truck load of money out of that effort.

All I know for sure is by telling an interesting story they've managed to get my attention, convey their core benefit, and if I was in the market for a blanket that was softer (and hopefully better smelling) than a silkworms anus I'd buy one. Probably.

The cream of the advertising and design crop were awarded the state’s top industry honours at the glamorous Adelaide Advertising and Design Club (AADC) annual black tie ceremony last night at The National Wine Centre.

The AADC presented its top gongs – the coveted Gold Chair to Clemenger BBDO and the Master’s Chair to Anthony De Leo – in front of a sell out ‘who’s who’ crowd of the South Australian industry.

The Gold Chair is the most coveted award, presented to the most outstanding piece in the competition. Clemenger BBDO’s winning multi media project “Already Home” for The Adelaide City Council shares the stories of locals through film, photography and written word, highlighting the unique lifestyles of those who live or work within the city of Adelaide.

The Master’s Chair recognises the role of Master Craftsperson and the contribution of individuals within the industry. Anthony De Leo from Voice studio impressed the judges with “W. Wagtail”, a Longview Vineyard wine label, for outstanding typography.

Category winners included Becq Hinton and Johnny Velis in the Press category for Adelaide Casino’s “Missing Big Cow” big schnitzel promotion, Parris Mesidis for Monarto Zoo’s “Baby Zebra” in the Poster category and Richard Lyons for Photography for The Adelaide Film Festival launch.

The awards have a reputation for being the toughest in the nation, adding to the prestige of securing a win. The judges, each at the top of their field internationally, were flown in from around Australia to undertake the difficult task of selecting the winning work from a record number of applications of unprecedented quality.

Co chair of the AADC Executive, Maggie Harris, said the quality of this year’s entries was very impressive.

“We are overwhelmed by this year’s response to the competition,” Maggie said.

“It’s great to see people taking pride in their work and helping to raise the bar in the local industry, which already enjoys a good reputation nationally.

“South Australian agencies and individuals are producing stunning work of an international standard, something we should all be very proud of in this state,” Maggie said.

Key judge, Adelaide expat and internationally renowned Creative Director, Chris Mitchell, said he was impressed by the standard of work being produced.

“I was pleasantly surprised by the unbelievable submissions in the competition, it made judging a challenging but exciting task,” Chris said.

“Competitions like this are important for the industry as it acknowledges people’s good work and helps the industry to forge on with new and challenging ideas and rise to even greater heights.”

About the Adelaide Advertising Design Club (AADC)

The Adelaide Advertising and Design Club sets out to promote and maintain high standards in the fields of South Australian advertising and design. The Club initiates and supports a wide variety of educational programs, exhibitions, publications and social events, for the betterment of its members, and the communications industry at large. For more information please visit www.aadc.com.au.

Mark Rivett, one of Australia’s top composers in the field of music for advertising, will return to his hometown of Adelaide next month to address the Adelaide Advertising and Design Club’s guest speaker event.

As senior partner and musical director of Sydney-based Song Zu Studios, Mark was recently voted as one of Australia’s top four composers with the most works performed overseas. He has received many major awards for music excellence, including Cannes Gold Lions, London International Advertising Awards, Gold Clios and Award Awards.

He will address a crowd of advertisers, designers and musicians as part of the Club’s yearly program, where he will discuss his career and the power of music in the advertising industry.

“When I started out I had some unconventional ideas, I wanted to build a business where specialist composers worked like specialist lawyers in a law firm. 9 to 5, in an office, on a good wage, taking a brief,” Mark said.

“Most composers are wonderfully eccentric and unique which means the company had to reflect that and operate in a unique way.”

Song Zu Studios has been involved with television ad campaigns for many national and international brands, including Coca Cola, Sony, Toyota, Adidas, Panasonic, VISA, Dell and Qantas with its “I still call Australia home” ad.

Song Zu Studios has also worked on film, TV and musical productions, including handling the music editing and programming for Baz Luhrmann’s Australia.

AADC’s Co-President Maggie Harris said the event is a good opportunity for people from the creative industries to learn from an experienced professional.

“We are really pleased that Mark was happy to come and speak, as he is so well respected in the creative and advertising community,” said Maggie.

“Young people starting out, as well as experienced professionals, will really benefit from hearing from someone so accomplished and we encourage anyone to come along.”

To attend the event, which is being sponsored by Adstream, email yvonne.karabatsos@clemenger.com.au or visit www.aadc.com.au.

Location: The Stag Hotel, Rundle Street, Adelaide.

Date: Thursday 14 October 2010.

Time: 6.30pm for a 7pm start.

Price: $10 members, $20 non-members and non-RSVPs; also includes a burger and beer.

It may seem amusing to non-industry people, but there is in fact an annual awards ceremony for the best ads and design work produced here in South Australia each year. This year’s black tie event was held at the Stamford Grand with several hundred of the industry’s best and brightest in attendance.

The awards are hotly contested amongst the various ad agencies and design houses with bragging rights, and a fair smattering of publicity, up for grabs. Adelaide has three major ad agencies but this year’s awards ended up being a bit of a two horse race with Clemenger and Jam fighting it out for top spot. In sheer numbers, you’d have to say Clems came up trumps with nine awards, but Jam weren’t far behind with seven. Jam also managed to pick up the ‘Gold Chair’ – the award given to the single most outstanding piece of work on the night – for their slow motion sneeze ad for the Department of Health. So perhaps it might be more of a draw.

A special mention needs to be made of the 6 awards received by Adam Johnson. His one person company left its mark alongside the heavyweights of Clemenger and Jam.

In the design arena, Voice were a clear winner with five awards with Parallax, Gavin Klose, and Black Squid also in the winners circle.

This year’s Chairman of Judges was the art director responsible for Queensland Tourism’s world famous ‘Best Job in the World’ campaign, and he spoke very highly of the calibre of work created here in Adelaide in the past 12 months. It was a refreshing change from the generally luke warm reception and distinct lack of awards the work has received over the past few years.

Somewhat surprisingly, no single piece of photography was deemed worthy of an award despite their being seven finalists.

NOTE: Glam Adelaide’s website was a finalist for best HTML/CSS website!

For all the latest Ad Town news, check out http://www.adtown.com.au

It seems every time we hear about Parallax they’re winning some new award, picking up a new piece of business, or putting a full size caravan in their office. OK, to be completely accurate they only did the caravan thing once, but they’ve done the award and new business thing plenty of times this year. And it seems they’re not done yet.

Although they’re widely renowned for their award-winning work in the wine industry, Parallax Design owner and creative director, Matt Remphrey, said the business’ ability to work across numerous industry sectors is a distinct advantage. “The diversity of our portfolio is reflective of our ability to deliver outstanding results irrespective of the industry – at the end of the day it’s about building strong, memorable and effective brands that appeal to our clients’ target markets,” Matt said.

After winning a competitive tender to work on the re-branding of Chapel Hill Wines, they were then commissioned to evolve the existing packaging across all ranges. The new look is part of Chapel Hill’s strategic vision to stamp the wine label’s authority as a landmark regional wine producer. The design company is also behind a recent review and refresh of the Business SA brand identity, with key aspects of the project including design of a new logo and typeface as well as refreshing the organisation’s positioning statement.

Other projects include packaging redevelopment for New Zealand based wine label, Winegrowers of Ara, as well as the creation of a new brand identity for family owned and operated crash repair business, CW Robinson. This body of work will see Parallax Design revitalise the company’s uniforms, external and internal signage, stationery and website.

Matt and the gang were understandably pleased with the recent wins saying “We have a great team here at Parallax and we’re all very proud of the great work we do for all of our clients.” Keep up the good work guys.

Article cited from AdTown.com.au

Let’s not beat around the bush, it’s a big ask, isn’t it? Non-alcoholic beer. It’s like, well, a vegetarian steak. Or a prostitute who doesn’t put out. Surely the reason you drink beer, is because it’s, well, beer. And it makes you feel all funny when you’ve had a couple. But oh no, the folks at Coopers reckon some people drink beer cause it tasteslike, ah, beer. So they’re launching a new campaign for Birell – their “ultralight brewed malt beverage”. See? Even that’s not as catchy as ‘beer’ is it?

Technically, Birell is a brewed soft drink with a beer taste and has an alcohol content of less than 0.5% by volume which is about the same as fruit juice. Hell, who knew fruit juice even had any alcohol in it? (Which kind of explains why some AdTowners have been knocking back so many orange and Mango Daily Juice’s lately.) Anyway, Birell is sold at supermarkets with other brewed soft drinks like ginger beer.

Scott Harris, Coopers’ Marketing Manager Brewing Products said the campaign has been launched in time for Christmas as many people would be looking for non alcoholic alternatives so they could socialise with friends and still be able to drive safely. Which, for all our mocking of this product, is clearly an awesome idea and one we’d support everyone doing of course.

Now, we don’t usually pass judgement on the work we talk about, but in this case we will say any campaign trying to convince people to drink this stuff would have to be good, and in our humble opinions at least, it is. It was created by Showpony Advertising and features a series of light hearted ads highlighting situations where poor judgement could lead to “unwanted consequences”. Parris Mesidis, who we’re guessing has a pierced scrotum and a transvestite boy/girlfriend, had this to say: “Despite bugger all alcohol content Birell is still a real beer so we wanted to make real beer ads. Nothing meek or apologetic but cool looking, ballsy, funny ads – old school Showpony.” Of the fun content of the ads he added “Working on a campaign that featured bikers, body piercing and the odd she-male was a chance to bridge the gap between our personal and professional interests.” Enough said.

Article cited from AdTown.com.au

Don’t get us wrong, we’re all for taking the p!ss and doing stuff at someone else’s expense. Scantily clad chicks in ads? No problems. Animal testing*? Better them than us, right? Making fun of ugly people? Good for a laugh. But smashing gnomes? Come on, that’s simply not on. Surely a protest is in order? Not that it will help the 100+ gnomes that were needlessly slaughtered all in the name of marketing.

That’s right, SA Tourism’s new ‘Recharge Getaways’ campaign through agency kwp! features a series of ads, including one simply titled ‘Gnome’ starring some wally who’s too busy doing, ah, well, nothing really, to take care of his beloved gnomes.

Annalise Menzel, producer at Spirit Films who produced the ads, explained “The empty shell of the former Clipsal factory was our location and 104 hand painted gnomes were used, and harmed, during the filming of the commercial.” Oh, the horror of it all! When the supply of gnomes, who meet their untimely demise at the end of a conveyer belt, started to run low, it was all hands on deck to restock. “At one stage there were two producers, the client and members of the crew busily painting away on set to match jackets, pants and polka dot hats” Annalise, laughed (in a really evil kind of way).

*Actually, we’re not really OK with animal testing. We love animals. Especially well done with some BBQ sauce.

Article cited form AdTown.com.au

A few weeks back we told you how the AFA, AWARD and some other bunch no one cares much about were talking about getting together and forming a ‘super group’ to represent the industry.

Well, it’s gone from concept to reality in record time with a meeting this week in Sydney giving it the big nod. Details are still a little thin on the ground, but we can confirm it will be called The Communications Council and work with the tagline “Commercial creativity and connection.” Clearly someone there is rather fond of the letter ‘C’…

In an effort to get the inside skinny we got on the blower with John McLaren who’s the AFA man here in Adelaide and managed to catch him at the airport on his way back from the meeting of the knights of the round table. He was a little tight lipped about it all because nothing was official at the time, but since speaking to him we can confirm John will actually be on what they’re calling ‘the transitional board’. So at least SA has someone who’s in on it which is rather nice if we do say so ourselves.

So a big AdTown congrats goes out to John and hopefully we can bring you a little more news as it happens.

Article cited from AdTown.com.au