Daisy Lowe by Jermaine Francis

See below for the video that first got my attention .. shot behind the scenes for her Esquire Photoshoot in early 2010.

Esquire woman we love – Daisy Lowe from esquireuk on Vimeo.

So my favourite commercial was the Audi A8 which managed to pull off a byline that not only tells you what they are about, but also that what the competition thinks they are about, has changed. “Luxury has progressed”

The next question is why do companies choose to pay over the odds for these spots on tv. I have a feeling Superbowl advertising is not so much about ROI but about showing off, hence the effort being put in and the money spent. That in itself would explain why companies who stand to benefit very little choose to place something during the breaks for 30 seconds of greatness. They tease us pre game with internet snippets using social media and then immediately after airing release the whole advert on youtube to hope for some viral action depending on how popular or criticised they were. Either options seem to work.

What’s your take on the Superbowl commercials?

Edit: I may have underestimated the ROI if you take into account social media’s effect on top of the 30 second TV spot @garyvee points out here.

Most interesting man you want to be!

So this evening after a remarkably average dinner I came home to read, picked up my Samsung Galaxy Tab (I wanted it regardless of the cool commercials) and began to read the BBC news. They had this awesome article on ‘Six ads that changed the way you think‘. You can’t argue with their selection, DeBeers convinced all men and women that diamonds should be an engagement ring, Volkswagen made not only small crap cars popular, but also German ones! They also mention icons like the Marlborough Man and Brooke Shields Calvin Klein advert. Everyone still loves a Calvin Klein commercial, they basically wrote the book on sex selling, and it does! Hell Brooke Shields is still famous because of it, I am pretty sure the only other thing she has done that was any good was marry Andre Agassi (but of course that didn’t last).

Absolute Vodka’s story of course is a great one of creating a market where none existed before, Absolute may be the cheapest one now, but they are the original premium vodka. Haagen Daaz falls into that same category, I am pretty sure they invented luxury ice cream, that didn’t come on in a cone anyway. Infact Haagen Daaz didn’t just invent luxury ice cream but they also created the name, it means absolutely nothing, but sounds really cool!

There are a few campaigns that in my mind should be on lists like these, but as far as monumentally changing things these are the greats, Coca Cola makes lists like this several times over normally, Budweiser does as well. Although they never get in on their most impressive marketing result. The Bud logo used to be in a normal font, someone said lets italicise it (ok a bit more research went into it) and BAM they increased sales by over 80% from making their logo italics .. CRAZY!

Some of my favourites over the years are Hyundai’s ‘Prepare to Want one’ campaign and Carlsberg’s ‘probably the best lager in the world’. In both cases they are telling you to buy it .. but making it sound like it’s your chouce with the word probably and prepare .. GENIUS i love it!

So anyway that brings me to of course the two greatest visual and video campaigns of recent time that if you don’t love you must at least agree are just brilliant advertising. The World’s Most Interesting Man & The Old Spice Man. Click read more for my favourites from the campaigns so far, which whilst may not be game changers are certainly great adverts.

BBC Sport – Formula 1 Pit Stop Special – “Overall” from Time-Slice® Films on Vimeo.

BBC Sport commissioned us to film the Formula 1 pit stop process as illustrated by the Force India F1 Team. The structure of the story to be told was conceived by Martin Brundle, who also provided the narration for each episode. In addition to being charged with the various camera techniques – TimeSlice®, Hi-speed, Liveaction – we were responsible for designing & compositing all the graphical information to accompany them. This control from shoot to post & delivery allowed us to turn out eye catching sequences to a consistently high standard within a very tight schedule. BBC Sport received our work as a kit of parts with which they inter cut archive footage, explaining the various roles within a pit crew & what happens when things go wrong!