It’s been a while since my last Top 5 post and to compensate for that, I’m bringing you two posts of creative nutrition this week. One today. One in a few days. Or else you’ll get a bit too excited. As always, I’ll be using this space on the web to showcase some of the things that brighten my day and re-ignite my creative thinking.

Enjoy!

1. Target – Every Color You Can Dream

This beautiful stop-motion campaign for Target takes you through a colorful, dreamlike journey made of fabric.  The song is “Everything & Everyone” by Boys & Girls.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4EaiSVQGWw

Oddly enough, the commercial looks very similar to Coldplay’s latest video for song Strawberry Swing.  Check it out here: http://www.coldplay.com/videostrawberry.php

2. Olympics – The Best of Us

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These are scary times for old media. The Internet has forced them to change or die or both. The media decline is probably most obvious in newspapers. The New York Times is not yet “a print newsletter for the elite and the elderly,” as the EPIC 2014 video put it in 2004, but it is definitely not what it used to be. The Wall Street Journal’s gloomy financial results are not getting any better. You don’t have to be a finance guru to know that the rest of the newspapers are also struggling.

Similarly, magazines are barely making it. Book sales are great, but only if you are JK Rowling. Hollywood movies are downloadable, sometimes even reviewed, before they are released. Marketers and consumers continuously wonder if TV is overpriced. Record labels and the music industry are running out of dumb ideas and Radiohead’s good ideas make their dumb ideas seem even dumber. And AM/FM radio… well, I can’t remember the last time I listened to it, but I’ve heard several podcasts and Pandora stations in the last few days.

And while MySpace continues to slide downhill from social web darling to shady poster child for uncoolness, its less than proud papa News Corp. is trying to change the way we consume news by announcing that it will charge for news content. Yes, charging, as in asking you to pay money for it.

Last time I checked, the news were free. The news are available to all and shared via links. The clicks on those links are what keeps advertisers paying for ads and what should make them pay much more in the future.

Everyone knows that The Wall Street Journal is one of the best newspapers in the world and that its writers are exceptional. I subscribed to it once (several years ago) and then canceled shortly after because I simply didn’t know what to do with such a huge pile of unread paper. (more…)

Chris Kahle is a recently hired copywriter for Crispin Porter + Bogusky, one of the hottest ad agencies in the world. While I cannot pronounce “Bogusky” very well, I’m quite aware of the agency’s widely known work for Hulu, Microsoft, Guitar Hero and Burger King.

 ”Boulder’s great. For a town out of about ninety thousand, it’s got a lot going on,” Chris said to me about the city in Colorado where CP+B is headquartered. It must be especially great to be there right now considering the fact that Chris was out of  a job just a few months ago when he decided to use Twitter to get CP+B’s attention. 

“I kind of became a victim of the recession 3 months ago. I got laid off from the agency that I was working at in Vancouver… Being liberated by being laid off, I had free reign to do what I want,” Chris explained. And working at an agency like CP+B is what Chris wanted to do so he got in touch with them. He had some contacts within the agency, but he wanted to increase his chances at standing out from the crowds (especially since so many people apply to CP+B on an on-going basis).

So Chris came up with the idea of asking people to tweet about him and his RFE (Request for Employment) to co-chairman Alex Bogusky and interactive creative director Jeff Benjamin. “I made a list of the few Twitter influencers in the advertising world, and I sent them messages saying ‘Can you guys tweet my RFE to CP+B?’ and for each person that sends this tweet I’ll give a dollar to charity.” (more…)

By now most people know that Microsoft has finally scored the deal it’s been wanting for quite a while. I’m guessing CEO Steve Ballmer still gets a little annoyed when thinking about all the trouble and time he wasted trying to get Yahoo! to give in. Then again, maybe things would’ve gone horribly wrong if Yahoo! had accepted what now sounds like a crazy initial offer.

The fact is that Yahoo! was so concerned with how much they could get out of Microsoft (or maybe how cool they would be by playing difficult) that they lost track of their purpose.

Yes, Yahoo!’s purpose in life was search. That’s how I know about them. That’s how you found out about them. Ok, to be fair, maybe some folks that still use Yahoo! Mail don’t realize this, but they probably only recently made the switch from AOL, so that doesn’t really count.

For most people on this Earth of ours, Yahoo! used to be a synonym for search engine.

Well, no longer. And with that, Yahoo! proves that they not only lost the #1 position many years ago, but that they also didn’t realize just how important search was. I mean, if they cared about search, they would’ve done something about it, right?

Wrong. Yahoo! was so concerned with becoming a portal, becoming the source for movie information (I admit it, Yahoo! movies is pretty good), capturing screenshots of Geocities and Flickr (instead of enhancing them), and wondering if red or purple is cuter, etc. that they totally forgot about the reason for their very existence. (more…)

Crispin Porter + Bogusky, one of the hottest ad shops on Earth, is making quite an aggregation statement with an innovative new agency web site. A week or two ago, a video of co-chairman Alex Bogusky wearing an afro wig appeared on YouTube. He talks about the agency’s new web site, which was not yet live at the time but has now made it into beta at http://beta.cpbgroup.com.

The web site is an ode to the power of real-time information on the web, showcasing a live feed of tweets, YouTube videos, news and blog posts. The information is separated in tabs; one for CP+B and one for clients like Burger King, Microsoft, and Guitar Hero. As Bogusky puts it, “it’s everything about us, and our clients; the good, the bad, and the mildly unnerving“.

So, if you get on Twitter right now and write about Crispin Porter + Bogusky (or send a tweet to @bogusky himself), it will appear on their “digital fishing net” a few seconds after. The effort is a somewhat similar social approach to that of Modernista (and Skittles for that matter), but with a better UI/experience and perfectly tailored for what CP+B does best: create buzz.

More screenshots after the jump (click to enlarge)…

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From great advertising and branding to incredible art, design, music, films, and anything worth a second look or  second thought, this is Diegoliath’s weekly source of creative inspiration. I’ll use this space on the web to showcase some of the things that brighten my day and re-ignite my creative thinking. So here we go!

1. Morinaga Chocolate Spot from Japan – non blinking record
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ia-XqY0aIT0

I love everything about this spot for Morinaga Chocolate by DENTSU, Tokyo.  This funny, beautifully shot commercial just won a bronze award at the Cannes Lions awards.

2. Fiat Panda
http://bit.ly/YGukK

Fiat confirmed that no pandas were harmed during the production of this hilarious spot by agency Marcel Paris. Great concept and art direction.

See the print ads http://bit.ly/15ieux and here http://bit.ly/4Dmm5p.

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 The Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival is the largest gathering of ad professionals and the home of the most prestigious annual advertising awards. At this year’s event, visitors have been able to experience an intelligent, multi-user “Touchwall” that will serve as an information hub for the event. And what a cool info hub they’ll be able to play with!

Schematic, a WPP Digital company, announced that its propietary 12-foot long by 5-foot high interactive “Touchwall” will allow people to get instant access to the complete festival program, 3D maps of the event and local area, and even search capabilities so attendees can contact each other and schedule meetings.

But that’s not all. The “Touchwall” experience begins when attendees place their badge against it. An equipped RFID reader authenticates the badge and opens up a personalized workspace. Because the wall is so large, multiple people can use it side by side. They can exchange business cards, tell marketing jokes, and actually laugh out loud as they enjoy the wall’s greatness. No emoticons necessary. (more…)