The NO!SPEC campaign: Serves as a vehicle to unite those who support the notion that spec work devalues the potential of design and ultimately does a disservice to the client.
Our mission: To educate the public about speculative, or 'spec' work.
Our target: Those who use creative services, as well as creative professionals (designers, photographers, illustrators, typographers, writers and those in marketing, branding and advertising).
What you can do: Place a "NO!SPEC" logo on your site. Sign the NO!SPEC petition. Distribute the "NO!SPEC" posters. Contact us with your thoughts, comments, articles and insights.
Requirements: The only requirement for participation is putting the appropriate value on your profession. "
If you're tired of seeing around the "$100 logo job offering" kind of situation (and worse: speculative work), check out this site.
To advertise the imminent arrival of its flagship London store, Nokia has joined forces with W+K London to introduce the first interactive Christmas lights display. Fourteen motion sensor LED light structures now line Regent Street and have the ability to shift colour formations in response to crowd density, wind speed, weather and levels of sunlight. The lights can be viewed on Regent Street until January 6. View video
"Defining creative excellence for 45 years, the D&AD Awards set the standard for great ideas the world over. Advertising, Design, Digital - D&AD spans the full creative spectrum
300 judges on 30 specialist juries consider the entries in categories ranging from Product Design to Mobile Marketing.
Winning work is awarded the iconic D&AD Yellow Pencil, appears in the D&AD Annual, and at exhibitions and events worldwide."
Dazed & Confused are running a competition for a photographic or artwork submission to be featured on a billboard in London and in the Diesel Kings Road store. Six entries from the project will also be showcased in Dazed & Confused magazine. Closing date is 4th December. Read the brief: VISIONS OF THE FUTURE
W + K Amsterdam is behind a black & white online project to promote Polish vodka brand Wodka Wyborowa. The site aims at launching a “W movement” claiming there is no “v” in the vodka distilled by Wyborowa.
This morning, I (finally) caught my girlfriend red-handed, committing what I consider to be the gravest of offenses in domestic life:
She was squeezing the toothpaste tube in the middle.
It's one thing to find the tube middle-squeezed long after your partner has left the toilet, but to be in there as she's doing it? If you think I jumped on it and called her on it, you'd be right.
Since the advent of tubed toothpaste, I'm more than pretty sure that how the tube is squeezed has been a point of contention for many couples before us. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that if you dig a little through divorce records, you'd find the end-versus-middle debate at the forefront of the divorce proceedings, at least a couple of times.
In any case, I'm not going to be talking about the Toothpaste Issue, as such. It's been hashed and re-hashed hundreds of times – including by some very witty comedians – and I feel no need to do it now. Rather, I'd like look for solutions and, for a time in the 1980s, Colgate-Palmolive had the perfect one, at least in the Canadian, UK and American markets. It was a stroke of pure manufacturing genius that died long before its time, thanks to its marketing. Not because of the lack of it, but because CP, and its agency of the day, targetted the wrong market segment.
The product in question was toothpaste in a pump. For those either too young to remember, or who weren't fortunate enough to have it in your markets, here's the idea: it was a plastic, non-aerosol, non-pressurised sort of hand pump that lifted the toothpaste from the bottom and out the nozzle at the top. I'm not to sure as to the actual mechanics of the thing, but there was a sort of central axis along which a disc was lifted to deliver the toothpaste, on the inside of the plastic housing. Now, I'll admit, for small children's hands, it was a bit difficult to negotiate, and took a fair bit of force to use. But never mind, I'm sure that over time, improvements could have been made. The point of it all was that the genius of this contraption removed all possibility for domestic hostility. On that front, anyway. There it would stand, on or next to the basin or in the cabinet above: gloriously up-right, always ready to go and blissfully un-squeezed.
Let's go back to CP's brand managers and its agency, for a moment, on both of whom I place the blame squarely for where we are today on the Toothpaste Issue. For whatever reason, they chose to aim this wonderful gizmo at kids. Yes, children have a powerful influence on how a household will spend its money, but when it comes to bath times and toothpaste, kids will try to avoid the whole business as much as they can anyway, no matter how cool the pump is, no matter how many sparkly bits come in the toothpaste (although, on a sidenote, whoever came up with orange Pez-flavoured effervescing vitamin tablets deserves a Nobel Prize for Über-Coolness. But I digress ... ). And that's where a little strategic research and a little bit of Attribute-Value Mapping would have saved this product from extinction (it disappeared from the shelves a couple of years after launch). The CP brand managers and their agency would have realised that the real goldmine for this unique gadget lay with couples, and not with their kids.
For those who are curious, here's the TVC (I don't quite remember if there was a print campaign):
I won't dwell on the execution, that's not the point; although, I will agree with you all that it's worse than awful. But, hey, it was the 1980s, so we forgive it. But, I will chastise CP and their agency of the day (does anyone know who it was?) for putting one of the greatest toilettery accessories to death before its time. Naturally, hindsight is always 20/20, but this product and the client, as a result, were done a huge disservice when the decision was made to market to kids, and not to adults who have been picking nits over the Toothpaste Issue for who knows how long. See, if I'd been the CD for this account, I would have done it a lot differently. First thing I would have done is put kids completely out of the picture from the get-go. Rather, I would have thought about all of the hassles I have had with toothpaste tubes throughout my life with various people, and I would have come up with something like this:
_((CLOSE-UP))
We see the bottom end of a toothbrush landing into a clear recepticle, the top half of both off-camera. A few drops of water splash onto the basin from the toothbrush.
((FOCUS PULL))
We see a man's hand putting a tube of toothpaste down on the edge of the basin. Its nozzle is so caked with dried toothpaste that the cap can't screw on properly, and the tube is squeezed in the middle so much that it is virtually flat, with huge gobs of toothpaste shoved into either end of the tube.
((WIDER EYE-LEVEL SHOT))
The man, mid-thirties and perfectly ordinary looking, is shirtless and clearly getting ready for the day ahead, turns round to face the camera (3/4 view). He's wiping his face dry with a hand towel. He's about to reach for something, but a female enters the frame, his partner, also looking like she's in the middle of getting ready for a day at work. Similar age, and perfectly ordinary looking, as well. She looks furious. She picks up the toothpaste tube from the edge of the basin, and rounds on him, waving the tube in his face accusingly. He looks surprised.
((WOMAN))
So it's YOU!
((MAN))
Uuuh ... what?
The man is starting to stammer and backs up a bit, but his partner in all over him, red in the face.
((WOMAN))
YOU'RE the one who squeezes the toothpaste tube in the middle!
((MAN))
No, no! Uh ... I don't know how it got like that, the cat must've stepped on it, you know how he is ...
This is where it goes very badly for Our Hero. His partner throws the tube of toothpaste at him, and goes berzerk. She can't believe what she's hearing.
((WOMAN))
THE CAT ?! I suppose the cat also forgets to put the toilet seat down, too, eh?! And the cat also forgets to take the rubbish out, AND fix the hoover AND ...
And on and on. Camera blurs out of focus, sound cuts a bit, be we can still hear the sounds of the argument, though we can't make out what is being said. Despite the blur, we can see she's getting more agitated, and he's getting more defensive.
Pack shot of Colgate Pump in the bottom right-corner of the frame.
((VO AND SUPER))
Colgate Pump. For Fresh Breath, a Sparkling Smile and a Happy Marriage._
... or something to that effect. Best I can whip up on the spot in a couple of minutes after midnight, but you get the picture. Huge opportunities there for CP, and they let them go to waste. But like I said, it was the 1980s.
It's a lesson learnt for all of us, though, isn't it? So often, we rush into a project and fall down by identifying the wrong market segment, or not picking up on the key insights, or not doing all of the research needed or just not reading the brief properly, and that translates into products with potential for greatness that whither away and die.
Okay, I'll stop finger-wagging now, we're all professionals. ;) As for me, I guess I'll just have to be content with one of those 100 mL squeezy bottles.
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Comments (2) | Posted by Kinobe