Meme Huffer

In case of fire... (Friday ffffound)

from Flo Heiss via ffffound

I love when my favourite brands get together

This just in from the newsdesk: adidas Originals are due to launch a range of Star Wars kicks, hoodies and Ts. Oh yes.

Some collabs seem forced and overly commercial, but this one seems well-judged, and with a clear understanding of its intended audience.

Meme Huffer can't wait to rock the Stormtrooper shelltoes!

via hypebeast

Process Map (Friday ffffound)

I do so like buying nice pens on the client...

from ffffound

Know thy audience

OK, this maybe not a work of staggering creative genius, but you do have to admit that they exhibit great insight and understanding of their target audience...

Thanks to Lee for the heads-up

Great Quotes for Planners #66 -Diane Arbus on originality

A superb quote for planners (or, indeed, creatives) from someone who always managed to find something new and unusual.

We are never going to find fresh, new, exciting & original ways of doing things if we keep doing the same old routine.

So mix it up. Take a new route home. Listen to music that is outside your current taste. Don't just visit museums and galleries to see exhibitions that you know you'll like -wander aimlessly and allow yourself to explore and discover. Stumble across some of your unknown unknowns.

image via i can read

More thieving bastards

In the chair today we have the new Virgin Trains offering (awfully titled "Success Express") from MCBD:



Now, there is much that we could say about this ad. That it simply isn't very funny. That it is an over-earnest pastiche of those pastiche ads that Mother used to do (usually with Traktor, who shot this ad). That it is shouty and patronising, and makes zero attempt to engage the potential customer in anything resembling a meaningful conversation. That I feel sorry for my former colleagues at RKCR, who lost this account in a pitch only to see the client buy this bollocks... (do feel free to add your own).

But the gravest sin of all is that the thieving bastards knicked the idea wholesale from an infinitely superior  US Starbucks spot from several years back:



Shame on you.

Eminem nails the past 50 years of pop culture in four minutes

Yes, he's back.

Reinforcing the view that Eminem is one of today's foremost social critics and satirists, here's the clip for his (don't call it a) comeback single:

Great Quotes for Planners #65 -McLuhan on research

 

"Trying to predict the future based on research is like trying to drive a car by looking in the rear-view mirror."

                                            -Marshall McLuhan

Meme Huffer would like to thank Dave Trott for unearthing this (and many more) in last week's Campaign Private View (oddly, not online). I've been shamelessly stealing that McLuhan line for years, but had forgotten the source.

Photo courtesy: Sr. Arrastrao

J.G. Ballard RIP

Regular readers will know that we have a fondness for Ballard up here in Huffer Towers, and we mourn his passing over this past weekend. The world has lost one of its true visionaries, a man who was unafraid to examine that which scuttles back into the darkness when the rocks of our civilisation (or should that be "civilisation"?) are overturned.

We'll leave you with a selection of thoughts and quotes from the man himelf:

“Twenty years ago no one could have imagined the effects the Internet would have: entire relationships flourish, friendships prosper…there’s a vast new intimacy and accidental poetry, not to mention the weirdest porn.”

"Electronic aids, particularly domestic computers, will help the inner migration, the opting out of reality. Reality is no longer going to be the stuff out there, but the stuff inside your head. It's going to be commercial and nasty at the same time."

"I would sum up my fear about the future in one word: boring. And that's my one fear: that everything has happened; nothing exciting or new or interesting is ever going to happen again... the future is just going to be a vast, conforming suburb of the soul."

"Consumerism is the greatest device anyone has invented for controlling people... For some particular reason, they call it shopping. But it's really the purest form of politics."

Steampunk Star Wars figures (Friday ffffound)

From here via ffffound

Thieving bastards corner

Now, you'd think that landing a brief for sex products (sexessories?) would inspire agencies and creatives to giddy heights of originality, but it seems that the opposite is true. Last year we saw DDB ripping off a Seat/Playboy cover wrap for a Philips dildo press ad and now we see McCann Erickson shamelessly stealing a much-awarded Coco De Mer concept for their client Durex.

Here's Durex's new spot for Play O pleasure enhancing lubricant:

And here are a few of the Coco De Mer spots from 2001 which, famously, were shots of people at their actual moment of orgasm:

 

So far, so plagiaristic.

But what is particularly stunning about this theft is that Durex's arch-rivals Trojan had already stolen this exact same idea for a press campaign in 2004:

 
 

More on the 'Keep Calm...' meme

Just discovered the Flickr pool... I quite like this one from Osborne Villas:

In The Loop

We are huge fans of "The Thick of It" up here at Huffer Towers, and now we're delighted to see that Armando Ianucci has directed a feature film in which the ever-scabrous Malcolm Tucker heads to Washington to lock horns with US military brass, ably played by Tony Soprano James Gandolfini.

Also worth taking a gander at Tucker's Twitter feed. And of course we're loving the Obama-esque posters (another favourite meme round these parts).

I could do that (Friday ffffound)

Same holds true for great advertising ideas, don't you think?

From New Math via ffffound

Great Quotes for Planners #64 -David Lynch on ideas and fishing

"Ideas are like fish.

If you want to catch little fish, you can stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch the big fish, you've got to go down deeper.

Down deep, the fish are more powerful and more pure. They're huge and abstract. And they're very beautiful."
                            
                                                    -David Lynch, "Catching The Big Fish"

photo of deep-sea glass squid (plus more aquatic oddities) found here.

Friday ffffound

This is turning into a nice little meme...

Great Quote for Planners #63 - Beyond the quant

"If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of arithmetic, we should not get very far in our understanding of the physical world. One might as well attempt to grasp the game of poker entirely by the use of the mathematics of probability."

-Vannevar Bush

Or, to put it another way, you need to think beyond the numbers, beyond the measurable and predictable.
Look at irrational as well as rational behaviours.

And don't forget to pay to attention to the lies while you're looking for the truth.

photo credit: Ashley Bingham

Great Quotes for Planners #62 - Read around

"I find that a great part of the information I have was acquired by looking up something and finding something else on the way."
- Franklin Pierce Adams

I was having a great chat with a colleague this morning (hi Jane!) about how one finds interesting things -y'know, the little factoids and opinion pieces that may lead to insights one day. Then I serendipitously stumpled upon this quote, which kinda sums up the point I was making about the importance of reading actual newspapers and magazines rather than just skimming the headlines of RSS feeds.

Don't get me wrong -searching for stuff online is great, but it makes it harder to learn about the things that you don't know that you don't know...

Photo: Cameron MacMaster @ flickr

Star Wars -Retold (by someone who hasn't seen it)

For all you geeks whose girlfriends just don't get your Star Wars obsession:

Star Wars: Retold (by someone who hasn't seen it) from Joe Nicolosi on Vimeo.

Friday ffffound - Topical Edition

Here's one for you to drop into your "planning in a recession" decks.

Image: Craig Ward @ Debut Art via ffffound