If This Is A Blog Then What's Christmas?

Here’s the Sun’s World Cup ad:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khV6hg0oFEo

I have to say that it really stands out amongst the giant CG-festeramas that have been populating the WC airwaves, but beyond that it feels just right for the product and the country.

See how you feel when you watch it compared to the Nike or Samsung ads and you’ll realise how a focussed ad for a smaller target can hit home with more impact.

It’s also hard to stop watching it once you start, and that’s a rare thing these days.

Interview with director Ed Morris (interest declared: he’s a friend) here.

In recent days I’ve become more and more impressed by Elon Musk.

Here’s a TED interview:

In a nutshell, the guy co-founded Paypal, then went on to found/co-found/take on three companies which literally have the potential to change the world.

First is Tesla, the first electric car company to create an economically viable car that matches the speed and comfort of regular cars (I know it’s currently around $70,000, but a model at half that price is due to arrive in a couple of years). It also has charging stations, some of which are solar powered, across the US that allow you to drive from coast to coast. Yes, the sun can now power your car across America. Although still in its early stages as a company, Tesla has just made its patents available to anyone who wants to use them ‘in good faith’, a brave move that will open up the possibilities of other manufacturers making their own electric cars and improving the costs and supply processes. If, finally, the tipping point version of the electric car is here, we have this man to thank for it.

Second is Solar City, a company that leases solar panelling to you so that your overall energy costs are lower, and that energy doesn’t come from fossil fuels. Again, if this is what brings mass solar energy to the world then that is an incredible game changer. (To be  honest I haven’t been able to find a huge amount about the success or otherwise of Solar City. It doesn’t appear to be moving ahead with quite the blaze of publicity that follows Tesla, but it’s surely a large step in a very good direction.)

Then there’s SpaceX (aren’t his websites lovely?). In June 2002, Musk founded, and invested $100m in, a company that intends to make space travel economically viable, so that ultimately we can go and live on other planets. I think that’s a pretty big (some would say foolhardy) ambition, but he’s actually making it work. The principle is to reduce the costs of sending rockets into space by taking the parts that are usually jettisoned and guiding them back down to where they launched from, to be reused hours later. Fuel is 0.3% of the cost of space travel; the rest is wasted rockets and he’s actually sorted that problem out. Take a look at the proof:

You know when people say ‘it’s not rocket science’? Rocket science is hard, fucking hard, and this guy has revolutionised the entire discipline.

So he may be experiencing varying degrees of success with those three ventures, but I’d like to take my hat off to him for even attempting what he’s done. It takes massive amounts vision, balls, intelligence and money to do those three things simultaneously, and they’re going to make the planet a whole lot better.

I think that’s what you call a win win win win win win win.

Man saves squirrel with CPR (thanks, C):

The most popular films in Hollywood, infographic stylee (thanks, J).

Hugh Jackman auditions for Wolverine:

Kanye self-compliment generator (thanks, N).

How good a singer was Karen Carpenter? (Thanks, S.)

The copyrighting of out of copyright material (thanks, J).

The internet in real time (thanks, M).

Seth Rogen and Snoop chat.

Beautiful gifs (thanks, T).

Great job titles (thanks, L).

The World Cup of things other than football (thanks, A).

New Samsung WC ad:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ystoqYTciBI

Which, essentially, is this ad from 1996:

or this ad from a couple of days ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iy1rumvo9xc#t=68

Anyway, the assembled all-stars playing a team of nasty robots, aliens, monsters etc. is evidently a well-trodden path.

I see that both Samsung and Nike got round the footballers’ availability issue by using animation. Perhaps that ended up lending itself to an OTT plot; after all, you can do anything in animation.

Also interesting that they’ve made the Messi/Ronaldo rivalry explicit. I wonder how easy it was to clear that with Cristiano (who misses a free kick and gets in Lionel’s way)?

Anyway, it’s an expensive load of old bollocks that I assume the kidz will lap up like a puddle of Smirnoff Ice. It tells me nothing about the phone (ham-fisted insertions of product shots notwithstanding) because, I assume, there is very little to say about it.

Basically, it’s as if Style and Cash got together for a predictable shag, while Substance went home alone for a cry-wank.

Welcome to advertising in 2014.

UPDATE:

Jesus wept…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdWc0h-BwN8&feature=youtu.be

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Smh0QXSmF-A

I liked it.

What’s it got to do with McDonald’s? Nothing I can discern.

But it’s fun, very watchable, impressive (until someone explains how much post-production and blue screen was used) and worth a share or two.

Will it get me to McDonald’s? Nothing will get me to McDonald’s, but it cuts through in a crowded advertising environment, and with this client that could be enough.

Another Ben writes:

Hi Ben,

Hope you’re well.

I know you get sent a million of these (I really don’t, by the way; I pretty much stick up every one I get sent), but here’s another side project that I’d love for you to post on your blog if you could. It’s World Cup related, and even my mum likes footy during the World Cup. The details and press release are below.

Thanks in advance,

Ben

Just so you know, I added all the capital letters in after Ben left them out.

Anyway, I would copy and paste the whole press release but for some reason it really fucks with the type on the blog, so here’s a slightly truncated version of the explanation:

The World Cup starts this June, and If you’re as clueless about it as the rest of America you might need a bit of help.

Introducing the Football-To-Football translator, a Google Chrome extension that translates the ‘sissy’ (their word) international World Cup lingo of any web page into real, red-blooded NFL terminology.

Eg: The World Cup translates to Basically the Super Bowl of soccer.

And Sepp Blatter translates to He’s kind of like the Roger Goodell of world soccer. But instead of controversially wanting to host the Super Bowl in a cold weather outdoor stadium, he wants to have it in the deserts of Qatar.

Sound like fun.

Install and enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHixeIr_6BM

(Thanks, S&C.)

By the way, this appeared in my Facebook feed quite a few times last week but I never chose to click on it.

Why? Well, I loathe those links that say ‘This guy found a kitten. What happened next will blow your mind’ or ‘There’s only one real way to pick up a girl, and you’d never do it to a stranger’. I’m suspicious of clickbait bollocks, so I tend to leave links alone unless they really do look worth it.

I guess that policy made me miss this ad, but it’s been a small price to pay.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iy1rumvo9xc#t=68

Not particularly interesting animation.

Or plot.

Or idea.

I watched the whole thing just so that I could say the above with some semblance of ‘authority’.

If I didn’t write this blog I’d have stopped it after about 38.4 seconds.

And is Tim Howard really the best goalie Nike sponsor? (Or is his inclusion a nod to the US market?)

I’ve just finished reading an interesting article on the economics of online film reviewing.

If you can’t be arsed to read it (which would be ironic considering its content), the gist of it is that because people are no longer interested in reading full-length film reviews (or anything over 1000 words) there’s no point in paying to generate them. That ‘no point’ refers to the fact that these things cost money and putting them up online is simply an exercise in losing that money.

But shouldn’t we live in a world where in-depth film reviewing is a valid, valuable pursuit?

This is where the world ‘should’ reveals its true colours as being essentially meaningless unless it’s attached to a logical context (eg: ‘if you want to be clean you should have a bath’; not ‘I’ve been out of work so long I should have a job by now’). But whatever world we think we ‘should’ live in, we don’t (yet); we live in the world our actions have created, so unless we all suddenly start preferring 1000 carefully chosen words analysing the themes of education vs instinct in Blue Is The Warmest Colour to 25 things I saw in Grown-Ups 2 that I can’t unsee, we’ll be getting a lot more of the latter and the former will wither and die.

Of course, this all comes down the financial imperative that seems to drive most things today. If those sites are the sole source of income for somebody then the need to make money out of them is inextricably linked to their very existence, and who are we to say what should or shouldn’t be on them? There are colossal reviews of all films that come out in the UK in Sight and Sound, so it’s not as if the needs of the devoted movie buff lie unserved, but they exist only as a result of sufficient interest to make them economically viable.

Or, as with this blog, you can write for the pure pleasure of it and the response it generates. In case anyone thinks I make money from this, let me now officially disabuse you of that notion, but I believe it has brought me indirect financial benefits that were not planned or courted. So I continue to do it because I think it makes me a better writer and CD, allowing me to discuss all sorts of issues that would otherwise remain inside my brain. But lucky me and my day job.

So what this really comes down to is the need to patronise the things you’d like to continue. Illegal downloads may not kill the movie industry right now, but they have compromised its financial benefits and by extension its ability to take risks that might have delighted us. The ‘disappearing middle‘ is where the good movies emanate from, but studios are no longer willing to back those horses. Do the meagre royalties of Spotify screw the ability of a new band to get a recording contract, or compromise the inclination of an established artist to do something more experimental? Does it matter? Were musicians on too much money in the old days of three decent tracks and seven shit ones on one £13.99 CD, the current situation being a rebalancing to where things ‘ought’ to be?

As I’m fond of saying, there’s no right or wrong here; just the workability of financing the things you love so that there are more of them. If you don’t want to subsidise the creation of something don’t be surprised when it disappears, or ends up flashing its knickers on Kickstarter.