History Blocks| Africa

Agency: Africa

Client: Unesco

Country: Brazil

One of UNESCO’s tasks is to protect the cultural heritage of all people around the world. Sadly, that is not always possible. Because of wars and armed conflicts, hundreds of monuments are being destroyed. Whether as collateral damage or as direct targets of cultural cleansing, they are being reduced to rubble – and so is our heritage. 

These historic places are now in danger of being left out of history. Some might never be reconstructed, and we may never be able to set foot in them again. With this in mind, we set out to keep the legacies of these endangered and destroyed heritage sites alive by rebuilding them in Minecraft.

Mori Building Brand Movie DESIGNING TOKYO

Agency: Dentsu Inc. / Dentsu Creative X

Client: Mori Building Co. / Mori Building

Country: Japan

For the past 60 years, Japanese developer Mori Building has looked at the bigger picture when creating the city of Tokyo. The Mori Building, unlike its rival companies, has a unique vision of urban development, which is to create a city, not just a building. 

The film reflects on the evolution of Tokyo and tells the story of its future through vivid depictions of Tokyo’s cityscape – which the Mori Building built and helped flourish – to the culture that was born from the town, and iconic celebrities from past eras exactly as they were back then.

Political Branding

Politicians immediately become brands (personal brands) when their campaigns kicks off  and this isn’t a new concept. Running for President of the United States means building a brand that at least 51% of the country is willing to buy on Election Day.

Logos + Taglines = a value proposition that drives voters to 1- differentiate the brands appeal 2- inspire them giving votes 3- and/or a few bucks in campaign contributions. 

"Make America Great Again", was designed to make white, working-class men remember when things were better for them or, at least, they thought they could remember.

Trump used this nostalgia to support his positions and tap into positive emotions in his supporters, further mobilizing them as evangelists.

Like a Swede ! #likeaswede

Do you know why Sweden is ranked as one of the best countries in the world? 

Like a Swede is the story of how a collaboration between the employers' and employees' organisations can affect an entire community, and explains how anyone in Sweden may have the same benefits as only the very richest in other countries.

Website: http://likeaswede.se/index_eng.html

Way of Living

 

Business Like a Swede

Tourism Victoria | Remote Control Tourist

Insight

Unlike other Australian destinations, Melbourne is not known for its iconic buildings or amazing natural landmarks. Instead, it’s more about ‘experiences’ – food, fashion, music, the famous laneways and its overall creativity. In fact, the best bits of Melbourne are hidden away. They are things that take time to discover - but once you do, your curiosity is rewarded.

The primary objective for this campaign was to highlight the fact that Melbourne is a very different destination that is constantly changing, and there’s much more to it than initially meets the eye. Its main focus was to give the domestic audience new reasons to visit Melbourne – whether they had visited previously or never considered coming.

So Clemenger BBDO Melbourne created the Remote Control Tourist – a way to let people from anywhere in world explore the hidden secrets of Melbourne before they visit in person. To literally let them ‘go before they go’. Remote Control Tourist is a tourism marketing world-first; a real-time web experience which allows visitors from around the world to truly experience the depth of all Melbourne has to offer, in the closest way possible to actually being there. They could ask the Remote Control Tourists to explore anything: stepping on to the MCG, drinking coffee in a laneway, checking out a designer store or sampling one of Melbourne’s gourmet restaurants.

Strategy

The campaign strategy was built around the idea of allowing people in other cities to experience Melbourne’s depth first hand. By harnessing the power of social media and combining it with some clever streaming video technology, the Tourists truly became the users’ eyes and ears in Melbourne. Part guide, part humble servant, the Tourists helped the audience explore the twists and turns of the city.

Potential visitors simply had to tweet or message via a specifically designed website, and the most interesting suggestions would be actioned by a Remote Control Tourist. The campaign included a number of distinct phases of activity – from pre-launch and the five-day live period, right through to a calendar of promotions and assets that can be used for a number of purposes. The strategy relied on the creation of first person video content that told the deeper and more interesting stories of Melbourne. This content is essential to provide information and to help people explore Melbourne in the future.

Execution

As the Remote Control Tourist was a world first campaign, Tool had to do a lot of work behind the scenes to work out how to even make it happen. It had no blueprint for it. The campaign itself was run on a custom built platform that allowed people from anywhere in the world to watch and control the Remote Control Tourists live as they were on the ground in Melbourne. The Remote Control Tourists were controlled by requests made on the website, Twitter and Facebook. Live requests were moderated and then fed to the website and in turn, to the Remote Control Tourists on the ground. Aside from the real-time HD video stream, viewers could also follow the journey on an interactive Google Map that provided information on the nearby places of interest.

To enable the constantly moving Tourists to stream HD footage in real-time, their backpacks contained cutting edge technology that enabled the digital video data to be split across four 4G LTE Mobile data connections. The four streams were then received at the RCT headquarters and stitched back into a single stream and then encoded for the various devices (desktop computers, smartphones, tablets) and distributed across the Internet via the Akamai network.

The resulting experience was a website that delivered a real-time HD video stream, map-based location tracking and a social feed of the user-generated requests and dialogue. The teaser campaign was launched the week before the campaign live period that incorporated bespoke designs from respected artists, Craig and Karl. The teaser campaign and live period consisted of press, outdoor posters, digital screens and banners but was complimented with a large scale social media and PR presence.

Results

From October 2 – November 20:

- Estimated unique reach of media coverage: 150,980,058
- Twitter impressions: 41,464,450
- Facebook impressions: 7,906,130
- Total visits to site: 138,980
- Unique visits to site: 107,830
- Return visitor: 22.40%
- Average visit duration: 6:18
- Cities: 5324
- Countries interacting with the website: 171
- Positive sentiment: 96%

BRAND:

Tourism Victoria

CATEGORIES:

Government/Public Sector

Travel/Airlines

REGION:

Australia

DATE:

October - October 2013

AGENCIES:

Tool

Clemenger BBDO

MEDIA CHANNEL:

Digital,Mobile,Online,Out-of-Home,PR

Kerala Tourism| Your moment is waiting

This promotional film for Kerala Tourism can be considered as a refreshing deviation from its usual line of communication. The promotional film titled ‘your moment is waiting’, whether you like it or not, is worth watching.
Kochi based Stark Communications, which has been handling the Kerala Tourism brand for almost two decades, has developed this promotional film, and the credit mainly goes to the renowned ad film maker Prakash Varma.
Well, Kerala has been promoted as ‘God’s own country’ (the credit for coining this much-used tagline too goes for Stark) and almost all the campaigns for KT has pivoted around it. It’s true that Kerala is rich with natural scenery and picture-perfect destinations. Backwaters, paddy fields, Ayurveda- indeed Kerala evokes all these images in the minds of a tourist. However, at some point the frequent use of this imagery in usual communication track seemed a bit tiresome. This commercial too is rich with such imagery, but in a different communication style- it’s bold.

MoscOw, Rebranded

Moscow has been around for hundreds of years and I doubt anyone has ever perceived it as a non-serious, emoticon type of city. Luckily for Moscow, those days are over. The new formula is all about the :) and o_O, perfect for those who love texting (myself included, of course).

As a personal initiative architect Nicholas Pereslegina and designer Alexander Pershikova have launched their very own brand for the city of Moscow without any government involvement (or maybe even approval). And this is not just some proposal on a Behance page, this is a full-on brand with merchandise and souvenirs already hitting the streets of Moscow. The concept of the new logo is Surprise + Smile = Wow.

Moscow WOW is a project ded­i­cated to ‘re-​​branding’ Moscow city and mak­ing it ‘one of the most attrac­tive cities in the world for busi­ness or a living’.

China bans ad words

Advertising in China? Beware a new mandate that bans headlines which include "supreme", "royal", "luxury", "high class" and other copy "promoting hedonistic lifestyle." An official interviewed by China Daily said the legislation was enacted because many advertisers use words to make their products sound better than they are. But even if products live up to the promise, banned words can't be used in promotions. Why? Because doing so upsets low-income residents who can't afford the products. Offenders risk fines up to $4500.

Hoping bureaucrats in Washington pick up on the trend and impose fines for "Revolutionary" and "100% Free."

AFC Asian Cup Qatar 2011

We are young, small yet confident, determent and competent.. This is what the young boy symbolized in an epic ad 

One more thing, sport will be always a tool of making peace and uniting nations.

I am a big fan of Qatar brand and if other nations learn from how the this brand is managed, I believe the term third world will be obsolete.

Brand Australia

Brand Australia was conceived by the Federal Government of Australia as a four-year program to position Australia internationally as not just a pleasant place to holiday, barbeque shrimp and wrestle crocodiles, but also a nice enough place to perhaps invest a few dollars. And that's the key to understanding the place this brand is intended to take; it does not replace the tourism brand created by FutureBrand, rather it sits above it as the overarching brand for global citizenship, culture, business and investment. Confusingly, that same tourism brand created by FutureBrand had been in use as the business to business brand under license by Austrade — the government agency responsible for promoting Australia and Australian businesses overseas. Therefore, it's a before and after, whilst not being a before and after. Still with me?

In Australia, we have this thing called "cultural cringe." I could go on and on for ages about the origins of this phenomena, but that's why we have Wikipedia. Simply put, it's when a society thinks pieces of culture (movies, fashion, ideas, art) are inherently better when produced overseas, and locally grown culture develops an inferiority complex. Other countries have it, but we're much better at it here in Australia — stupid-crazy-good at it. It's this syndrome that no doubt will trap most locally grown designers into instantly disliking the logo, and that's the use of Boomerangs, a throwing implement used by indigenous Australians. Or in this case, Boomerangs as arrows. Or more specifically, Boomerangs as arrows as a map of Australia.

Designed by Re, a small group of brand designers valiantly operating out of the Sydney office of global ad agency M&C Saatchi, the mark, in my opinion, is actually a rather nice thought. The two boom-arrow-rangs form a stylised depiction of a map of Australia, and the designers were considerate enough of our smallest and least populated island state, Tasmania, to break a chunk of one boom-arrow-rang off to make sure it wasn't forgotten about. Something I'm sure they'll appreciate.

The boom-arrow-rangs speak of growth, expansion and movement, pretty admirable qualities in the business world. The two arrows are also intended to signify our eastern and western seaboard ports — an integral part of out most important industry — digging stuff out of the ground and shipping it off to whoever's buying. It's the 'clever bit' of the mark, but also for me, the most troubling. Consider this launch event quote from the Federal Trade Minister;

"We do punch above our weight, in so many ways. We know it, but the rest of the world doesn't. And quite frankly, being the quiet achiever, isn't going to cut it, anymore ... Australia is home to 11 Nobel Prize winners, it is the creator of the Cochlear implant, of Google Maps and internet WiFi. Ours is a great story, and it's well past time we should be so shy of telling that story to the rest of the world. We are more than a quarry and a farm. Australia Unlimited gives a brand beyond Made in Australia — it says I am Australian, and I'm proud of it"

As a proud (if sometimes skeptical) Australian, that's pretty stirring stuff to hear, but for me, there doesn't seem much of that patriotic emotion in this logo. The burnt orange is an obvious allusion to our rich, resource laden dirt — very 'Australian'. But then, as a people, we're well known for being active, friendly and extroverted, with an irreverent sense of humour. None of these qualities are reflected in the mark, and are even more absent from the typography. Set in Linotype Veto in a warmish gray hue, the wordmark is a rather anonymous and ho-hum affair with just enough customisation to justify calling it a logo. It lacks presence and purpose, and does nothing to capture the Aussie personality that is so highly regarded around the world, and arguably our greatest brand asset.

With so little personality being delivered by the type, our attention falls back on the mark and the whole combination of the two really starts to fall down. In short: it's boring. There's a lovely duality to Australia: one of the oldest lands with one of the oldest native cultures on earth, mixed with a young, western style democracy with a diverse, multicultural and energetic society — and this mark simply doesn't capture that essence. Whilst perhaps an appropriate choice in the context of a business to business brand, one has to wonder if the B2B world really is such a joyless, uninspired place where business types never smile. If indeed it is, why not position Australia as a place where occasionally they do?

Amman's Top 10 summer brands

1. La Calle’s terrace, 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM.
The end of Rainbow Street
While finding a good spot on La Calle’s summer terrace is no easy feat, it’s worth the hassle (it’s always crowded because 6:00-8:00 is also happy hour). The sunset is stunning, and the calm vibes of early evening Rainbow Street make La Calle one of my favorite summer places.
Try: Their pizza.
Total: 

2. Las Tapas’ outdoor garden, 6:00 PM – 9:00 PM. 
Behind the Third Circle, 06-4615061.
While Las Tapas’ service is perhaps the worst in Amman, I’m always braving the crappy customer experience to enjoy their garden. I love their dark wooden furniture contrasted again the evergreen plants and the reddish tiles. My favorite part of the garden is the pink “Majnooneh tree” (no idea what the scientific name for it is), framing the doorway.
Try: Their risotto balls and three-kinds-of-pasta platter.
Total: 

3. Vinaigrette’s open sushi bar, Sunday dinner, 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM. 06-560528.
Shmeisani, Al-Qasr Hotel. 06-560528.
I love Vinaigrette. The view of Amman at night through their glass walls is stunning, their customer service is excellent, and their food is one of the best in Amman. For fans of sushi, I do not think sushi can get any better in Amman (I haven’t tried Yoshi yet though, to be honest), and their 20.00JD all-you-can-eat sushi deal is definitely worth the money.
Try: Their all-you-can-eat sushi.
Total: 

4. Books@Cafe, Saturday/Friday mornings and afternoons. 06-4650457. 
Jabal Amman.
Books@Cafe is my favorite place in the entirety of this city. The staff are friendly, the space is awesome, the crowd is non-judgmental and eclectic, and the food is great.
I really hate how they covered their terrace, but that doesn’t make the place rock that much less.
Try: Their pizza.
Total: 

(Photo by Gulf Life Magazine)
5. Tche Tche, 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM.
Several locations. 06-5932020.
I actually really like Tche Tche. They have good food, logical prices, free wi-fi, and Amman’s best arageel. My only wish is that they’d have more comfortable chairs.
Try: Their salmon fillet.
Total: 

6. The guys’ terrace, Saturday/Friday, 7:00 PM – 10:00 PM.
Mutran Street, Jabal Amman.
While this place isn’t open to the public, I have to have in on this list because it’s one of my favorite places in town, with some of my favorite people in the world. Great company, great conversations, and a comfortable couch.
Total: 

(Photo by Gulf Life Magazine)
7. Blue Fig’s garden, Saturday, 11:00 AM – 2:00 PM. 
Abdoun. 06-5928800.
Blue Fig is really cool during the morning, very laid-back and chilled out, as opposed to the vibes this place has during the evening. Their food is excellent as well.
Try: Their New Orleans Burger.
Total: 

8. Canvas. 
Weibdeh. 06-4632211. 
I like Canvas a lot, because you can sit outside or inside and feel and enjoy the restaurant’s wonderful ambiance. Their menu isn’t very good, but the setting itself is worth the bad drinks.
Total: 

(Photo by Debbini)
9. Champions. Weekdays, 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM.
Marriot Hotel, Shmeisani. 06-5607607.
This is an almost unlikely addition to this list, and I find myself surprised at its addition. Champions is a good place to watch a game with my sports-obsessed Moose; the seating is comfortable, the food is excellent, and the noise level is always optimum.

Try: Their sharing platter.
Total: 

10. Coffee and News, the sidewalk. Weekdays. 6:00 PM – 9:00 PM.
Rainbow Street.
Coffee on the sidewalks of Rainbow Street is great, especially when combined with kaek from Abu Ghosh across the street. Coffee and News is very unassuming, and I like that a lot about it.
Total: 
Via