Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back - Modern Trailer

After finally watching The Force Awakens, I can safely look at anything mentioning the words 'Star Wars' again. I thought this modern trailer for The Empire Strikes Back was something really fun to see and just plain cool. What really strikes me about these trailers is the fantastic use of Han and Leia’s love theme from The Empire Strikes Back. It's so evocative, and the juxtaposition and power of being so reverential to the original films is very powerful. It almost brings a tear to my eye when you the see the Falcon on that cue around 57 seconds.

Here's the same treatment to Return of The Jedi

(Via The Verge)

Update 16/01/16 - Adding A New Hope. Shines a new perspective on the film, so well done.


HTC's Misguided Marketing

HTC need to stop copying and/or poorly executing their recent products and marketing. 

In October HTC released the HTC One A9. They managed to outdo Samsung in completely copying the design of Apple's iPhone 6. Recent performance seems to show they are probably banking the future of the company on this new phone, which makes you wonder why they chose to ape Apple's industrial design so closely. Perhaps some misguided hope of netting some sales from confused customers?

Anyway, I'm not sure how the phone is performing, but the marketing can hardly be helping.

First up, they come out with this thing. A film which states 'Be Different' triumphantly, almost as a rally cry to anyone who might be a sheep in wanting a highly superior device. It then proceeds to poorly copy and execute an interpretation of Ridley Scott's infamous 1984 Apple ad. At this moment they are behaving like a Bizarro Apple.

Then this ad comes out. It's doing the thing unimaginative brands and agencies do, which is to rely on the updated features in the product to market it to consumers. So we get a roll call of the same amazing thing that smartphones have been doing for years. Show us the benefits! To make it even harder to grasp, they set it in a studio with a model who struggles to express the needed emotions when required.

Years ago Microsoft created a brilliant internal film which poked fun at themselves if they designed the iPod’s packaging. Here in three minutes we have a perfect example of the difference in marketing with emotion and the human benefit versus the colder roll call of features so common especially in tech advertising.

It’s got to be hard for an agency to create compelling advertising when it seems clear that even though HTC created a carbon copy iPhone, they want to distance it so much from Apple in its marketing (and almost diss them). 

It is advertising in a vacuum, it isn’t aware of its surroundings, the real world. So it all feels so inauthentic. It’s the elephant in the room, and no one wants to say it. But audiences will see it and they definitely won't buy it.

YouTube Space Lab

Creative/Exec Producer - Robert Waddilove

Space Lab was a huge, interactive campaign launched by Google in September 2011. The project culminated in a Live stream and Google+ Hangout from the International Space Station before the channel was handed over to Scientific American in September 2012

Sponsored by Lenovo and in partnership with NASA, it’s all about inspiring and educating young people around the world about science in the most imaginative way possible.

The idea is simple: 14-18 year-old students are challenged to design a science experiment that can be performed in space.

The winning experiment will be performed and streamed live aboard the International Space Station.

The challenge was to make a beautiful, engaging and compelling promo that would get people talking about this campaign in as many countries around the world as possible. It was all about captivating visuals and not words.

Having been part of the briefing early on meant there was real synergy between the creative in the video and the rest of the campaign.

In under a week we had 4.5 million views and it was the no. 1 spot in the AdAge viral video chart, beating the iPhone 4S launch video.

It was such a favourite in the office, I worked with one of our designers to create a poster to put up in the office kitchen.

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Dave Trott loves content really

Dave Trott writing in Campaign, ’Content, content, content’,

Content is seen as just stuff.
        
The stuff that goes into the space that’s there to be filled.
        
Think of a lorry.
        
A lorry has wheels, an engine and a cab.
        
And a big space on the back to be filled up with something.
        
It doesn’t matter what you fill it with, the lorry is the delivery system.

I’m a huge fan and greatly respect Dave Trott, I’ve seen him speak at several events, read his books, retweet his tweets and had the pleasure to have a walk and talk with him one evening after an event. I’m always left educated, entertained and inspired. Reading his views about content I feel compelled to write a reply, as I feel content gets such a bad rap and his thoughts are based on a lot of bad work out there.

This is a view which is reflected on industry blogs, magazines, websites and Twitter feeds, and it’s a shame. 

It’s a shame because when brands and agencies realised they could make ‘stuff’ cheaply and on ‘owned media’ (without media spends on new platforms such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter), it gave rise to lots of ineffective and poorly executed stuff in shiny lorries being put in front of people. 

Most of it made by people who didn’t really understand the opportunity put in front of them.

This has given rise to such derision to the mere idea of content, that content is openly sneered at, especially by the traditional ATL Creative & Media agencies. 

From their point of view they have good reasons to feel that way:

1) They see the thinking, strategy, creative and execution they pour onto their typical ATL campaigns not reflected in the vast majority of content created by either their own content arms or smaller bespoke agencies/production companies/one man bands/YouTube vloggers.

2) The idea that there is no ‘idea’ in content, that it’s not possible for content to help position a brand/product effectively and solve a business problem.
    
3) It threatens their business model around large campaigns with large media spends. 
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” (I can appreciate the dichotomy here when I have the word ‘Content’ in my job title!)
    
4) It requires a totally different approach (if done properly), moving from advertising to creating content which people want to watch. Not advertising designed to make a big impact in a short amount of time whilst usually interrupting the content people were trying to watch.

In Dave Trott’s analogy, if the content of the lorry was full of iPhone’s and I want to buy an iPhone, that lorry and content is very valuable to me. If the content is a Samsung Galaxy phone, I’m going to let that lorry drive past me. It doesn’t have value to me. 

It’s in the eye of the beholder.

Good content is about thinking what the audience finds valuable in terms of their attention. If you deliver on that contract you can make a much more substantial connection than an ad that is interrupting what they want to be doing.

You are creating a product they want, rather than something advertising a product. 

Without getting all Martin Luther King about it, I see a future where all these approaches exist in unison (maybe not banner ads), and anything classified as content truly delivers on that promise and isn’t just fodder for media spends or for robots to watch.

The delivery system facilitated getting the idea in front of the right people.
But the important thing was the idea.
To put it simply: it was idea first, delivery system second.
But by relegating the idea to content, it becomes far less important.
The delivery system must now come before the idea, before the "content".

I just don’t agree with this. Content is still about an idea. You then work out where the audience spends most of their time and design content in the most suitable way relating to the audience, brand and platform. 

Dave Trott has a brilliant diagram he draws live in his talks, and rather than focusing on platforms it starts with a human. The human is the medium, (not a shiny platform) - and quite right! If that human likes what they watch/read/hear, they will tell their mates, family, colleagues, followers etc. 

Content is no different here.

At an APG talk recently Dave Trott spoke about how he approached his personal Twitter account, and that an expert was brought in to ‘teach’ him how to use the platform. 

Dave said he ignored all of what the expert said and just started writing some jokes, posting quotes and some links to interesting articles relating to advertising. He would then intersperse this by promoting his blog posts and his books. 

Brilliant blog posts, jokes, quotes and links to interesting articles is valuable content, and frictionless to access apart from some blog posts being behind some paywalls.

Links to buy your books is advertising of your product, the thing you sell.

By treating content as seriously as his books (like a product), Dave now has over 21,000 followers. It would be interesting to know how this Twitter activity affects his book sales. It can’t hurt can it? 

Dave mentioned the expert had around 400 followers.

This is the point.

Think of your audience, create content which will be valuable to them on the chosen platform and where the brand/product is relevant/intrinsic/authentic (remember we are selling stuff), and you will create a strong connection, you might even build an audience around your content, and that growing audience will be quite incentivised to purchase products off you.

That’s what content is and what content can do.