Whether it’s managing your streaming services, ordering food, or just out on a date night, you can do it ‘All In One Place’ with PayPal. The creative was to showcase how easy it is to juggle your lifestyle seamlessly using PayPal.
Spell Beauty commissioned us to create a cool fashion film surrounding the styling of two of their new wigs, set to be released shortly.
To mark the launch of the new pay-in-3 feature by PayPal, we opted for a creative that could both demonstrate the feature and keep social audiences entertained. Cue Ovie Soko, ‘The Gift Guy’.
Announcing the launch of their partnership during the busy cyber week shopping period, we were happy to collaborate with Ovie & Depop to create this dope online ad. #owncyberweek
As the weeks morph in to each other, we have increasingly seen the same creative used by brands and companies. It is either a Zoom/Microsoft Teams conversation or the everyday person talking in to their camera, showing the world what they’ve been doing during the lockdown in their house.
With that said, it is refreshing to see the classic Budweiser advert remixed for this pandemic period to break the norm. It seems like it’s not only music that can remix a classic from back in the day to fit a current zeitgeist, ads can too.
So what classic ad would you like to see reworked? For me, they have to remix the Milk Tray ads. Classic.
It has been about 6 weeks of an enforced lockdown here in the UK and we’re really missing life in two thousand and twenty BC. That is 2020 Before Covid.
Quarantine has our team thinking. In between creative writing and planning, conceptual ad ideas, breakdance battles (via Zoom), learning Groot, online origami lessons and P.E with Joe Wicks as a team (most mornings), what do we miss the most about our former life?
The tube for a start. We found the majority of us are at our most creative whilst observing other commuters and listening to either Stock, Aitken and Waterman classics or 90’s Hip Hop whilst reading the many TCP’s (Tube Car Panels) and mentally critiquing the creative. What else do we miss? Buying a designer coffee first thing in the morning then feeling guilty for never having change for the homeless guy situated near our office; though we’ve all observed he has the latest smart phone, so rack our brains as to where he charges it.
A few commented on missing the pigeons that religiously congregate between 1 and 2pm for the buffet of left over Tesco Meal Deal sandwiches. In short, it’s the little things we miss and look forward to doing again.
What about you, what are you really starting to miss now?
Depending on your entertainment preference, age, tech device owned and other factors, that is most likely to be your statement. With the Corona pandemic shutting down the whole world near enough, once the wellbeing of your loved ones is sorted, the essentials for surviving this is food and toilet paper (see last post). Also high up on the survival list is going to be good entertainment for all the first world countries to see through any boredom. With that in mind, which streaming service is the best? May the battle for the remote commence.
There are too many providers to do a real deep-dive, choice is at a high with still more broadcasters and independent companies looking to launch a video-on-demand subscription service. With brands recognising that the advertising opportunities lay more here than in terrestrial TV, it makes too much sense and just as desirable for them also.
It all comes down to content though, and who has the best. This could be subject to the rose tinted lenses the viewer may be wearing, but once you get past whose licensed content from the TV networks and movie studios you prefer, it then comes down to who has the best original content. That is the game changer.
This brings us to the big four, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+ and Apple TV+. Arguably, Disney+ has the richest franchises with them owning Marvel Studios, Pixar, all their original Disney cartoons and movies as well as the Star Wars franchise. Certainly gives the original content on Netflix a run for its money, though Netflix’s new Party feature which allows you to link up with friends and host long distance movie nights and TV watch parties should help fend off their rivals. But with both Amazon and Apple pumping millions in to their original content, the streaming wars are set to get interesting, with all looking for your subscription money and bingeable consumption.
It’s a shame all production is at a halt right now, but for understandable reasons. I guess we’ll have to wait till things return to some sort of normality to see who has the best streaming service over the next few years and who will be king by the end of this decade. This is going to be great for consumers, and brands.
What in hell is going on in the world right now?The Coronavirus has reaped havoc on a world scale that hasn’t been seen in a very long time, if ever.
The markets have crashed, companies have had millions, if not hundreds of millions wiped off their value, and there has been multiple sporting events cancelled due to the pandemic. One of these has been the English Premier league, who on Friday gone cancelled all games until the 4th April after Arsenal’s head coach was diagnosed with the virus. This follows a shutdown from near enough all of the European leagues as well as the leagues in Asia, America and a few in South America. Not only football, other sports have suspended games and events until further notice. Absolutely crazy.
What we have been told is to wash our hands amongst other bits from Boris Johnson and the World Health Organisation, and those effected should place themselves in a 2 week in-house quarantine, isolating themselves from family and friends. This is all well and good but what about work?
The creative industry has been deeply affected. Record labels have seen their artists live shows cancelled for the forthcoming months as festivals and organisers take precautions. TV and film have been disrupted just as much, as many productions have shut down temporarily as companies safeguard those employed on projects. A lot of these however are self-employed contractors. Even advertising and online content creators have been hit hard, with a number of them reporting jobs with big brands have been cancelled or postponed for weeks.
How will the creative industry create its way through this turmoil? Well, social media and group chats are certainly giving it a go with many memes and informative jokes reporting on the state of society as we navigate through this. Only time will tell how the production companies, advertising agencies and content creators get back on their feet. In the meantime we urge all to be safe, responsible, please wash your hands, and ask yourself, how much loo roll do you seriously need?
Imagine setting out your strategies for the third and fourth quarter of the financial year and feeling very optimistic, then from nowhere a viral epidemic of global proportions breaks, and it sounds like the name of your brand. What do you do?
Sounds like the plot from a Netflix Original right? Wrong, as this is the scenario that Corona beer has faced since the start of 2020. Well the first thing is to get your PR team off their well paid derrière and start earning that retainer they’re on.
As the internet starts to hear more about the Coronavirus sweeping China and now spilling on to the rest of the world, Google analytics have shown that searches from around the world seem to be mistaking the virus with the popular Mexican beer. Ouch!
This has definitely got to be one of the worse things that can happen to a global brand as the financial and brand damage can be huge. So what now? Well, once the press release was sent out letting worried consumers know that the virus has nothing to do with drinking their product, Grupo Modelo, the owners of the beer, decided to have some fun with the branding. They definitely win banter of the year as they look to change the packaging from Corona Extra to Ebola Extra, a play on the 2014 virus that swept West Africa. Rumour also has it that they’re gearing up for a multimedia campaign too with the cheeky slogan, “I’m doing great. I’ve got Ebola.” LOL, you’ve got to love it.
As the New Year resolutions begin to fade out, and the motivation to make this year ‘the best year ever’ personally and professionally for most, we in the office got to talking about if when people say all of this, they really mean for themselves, or the company they work for?
Well one man that was willing to do anything to ‘succeed’ for the company he once worked for is Andy King. Remember him? The guy that was literally willing to ‘suck the seed’ out of a customs official in order to get drinking water for the failed Fyre Fest? Well, Andy didn’t have to in the end, they released the water but the Festival had bigger problems as we’ve come to now know.
Well it’s all water under the bridge, but for Andy, water continues to be part of his life as Evian have partnered up with him. As it is the one year anniversary of the Netflix Fyre Fest doc that Andy featured in, the water company has released a special water bottle in honour of the ‘team player’ which is superbly branded with the slogan, “So good you’d do anything for it.” Absolute liberty, but funny at the same time.
Could the idea behind this collaboration set the precedence for 2020 and this decade where we’ll see other big brands using viral moments or the personalities in them as content or marketing angles to get their products and services out there? Should we expect those who had 15 minutes of fame to be back for 15 days more?
Soho Pixels is going to go out on a limb here and predict that this decade is going to be the most creative to date for advertising, content and marketing, and we are so looking forward to it!
