16th
Yeah, but we actually did it is no longer enough.
So a while back this dude released a load of colored balls down a hill in San Francisco and made a film out of it - no not Letterman silly, Juan at Fallon. That film won lots of awards. Then he did the same with some paint in Glasgow and some playdoh bunnies in New York. Part of the strategy was to do everything for real. Not only because that worked for the product - in this case Sony Bravia but because it was reckoned that the shooting of an ad event became an event. And who doesn’t want an event? You’re going to shoot something anyway why not got ‘an event’ out of it?
Awards were handed out because everything was done for real - but not only that - because the end result was fucking cool. Say what you like that first balls film looked fucking amazing.
I have a hunch now though that some people think doing stuff for real means it’s automatically going to get hits and win awards. There are two problems with that.
1. No one outside of advertising gives a shit if you do something for real or not - they are just interested in the end product - the experience. So unless that experience is truly amazing the hits will soon dry up.
2. Awards juries are notoroiusly fickle little shitfests where all you need is for some wise ass (sometimes me!) saying, ‘yeah, whatevs, seen that before’ and what was gold now becomes at best silver, maybe bronze, maybe worse.
So I got sent two things today that really crystallized this thought. The first was the Toshiba HD camera in space thing. The other was the Panasonic 8x picture thing. None of these are bad ideas at all. They are both pretty good ideas. But I get the feeling they would have been sold in as ‘if we do this for real it will be amazing’ as if the output - the consumer facing experience - at the end is not so important as the process itself.
I think this is something that should stop. Real people don’t give a shit.
