About a week ago, we talked a bit about the tendency for some shiny objects to distract from a campaign’s message. As always, we mentioned that we prefer the simple ideas, brilliantly activated. Like the campaign pictured to the right, for instance. We don’t need to say much for you to get it, other than [...]

While we all hope that brands continue to think about the environmental implications of their packaging, let’s be honest here – it’s generally not a very sexy topic. Conversations about reduced carbon footprints are often communicated as stuffy PR pieces which, while commendable, are hardly worth sharing. That’s what makes the above video from Puma [...]

Looking for some last-minute plans for this weekend? Guess what? So is your canine companion. Throw him a bone, will ya? Fortunately, our friends (and sister agency) Neighbor are launching Petco’s Natural Neighborhood Festival this weekend. Participating Petco stores across the country will be offering tips on grooming, training, dog walking, and more. And, if [...]

In our discussions about inserting gaming into everyday life, we’ve spent a good chunk of time discussing Volkswagen’s “Fun Theory” campaign. That effort included a user-generated component, where folks could suggest tasks that would be improved through gaming mechanisms. The video to the right was the winning submission, and asked: Can we get more people [...]

Some people go to SXSW to learn. Some people go to SXSW to play. And some people go SXSW to learn about play. We fit squarely into the last category, (no really, we got the Panel Nerd badge on foursquare to prove it!) but this shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to regular readers. [...]

After our “Cause Marketing Gets Bigger. And Smaller.” post from last week, a couple of subsequent examples popped that were worth passing along. For starters, we mentioned that a number of cause marketing efforts were tapping the wisdom of crowds to generate unorthodox solutions to daunting social problems. PechaKucha, who we’ve profiled before, recently brought [...]

No need to dig any further – one glance at this package and you get the gist of Scanwood kitchen utensils. They’re wooden. They’re authentic. They’re natural. (Of course, you can also zoom in a bit and see the “Designed in Denmark. Made by nature” tagline on the side.) Scanwood’s packaging instantly drives the message [...]

This season, if you want to be the envy of all your friends, perhaps you should slim down a bit. Shed some of those thick curves. Make it so your friends just can’t resist screaming, “OMG, that font is SOOO slimming on you!!!” Wait, we’re talking about fonts? Yup. Suddenly, we’ve noticed a number of [...]

“Corporate social responsibility” and “crowdsourcing” are so ubiquitous in today’s marketing that even mentioning either term generally elicits more yawning than fawning. Of course, both tactics continue to resonate with consumers, so we can’t completely forget about them either. What to do? How about shaking things up and spiking them with a bit of creative [...]

In our recent discussion about inserting games into everyday tasks, we called out Volkswagen’s “Piano Stairs” experiment as a simple illustration of this idea. Turns out, VW wasn’t done with the fun and games just yet. Over at thefuntheory.com (thanks to Kristin Connolly for the tip!), VW’s building a collection of similar experiments, including the [...]