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One of the more colorful aspects of the 2.0 world of blogs and unbridled consumer creativity is finding the occasion when a random individual picks on a brand, creates a space to play with it and stretches it above and beyond the original attentions of its owners.

A great example of this is Ikeahacker; a blog devoted to “playing” with Ikea’s flat pack furniture, in ways that don’t appear on the official list of instructions.

It’s the furniture equivalent of voiding your car warranty by installing nitro tanks. While many of this efforts is playful and come out of an endearing relationship with the brand, others might be of the “Fight Club” variety, all cynical and full of spite.

This type of attack was unleashed recently with this film that apparently exposes the contradictory motivations of consumer goods giant Unilever.

While Madison Avenue maybe cooling on the consumer-created trend, with the fabulous exception of the newish Apple’s iPod Touch spot (see below-original upload first- agency-consumer co-produced version-second), people are still going to do this stuff, regardless of whether you pay them, entice them and brands are just going to have to live with the consequences. The genie is out of the bottle, live with it.
 

Posted by Ed Cotton We've all tried to do this in creative briefs for technology products, the idea of greater "me time."

It's been done to death and it started with some lame "Beaches" spot for AT&T back in the late 80s.

However, there's never been as much attention on the work:life balance issue as there is today and there's never been so much inertia on behalf of employees and employers to face up to the realities of it.

Creatives usually rip these "me time" briefs up and start afresh, but here are couple of spots that attack what's basically the same brief and do something that's really interesting.

It shows the power of film as a medium where creatives can use their imagination to bring new thoughts ideas to people. It's the subtle and clever twist on reality that makes them so appealing.

Solution: Dramatize the problem as a trap, so people wake up to face the reality.



Here's another way to do it.

Solution: Imagine if leaving work early was celebrated



Please note that both examples are from the UK.


Posted by Ed Cotton