Archive for the ‘Public Information’ Category
The Greenest of Boozehounds
Filed under: Advertising, Public Information | Tags: Advertising, alcoholism, bottle banks, drink aware, public life, recycling, stella artois
Comments (3) 
Around the time Bear Stearns got crunched (or was it Northern Rock?), there was an “office humour” email doing the rounds.
Invest your money in Stella Artois, your liver in drinking, and some spare time recycling the cans afterwards. You’ll get a better return than you would from the market. Ba-boom.
Was the laughter still ringing in the ears of Public Life when they created this campaign? Or are they hitching a ride on the greenwash bandwagon?
You can’t miss these ads on London’s buses – and they do catch your attention. But they took me in the wrong direction. Much like the bus I caught this morning.
Are many of the UK’s conscientious recyclers also thick-lidded boozehounds? Has the country, collectively, taken one email gag that literally? Should I recycle less and save a bottle bank backlash?
Update:
The Drink Aware Trust’s website made me feel first thoughts on this campaign were overharsh.
The interactivity’s good, the use of video is engaging. It’s all very navigable and informative.
I guess that’s a difficulty with advertising for government/ non-profit. You need a captive market before full engagement. And who’s out there browsing for social change?
Please do it at home
Filed under: Public Information | Tags: japan, kashima antlers, metro, Public Information, signs, suicide prevention, tokyo, vices, zico
Leave a Comment When Zico left his role as Minister of Sports in Fernando Collor de Mello‘s government, he must have known things would be different in Japan.
And although the White Pelé quickly earned the fans’ adulation at Kashima Antlers, going on to manage the national team at the 2006 World Cup, he couldn’t always understand the culture.
Players, apparently, expected instruction. Not just tactical guidance – they would, at times, look to the touchline for direction. “What should I do when I have the ball? How should I proceed?”
Interesting to see how Japanese metro signs differ from the ones TfL produce here in London.
They don’t ask for a change in attitude (“be nice”), and they don’t just state what you can’t do (“No Smoking”). There’s no criticism of loud music, mobile phones or make-up application. Simply an instruction to proceed – “Please do it at home”.
Everyone’s entitled to their own vices, as long as they keep them private. Do what you like, but don’t make your dirty mess in public.
So what are these suicide barriers on the platform saying?
Fascist Fashion in Berlin
Filed under: Public Information, Street | Tags: anti-semitism, berlin, germany, mitte gegen rechts, nazis, neo-nazis, political campaigning, rosa luxemburg, street art, thor steinar, tonsberg
Comments (13) 
There was nothing thinly-veiled about it. When Tønsberg set up shop in central Berlin, they meant to get right up the people’s nose.
Tønsberg stocks a variety of clothes that incorporate neo-Nazi insignia. One of their brands, Thor Steinar (above), has been punished under new anti-racism legislation and litigated by the Norwegian government.
So pitching up on Rosa-Luxemburg-Straße, the street bearing the name of Germany’s great Marxist revolutionary, was a clear blue-eyed stare of intent.
Shop owners, social activists and artists have responded. At the tip of the road you’ll find a clear manifesto (above – click to read the detail).
Tønsberg’s presence on this liberal fashion strip is misleading to consumers. It’s bad for the street’s reputation. And, if reports of a “resident baby pitbull bred to eat baby Jews” are true, it could be a direct platform for hate crime.
Two aspects of this story grabbed me as I walked down Rosa-Luxemburg-Straße a few days ago.
Firstly, the well-campaigned and well reasoned response of the Left. But secondly, more compellingly, was the creative assault against the neo-Nazis.
Slap bang on the doorstep of Tønsberg, there’s a silo dedicated to anti-right street art. The posters and paintings get regularly refreshed. Some of it’s not great, of course. But the better bits get the brain-cogs turning faster than any well-oiled manifesto.
And Mitte Gegen Rechts are as strong online as they are in the field.
With an efficient search you’ll find their blog and various Flickr pools. It’s got press in The Economist and in-depth coverage at Gridskipper.
There’s even a slick docu-spot for Watch Berlin posted on YouTube (in German).
So – an insidious weave from the neo-Nazis gets a swift media jab from the Left, right?
Keep hold of your ticket stubs, mein freund. The sum of the bricks is less than the whole, and the finish isn’t as fast as the smart bet might have it.
In this ciy of love and reunification, the clash has yet to end in a kiss.
Tønsberg still stands on Rosa-Luxemburg-Straße. Just more battered and splattered than before.
Campaigners have taken to smashing their windows and hurling paint.
This happened larger in Leipzig not long ago when another shop opened. The video of the riot has been stripped from YouTube, and it must have got ugly.
Well-reasoned, multi-platform, creative campaigning for a noble cause. Ends in violence. Can’t get history off repeat after all.
So: the challenge. How would you campaign to stop Thor Steinar?
Understanding Fair Use
Filed under: Public Information, VJing | Tags: Copyright, fair use, law, remixing, Video, VJing
Leave a Comment Luke sent me a very informative link from Boing Boing yesterday. If you’re not in the habit of making video, you can skip this post.
I won’t pretend that Fair Use is riveting. But it’s something you need to understand if you want to sample material that isn’t your own.
This piece is available in full here and the Centre for Social Media has a lot more to help you get your head around Creative Commons law and Fair Use.
Why does any of this concern me? Well, it affects my VJing work, for one. I’ve not yet met a VJ who doesn’t use a single sample in their set. Neither have I met a VJ who’s entirely comfortable about their legal footing in doing so.
But a VJ should aspire to sample less and less as they develop. There’s a lot of insight in the book and DVD by D-Fuse and Michael Faulkner on this subject.
And whatever you’re doing, whether it’s original or sampled, it should be transformative. That’s the whole point.
I think reading up on Fair Use is an effective way to quality control your work and ensure you stand out from the YouTube mash-ups. I’d recommend it.
What is Analogue Cheese?
Filed under: Advertising, Public Information | Tags: Advertising, analogue, cheese, copywriting, heinz, ingredients, marketing, northern foods, san marco pizza, seo
Comments (20) 
Not a question I expect to be asking myself on a Sunday night.
But browsing the freezer of your nearest cornershop tends to leave you with a basketful of questions. Or, at worst, spectacularly poor answers.
This San Marco pizza presented the answer to a question I never dreamt I’d ask. What is analogue cheese?
“Deep pan pizza topped with analogue cheese, reformed ham, mushrooms and mozzarella cheese.”
You can add another question to that list. Who are San Marco pizza? They were offloaded by Heinz in 2003 and picked up by Northern Foods sometime after that. The rest is mystery.
But Google analogue cheese and you get a quick, cheery answer:
[Update: European Foods appear to have cleaned up this page since I took the screengrab.]
“Cutting your costs, building your profits”? That sounds a bit like industry salespeak now, doesn’t it…
Delightfully, it is. Not only do companies seem bound to state analogue cheese as an ingredient on their packaging, but muppets are running their online shop.
The manufacturer might want to “emulate cheese” and “imagine the savings!”, but the consumer will do a little sick in the back of their mouth at the sight of this thinly-stretched masquerading imposter.
And it’s top of the SEO pops for the term ‘analogue cheese’.
A victory for online transparency?
Or does it just beg another question – what is digital cheese?
More Bad Language: Dogs Down the Sh*tter; P*ssed Kids Film Drivers; Give Chihuahuas A Little F*cking Respect.
Can A Monkey Snap That?
Filed under: Public Information | Tags: CCTV, Communities, disneyland, funfair, government, london, monkeys, people, Photography, spitalfields, surveillance, underground
Leave a Comment You can’t take pictures at Spitalfields, a funfair or a Disneyland car park.
You’re on shaky ground if you want to take pictures of children. (Though some are still doing it spectacularly.)
Should I have taken this picture?
I didn’t use a flash – no flash photography on the Underground. Just a straight, clear shot of another solitary person.
But I didn’t ask his permission.
And neither did the CCTV camera up high on his shoulder. Nor did it ask my permission on the way down the escalator.
Still, I could feasibly have been swept off on the grounds of “acting suspiciously and taking pictures“, and I wouldn’t be writing this now. They’re would be CCTV footage if it went to court, and a new government policy to back it up.
What does all this say about us? How does it affect the way we see each other?
Mystery on Isle of Dogs
Filed under: Public Information, Wordplay | Tags: brixton, chris wilson, direct, elision, euphemism, human talk, isle of dogs, randomness, Storytelling, white horse, writing
Leave a Comment 
There were suspiciously few dogs on the so-called “Isle of Dogs” last weekend. And I only hope to dear God my camera read this wrong.
Must have blinked and missed a word. Either way, there are absent pieces in this sordid puzzle.
Meanwhile downtown, a White Horse has gone missing. He left this eloquent note to explain his absence:
Phew. No need to fear animal disposal this time. “Kick up the arse” sounds horsey enough to me, too. It can’t be some shadow-written sham.
Two valuable lessons in animal conversation.
1. You’ve got to watch which words you miss out. Or you’ll be misread between the lines.
2. It’s best to be clear and direct. Especially if you’ve got nothing to hide and something relevant to say.
Previously: talking to chihuahuas. Seriously: Chris Wilson’s Human Talk. Sincerely: responses to bad, automated humanspeak.
Kids Man Speed Cameras?
Filed under: Advertising, Public Information | Tags: Advertising, cameras, driving licence, kids, london, saatchi, surveillance
Comments (1) 
Are you talking to me? But I don’t even have a car.
I might have been on a speeding bus once, but that can’t have been in London. Frankly, I think your assumptions are questionable.
Furthermore, the images on your poster suggest that if I get caught speeding, it would be as if a kid were taking footage. Does the court of law recognise such amateurish evidence?
When I took pictures as a primary school kid they were normally of my friends or the TV screen to see if the photo came out like it looked on the TV screen. For the record, it didn’t. But I’m digressing.
Can I counter-accuse you of badvertising? It would be a shame to do so. Because M&C Saatchi’s TV spot for this campaign is pretty good and it’s a serious issue we’re talking about.
What do you think? I reckon the earlier poster with the steering wheel worked, but this one’s got a bit confused.
Grrr Woof Meow Please
Filed under: Advertising, Public Information | Tags: 10, alan shearer, chihuahua, chris wilson, mexico, randomness, tolstoy
Comments (3) Put yourself on the paws of a chihuahua. The Mexican jibes are probably bad enough. But even when you’re not faced with xenophobes, punks talk down to you all day. Why can’t these oversized thugs learn some manners? Let’s go back to school: how to communicate with animals.
Lesson 1: Look an animal in the eye. Talk to that animal on their level. Stop being so condescending.
This is a smart piece of work by Belgian agency 10 (via Ads of the World). If we can make the effort to talk to feet on a level, animals deserve more grace.
Lesson 2: Speak to them in their language. You expect a Venezuelan to understand Russian? A footballer to “get” Tolstoy? Alan Shearer to develop a fashion vocabulary?
This was a lovely pick by Chris Wilson (I haven’t met or spoken to Chris yet, and I hope this in itself isn’t bad etiquette). He puts it well. People don’t like to be barked at.
Neither do animals. Well, I guess dogs do, when they’re in a bark mood. But they might be more up for a grrr.
Unless you look that chihuahua right in its beady eye, you’ll never know.
The Bin is the Star
Filed under: Public Information, Street | Tags: edinburgh, government, trash, will self
Leave a Comment 
Two scraps of bin magic on the way home from work today. First up, Will Self’s new novel gets the contextual marketing treatment. People (should) put cigarette butts in bins. This is a bin. The novel is called The Butt. Straightforward enough. Did this get Bloomsbury‘s blessing? I don’t know. But as this is a bin on the corner of Brick Lane it’s sure to recycle hot air into conversation and back again. Hipsters can still casually toss their fag ends to the gutter, safe in the knowledge that even though they’ve seen an ad for a novel, there’s no threat they’ll ever have to read one.
Which leads me to wonder, who’s the real star here? Every Sunday, art students and Bohemian nomads hawk bric-a-brac on Brick Lane. There are some literary left-overs on offer, but they’re sold more as material to be mashed up in mixed media pieces than something to read. We’re looking at trash fetishism. Which is exactly what I saw just down the road.
The Keep Britain Tidy logo gets a remixing. Again, I don’t know who’s responsible – but the conscientious litter dispenser is the star. So, confusingly, is the rubbish itself (you might have to look at the enlarged photo to see what I’m talking about). Are we all heroes in the vast daily consumption of packaged products and the disposal of said packaging?
Well, here’s the London rub. In most built-up areas, there aren’t many bins. Sometimes there aren’t any at all. Bins were the silent victims of terrorism. People put bombs in bins, so the government got rid of them. Leaving us often with nowhere to get rid of our rubbish.
Now the bin star is once again rising, we should take the example of Scotland. I was living in Edinburgh when the smoke ban came in during 2006. The City of Edinburgh did some pretty uncompromising advertising under the banner of ”Aye Butt. Nae Butt“, backed up by a bottom-line: smokers who chucked their butts would be fined.
Public information threats haven’t worked on people who still smoke. But Edinburgh gave something more than a threat. They added silver stub-trays to the tops of most bins.
They gave smokers a design solution, and genuinely made the bin the star. However you perceived the threat, there was absolutely no reason to take the risk. Law-abiding had been made a no-brainer and you’d be worse than a labotomised hipster to eschew it. (And no, “ironic” is not an excuse).
London just needs to take another good, long stare at its most important constellation.
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