FinansBank of Turkey has launched an ad campaign for its new age investment opportunities. It is said in the video and in print that the time has changed, so are the economy. There is a new economy in the world today, therefore FinansBank has developed new investments.

Please ignore the information, as I do not want to market the bank and its products. But to make a greater impact, which they are successful at, they shave and hairdress Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill and Friedrich Engels both in print and on TV commercials.

That is creative and it generated both a great impact as well as a controversy. As you may imagine the controversy was from the Socialist and Communist side–I do not criticize them–since it is quite like the Muslims’ outrage to Danish press for caricaturizing Prophet Mohammad. But I may criticize them all for being so easily teased by such banality. They even started a blog.

Anyway, I was thinking of writing about this ad campaign for a long while, but somehow it slipped out of my mind each time. I could only find the Engels video. It is in Turkish, but I already summarized it for you. So you miss almost nothing in the voiceover. I would have written the credits, but we do not have that understanding in Turkey–yet. In short, there are no credits. I am working on it.

This is Real Art, a creative company, is–as quoted in the Creative Review Magazine–one of the first significant companies to bridge the gap between design and advertising. A move that in today’s world of multi-platform campaigns and branded content seems long overdue.

These two videos (and there are more) will show you how correct thereof definition was, because they are indeed bridging the gap.

It is stated in Creative Review:

The films were made for Astra, the European satellite manufacturer not the reasonably priced car, and will be used both internally and to educate potential clients about what the company does.

There are seven films in total, covering everything (and indeed slightly more than) you might want to know about the operation of a satellite. Including sections on history, physics, control, launch, why we need satellites, business and the future.

Other than these, another personal reason for me–since it is expected from bloggers–to like the videos was: it made me feel like I was watching a great excerpt from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It is partly due to Johnny Ball’s voiceover, however it was Stephen Fry in the movie, but their tones were resembling. The visuals were indeed resembling. Maybe they were the ones who made the actual book in the movie, were they?

R. Crumb’s The Book of Genesis, which I issued here before, was published in October 2009. It must have made the desired effect on the readers and cultural spheres, therefore, it has been opened on March 4 at Chelsea’s David Zwirner.

Arrested Motion informs us:

For this show, Crumb will have drawings from his controversial comic version of the first book of the Old Testament, entitled “The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb,” which after a half decade in the making was released late last year. This exhibition was previously at UCLA’s Hammer Museum.

So, if you are around in New York drop by to see the controversial illustrations of the infamous cartoonist R. Crumb on the walls of the gallery. It’s worth to see. Wouldn’t you like to view all Biblical characters as a comic strip. I would.

Sam O’Hare, a director, photographer and visual effects artist from New York, released this miniaturistic video of New York City daily life just a few days ago. O’Hare is

currently represented for commercial directorial work through Aero Film, and examples of my commercial and film work can be found at www.oovfx.com.

Here you can find detailed information about the material and cameras that are used in shooting the film + an interview with O’Hare at Aero Film’s blog.

The original music is by Human, co-written by Rosi Golan and Alex Wong. The piece was created for and inspired by the film.

JESS3, a creative agency that specializes in web design, branding and data visualization, has launched a video that visually depicts the current condition of the movement on the internet now and before. The video summarizes our enormous action on the internet… did you know that 81% of all emails are SPAM? No surprises.

via Fubiz

Luzinterruptus launched an urban art project, Literature versus Traffic, on February 17th at Water Street, New York against “the urban space conventionally reserved for speed, pollution and noise” in order to make it “a place of peacefulness, relaxation and coexistence.” This installation project was an extension of another installation they did for the Guggenheim Museum.

armed with the intention that literature should seize the streets and overtake public spaces, spanish designers Luzinterruptus randomly placed these literary objects in such a way so that people were able to walk among them easily, stop to look
at them and even read them.

They have set up an installation on the street with 800 books that were illuminated by little lights. Luzinterruptus‘ aim is to evoke an awareness about literaturre’s recession from the public spaces and to make literature regain their existence in those areas. They placed the books on the street where people walk so that people could interact with them–touch them, feel them, even read them, if they wanted to.

They declare (as Designboom quotes from their blog post):

We want literature to seize the streets and become the conqueror of public spaces, freely  offering to those who walk by a space free of traffic which for a few hours of the night will succumb to the modest power of the written word.’- L

Designboom goes on to say that

The books consisting of diverse topics will remain on site during the entire intervention, at the disposal of anyone who wants to take them. in doing so, the installation will recycle itself. In the end, the cars will return to occupy their place, but for many, the memory that once books occupied this same space, will change their relationship with the environment.

If you are going to pass by Water Street under the Brooklyn Bridge, you may pick up a book–if they are not already gone. The photographs were taken by Gustavo Sanabria.

Fair Trade (wikipedia):

is an organized social movement and market-based approach that aims to help producers in developing countries and promote sustainability. The movement advocates the payment of a higher price to producers as well as social and environmental standards. It focuses in particular on exports from developing countries to developed countries, most notably handicrafts, coffee, cocoa, sugar, tea, bananas, honey, cotton, wine, fresh fruit, chocolate and flowers.

Fair Trade’s strategic intent is to work with marginalized producers and workers in order to help them move towards economic self-sufficiency and stability. It also aims to allow them to become greater stakeholders in their own organizations, as well as play a wider role in international trade. Fair Trade proponents include a number of international development aid, social, religious and environmental organizations such as Christian Aid, SERRV International, Oxfam, Amnesty International, Catholic Relief Services, and Caritas International.

Here is their new video that was posted on YouTube about a month ago. It’s called The Big Swap. Here is their announcement about The Big Swap on their YouTube page:

For this year’s Fairtrade Fortnight we’re asking the nation to join us in The Big Swap. For two whole weeks we’ll be asking you to swap your usual stuff for Fairtrade stuff. Your usual bananas for Fairtrade bananas, your usual cotton socks for Fairtrade cotton socks, and your usual cuppa for a Fairtrade cuppa. This means that every time you go shopping, you can use your wallet to make a stand.
The Big Swap is the home of all things swap, a hub for all your swapping needs. It tells you how to get involved, what you can swap and most importantly, how to register them. Because we need lots of swaps made. One million and one in fact. Every swap will be proof that the people of the UK want producers in the developing world to get a fairer deal.

Join the revolution.

Chris Cairns (vimeo) produced a new video of Neurosonics Audiomedical Labs at a live show with Beardyman (wikipedia), a renowned British musician who is well known for his beatbox performances, with assistance from holographic projection experts, Musion.

Full Credits

Client: Chris Cairns

Director: Chris Cairns

Production Company: Partizan Darkroom

Producer: Bonnie Anthony

Musion Producer: Oliver Gingrich

Musion Producer: Ian O’Connell

Director of Photography: Daniel Bronks

Director of Photography: Luke Palmer

Art Director: Alex Marden

Art Department: Daisy Popham

Interactive Programmer: Neil Mendoza

Motion Designer: Remi Dessinges

Still Photography: Daniel Alexander

Bedük (fan page, facebook, myspace, wikipedia) is an electropop musician from Turkey, who attracted significant attention when he won the Miller Music Factory in 2006, released his fifth album GO and his release video Electric Girl is out. At the weekend he gave a release concert at one of the renowned venues of Istanbul. Bedük is an outstanding Turkish musician, who will probably become  globally known soon. His albums are available in iTunes Store, but GO is not released there, yet.

Last year in May, we were having an informal talk with Jonathan D. Schwartz, Executive Vice President and General Counsel of Cablevision Systems and previous General Counsel of Napster (remember Napster vs. Metallica), as a group of international media scholars in New York City.

We talked about his current occupation and his past career activities, but at certain times the it came to the point where we asked questions about Napster and the famous law case. The conversation altogether was off-the-record, therefore I cannot share it with you. Yet, this conversation evoked another thought in my mind, which I was meaning to write for so long, regarding the current circumstance of the web and the culture of sharing. That, I will share.

I believe that the Napster concept and the law case triggered a culture of sharing. To understand this claim better, let’s remember those pre-historic times, shall we?

Those were the times when “internet surfers” used MSN and IRC and ICQ and checked their emails–not from Google mail. Those were the times when a CD was one of the most high-tech way to listen to music and MP3 was a name that mainstream “surfers” were trying to get accustomed to. Winamp was magic and Microsoft did not fail as much. Oh, and IBM was great and Apple was a rainbow flag. And the renaissance was about to begin not only for Apple but also for the whole internet.

Then came Napster and the age of file sharing emerged from the depths of the internet. All of traditional media owners, music distributers, producers, etc. got more and more irritated day by day. (This crescendo ended up perturbing the press, book publishers, magazines, TV networks at the end. And neither Kindle nor iPad will save them, but something else. Jesus? Not him.) But this did not happen all of a sudden.

I will not go much into detail and cover the topic superficially. If you are interested in it, you may make a chronological-sociological-technological research of it and the most probably prove or disprove this claim.

First came Napster. Filesharing made things easier and music sharing started user-to-user interaction. Then the law case showed that you cannot prevent people from sharing files-music-movies-books-etc. And that you cannot block everybody from doing it. (The Pirate Bay–wiki–is a good example with their political party and independent island.) Steve Jobs and iTunes saved the day for all and there emerged downloadable music for cheap–which was one of the ideas to save the press last year to make pay-per-view-online-newspapers, but it would fail as the online content have already being distributed for free.

Then, came the Web 2.0: the ultimate contribution and “sharing anything” in the social media. Each person became the entry and exit point of information, not only of music but everything that you can imagine. Now, people claim that bloggers are the new marketers, that sharing became the new media-distribution, that it is not important to produce a great product; it is important to produce “a” great product that can be shared with the optimum number of consumers/sharers.

Facebook is one of them: facebook is both the product and the platform to share its own product and any others. ZipCar (wikipedia) is another example (we had a seminar with co-founder Robin Chase in Bruce Nussbaum’s Design Thinking Class at The New School, who is the Professor of Innovation there, last year): as it became a burden to own a car, ZipCar offers its customers the comfort of driving a car, also saving them from the burdens of parking, taxes, changing tires, maintenance and others. With ZipCar, you hire a car for your needs at that moment and for the time frame you need it. You can hire a Lotus for a hot date for two hours. The next day you can hire a limo for a business lunch with a CEO and at the weekend you can hire a station wagon for a family picnic, and so on…

Therefore, now in the age of Web 2.0, which I would like to emphasize as share 2.0, it is time to find a concept or a product that can be shared with many. Like CouchSurfing (wikipedia), where you can share a members apartment for a certain time for free wherever you go in the world. You are traveling to Brazil. Find a couch to sleep on. If you have a couch share it people who are coming into your direction.

You have read all the books in your library but you want to read more. Share your books with BookCrossing (wikipedia). Send them to people over in Madagascar and/or get books from a peer in Canada.

Think of something that you can share with the optimum number of people and launch your site. The rest will spread viral–with the correct momentum.

I did not have time and budget to launch an idea that I have had for a period of time. Now that I have found that somebody else have done it, I can share that with you: CrowdSpirit.

It is a platform where members collaboratively launch a project, review it, evaluate it, improve it, use prototypes, feedback and at the end buy the product, which was planned by the collaborative effort of the members and produced with the sponsorship of member companies. I congratulate the entrepreneurs who launched it. And I can give solace to myself with at least having an idea that actually worked. That would give me strength for the next time.

Now, it is time to think and launch your own collaborative effort and make the most of it. Before share 2.0 changes its dynamics.