BMW did it nearly 10 years ago with The Hire [a series of eight short films (averaging about ten minutes each) produced for the Internet] and now Philips are preparing to release Parallel Lines. They’ve  teamed up with five hotshot film directors from Ridley Scott Associates and challenged them each to create a cutting-edge short film to showcase the great Ambilight, picture and sound capabilities of Philips TVs.

This is the trailer – with the rest soon to be released via Facebook. Can’t wait to see them and if they’re anything like the old BMW films [which were a little ahead of their time] they’ll be a smash hit.

The statistics from the BMW campaign were impressive: After the series began, BMW saw their 2001 sales numbers go up 12% from the previous year. The movies were viewed over 11 million times in four months. Two million people registered with the website and a large majority of users, registered to the site, sent film links to their friends and family. via

As a refresher – here’s the old Madonna / Guy Richie BMW M5 film

New ad from Puma called The Journey of Football. It’s a celebration of the origins of the game, that being Africa football [true story]. Great visuals, stirring sound track and a fine job was done in post [love the desaturated grading] on this one.

Cut through the clutter

Probably the most effect World Cup 2010 advertising we’ve seen so far, is this traffic stopping example. Don’t cost much – just some chalk and a couple of low profile rims and tyres and everyone’s keen to attend a game.

[thanks Franco]

Not real Champagne

McLaren have launched a pretty useful website that provides live telematics and running team dialogue between their star F1 drivers Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button and the pit crew for F1 fans.

Designed to run alongside and augment the live action taking place on the big screen, the little screen experience offers a software app that is live only when the car is on the track, delivering live updates from both the pit and the minds behind the car at McLaren’s UK HQ. Totally unique to McLaren, it gives fans an insight into what’s going on in the heads of the drivers and the team behind them, before, during and after ‘The Race’. [via]

As we always say – digital shouldn’t replace traditional channels, but rather add layers to enhance the overall experience into something that’s even more of an experience on the day. This is a great example of that. The technology is there right now to virtually transport fans into the inner workings of the behind-the-scenes of sport.  Go Go Go!

Check out the McLaren site here

This movie was painstakingly made by crafter Holly Klein. The set pieces and characters were all cross stitched by hand, then scanned into a computer and animated.

Must have taken an absolute age to do, but an innovative idea all the same.

via

Forced to miss the AC Milan – Real Madrid UEFA Champions League game for a classical music concert, Heineken punked these guys real good.

via

Burger King in Brazil have taken the personalisation idea a step further by printing the customer’s face on the wrapper of their Whoppers [that's a big burger BTW].

Not sure we’d be too keen on having our face digitally crafted onto our junk food, but it’s a fun gimmick all the same.

via The Denver Egotist

Enter the rabbithole

Found at the entrance of the Cavendish Exclusive Books store. Meant to draw attention to a crime novel series. It’s a sticker decal of a hole in the ground and a rope all cordoned off with warning tape. The execution isn’t the greatest, but it made us stop and walk around it a few times.

At Defon 3...

About 10 years ago we read articles about Oakley and their internal game where everybody in the company believes that they are fighting a war. The head office was reported to look like a military bunker, situated in a desert with most of it underground. Today we see pictures – and even if it is more than ten years old, it’s still a pretty rad place to spend your offices time as an employee.

Ready to engage

The bar at Oakley HQ

Check out all of the picture over at NOTCOT and here

It’s such a pity when sound engineers insist on reusing sound effects in movies and ads that have been used over and over again.

For example the classic baby chuckle that gets used in just about every scene featuring a baby with a faint smile on its face.Or the predictable car tyre screech, which you’ll easily spot whenever speeding cars are filmed. It’s the same sound effect, ripped from the same library CD.

Our other favourite, is the canned applauding crowd sound [found in this ad at 0:48]. We were so enjoying the story up until that point, at which it transformed this ad into a channel-changer for us.

Did the budget not allow for an original recording of happy people? Surely for a beer company it couldn’t have been that hard to find a crowd of people dying to emitted a cacophony of delight.

Please – burn that bloody CD and go record your own sounds. It makes a perfect well-filmed commercial seem cheap.