fenton benton, benton & fenton

New work - Anti-binge drinking

noreply@blogger.com (Stuart Parkinson) — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 10:20:00 +0000

Last week saw the launch of the anti-binge drinking campaign made my VCCP (where I work) for the Home Office.

The majoy online push centres around a film we made..

You may have already seen the ads on tv

Male

Female

The campaign also features online ads (I'll try to get the links soon as I'm really pleased with them) and a shop window display down at long acre in soho where you could bluetooth the online video and watch the ads and we invited bloggers down to cover the event on the same day we launched it to the press.

Laurence Borel of blogtillyoudrop has written a really good post about it.

I'll try to post some more of the stuff as the print and online ads are great. Enjoy!

URLs are on their way to the void

noreply@blogger.com (Stuart Parkinson) — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 19:05:00 +0000

They'll exist, but they won't be typed by anyone.

In Firefox, you can type in a keyword to the address bar and it will take you to the first google hit (just try it....gmail, hotmail, any really common sites)

Now, in Japan, just as in the UK with stuff like 'Act on CO2', they've started introducing search terms into ads rather than URLs.

One of the best blogs I've stumbled across recently

noreply@blogger.com (Stuart Parkinson) — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 15:27:00 +0000

Worth noting Lee McEwan's (Planning Director at Leo Burnett) blog. I found it looking for the quote above.

Measuring cup with unusual units

noreply@blogger.com (Stuart Parkinson) — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 10:26:00 +0000

I thought this, courtesy of boingboing was awesome.

I am an IRL sh*tposter

noreply@blogger.com (Stuart Parkinson) — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 09:42:00 +0000

This is my crowning glory. I have been accused of being an IRL (In Real Life) shitposter by the anti-scientology dudes over at londonlulz and they are lulz. They're absolutely right. I can't help it. But they should know that we both have the same objective - outright undeniable lulz. Mine were had at the expense of the British Police Force, rather than Scientology but hey...what are you gonna do?

Mick Jagger's Growling Bun

noreply@blogger.com (Stuart Parkinson) — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 12:48:00 +0000

Mick Jagger has a bun
Which sits beside him growling
On a velvet cushion
On a gilted chair
It sits beside him and goes
'aaaaaaaach'

It's not really a growl actually
It's a whisper
But 'growling bun' sounds better
Than 'whispering bun'

This is inspired by Ellie Robins, the girl who generated the phrase as part of her neverending lulz cycle.

bounce the pope / xenu and other anti-church of scientology

noreply@blogger.com (Stuart Parkinson) — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 15:52:00 +0000

Walking down Charing Cross Road yesterday and there's the latest from the lulzologists anonymous/xenu, outside that weird COS test shop centre thing which I've always wanted to go into to see wtf they actually do in there

Anyway, when you see a protest, you might as well join it. So I did. A phrase my friend ellie coined is 'bounce the pope' it means nothing, it's just a celebration of language and putting weird words together, but I find it hilarious. So I made a sign out of it and joined in.

Little did I know that the xenu/anonymous dudes thought I was trying to show them up as religious bigots. I wasn't, I was just doing it for teh lulz. It was lulz.

This is a converstaion I had with a police officer just before I was given an official warning - my main beef here I suppose is not with the COS, but with the absolut decay of free speech in this country.

police-cop: I'm not sure they're going to be so pleased about you doing this in their protest. What's it about anyway?

stuart: We believe the pope should be bounced

police-cop: How do you mean?

stuart (trying to keep a straight face): Like a rubber ball, officer.

police-cop: well, I find that offensive as I'm catholic, could you take your sign down and move on.

stuart: Okay officer, one question, is what I'm doing illegal?

cop: Yes, this is your first official warning.

stuart: Fine. Thanks officer.

So anyway, here are some pics of the occasion. And the thread on xenu.net where they seem to think I'm a scientologist, just to note. I'm not. The COS offends me and I'm glad people like anon are trying to turn it to dust via extended internet and IRL lulz events.

Creative limits: Music made only with sounds from Windows 98/XP

noreply@blogger.com (Stuart Parkinson) — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 13:46:00 +0000

I posted a few weeks ago about 'creativity with limits' and how nowadays, it's a the hook, the novelty, the talkability factor that now makes art, instead of fine craft skills. Since, well, time and opportunity and technology are unlimited, fine means nothing.

I think this is a good example. It's not that good, but 200,000 views later....

Another doppelganger

noreply@blogger.com (Stuart Parkinson) — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 11:25:00 +0000

I seem to attract people saying...'omg, you look exactly like this dude'

This concept extends to people sending me pictures of people who they think I look like.

I can't help but agree with this one I've just been sent.

It's a guy called Daryl Polumbo, who I think was in glassjaw and is now in another band. He looks like a wide-eyed me.

Why we can't succeed against our clients

noreply@blogger.com (Stuart Parkinson) — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 11:51:00 +0000

We can only succeed with them. One thing all awe-inspiring advertising has in common is that the client had faith in the agency. I think this trust has been somewhat eroded, especially in this decade.

Richard summed this idea up really nicely in a post of his.

Edit: On second glance, that probably needs a comma in it.

Like wearing a nametag to remember who you are.

noreply@blogger.com (Stuart Parkinson) — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 11:53:00 +0000

Thanks to Saher again

They are so in-tune with what their brand is about that the need for a formal articulation is almost the equivalent of someone writing their own name on a post it note to remember who they are.

(written about fashion brands)

I think it must be the planner's dream to be able to articulate a strategy that becomes not a coat of varnish on a big organisation, but something that can credibly live throughout the organisation and affects the way it talks, acts and thinks.

All the successful brands, google, apple, nike, absolut...and even the type of famous person that you'd lvoe to go down the pub with people (brands are just multifaceted personifications of companies to me)..actors like brad pitt, christopher walken, gary oldman, kevin spacey...musicians...beck, jimi hendrix, jim morrison...probably most of all, david bowie. They all stand for something. It's in their blood. It's not a layer of comms or a brand onion. It's a belief. And arguably, where there isn't a CEO like Steve Jobs, there needs to be a brand planner who understands the way in which people like that work.

Millions of pounds. Wasted

noreply@blogger.com (Stuart Parkinson) — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 11:33:00 +0000

Imagine if all that marketing spend was a gift from the brand.

Brands spend extraordinary amounts of money advertising themselves. Imagine if instead of plugging all this money into 'communications' they instead created, cultural products, entertainment, services, innovations, applications of their brand idea. In other words they did stuff instead of said stuff. Brands should do more and say less.

From Saher Sidhom, the very sharp head of strategy at greatworks who are doing some awesome work for absolut.

I keep talking about brands doing somethign worthwhile. In fact, I got bored of myself, until I heard Saher take the words out of my mouth. I know, I know, it's nothing new, what are the origins of the soap opera afterall...it's just. Who will be the first to switch £50m of media and agency fees a year to making something people want to engage with? Altering consumer perceptions has become harder to do with conversation (be it two way or one way). It's time for some action.

Matter matters

noreply@blogger.com (Stuart Parkinson) — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 17:03:00 +0000

Thanks to seeing a post by Russell, I've just signed up to Matter, an initiative set-up to re-invigorate DM.

I think this is awesome. Utterly brilliant and a great move toward brands doing worthwhile stuff for their customers instead of just trying to talk at them.

I've signed up and I'll definitely be posting about the thing that I am posted. Post.

Sign up before midnight tonight!

More details here.

One of my favourite ads from last year

noreply@blogger.com (Stuart Parkinson) — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 10:37:00 +0000

I've just seen this ad online which reminded me of Amelia's post about her favourite ad

I guess it's easy to remember that putting people off doing things seems, to me at least, a little easier than selling them something, but the example above is a testament to well constructed visuals and copy and how impactful they can be.

I found it extremely striking and I re-appraised my consumption of crisps.

Creativity with limits

noreply@blogger.com (Stuart Parkinson) — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 11:33:00 +0000

I doubt this is a new idea, but I've been trying to think about how to articulate it for a few weeks now, and it hasn't come to me. So I just thought I'd try writing what came to mind. Ad-hoc like? Sweet.

I want Faris to tell me the name for this, but broadly, what I'm interested in at the moment is the subject of the post. Creativity with limits.

It follows discussion with a friend in a band about creative competition as well as with Richard about, breaking through, gaining attention and otherwise being successful in an utterly saturated world.

Maybe first we need to ask why it's saturated? I think the answer is opportunity...

Technology. The ubiquity of personal creative technology, cameras and computers etc - on top of the commercial technology that allows us all to be fed without slaving in the fields...

That means that the competitive landscape is full. People don't know where to look and people don't find new things like they used to.

Suddenly, things with seemingly no creative merit in an 'olde world' become very fashionable.

- men who make art out of carving pencils. I'm sure this was just a silly craft skill bored old men in the outback would've done. Now it's art
- Paper art
- Jack Kerouac
- abstract expressionism
- gonzo

I’ve read somewhere before that some of these things were considered to be part of the cult of the amateur. I don’t buy that. And even I used to slate art forms that didn’t look like master crafts. However it’s simply the way we are forced to express ourselves in an arena where a painting that took 11 years to complete may be worth less than some LSD inspired dots that someone who is either an artist or just a very savvy businessman (is there a difference..?) created. It’s also the way to cut through, it’s the ultimate USP.

Hey look, this is my art gallery, it’s filled with expressions of city life that all took 11 minutes to paint, or indeed here are some portraits, I painted them all on Parisian metro tickets .

So here's my thing. Fine craft still exists, and it can triumph. But for now, I believe that successful art, literature and music of today will consist of things that have been made within limits imposed by the artist. I think that what happened in film with the Dogme 95 is linked with this, but slightly different, as the limits they imposed were not media limits, or limits of form, but imposed rules of behaviour within that media - i.e twitter with film would mean making a film in 1400 pixels, or twitter in a dogme 95 form might mean only tweeting using palindromes (you get the idea).

My own personal take on this is that with James Bell of Seeing Scarlet, I'll be making some demos around concepts like 'conceived and recorded in an hour' and totally ad-libbed lyrics. I understand this is not a new thing, but I like it.

Don't mess with the talent

noreply@blogger.com (Stuart Parkinson) — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 10:36:00 +0000

Or they'll most definitely mess with you.

Just seen this on techcrunch, Noca, an new online payment site set up by ex-Visa employees is said to be the new PayPal.

I don't have any evidence that these guys/girls were messed with by Visa, but when all is said and done, they left, with a great entrepreneurial idea which is set to challenge one of the internet's most valuable brands and probably Visa itself. Maybe there's VC in there somewhere from Visa, but I doubt it, there's too little branding for that.

They even started out on facebook with an awesome 'micro-payment' thing, a great proposition of 'owe your mate a fiver for the drinks last night' - from account to account, no bullshit, no fees.

Got talent? Keep it. There are lots of ways. But try asking it what it thinks and investing in that, it's talent for a reason.

This isn't branding, it's letting personality shine through organisation

noreply@blogger.com (Stuart Parkinson) — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 18:19:00 +0000

Something Iain Tait has certainly been quite focused on recently is the power of copy in communicating a brand, or a person behind a website. There was a tremendous post on this (in the guise of talking about DM, although really it covered all corporate comms in my book) that really snapped my fork.

The example I cite is from digg, and it's a tremendous window into the people and personalities behind a big web 2.0 brand. Basically, they use the 404 error to give each member of the team a chance to post their favourite link (maybe this is monetised, maybe it isn't). It seems to me, that in this case it's genuine and they really are just giving you, the digg reader some stuff that might be of interest to you whilst the site is down...afterall, digg is probably still run by the people who made it (it is...) and they're going to have a shared interest with their consumers, not a constructed one, a genuine one.

It feels like my job as planner needs to be to identify what this shared interest is, and with big brands, use self selective media to communicate with different shared interest groups.

All the corporate communications and branding do in this case is make me feel like i understand company x and that company x understands me, once this exchange is complete (through witty copy or huge events), then we have a relationship...and to quote the most awesome communications writing I've read in about 5 years, then I want to be a member of their club.

I've found my doppelganger

noreply@blogger.com (Stuart Parkinson) — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 14:12:00 +0000

A few months ago, I blogged about a the fact that someone should make a site where you can truly find your doppelganger, with image matching algorithms as well as entering features, details etc.

Anyway, my housemate ant and his girlfriend victoria (hungamunga) have found min

Guess which one is me.

A

B

Something I don't usually blog about...

noreply@blogger.com (Stuart Parkinson) — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 09:53:00 +0000

...my work, well directly at least. I find it a bit unnecessary and a lot of people only seem to do it as some sort of ego-constructing onanism.

However on this occasion, it was a piece of work I was extremely proud of and something that also serves as a case study for a brand putting its faith and trust in the agency it's employing, rather than constantly fighting for intellectual superiority (dog, bark, why, yourself etc).

Anyway, from the people who brought you the Anya Hindmarch'I am not a plastic bag' and books like 'Change the world 9 till 5' comes Small actions, big change

The client came to us with a deal with the Department for Education and Skills which required, at minimum, a book to be produced which communicates the We Are What We Do philosophy. So the brief, support the production of ~2,500 books to go to every school in the country.

What we ended up with is a testament to some good research, simple strategy, awesome production, design and project management - and on top of that, and perhaps most importantly, a group of clients who couldn't have been more open, intelligently challenging and brilliant to work with.

We produced a site which lets kids, groups of kids, schools, shoals and troops upload their representation of an action.

We wanted to give it some perspective, that things could be more than the sum of their parts, and that people working together could make something bigger and more impactful than one person working alone.

We then remembered Art Attack. And we made a google/flickr maps mashup thing linking people's uploads to their position on the map, the intent to cover england in aerial actions.

I think it's cute, simple and so far, it's proving to be really effective.

We Are What We Do is an organisation that's been set up simply to do some good in the world, it's not a charity, but as far as I've seen, the money they make simply goes into the next project.

If you like the site, then I'd love for you to help it along by putting it in the hands of some kids or schools you know.

Thank you.

Fallon bunnies are just another rip off

noreply@blogger.com (Stuart Parkinson) — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 10:26:00 +0000

It was pretty, nothing's original, but it still makes old Fenty sigh a little bit that it's unashamedly lifted from someone and no credit's been given.

There is no difference between digital media and old school media

noreply@blogger.com (Stuart Parkinson) — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 09:10:00 +0000

They both got people talking about brands, just in different ways

Digital media lets you talk with the brand directly and offers you something (usually functional or novel, but it can be emotional too) to talk about.

Old school media creates an emotional/rational (perfume vs key facts that separate BOSE sound systems from the competition [in fact, perfume ads even have a rational bend to them, oooh, have you seen kate moss in the new versace ad]) reaction which, in truly successful campaigns, is strong enough to get you talking about the ad you've just seen and the product or brand within it.

The funny thing about digital media, is that the job of the piece of work is very much interlinked with the medium, and in digital, that's absolutely boundless, so what you need to do to make good digital things is to not just understand the right way to create an emotive or rational experience that creates a reaction, but also have some AUDIENCE LED comprehension of WHAT that is and HOW it works. Effectively, that the idea and the channel are too linked not to think about them at the same time.

Digital doesn't push

noreply@blogger.com (Stuart Parkinson) — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 08:56:00 +0000

Okay

We've done a great website which says what the client wants it to say, mirrors the proposition of the ATL advertising and maybe it's got an interactive game or something else on it.

client: 'something is wrong as thousands more people than normal are not just spontaneously coming here'

stu: 'why would they? the only people who will come, unless you've let us do something really worthwhile/novel or entertaining which possibly doesn't sit within a brand pyramid, are those who would've visited your site anyway'

client: 'oh, so why are we spending all this money on digital?'

stu: 'well, I'd suggest that at the moment, you're doing it because you've heard it's the right thing to do, and well, isn't everyone devoting 20% of their budget to digital? and that nike plus thing was really great wasn't it?

then i'd suggest 3 years of cognitive behavioural therapy, breastfeeding people as children, a critical perspective, about 20-30% more cynicism, the ability to think logically and rationally about problems before acting, as well as a nature which automatically questioned what was put in front of you

to top it all off, i'd say that you should be spending money on digital to enhance and deepen your communication with people, but you must realise that only a finite amount of people will ever be interested in what you have to say unless your product is classless, sexless and alienates no one (that product doesn't exist because of the very nature of the mature consumer having to refuse as much as he accepts in order to define himself)

Digital is not a push medium, the days of 30million views of your viral are gone, the only reason people did this was because of the novelty, you have two options:

- find the next novelty, luck more than judgment, will simply make your brand look a little more forward thinking than the competition for a while, it'll be expensive, and it doesn't really fit with the temporal inertia of strategic business requirements - you can't plan for it.

- properly identify your current and realistic potential audience, don't just identify it, construct it, people's interests and activities are there for all to see, know where you want to go and adapt to that audience be focused and even more focused. there is no mass market, the thing that looks like that is just a finite collection products which appeal to lots of people, all for different reasons. you can focus on many groups if you think your product has some credibility in them....

....and please, for god's sake, stand for something. brands are just people, would you want to surround yourself with inspid, vacuous idiots, lacking an opinion but never lacking something to shout about?

Insight mining and Subway

noreply@blogger.com (Stuart Parkinson) — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 08:39:00 +0000

Further to my post here regarding Subway and how insights can be found in and around social communities, the same guy who drew the cartoon about Subway laying out their cheese in a manner which doesn't tessellate has now reported that someone sent him an image suggesting the do it on purpose to try to maximise revenue.

This made me feel really nasty...almost like throwing a half full can of beer at a subway window at half past twelve on a friday night. Not that Fenton would do anything like that, but the sentiment's communicated.

Stop:

Trying to cover up problems and bad things with communications

Start:

Doing things properly and then communicating them to customers

Outcome:

Everyone is doing things properly, and there's not much to talk about and everything is more efficient and life a little bit nicer.

My opinion on that?

Fine, I'll play Bossa Nova guitar on a beach instead of sitting at my desk.

Online video wall

noreply@blogger.com (Stuart Parkinson) — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 13:44:00 +0000

Connectedness. Lots of people online. The internet being a brilliant place to meet people and communicate.

At the moment, this interaction, meeting and communication is not at all like walking down the street. A lot of it is carried by specific searching, me clicking a band in my profile and seeing who else likes it. Searching for people in your area on myspace. Your school. Your work.

Serendipity. Meeting someone by walking into a bar isn't 'random', walking down the street and bumping into someone new isn't coincidence. It's the same as looking for them online. A series of choices have led both people to one place, the difference, is whether or not this has been a conscious process.

Serendipity online is a weird on. It used to take place in AOL chatrooms and IRC (which is actually more community and interest based). Virtual pubs. I remember rooms which used to be called "village square', 'pub' and 'TheLocal'. These existed as people were talking real world concepts online in order to understand and pass on what it was in an accessible way.

I'd like to see more serendipity in connecting with people when you're online.

I have two ideas:

1) Create a webcam videowall that when you're bored, you can switch your iSight (or lesser webcame) on, and just become part of a video wall which people could go to a URL to see (as long as they too were broadcasting). Then you could just watch people, see who you might like to chat with. communicate with them visually. I reckon it'd be really exciting. Picking people who you think you'd get on with out of a crowd. The next part of the interface would be text based, or simply feature a way to exchange details to communicate via IM, skype independantly of the site.

2) the same as this, but with avatars and text. Like second life, but less anthropomorphic. You have an icon, the virtual landscape is split into loads of areas, age, interest group, sex etc and you can skittle about throwing your avatar into a new space to see lots of people chatting to each other. Like you can hear loads of conversations in a bar. See which one you want to join. See which one you have something to add to. Read what people are saying and judge whether or not you want to take part. If not, skattle to another area of the virtual conversation space.

(note to self: post the link for that brazilian tree saving site)

It's basically a massive set of chatrooms shown in a physical space with no boundaries. They can cross, and that creates overlaps. You'll have a group of people talking about advertising, and a group talking about design and there might be an overlap group....i need a diagram to explain this. I'll get around to that.

This post is a WIP. Your thoughts and additions are welcome!

human brain cloud

noreply@blogger.com (Stuart Parkinson) — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 16:02:00 +0000

http://www.humanbraincloud.com/

Picture (Enhanced Metafile)
Addictive? Yep
Full of needless stats? Yep
Nice flash animation? Check
Insightful? You bet your ass…
Probably good for copywriting? Er…sure
Wish I'd made it? Fo shizzle

Common associations

* lego -> my eggo
* tiger -> tony
* have it -> your way
* snap -> crackle pop
* subway -> eat fresh
* this is -> SPARTA!

More stats here; http://2dboy.com/