01 April 2013

As is becoming tradition on Inspirational Geek it’s that time of year again where we take a look back at some of the more creative April Fools’ Day pranks that may (or may not) have had you fooled.

More and more companies are having a go at executing some seemingly legitimate ideas, most are pointless or silly, but more often than not you will need a couple of moments to think if it can really be real (before noticing the date!).

From Nasa’s plan to “bag an asteroid“, The Whitehouse’s special message from the president, some frankly awful Photoshop-ing to turn The Shard into The Shlide, and Netflix’s implausibly specific categories, here are some of my favourites from yesterday.

Google Treasure Maps
Building on the success of last year’s 8-bit maps we now have Treasure Mode within Google Maps.  Try and decipher the clues and uncover the secrets of Captain Kidd’s long lost treasure map – if you can!

Sony Animalia
A range of technology specifically designed for pets.  Obviously.  Products such as the “K9 4K TV” and “M3-OW KittyCans”, so cats and dogs can relax and enjoy technology away from their owners!

This sort of idea probably isn’t too far into the future, but I very much doubt that the products will come from Sony when (if) it does emerge!

Twttr
Announced on their blog, Twitter claimed to be launching Twttr.  The 140-character limit is set to become even more precious as a new tiered service is set to start charging for vowels (y is still free!) at $5/month.  By eliminating vowels, they aim to “encourage a more efficient and “dense” form of communication”.

YouTube Winner
After last year’s opportunity to buy YouTube on DVD the announcement came that YouTube.com will “no longer be accepting entries”.  Entries? I hear you ask.  Yes, turns out the past 8 years worth of uploads have actually been part of a best video competition and the time has now come “to review everything that has been uploaded to our site and begin the process of selecting a winner.”  The proud winner will be announced when YouTube comes back online – in 2023!

Virgin Glass Bottom Plane
Richard Branson announced a world first from Virgin - the glass bottom plane!  An “aviation breakthrough which has been years in the making” as one of Virgin’s top-secret projects is now available to allow passengers a “special opportunity to look down on the beautiful scenery of Great Britain as they fly”.

Bizarrely this scheme has attracted a number of negative comments and criticism for the feasibility of such an idea!  For me, however, that is part of the fun and notion behind an April Fools’ prank.  I guess it just proves you’ll always get some negativity whatever fun you try and have!

Vimeow
Video-centric social networking site Vimeo have never been one for the fleeting trends of the internet, instead defiantly remaining as the well-designed, high-quality video upload and sharing website of choice.  However, it seems that the rising popularity of cats on the internet has forced their hand in now creating Vimeow.

With the forum rebranded as the Litterbox, and video appreciations measured in Tummyrubs and Purrks it is hard to see why they waited this long to launch.

Skinny Skinny Jeans
With regular skinny jeans no longer trendy enough, American Eagle have come up with their super skinny “Skinny Skinny” spray on jeans.  Available in two shades for even the most fashion-conscious cool kids.

And my absolute favourite:

Google Nose
Google Nose launched in Beta as the new scentsation in search.

Smelling is believing

Go beyond the more traditional search senses of typing, talking, and touching, and get sniffing the Aromabase of over 15million scentibytes.

Here’s to even more creative ideas next year!

Child Of The 90s – Internet Explorer

Internet Explorer used to be the go-to browser of choice, but in recent years it has fallen out of favour with the surge in popularity of Mozilla’s Firefox and the domination of Google’s Chrome, as well as a few others.

In the 90s, however, you didn’t have the choice.  Certainly there was more than just Internet Explorer (Netscape springs to mind), but for the masses it was all we knew.

Microsoft and Windows are now fighting back and using that sense of nostalgia to appeal to many of us (myself included) with this rather clever advert.

This advert has my childhood all over it.  Although I managed to avoid a bowl haircut, I did have a shell suit, snap bracelets and bum bag (a cool kid, I know!), and whilst I wasn’t very good with a yo-yo, I was brilliant at Pogs.

I remember our family’s first dial up modem (oooh the luxury of 56kbps!) and I was even still using floppy disks at my first year of University!

I also had a (seemingly suicidal) Tamagotchi, Trolls, a Walkman, Super Soakers, and (yes!) smashing the handles on Hungry Hippos!

I’m not sure I’ll steer back to using Internet Explorer, for the time being anyhow, but the advert certainly struck a chord reviving memories with me and has given food for thought.

I really like their use of the “reconnect” wording, reinforcing that deep down they know that all people of a certain generation once used, and loved, Internet Explorer for providing all of our internet-related needs.

In the future I won’t be so quick to dismiss IE, even if it is to simply note how good their new advert is.

John Lewis Christmas Advert 2012 – The Journey

I briefly touched on Christmas advertising last year, but since John Lewis‘ 2011 effort the Christmas era of advertising is turning into something of a British tradition.

Christmas adverts signal unofficial milestones for us all,  becoming slightly teary-eyed at the endearing The Long Wait from John Lewis last year (which of course means it’s time for you to dust off the box of decorations in the loft), and waiting in anticipation to see the Coca Cola truck (which obviously means you no longer need to feel guilty about listening to all that Christmas music on your laptop).

That brings me nicely round to this year, and the first Christmas advert that I have seen is the beautiful 2012 John Lewis advert.

A hugely successful campaign last year was always going to be hard to follow, and although this one doesn’t tug at your heartstrings quite so much, adam&eveDDB have still done a rather special job with it!

I rather enjoyed the music too, it’s Gabrielle Aplin‘s cover of The Power Of Love.

Let the Christmas shopping begin!

Impress A Penguin

If only all job adverts were as adorable as this one 
http://impressapenguin.com/

The subtle animations inject life into what would be an otherwise static website.  Lovely touch.

If you would indeed like to be the new Community Manager at Penguin Press then head over here to apply.

Old Spice Muscle Music

This is brilliant.

Funny, creative, engaging, imaginative, and one of the best marketing videos I’ve seen in a long while.

Marvel at the musical muscles (and the flaming saxophone!), then when he’s done you can have a go yourself.  Have fun playing with him!

McDonald’s Photoshoot

You’d be forgiven for thinking that the title of this post would offer scantily clad females posing in red and yellow bikinis, or perhaps even some interior shots of McDonald’s “restaurants” re-designed in a particularly creative manner.

But no.  As is such with McDonald’s, this is just about the food.

We’ve all wondered why the ‘perfect’ looking burgers on the menus differ so greatly from what we are given in our take-away cartons, and (somewhat to my surprise) McDonald’s have now revealed exactly why that is.

A burger made “in about a minute or so” and purchased over the counter

A burger “styled” over many hours for a photoshoot

The secret is a painstakingly laborious “food styling” session given to each item on their menu, before being photographed and given a digital touch up (obviously).  The whole process is proudly shown off in the video below.

I’m not really surprised at this (oh come on, we all know it happens), but what I do find mildly amusing is that McDonald’s actually employs the specific role of “Food Stylist” to carefully inject ketchup and taper the melting edges of processed cheese with a hot palette knife!

The difference is quite clear, but is this form of advertising fair on the consumer?

I mean, if you bought a car based on an advert you would expect it to look the same wouldn’t you?  The wing mirrors, doors and everything else would be in the same position and of the same appearance as shown in the advert.  I’m not convinced by their stance on this being a  true and fair representation of the end product (as advertising should be), but then again I need don’t really need any more excuses to avoid fast food restaurants beyond the health aspect.

Submit your own questions to McDonald’s here, you never know – they might just answer it for you!

Reggae Reggae Advert

Back in February 2007 Levi Roots famously charmed Dragons’ Den’s very own Peter Jones and Richard Farleigh with a singing pitch for his Reggae Reggae Sauce.

Five years on and the product is still going from strength to strength, with the latest installment being the first TV advert for the product.

JWT London created the campaign, with the creative claymation skills at Aardman Animations bringing the advert to life.

The 50cm tall animated figure perfectly captures sauce creator Levi Roots, and took six Aardman model-makers over a month to complete the main character alone.

The full scene uses 20kg of animated clay – chicken has never looked so tasty!

Imagine Lego

Imagine Lego is a powerfully simple advertising campaign from Jung von Matt.

Lego at its minimalistic best.

Did you get them all?

Symphony In Motion

Over here Honda are well known for their creative advertising, and it seems that on the other side of world in Australia the bar is set similarly high.

The advert for the new Civic, created by Aussie communications agency DraftFCB, features a soundtrack comprised entirely of noises that the car makes.  65 different noises to be exact.

They aim to demonstrate that every part of the car works in perfect harmony, lovingly calling it Symphony in Motion.

I’m not so keen on the overall image and appearance of the car over previous Civic models that Honda have produced, but the advert is definitely well worth a watch, full screen if you can.

Three Little Pigs

The new advert from the Guardian is rather good.  Really, really good actually.

As part of their open journalism approach to the coverage of news and stories, it takes a creative look at how they might address the traditional three little pigs story, and how it could pan out if it occurred in society today.

It’s incredibly detailed, and particularly realistic (given how we saw other events, such as the riots, covered last year), with the  media spiralling out of control through social media and other outlets of personal opinion.

Love the unexpected twist in the advert’s conclusion, fantastic stuff!