Speak the language and get your message across

My high school literary teacher always says that in order to get your message across, you have to speak in the language that people understand. At that time I was too busy agonizing over our 15 minutes public speech assignment than actually taking it into account. Thankfully, I managed to do my speech without much of accidents. Now, since I work in the communication field, this piece of advice rings especially true. Basic communication is all about getting your message across your target audience. A good example is this advertisement for Eizens Sport Center. Everyone knows that you need exercise in order to maintain you health but to some guys, those reasons are not motivational enough. So how to motivate them then? By approaching them with different angle and speak to them with the lads’ language. The Eizen Sport Center’s print ad depicts a potbelly as a mountain that a fat guy has to climb in order to get the fun having hot girls. So join the center, get a flat belly, and your journey to the girls will be smoother!

iPaper: a new alternative to pdf

As a blogger, sometimes I would like to be able to host a document on my site so people can read it without having to download anything. With PDF you always have to install software and even pay for it. It is OK but not the most efficient way. However, now there is a new service to fulfill that need. iPaper is a document reader format built for the Internet. Like YouTube video, users can upload their documents in a form of Flash Widgets and then embed them in their website and blogs. iPaper reads many other document formats like PDF, Words, PowerPoint, etc. By subscribing, users can join a network/community so they can share their documents with their friends. Plus, users don’t have to pay or download any software. Just give it a try :-)

Read this doc on Scribd: World Population Datasheet 2007

Funky Forest

How would you sway city children to be more in touch with nature? Muonics worked together with Emily Gobeilleto to create an interactive installation called 'Funky Forest' which premiered at the 2007 Cinekid festival in the Netherlands. In 'Funky Forest', the children can create trees with their body and then divert the water flowing from the waterfall to the trees to keep them alive. The result is a beautiful colorful inspirational forest.

Wikipenguin

This is probably pretty old but I can’t help but love this idea. Just like Wikipedia where everyone can participate in editing entries, Penguin, the classic book publisher, also launched a platform that allows everyone to play part in editing and contributing pieces for the online Wikinovel. Called A Million Penguins, unfortunately the project has ended on March 2007. Personally, it is very interesting to see how the novel evolved, ranging from one with a serious side to an odd one. I would say that this a classic example of a great crowd-sourcing endeavor.

Collective human joystick

I am one of those people who rarely go to cinema. I am easily bored and most of the recent mainstream releases’ storylines are rather predictable so they lose their entertainment appeals. If I do go to movies, usually I arrive late and totally missed the ads. But I think I’m going to come earlier for the ads if I can join the fun in one of the AudienceGames’ campaigns for Volvo (in UK) and MSNBC (in USA).

In the Volvo campaign, cinemagoers were invited to test drive the new Volvo XC70 by steering a car through several obstacles and reach the finish line. They can steer the car by moving their bodies to the left and right like gigantic joystick. These movements are then read by a motion sensor, which is placed in front of the theater. It is amusing and memorable, 2 important points for a brand advertising.

Back to the old school video games

This video is simply cool. Apart from the human Tetris, the Project Game Over also offers the human version of Pong and Space Invader. These videos brought me back to my gameboy era which feels like ages ago compared to XBox 360, Nintendo Wii, and Playstation 3. They were so simple but loaded with lots of fun!

Breathing Earth

Today, I was prowling on the net as usual, trying to find inspiring stuff. I need something to cheer me up from all of waiting for the spring to come. But reading RSS feeds is like buying a Kinder chocolate eggs, you just hope for the best that you get the toys that you haven’t gotten before (ok, I admit that I kept on buying Kinder chocolate eggs in order to collect the toys, they are cute). Well today, I stumbled upon Breathing Earth, a simulation of real-time presentation displaying the carbon dioxide emission levels of every country in the world along with their birth and death rates. After all of the bombardments from the media about the environmental problems, it is easy for people to be confused. I know that certain things are not good towards the equilibrium of the Earth but I don’t understand the impacts in larger picture so this website helps. And it looks pretty cool ;-)

The Coke Zero Game –Football as It Should Be-

The commoditization of Internet connection to the mass has opened many options for companies to build and strengthen their brands. If you have great website then what else you can do to keep attracting your customers and let them experience your offered product/service/lifestyle? Coca Cola zero answers it with ‘The Coke Zero Game –Football as It Should Be-’. The story starts with you feeling dissapointed because you couldn’t get hold of any football match tickets and to top the bad luck, your television is kaput. Then a trio of beautiful women appears and offers you the opportunity to watch the match from Coke Zero Lounge. All you have to do is to arrive in the lounge before the big match starts by jumping bridges, destroying walls with a dragon ball kick, and kicking-up a fireball.Overall, the game is fun and neatly packaged with great video executions. Aimed to young men, the Coke Zero Game has all of the needed elements: adventure, football, and scantily clad girls.

Bangkok special market

Apart from the safety issue, this open market is pretty amazing. Due to the high speed of urbanization and the increase of human population, limited space has been a constant issue which is getting bigger and bigger. If you keep your mind open for creativity, you can always come up with a brilliant idea to explore your option.

Flip it

Girls are girls right? Just sell the products to them like the way we sell it to the rest of the population. Make it cute and adorable. It is that easy. 3lying begs to differ. They believe that the marketing community is not giving what the young female customers want. To support their argument, the New York based all girls agency, took upon Project Flip. Project Flip is a voluntary project for girls between 15-23 years where they were asked to ‘flip’ ads if they consider the ads to be irrelevant and explain why they think that the ads are not reaching the targeted audience, them.

First Post

Urgh the first post. I hate the first post. I’m always confused with what I should write as this is supposed to be the clincher you know, just like how you started your first day of school or job and you try your best to impress your new peers. I always have the extra nervousness and sinking feeling that no matter how hard I try, it’s going to backfire. This reminds me of my earlier days working as an intern in an advertising agency in Amsterdam. I was waiting for my graduation and I decided that I needed more work experience. I have dabbled before in the media industry (I used to work as a radio presenter as well as a freelance writer for the Indonesian section of Radio Netherlands) but hey, advertising also seemed to be just as if even more interesting so I applied for a summer internship and got accepted. Hurray!

The internship was a bit daunting at first. I have no previous experience in advertising and sometimes I feel pretty ditzy however everything works out quite nicely. I enjoyed my time; I had my ups and downs with the rest of the team, furthermore I am learning a lot! It appears that they like me too since after only several months they offered me a full time position as an assistant researcher (cue me doing my little jiggy dance). As a burgeoning new member of the advertising industry, I am still unsure with which way I should go. So when I was given the trend-watching project, I snatched it with both hands. I believe that this could be my thing, something that I can love working on. As a newbie, I do lack the experience but that is why I’m still in training and I have this blog to chronicle my journey from an intern to a fully-fledged trend watcher.