It's not often I want to write up about an ad that I like. Mainly because there haven't been many recently. Of course I could bore you with my opinions on the highly anticipated Christmas ads from John Lewis (made me cry) or Sainsbury's (it's just a cat fucking up Christmas), but then I'm not sharing anything new or valuable with you. I saw this trailer for Channel 4's 'Meet The Superhumans' - spine-tingling stuff. (Click to watch) You may remember the original SuperHumans ad for the 2012 Paralympics. If you haven't, here it is - an extremely powerful video that I personally find emotionally overwhelming and highly gripping. (Click to watch) Channel 4 are bringing back the idea for the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janerio, The original idea for 'Superhumans' came because the Paralympics never had as much worldwide coverage or air-time as the Olympic Games (the Para's opening ceremony had 11 million views, whereas the O...

There are many places I don't mind being advertised to, in fact there are many places I expect to be advertised to. Everywhere from my work, to my home, to my deathbed. However, I don't enjoy being advertised to on Instagram.  Instagram is a very personal app. Users are selective about who they follow, and weigh up whether they really want to commit to having certain content be part of their news-feed. Instagram is one of those rare social media sites where people are looking to discover; to search out their passions and be inspired. Users care about the content they are seeing; they will check their news-feed when they can dedicate the time to appreciate the content, and they will most likely scroll down until they reach the last photo they viewed, so as not to miss anything. Unlike Facebook, users won't put up an album of photos, they'll choose that one special one which sums up the whole night. Unlike Twitter, they won't post every time they ha...

Consumers create much more (and often better) content for your brand than you do. A bold statement maybe, but a quick sweep of social channels and consumers are there; using, sharing, living your brand. Take GoPro's consumers for example: Or perhaps Lego's Or Nutella's... Consumers are using brands in the most genuine, real way, every day. But I'll come back to this in a minute. Today I attended ISBA's 'Good Brief Week' event, which was about how brands should do real-time, reactive marketing. I feel this is one of those topics I know a lot about because I actually have some common sense, and I know that a beer brand shouldn't be tweeting about the birth of the royal baby because it's got fuck all to do with them. Jon Burkhart opened the presentation with the overrated, outdated, Oreo - Dunk In The Dark example... " Ugh, here we go ".  But no, before I was about to ram my pen into my jugular, he brought...