BigShinyThing

On odd occasions we use this site to eulogise the advertising agency where we both used to work: HHCL and Partners. In this case, we wanted to share a couple of ads that sadly never made it to air.

First up, Harvey Keitel (yes, you read that right) for Texaco.

Magnificent. And, Shape ‘Eat It Like a Bloke’. Brilliant.

With thanks to Chris.

Doubt it …

That planet’s about to fall apart like a pig in a blender.

Fab.

Full disclosure: this ad was done by HHCL (RIP), our former employer and manger of BST.

So the *shock horror* news from last week was that London ad agencies BBH and Leo Burnett are to open premises in Second Life. Leo Burnett think a virtual office will be a good way to run international business and BBH see possibilities in a virtual creative office. Well whoopee doo: virtual offices ain’t that new. HHCL did it back in the day (1998) with their MOO-based HowellHenryLand [full disclosure here -- BST's designer built hhland and BST's editor worked at HHCL]. As that experiment showed us, there is a valid space for virtual offices, but we would suggest that Second Life isn’t it.

This photo of a Second Lifer from The Economist this week shows why. Folks, the clue is in the name. Second Life is a place where people come to exercise their fantasies, not their reality. Second Life users don’t want this space to look like London’s Soho — they’ve already got one of those.

Maybe, if ad agencies and brands are smart they’ll use their Second Life presence to probe users’ ‘other’ life — the one where they have leather wings and flying rollerskates — to find out what drives peoples’ desires and leads them to want innumerable handbags. What ad agencies have to recognise about SL is that it’s (deep breath) Not Real. If they must be in Second Life, we’d like to see ad agencies get genuinely creative: how about BBH fire-bombing Leo Burnett from flying Llamas?

Anyways, isn’t SL well, just a bit emo? In our idle moments, we dream of the day when ad agencies and other brands try and invade the blood-and-guts online game World of Warcraft. After all, that MMORPG boast an impressive 7m subscribers to Second Life’s paltry 700,000. We’d also love to see who would win in a fight of Second Life users vs World of Warcraft but it would appear for now that these virtual worlds are not mutually inclusive. Shame. Designer Adidas vs. Broadsword +3? That battle would be short but very sweet. Ah well…

Here we have a classic example of ad agencies’ tendency to simply appropriate a new space as opposed to thinking about how to contribute to it. Witness the numerous feckless experiments we’re seen already with street art from the likes of PSP and Saatchi & Saatchi.

As Henry Jenkins tells The Economist, Second Life deserves credit as “a world of hypotheticals and thought experiments”: it’s not just another territory — like New York — for ad agencies to plant a flag on as a PR wheeze.

The wisest words we’ve heard for a while on the subject come from MIT’s Advertsing Lab:

My take: throw in a recommendation engine. If people are to endure ads on their MySpace pages, at least let them and their friends pick the ads to see. If I know that my buddy is on the market for a new car, I’ll think there’s a better chance he’d appreciate a Toyota ad more than a random punch-the-monkey banner. And if a banner is funny or otherwise amusing (yes, there are amusing banners), people would recommend those too (just watch all these commecials uploaded on YouTube), eventually driving the overall quality of advertising up.

Well yes. Content is media. Respect its creators, learn the vernacular, and maybe the community will welcome your advertising content into its world. We’re particularly excited to see that great ads are accepted as simply being great clip media. And no we didn’t plant this on YouTube. It’s there because some punter loved it enough to do that themselves. And that’s worth thinking about.

It was full of helpful suggestions of how to save the planet in small ways.

This year he’s planning to contribute to a second book – this time about making the workplace a happier and smarter place. The brief is this: what would make the best ever working environment?

We need your help with suggestions for a poster that would come with the book – basically a list of 500 suggestions to make the working environment a better place – and the ones that are featured will be attributed to the person who suggested them.

Here’s what we’ve come up with so far:

• talk to temps
• know the names of your office cleaners
• always take a lunch break
• use both sides of the paper when photocopying
• don’t pee in the lift

Pls send your suggestions to anne-fay@bigshinything.com and many thanks!