I was recently invited to Krakow to take part in an artists book exhibition called “Some books are to be tasted”. There were books from around the world on display. From books that could take pictures to architecture books reconstructed into mini cityscapes. It was a fascinating show with some incredible work – see link below.
My contribution was a book based on ‘the troubles’ in Northern Ireland. ‘Open Book’ is 3,550 blank pages each representing a person who lost their lives in the 35 year conflict. The years are represented by red ribbons and it’s bound in white linen. It was quite poignant to have it shown in a city which has known terrible conflict.
We’ve been getting a great response to our Coca-Cola ‘Open Happiness’ eboy campaign with a lot of people curious as to how it was created, here’s a short video that shows the development from initial pencil sketch to final artwork which we hope you’ll enjoy!
Our Belfast and Dublin cities will also be featured in a book on illustration by publisher’s Laurence King, so watch this space!
Here’s some new international work we’ve just done for Irish Mist. The clients (Nora McNulty and Kevin Abrook from C&C) wanted to re-launch this whiskey liqueur in an elegant new bottle to a younger audience. Their main objective was to show the versatility of the product itself.
Irish people are known the world over as being incredibly social. We’re known for our natural ability to get on with others. Our simple idea was to show how easily Irish Mist mixes with other elements (ice, cola, lime etc.) to create the perfect drink under the tag line ‘ridiculously sociable’.
We have just posted Coke’s ‘Open Happiness’ eboy outdoor campaign and we are more than happy about it!
Eboy Dublin outdoor ran last year and was loved by teens – in fact the response was so strong Coke posted hundreds of posters to die-hard Coke fans. Teens connected with the fact that their city was given such local relevance especially by a big global brand like Coca Cola; so with this in mind we commissioned eboy Galway, Cork and Belfast illustrations.
For the second time in a week I find myself writing about McDonalds. I haven’t been this enthusiastic about the brand since I was a child. But once again they have developed a wonderful piece of outdoor activity, proving that hugely effective consumer interaction is not restricted to on-line channels.
McDonald’s have taken their iconic permanent outdoor site at London’s Piccadilly Circus and created an interactive LED sign that lets passersby pose from a distance to create optical illusions like wearing a bowler hat or holding an umbrella or a bouquet of flowers. This brilliantly taps into the knowledge that this is one of London’s most popular spots for tourist’s holiday snaps and gives consumers a little something extra to remember their trip to London by.
In addition to the site itself McDonalds have set up a Flickr group to allow people to share their photos and a fan page on Facebook to deepen the engagement with consumers. All in all this is a very clever use of a site that could easily have become wallpaper and given McDonald’s real cut-through in probably the most cluttered advertising space in the world.
In what is a perfect piece of comparative advertising for these recessionary times, McDonald’s in the U.S. have capitalised on Starbucks’ reputation as the home of the $4 coffee.
In doing so they have have reinforced their own value for money credentials while giving a major competitor a kicking, without even having the decency to help their awareness by naming them. Nice work.
This has been such a fun project to work on from start to finish – beginning with the Thirst Never Wins Online / TV work last summer and now with this print campaign.
Creating an imaginary back catalogue for J.D. Quench just makes me laugh. I love the idea that this forgotten giant of D-Movies appears to have spent his entire career in a series of Sprite Film Productions with entirely similar plots.
‘Mouth of Fire’ takes J.D. to the Orient. In my mind the film was shot in Chinatown, L.A. in 1973; they never would have had the budget to travel. No doubt J.D. himself would have put in at least two days martial arts training in advance of filming (he was never a great believer in ‘method’ acting). The plot would have revolved around J.D. overcoming a nasty Chinese ‘T.H.I.R.S.T.’ gang with his specially adapted Sprite nunchuck - all accompanied by very, very loud; very, very badly synched sound effects.
‘The Elemonator’ would have been much maligned on release but then go on to be considered a hugely influential Sci-Fi classic when re-assessed years later. Here J.D. is sent back, from the future, to 1974 (conveniently!). His mission would have been to prevent an alternative global future where people would have been denied the thirst quenching qualities of Sprite forever: something just not worth thinking about.
I would guess there might have been some groundbreaking (read: really dodgy) special effects throughout.
Movie credits where they are due - these posters were illustrated by Bruce Emmett through the Folio Illustration Agency in London.
Working with Heineken Ireland over the past 7 years has given us at McCann plenty of opportunities to create some of the best ideas and campaigns in Ireland. So it’s no wonder that we’re delighted to launch our biggest ever campaign for the iconic Heineken Bottle.
The brief – how do we get men to engage with the Heineken Bottle and take on a category that has seen speciality bottled beers gain in popularity. Rather than look to solely create an ad campaign, everyone aimed for a big idea: a fresh new philosophy for the brand, one that consumers could share and identify with.
“Live Every Last Drop” is the big idea that captures this new brand philosophy where stories are told through the eyes of the Heineken Bottle.
First up is the “One Green Bottle” TV commercial. It’s often said that your life flashes before your eyes if you are unfortunate to be visited by a near-death experience. This is the basic idea behind our first TV commercial, where we see the flashback of the life of a Heineken Bottle as it falls to a seemingly certain end.
Stories told through the eyes of Heineken bottles that Live Every Last Drop is a big idea that can stretch across any touchpoint and “One Green Bottle” is only the start of a big idea that will run and run.
The Irish Society For the Prevention of Cruelty to Children has a major problem: it simply cannot handle the number of calls it gets. Through our previous work with Cheerios sponsored Childline Breakfast Together Week, we learnt many of the serious issues facing the ISPCC on funding the Childline service, such as the fact that as much as 50% of calls to Childline go unanswered.
Simply put - serious cries for help tragically fall on deaf ears for no other reason than lack of funding. To help people understand this situation and dig deep for a truly great charitable organisation we made this film for them. Shot and produced for nothing, the idea is simple and extremely effective.
This is the ISPCC’s very first television commercial. Directed by Richard Chaney, the ad dramatises exactly what underfunding means to the ISPCC and the children who need its services.
Please click here to donate www.ispcc.ie We greatly appreciate your contribution. Dig deep people – charity begins at home.
Thank you to everyone who gave their valuable time; Speers Films, Jonny Speers and Richard Chaney and the guys here; Laura, Ray, Emma, Leona, Jono and Martina.
The return of the Heineken Cup gives us another chance to look at our recent Heineken Cup spot “Field of Dreams”.
Set in the year 2028, it follows a documentary crew to a disused stadium to interview the old groundskeeper. While he reminisces about the great games he’s seen on this sacred turf, the crew are disturbed to see that ghostly presences still play out great moments from matches, proving that “Greatness Lives On”.
Shot over one very cold and very long night in the east end of London by Knucklehead’s directorial duo Zak & Dan, a massive amount of effort went into the Art Direction of the Stadium. Huge sections of the stands were carefully dressed providing a believable disused stadium that has fallen into disrepair, while the pitch was covered in overgrown sections of turf cut from a local piece of land. To create a sense of realism around the action, the players were captured on a hand cranked camera so that the film could be double exposed to create the ghostly effect, while the post production was handled in Framestore, London. Finally the performance by veteran actor John Nolan provided brought a sense of warmth and nostalgia to the ad.
Developing a campaign to encourage the adult female population of the country to sign up for the National Cervical Cancer Screening Programme was a daunting task. So it’s fitting that the actual production of our ad was one of the most technically complicated productions of our experience.
The concept itself was a simple one, show a woman slowly changing on the outside, growing older, as she explains that she is also changing on the inside and as a result needs to be regularly screened by CervicalCheck.
The practice of aging someone on camera from 25 to 60 proved to be anything but simple. The director Simon Levene, brought onboard the expertise of post house Finish. The plan was to do it completely with CGI and not resort to make-up or prosthetics.
The first challenge was finding our woman. In reality we needed three women, who looked incredibly alike. We cast for families, we needed three generations of one family, who bore a strong resemblance to each other, and who were all also comfortable in front of the camera. The three women we finally cast were from the same family, a grandmother, daughter and granddaughter.
We filmed the ad on location in a park in Bray and also Ardmore Studios. We had to film the women speaking to camera against a green screen, as we needed to control their movements and distance from camera as much as possible. Finish took this footage and basically morphed the three women together, painstakingly painting out hair, and moving eyes, noses and lips between each frame. The face is constantly changing; it’s never any one of the women, but more a combination of all three.
We’re so pleased with the final ad, it’s just mesmerizing and more importantly it dramatically articulates the need for women to be regularly screened for cervical cancer.
Last year we created an integrated campaign for our client Tayto Crisps. By the end of the campaign, Tayto had sold close to 1 million extra packets of crisps. Here’s my version of how it all came to pass…
I was recently invited to Krakow to take part in an artists book exhibition called “Some books are to be tasted”. There were books from around the world on display. From books that could take pictures to architecture books reconstructed into mini cityscapes. It was a fascinating show with some incredible work – see link below.
