Blogbook
WMcCann’s ad for their rebrand of Hospital de Amor is an animation titled The Fall, a heartbreaking portrayal of the cancer journey. Via Adweek:
The Hospital de Cancer de Barretos, an internationally renowned children’s cancer treatment center, has been renamed the “Hospital de Amor,” or “Hospital of Love” to promote the power of love as the most effective resource in fighting cancer.
To promote the rebranding, WMcCann Brazil created a short animated film illustrating how love is the most powerful force against cancer. The touching film shows the devastating effects of childhood cancer, from the debilitating treatments to the emotional toll on family, friends and caretakers.
The film was made from the point of view of the child, and shows her journey after her diagnosis . With no dialogue, the message is delivered through the emotive song and lovely animation. The film is titled “The Fall,” which is both literal in the film and also a metaphor for that moment when the floor gives way beneath you, and you are plunged into the unknown. Loving family, doctors and friends act as balloons that support you emotionally and physically, because love never lets you down.
The animated film, produced by Zombie Studio and Loud, is the first piece of major communication concerning the hospital’s rebranding. The emotionally charged message in the video was inspired by the hospital’s new identity.
The Heat is a Netflix documentary film featuring groundbreaking women in the male-dominated restaurant industry, including up and coming chefs. Via Eater:
Countless culinary documentaries have focused on the lives of brilliant-but-complicated men who cook in high-end restaurants — the Chef’s Table series is perhaps the most popular example of this genre — and now the culinary world is finally getting a film that will shine a light on the women who are changing kitchen culture around the world.
Maya Gallus’s new documentary The Heat: A Kitchen (R)evolution features three women who have spent most of their adult lives in the kitchen, and five younger chefs who the filmmakers believe are “the hungry talents of a new generation.“ The former group includes French culinary titan Anne-Sophie Pic, London fine-dining star Angela Hartnett, and New York-based Iron Chef and former Annisa owner Anita Lo. The young guard is represented by Toronto luminary Suzanne Barr, former Chumley’s chef Victoria Blamey, Canadian pop-up dinner maestro Charlotte Langley, writer/ex-line cook Ivy Knight, and Amanda Cohen of NYC vegetarian favorite Dirt Candy.
The trailer for the film shows these acclaimed chefs directly addressing the sexism that is rampant throughout professional kitchens. “There’s a saying that ‘men cook for glory and women cook for love,’” Anita Lo remarks. “And if we do, it’s because of how we were raised, and of that social construct. But as a chef, you really want to be judged on your work, you know — gender really has nothing to do with it.”
This gorgeous Google Doodle in the memory of French illusionist and film director Georges Méliès has 360º video and is the first ever Doodle to be in VR. Via the Verge:
The Doodle, called “Back to the Moon,” is a collaboration between Google Spotlight Stories (the company’s VR storytelling arm), Google Arts & Culture, and Cinémathèque Française.
Méliès was known for pioneering special effects and narrative film techniques during the early days of cinema, most famously with 1902’s A Trip to the Moon. Google’s “Back to the Moon” Doodle runs for two minutes and follows an illusionist as he chases the queen of hearts on an adventure that spans the stars and oceans. The video celebrates magic and cinema and explores Méliès’ work in illusions like duplication tricks and double exposures, a replacement trick, and a cache illusion where elements look like they’re disappearing. In a tribute to Méliès’ sometimes diabolical worlds filled with skeletons and ghosts, the Doodle also features an evil green man who attempts to kidnap our hero’s beloved queen.
There’s a lot going on in the 360-degree video, and while there’s one main focal point to watch, there are also extra animations around the sides. (You’ll need a few playthroughs to catch everything.) One particularly dainty moment happens when the illusionist finds a pearl and blows into it, turning it into a balloon of the sun that floats to the top of the video. The video really makes use of the 360-degree space, so you have to swivel the video (or your head if you’re using a headset) to follow the action.
“In addition to being a magician, Méliès was an expert storyteller, so it was important for the Doodle to have a clear story. We approached it as if it were a ballet or play you watch at the theatre, where you get to choose where to look. In these situations, the spectator becomes the camera, editing their own film,” said Hélène Leroux, project art lead of the Doodle.
Le Nuage is a short film expressing the many frustrations of creative output by Russian film student Iulia Voitova, including writer’s block. Looking to deal with creative block? FastCoDesign has some suggestions:
The easy thing to do, especially when a deadline is looming, is to lose perspective. The harder but much more productive mindset is to realize that you–and virtually everyone you respect and admire–have overcome blocks in the past. You might even say that it’s part of the process. So have a lot of successful people you think never have such problems producing work. “Anyone who tells you they don’t encounter creative block is either not passionate about what they do or is stealing someone else’s ideas,” asserts the graphic designer Mike McQuade.
[…]
Lots of reading and lots of sketching. The reading part is a long-term strategy: constantly consuming ideas, influences, details, angles, metaphors, symbols, etc., and storing them in the back of your brain so that later on–sometimes much later on–you have a rich catalog of starting points to draw from. Sketching is a way to activate all of that background information when faced with a problem: the act of drawing, of giving visual expression to many different ideas, helps you sort through all of those random elements and to make unexpected connections between them. The key is to sketch quickly, without getting caught up in the execution or technique. That way you stay in the realm of content, without getting bogged down.
You’re browsing Facebook. Or the news. You see a dense, defensive paragraph that may or may not be apologetic, followed by a statement that runs something like “SmartyPantsCompany stands for diversity, inclusivity, friendship, everyone, bears, puppies, and world peace”. You think: now what? Some piece of tone-deaf advertising’s gone viral? CEO said something he shouldn’t? Is the statement going to help repair any PR damage already done? If it’s the first time such a statement’s been expressed, probably not. It’s too late to cover your ass when something’s set your pants on fire.
Nowadays brands are under increasing pressure to be transparent about what they stand for, particularly within their branding. At Starship, we believe that if brands genuinely stand for something, it’ll be easier for them to separate themselves from the crowd. Such concepts could and should be part of a brand’s overall strategy and branding, as carefully considered as its visual expression. And it should be a sentiment that’s consistently expressed with the brand language itself, or it won’t come off as genuine. It shouldn’t be something created just for the sake of ticking a box. It should stem from the reason why the company was made, or why it still operates. Teasing out and expressing this sentiment in words can and should take as much time as other aspects of a company’s branding. Like the other aspects of your brand, it should be carefully considered with expert help.
[Jan Zijderveld, president of Europe Unilever, said that] brands with “purpose” at the heart of their message were growing at twice the rate of other brands across Unilever’s portfolio.
Across Europe, he said, macroeconomic pressures and resulting price promotions had “eaten away at brand value” but that business could achieve double-digit growth by marketing around a sense of purpose and driving trust.
“Consumers want brands that stand for something,” he said. “Ben & Jerry’s and Dove are examples – what we find is when we do this with our brands they grow twice as fast as those who don’t have sustainability at the heart… That’s where the juice is, the pockets of growth… Consumers want brands to be more responsible.” –CampaignLive
When we tell clients their brands need to brand values, we’re not trying to sell marketing buzzwords or hokey ideas. It’s actual, actionable strategy.
Everything Is On Fire
Brands mess up all the time. In the digital age, if brands get dragged online and in social media, it can affect the stock price. There are some things that companies can’t (and shouldn’t) be able to bounce back from–*cough Weinstein cough*. Some companies have tried to readjust to survive the scandals anyway: Uber is one of the most obvious examples. Despite headlines predicting the end of Uber in early 2017 after a string of scandals including its ex-CEO Travis Kalanick’s behaviour, having a culture that fosters misogyny, stealing from Google, responding badly to a taxi boycott and more, in 2018, Uber still exists. Uber chose a new CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, who’d been at Expedia. Dara is a fan of the Zero Defects policy:
In the late 1950s, a weapons maker called the Martin Company received a contract to build the first Pershing missile. It was to be the most sophisticated mobile weapons system on earth: 5 tons of metal and precision technology designed to deliver a nuclear warhead from up to 460 miles away. Should it ever be used, there would be no margin for error. It had to be perfect. And the US Army wanted it delivered quickly.
The task of ensuring this timely perfection fell to Philip Crosby, a quality-control manager at Martin. To break with his industry’s wartime habit of tolerating small mistakes in feverish production, Crosby came up with a philosophy he would later call Zero Defects. The idea was, basically, to instill in workers the will to prevent problems during design and manufacture rather than go back and fix them later. Crosby’s philosophy went on to become a management buzzword, especially in the aerospace and auto industries, where a faulty gasket or a weak bearing could mean a fiery catastrophe. During the Apollo program, NASA even gave out little Zero Defects trophies—each one a cute pewter spaceman standing on the moon with the letters “ZD” emblazoned on his chest.
Genuine brand values expressed effectively through a business is part of how brands could instill a Zero Defects philosophy in their company. Training and a work ethic and culture that grows out of a brand’s values combined with a consistent public-facing strategy across communications would have a positive effect over a company.
Things will still happen. Take Starbucks, for example. Their mission statement: “To inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time.” Earlier this year, the cops were called on two black men who were waiting in a Starbucks store for their friend. They hadn’t caused a disturbance: they’d just refused to order, presumably because their friend hadn’t yet arrived. After the incident went viral, Starbucks issued the following statement:
We apologize to the two individuals and our customers for what took place at our Philadelphia store on Thursday. pic.twitter.com/suUsytXHks
— Starbucks Coffee (@Starbucks) April 14, 2018
The company achieved 100% pay equity in the United States and is working on achieving pay equity globally. Starbucks sources sustainable and ethical products, hires refugees, and runs various other social impact programs. As such, several customers responded favourably to Starbucks’ attempt to make amends. The CEO has apologised to the two men, and although Starbucks’ decision to close all its American stores for racial bias training was met with a mixed reaction, they have brought on groups like Black Lives Matter to design its curriculum. Time will tell whether the token afternoon of ‘training’ helps, but overall the issue hasn’t affected Starbucks’ stock price, and Starbucks has managed to regain some control over what was deservedly a brand PR disaster.
Standing Up for Something
There’s a difference between just standing for something and standing UP for something. A statement on paper (or twitter) doesn’t mean much if your brand doesn’t also have initiatives in the same spirit of its mission statement. Nowadays, with the rise of lifestyle brands, clients do like brands that also give something back. Grill’ds bottlecap system, for example, is very popular. And you’d often find brands sponsoring anything from zoo animals to cultural events. Standing for something will help your brand connect with its target audience on an emotional level, cutting through the noise. The more you act along these lines, the more you’d reinforce your brand’s presence–and convince customers that you’re worth supporting above your competitors. Naturally, customers who don’t agree with your brand values may also decide to turn away from your brand. Maybe that’s ok, maybe it isn’t. That’s why the way forward requires thought and care. Want to have a chat about it? Let us know.
Emilia Clarke, also known as the actress behind Daenerys Targaryen in Game of Thrones, attempts to share s8 spoilers in the name of the Omaze charity. Things don’t work out the way she wants. Via Cnet:
The Mother of Dragons really, really wants to take you onto a top-secret set during filming for the final season of Game of Thrones. She also wants to read you key scenes from the script. But even the Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea can’t defeat a stubborn producer and a video editor armed with the power to bleep her speech.
Emilia Clarke, who plays Daenerys Targaryen, stars in a delightful video released on Thursday to promote a charity drive through fundraising platform Omaze. Fans can donate for the chance to win a trip to Belfast to visit the set of Game of Thrones and have lunch with Clarke.
The fundraiser benefits the Royal College of Nursing Foundation, which provides support to the nursing community with financial assistance, advice and grants.
There are already a lot of spoilers and teasers out there for Game of Thrones fans. Sadly, George RR Martin has also announced that his hotly anticipated book, the Winds of Winter, will not be released this year. We’ll have to wait until 2019 and season 8 for anything–unless you’re the lucky person who gets to win a trip to Belfast. So check out Omaze for the donation drive!
Seer Tracking is a project by 19 year old Stanford University undergraduate Amber Yang, which aims to better protect astronauts from space debris. Via Vox:
When we think of space, we often think of the vast emptiness of the next frontier. Unfortunately, that’s starting to change. There are more than 500,000 pieces of man-made trash floating above the Earth making “the next frontier” more of a hostile obstacle course for astronauts and satellites. The more we launch up there, the more difficult space travel becomes.
Objects as small as paint flecks and as large as defunct satellites can sometimes move in unpredictable patterns at speeds up to 17,500 mph. This debris poses a massive risk to working satellites, spacecraft, and even astronauts. Coming in contact with a single rogue piece can cause immense damage. In 2009, for example, a defunct Russian satellite collided with an operating US satellite. The result was billions of dollars in damage and hundreds of pieces of potentially dangerous debris.
Organizations like NASA scrambled to quickly track the pieces and avoid future collisions. So far, there haven’t been any human casualties. But as lower Earth orbit gets more and more crowded, the risk of a collision increases, making tracking the locations of this space junk vitally important for space exploration.
When 15-year-old space enthusiast Amber Yang first heard about the increasingly dangerous environment in lower earth orbit, she decided to take action. During her winter break at school, she spent time learning the ins and outs of astrophysics, coding, and space junk. Her final product was Seer Tracking, an AI-based orbital debris tracking program that she says may be the most accurate in the world.
Canuck Black is a great short film that uses stop motion to explore ideas behind animal liberation. Basically, cops arrest a bear. Via Short of the Week:
Raised as a human, a highly intelligent and eloquent black bear finds himself locked in an interrogation room, suspected of murder, in Rebecca Archer’s National Film and Television School grad film Canuck Black. Quizzed by two aggressive cops, this fearsome carnivore must fight his animal instincts and prove his innocence…or at least disprove his guilt!
Eager to explore ideas surrounding animal liberation, Archer’s film playfully uses the tradition of Anthropomorphism in animation to create a character struggling to find the balance between his animalistic nature and his educated upbringing.
“I’ve always been intrigued by the idea of animals being portrayed in human situations, whilst retaining some of their natural instincts and way of life”, Archer admits when discussing the inspiration behind her short. “I wanted to explore a character that was intelligent beyond expectation and actually quite dangerous, but still approachable. Much like a child is naturally drawn to a cute fluffy animal without knowing their potentially killer instincts.”
Another filmmaking tradition employed in Canuck Black is the use of the interrogation room as a setting. From Basic Instincts to The Usual Suspects these restrictive spaces have been used as the backdrop for some of cinemas most memorable games of cat and mouse and Archer uses her location to full effect. Canuck is literally the caged animal in this scenario, chained to the table and under the scrutiny of his human captors, but like in all good interrogation scenes who holds the power is never truly clear until the end.
Sanrio, a company best known for being behind Hello Kitty, has a surprise hit out on Netflix, the hilarious Aggretsuko, a series about the pain of working corporate jobs. Via io9:
There comes a point in every young professional’s life when they find themselves sitting in a dreary office and wondering, “What am I doing? Who am I? Is this really all there is to life?” These thoughts are typically followed by the consumption of alcohol and, in Aggretsuko’s case, a side of death metal karaoke.
Aggretsuko is Netflix’s new series from Fanworks and Sanrio (makers of Hello Kitty and other relentlessly adorable characters) about Retsuko, a 25-year-old red panda who works in the accounting department of a soul-sucking trading corporation, a business she not-so-secretly loathes. After five years of working for the company, Retsuko appropriately sees her new job as a necessary evil that allows her to afford her humble apartment and slightly excessive drinking problem. But that perspective doesn’t protect her from the living micro- and macro-aggressions that frequently make her want to quit—such as her self-absorbed coworker Tsunoda, who refuses to do her own work, and Ton, Retsuko’s supervisor, who frequently harasses her and enables Tsunoda’s behavior.
Though she puts up a somewhat convincing facade of pleasantness and cordiality at work, Retsuko is, in the truest sense of the phrase, filled with a burning rage that she’s only able to release in her secret solo karaoke sessions—where she sings death metal anthems about the evils of working within a capitalist system.
These anti-smoking PSAs from Tobacco Free Florida focus on empathy instead of fear-mongering to get their message across. Called The Reasons, they were made by agency Alma. Via Adweek:
Aimed at Florida’s rural communities, where the agency says smoking rates are 33 percent higher than the rest of the state, the real-life vignettes introduce us to smokers—most often working parents under daily financial stress—who admit they’re tired of the physical and financial toll of smoking.
“I’m tired of not being able to breathe. I’m tired of wasting my money on cigarettes,” says Robert, a 29-year-old father of three. “I don’t want to smoke, because I don’t want to be like my dad. I don’t want to be in a wheelchair with an oxygen machine behind me. I want to be there with my children and grandchildren.”
Christy, a citrus inspector who works incredibly long days, wants to quit because she knows it would make her children more proud of her.
“It takes energy from me. It slows me down. It’s costly. I spend a little over $6 on a pack of cigarettes,” she said. “If you calculated what I spent in a week…it’s terrible. I could probably pay my family’s bills. It’s embarrassing. It’s so embarrassing.”
“I pride myself on my family,” she says, “and I want them to be proud of me.”