Tag: Brainstorm

In a JOVA first we attended a festival virtually, thanks to two cyberspace souls that were able to Represent us at the last minute at the PICNIC Crossmedia creative festival in Amsterdam last week. They've kindly blogged the highlights for us, big shout outs and thanks go to Laetitia Dam and Bertrand Robinne for hanging out on our behalf. Of special interest to us was the Suprising Africa day, that they covered in detail for us. See their photo-story here (video still to come) and read their review below:

 

A new Ecosystem conference

Being music lovers we first stepped in the Flexbar where “A New Music Ecosystem” conference took place. “The music industry is changing. Artists and developers everywhere are working on new ways of connecting fans and bands and developing new businesses along the way”. As MySpace users we were mostly interested in the presentation of new Music websites. The one that caught our ears was Twones introduced by the dynamic and young Tim Heineke. Twones is a music service and a new way to store, organize, find & share music played all over the web

We're so chuffed to be an official media partner of this years *sparkling* PICNIC future-forward, creative and innovation gathering in the naughty city of Amsterdam later this month. If you don't know about it, click on the gorgeous banner above, or simply read below...and then convince your boss to pay for your trip. It's worth it.  We're really hoping to go (we're still in the convincing stage), or at least send someone else to represent (we're the boss), so watch this space. The conference program for PICNIC ’08, the annual event for creativity and innovation in media, entertainment and technology, is appealing to a fast growing international audience.  PICNIC ’08 is taking place from September 24 – 26 in Amsterdam. The event combines high class international speakers with high level seminars and workshops.

We're just imagining the heavy heads and hearts this morning as a night of partying no doubt continues for some on Margate beachfront and ends for others as they rush to catch their flights back to their beds to recover... Here's the announcement of this years winners! The 2008 Loerie Awards Festival Weekend kicked off on 26 July with the Saturday night awards ceremony, hosted by Media24.

 

 

Power to the people! By now you've gathered our focus is on Belgium for a while. A quick French lesson in homophones and a bit of History before we explain this superb social project "No future without 100 ideas": 100 in French is CENT, the word 'Without' is SANS - both of them are pronouned in the same way kind of like SARN with a nearly silent R and soft N. Belgium is made up of 3 ethnic/linguistic areas - Flandres, made up of Flemish speakers (similar to Afrikaans), Wallonie, which is full of French-speaking citizens, Brussels, which is both languages and the centre of the European union, so very diverse with a lot of business in English, and then in the far West of the country is a little Germanic area which tags onto Wallonie.The country is tiny. The population is just over 10 million. Peanuts. And yet, the people are divided. Simply put, some people (and politicians!) want Belgium to split and for the French half to go to France, the Flemish part to the Netherlands and for Brussels to become it's own state like Luxembourg. Many people are devastated by this thought and

We couldn't help but be inspired by this ingenious customisation concept we came upon while weaving through the 'biggest pedestrian shopping area in Europe' in the wonderfully under-rated city of Liège... Belgium. Picture it, an empty minimalist white-washed interior, spotless shelves line the walls bathed in a cool light that entices you to stretch out and pick up one of more than 40 colourful cd boxes on show. Meet BONGO - the only way to give a gift in a hard-to-please world. Each colourful cd box offers a gift equivalent of a set price, that you can choose and present to a fussy friend as a 'gift experience'.  For example, if you would like to give your friend a gift worth R200, you may choose a 'champagne breakfast' box. Inside the box, is a cheque that can be presented at a number of 

Have you got an idea for a greenhouse-gas-reducing product or service? Are you interested in using your creativity to help with the current global crises? Enter the PICNIC Green Challenge and win over R5 million to develope your bright idea. It’s a global crisis and a global competition, so scientists, engineers, superminds, enter!  “The world must embrace a new, greener lifestyle. One bright idea can make a big difference. To encourage and aid the invention of great new green products and services, the Dutch Postcode Lottery and PICNIC present the PICNIC Green Challenge 2008.”

We love this. Australians look a little suprised by the pride and joyful enthusiasm shown by the only 4 Ghanains living in Sydney, Australia. But seriously, four Ghanains based in Sydney wanted to support their national soccer team that played a friendly match this weekend in Oz, unfortunately there were only four of them so not enough to make up the entire G H A N A. Their genius performances at the airport and downtown offered passers-by the chance to join their gang and become the missing H in Ghana. Watch the video below to understand the sheer brilliance behind their simple idea. Thanks for carrying the true African spirit so far! Big thanks to Adverblog. 

 

Every now and then we join the masses that flock to Trendhunter for a peek at what's news. Today the ever-flowing trend website pointed us towards the Montana Meth anti-drugs campaign entitled Not Even Once, where they show "dramatised" videos and posters of what the horrific drug 'meths' does to users - watch the videos here. While they do make you think about taking drugs, one has to wonder if the REAL THING wouldn't be more effective, I can just imagine cocky teens thinking "but those are actors"... athough using real drug users would require enormous sensitivity and be very tricky to pull off. Ironically, there's a South African campaign of a similar nature but with a very different approach - they use hip sports like skating and surfing, music and fun to "talk to youngsters on their level".  Not Even Once has a well-designed, engaging website, 

Ogilvy Toronto came up with a stellar concept for the cereal brand Shreddies.  The brief was for the agency to 'make people think of Shreddies again'.  The concept was simple but potent: take the breakfast cereal square, turn them 45 degrees and rename them as diamonds.  Get it? Then package the same product as a new product called 'Diamond Shreddies' , set up a microsite , do some market research , put together a humourous ad and viral campaign and see what happens. Outstanding.