Charity Ads: A More Mature Approach?

Kids Company by AMV.BBDO. Art direction/ design: Paul Cohen. Copy writer: Mark Fairbanks. Photography: Thom Atkinson

The unscrupulous among the advertising community have often tended to look upon charity accounts less as an opportunity to help those in need and more as a chance to help themselves. Is a more mature approach emerging?

Charity campaigns have often been taken on with the express intention of winning awards and, in order to do so, many have resorted to crude tactics. In the mid-90s when outrage over ‘shock advertising’ was at its peak, some of the worst offenders were for small charities many of which, miracu lously, were never heard from before or since.

But perhaps there is something of a more mature approach emerging. The first thing that occurs with these campaigns is the amount of copy used. It’s not so long ago that we were all bemoaning the death of long copy in advert ising. And yet all four campaigns use lengthy, discursive texts to make their case: in Kidsco, the copy runs to nearly 400 words. The style is convers ational.

In Qatar, an Art Museum of Imposing Simplicity

The new Museum of Islamic Art, designed by I. M. Pei, opens next week in Doha, Qatar.
Nicolai Ouroussoff writes: "Rising on its own island just off the city’s newly developed waterfront corniche, it is the centerpiece of an enormous effort to transform Qatar into an arts destination."
"The inaugural festivities on Saturday, including a performance by Yo-Yo Ma, attracted art-world luminaries from around the globe.
"Viewed under the light of a spectacular evening fireworks display, the museum’s colossal geometric form has an ageless quality, evoking a past when Islamic art and architecture were a nexus of world culture. At the same time it conveys a hope for reconnecting again."
"Mr. Pei visited several proposed sites in downtown Doha before settling on the area just off the end of the seafront corniche.
"Worried that his building might one day be hemmed in by new construction, he asked Qatar’s Emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, chairman of the museum’s board, to build him a private island so that his monument would be isolated from the rest of the city."
"The building seems austere by the standards of the flashy attention-grabbing forms that we have come to associate with Persian Gulf cities like Dubai and Abu Dhabi."
Mr. Ouroussoff says the museum "recalls a time when architectural expression was both more earnest and more optimistic, and the rift between modernity and tradition had yet to reach full pitch."
"The museum, which houses manuscripts, textiles, ceramics and other works mostly assembled over the last 20 years, has emerged as one of the world’s most encyclopedic collections of Islamic art.
"The origins of its artifacts range from Spain to Egypt to Iran, Iraq, Turkey, India and Central Asia."
“Islam was one religion I did not know,” Mr. Pei said in an interview. “So I studied the life of Muhammad. I went to Egypt and Tunisia. I became very interested in the architecture of defense, in fortifications.”
“The architecture is very strong and simple,” he added. “There is nothing superfluous.”

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/24/arts/design/24muse.html?_r=1&ref=design

CS Shanghai: The City Past and Present

Textile hanging featuring Shanghai landmarks by Jellymon

There’s a feeling that Shanghai has returned to its roaring glory days of the 30s, which means huge energy, huge opportunity…and huge inequality

The first speaker session at the Creative Social Shanghai event this morning was by New York-based writer Stella Dong who recently published Shanghai: the Rise and Fall of a Decadent City. Stella gave a great potted history of a city that, as recently as the 1840s was just a quiet market town. “Shanghai is a city that no longer exists but in many ways has come full circle,” she said. “Old Shanghai was a freewheeling place, it was about being greedy for material things and for life which is what Shanghai is once again after a long hiatus.” Modern advertising came to Shanghai thanks to those lovely people at British American Tobacco who, in the early 20th century, came up with the idea to give away calendars featuring pretty Chinese girls [who also appeared on posters, which other brands copied, see below]. The images became iconic and unique to Shanghai.”

Link: http://www.creativereview.co.uk/crblog/cs-shanghai-the-city-past-and-present/

Killer iPhone Apps

Give an iPhone owner half a chance and they will happily launch into a lengthy demonstration of the latest slew of ‘apps’ that they’ve downloaded for their pocket-sized gadget. Apps are, essentially, packages of software that utilises (hopefully) the best properties of the iPhone’s hardware - ie the multi touch screen, GPS, and the impressively sensitive accelerometer. These properties, combined with a powerful operating system (Unix) and fast internet connection speeds mean that the iPhone is, in short, a creative programmer’s dream come true. Here at CR, we’ve been checking out a wide variety of apps and have compiled a round up of our current favourites…

Link: http://www.creativereview.co.uk/crblog/killer-apps/

Islamic Innovation in Dubai.

Islamic Innovation in Dubai.
Posted by: Bruce Nussbaum on November 12

On the road to the airport in Dubai, I passed a big billboard sign. It said:

“Innovation Thinking Based on Islamic Values.”

Fascinating.

other comment:
Cincinnatus
November 14, 2008 12:36 AM
Hey Bruce:
It's more like Frightening!
Have you any idea what the terms Islmamic Values means? Do you realize that Islamic law, Sharia, and Constitutional Law are 100% anti-thetical? Or are you OK with a Supremacist Ideology, with no Freedom of Conscience, Religon, Speech & Assembly? Are you willing to throw away the Golden Rule? Or the notion that All Men (& Women) Are Created Equal?

If so, then Fascinating may be the correct term.
If not, then mine is.

6 words means a lot. Many things could be thought under this statement.
Depending on positive as well as negative thoughts.

Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson is the Grand Designer.

Hank Paulson is taking heat from economists, Wall Street institutional investors and politicians in Congress for changing the federal government bailout policy. The stock market went down last week partly on the fear that no one is in charge in Washington and that there isn’t any stability yet to the financial crisis and deepening economic recession. So Paulson the conventional wisdom is that Paulson is failing—and may be a failure.

That is simply not true. Paul is doing what he should be doing, which is what designers do—he is looking at the facts on the ground and iterating and prototyping as he goes. With the housing bubble bursting, we are now in a period of fast change, high uncertainty, and deep confusion as to what to do. Standard policies won’t work. New programs have to be created on the fly. The best strategy is to try many things, fail fast, learn from the failures and move on. This is what Paulson is doing.

In fact, the big question facing the US is this: What do you do when you don’t know what to do? The answer is design your way into the uncertain future. Which is what Paulson is, in effect, doing. Paulson is the Grand Designer.

Money, Lovely Money

Before the Euro, Dutch money was the most beautiful in the world. A new Five Euro coin, designed by artist and architect Stani Michiels, is a worthy successor to a great tradition

Michiels won a Dutch Ministry of Finance competition to design a coin with the theme of ‘Netherlands and Architecture’. “I approached the subject ‘Netherlands and Architecture’ from two points of view,” he says on his blog. “On one hand I paid tribute to the rich Dutch architecture history and on the other hand to the contemporary quality of Dutch architecture. These form also the two sides of my coin. Traditionally the front of the coin needs to portray the queen, while the back side displays the value of the coin.”

For the front of the coin, Michiels listed the names of prominent Dutch architects according to how many hits they gained on the internet: “Of course this order changes over time and as such this is another time stamp on the coin besides the number ‘2008′. Only the first 109 architects fitted on the coin, so that was immediately the selection.”

On the reverse, Michiels referenced the sheer number of architecture books published currently, arranging different sized books around the edge of the coin so that the space between their tops forms the outline of a map of The Netherlands. “The books rise as buildings towards the center. Through their careful placement they combine to outline the Netherlands, while birds’ silhouettes suggest the capitals of all the provinces. The following scheme reveals the process:”