Does online have a shorter shelf life than it's counter parts

In my view online is a bit hit and miss when it comes to shelf life, I do believe that in order for online work to have a better shelf life you need to make it work a lot harder for you.

What do I mean?

Well with and offline material you will have the users undivided attention (how ever long that may be) and it's at points where they can't really escape. With online you need to direct and entertain your user whilst not boring them, they want to see motion, they want sound and they want to be told.

Why is this the case?

This is the entertainment age we all want to see and hear something astounding, the message is clear it requires less effort for the user and to keep it fresh you need to be able the generate content.

So how does this relate back to the question. Simple. You have 20 seconds of my time, your job is to keep me interested past 20 seconds. What do you do?

So the olympics are over.

But why should the fun stop, here are a few of my favorite ads from the event.

Building wrap

Coke branding

Mini rick shaw

Samsung viewing pods (not sure I'd stick my head in it there though)

How to deal with a client - For freelancers

Well it's been a quiet month for me, summers now arrived and a lot of clients are on holiday.

So that gives me time to write a bit about dealing with clients direct if you're freelancing.

As some of you are freelancing I am guessing from time to time you'll get clients approaching you directly. Well the usual courteous mannerisms are required, try to be very formal remember you're not on ground in which you can start making jokes that's not to say you shouldn't reciprocate if he does.

Insist on meeting, it's very important to put a face to the phone call for both yourself and the client, this will give the client more confidence that he's not dealing with a cowboy and also clients like to be serviced.

You should use the meeting to ask as many questions as you can about the brief or take the brief. A lot of things aren't done very well over the phone; briefing is one of them (probably a creative thing only).

Don't act like a poor man, offer your knowledge to your client, remember you're dealing with the client direct now and as such you need to need to be on side and offer him advice even if it's a 30 minute phone call. Chances are that if he likes your advice he'll give you the job any way.

Don't be optimistic with time lines, this is a big mistake I once made with the client. Dealing with the client is very different than dealing with agencies, agencies have people that are in charge of dealing with time lines clients and budgets. If you're new to the game give yourself as much time to do the work as possible, try and factor in at least a couple of days buffer just incase the client throws a curve ball at you and if you deliver a day early then the client will love you for it.

That's it for now, your next instalment on this will be either new business or servicing the client. It really depends on how I feel unless somebody comments on how they really wants to read a particular title of course.

It's a weird ad for a weird product

Xbox have released a game called Viva Pinata, it's got some thing to do with Pinata's and I'm not 100% sure what the point is but here is the tv ad.

Not so natural history exhibition

There's a nice exhibition going on at the natural history museum in Basel, Switzerland.

It shows the skeletal features of well known cartoon characters, click here to see some examples.

what's up, Doc?

Does it offend you?

Today I want to discuss ads that have recently been banned or discussed due to how offensive it is.

First of all I want to ask a question, how many of you are guilty of laughing at something you really shouldn't have.

Second is how many of you base your conduct on societies reaction of you.

What has annoyed me is peoples reaction to these ads, all of them are supposed to be in jest. Of course it's easy to find the problems but are they really a problem?

I am going to talk about the 3 latest ads to come under fire:

Heinz Deli Ad
So this ad got pulled because of the homosexual content. Lets talk about the scene in question, a guy kisses another guy in which one guy is playing the wife. Why did this offend you?

Is it because there are 2 same sex people kissing, perhaps it's because you feel it's taking the piss or promoting gay marriages, may be it just makes you feel awkward.

But is it any of the above?

Would you be offended by the rocky horror show, may be Lily Savage or Eddie Izzard how about if you had a crossing child playing role play?

Snickers Ad
So Mr. T decides that speed walkers are a disgrace to the man race and all of a sudden we all decide that the ad is attacking gay people.

So it's not that a man mincing and swinging his hips side to side is bloody disgusting, Noooo!

We have automatically deduced that a Man > speed walking > mincing = gotta be gay.

For me; complaints on this ad has just based on a whole lot of assumption based on innuendo.

Spanish Olympic Basketball Ad
Well this one is more obviously offensive but what I don't like is the amount of fuss it's been kicking up. First of all they have almost used this ad as an excuse to bring up more of a reason to hate the Spanish.

Sure it's a misjudged ad but it's not aimed to alienate the Chinese.

I suppose what I'm getting at with all these ads is that we aren't really offended by these ads, in fact I think that we are offended because we are worried about how people see us and that society says we should but behind closed doors we are secretly having a giggle with your close mates.

Am I wrong?

Leave a comment and tell me why I am.

Spanish olympic ad

So some of you may have seen the Olympic ad from the Spanish basketball team, if you haven't its below

There's been a lot of outrage about this ad and I can understand why, although I'm sure it's been done in jest; it's evident that the rest of the world doesn't think so.

The Spanish Olympic association have obviously jump to the defense of the players but you have to think who did sign this off and who actually thought this would be a good idea.

Obviously Spanish advertising doesn't really take much notice of research but to screw up on such a big stage I'm sure some one's head is going to roll over this. Already people are comparing this to other sporting incidents i.e. Lewis Hamilton and Theirry Henry.

I'm not sure this can be classed on the same scale as those incidents are quite malicious and this is supposed to "promote" the games. I'm sure this incident will blow over in no time but keep you eyes on sponsorship deal being dropped when some of the player return to the states.

So what do you all think?