A new campaign I’ve created for Skype. And my first TV ad for them. So far there’s one TV 30″ ad and one Ident for a CNN show. But there will be eight in total. As well as the TV there’s a banner campaign, a hub page at skype.com/magic and 15 sec pre rolls for CNN.com.
We wanted to talk about Skype products that people aren’t aware of in a fun educational way. But with a feeling of dad magic. Look out for more to come.
I also art directed the photo shoot and design of the skype.com/magic hub page.
I wrote and art directed the campaign under the watchful gaze of my Creative Director Nick Darken. But there are a few other talented fellows who helped bring them to life. Grant Orchard the (brilliant) director over at AKA. Petrina, Stephen and Tom at Albion. Matt Thomas the animator and kilobyte finder. And the bloody nice Gary at 750. Not to mention all the others who’ve helped pull it together. Cheers guys.
To commemorate the death of the Accurist Speaking Clock (an idea we convinced Accurist to do in favour of a more cultural clock) I created this T-shirt.
How Do You Hello? was a strategy developed by Natalie Ranger and myself to kick start a year of communications. Skype is more than just calling. So an Hello can be anything from a video trick, to a picture, smiley face – whatever you like. We began the campaign by creating a series of ‘Hellos’ for the Skype.com homepage. Presented in a random flow. To inspire people to think about how they’d start their Skype conversation. We did everything from a violin recital to jumping on jelly.
My Lily’s Kitchen packaging has been spotted by the people over at The Sunday Telegraph’s Stella Magazine. Good stuff. Go on, treat that other member of the family. The magazine thinks it’s wise to.
“It’s not often you’ll find us cooing over a tin of pet food, but Lily’s Kitchen has packaging to challenge many an posh organic brand.”
For some users, the organised mayhem that is MySpace can be a little daunting. Martin Rose and myself were tasked with creating banners for on-site inventory promoting the improved features on MySpace: finding new friends, sign up, social and groups, enhanced profiles, picture upload, privacy & security.
The heroes of the banners are what we coined Friends & F*ckers and were designed to create a series that felt like engaging MySpace content rather than “ads”. After all, nobody really wants to be told how to use MySpace. The original scripts were pretty dark and weird, but we simplified them down to get the message across in still and simply animated banners.
“It’s a good look cos you’re so tonk!”
Stay tuned for the more racey mini-length films. The banners aim to re-ignite current users’ profiles and to engage with new users too and are running internationally (ex USA).
It was a real team effort job with the banners being animated by Martin (who also jumped into a pile of toys to find the perfect nondescript action figures) and the beautiful blue pants made by Benita our producer.
