Mr President

The power of a brief presentation

Presentations, especially those of the Powerpoint variety, can be over-contrived, bloated, winding indulgences of the creator's confused imagination. Most presentations lack a point. Which is usually made-up by filling them with bullet points. But they don't count.

So when I get to see a perfectly impactful one number presentation, I do a little flip of joy.

In the midst of Microsoft royally pissing off the gaming community by not only doing away with the DVD as a means of carrying games (progress eh?), Sony have been poking fun and winning a zillion Brownie points by simply keeping the disc drive. 

In effect Sony are winning the next-gen console war by keeping a piece of tech that has pretty much always existed.

Link: Well, Sony just won this generation's console war

That one slide is all that is needed.

Just to rub it in, they even made an instructional how to video about this anachronistic (but winning) "new" feature of the PS4. Genius.

 

But, back to the one number presentation. Sony have a track record for slapping down their console competitors. Back in 1995, following on from a long, rambling, flashy but pointless presentation by Sega to launch their doomed Saturn Console, a Playstation exec walked on stage and gave a one number presentation that won the war.

As u/awwnuts07 on Reddit explains:

"This actually reminds me when the Sega Saturn was announced at $399. Right after Sega's presentation, a Sony exec walked on stage, said "$299" and walked off. Pretty much killed the Saturn in one fell swoop."

Here's the one-number presentation itself.

 

Remember that when you are just putting the final animation effect touches to slide 134 in your next deck.

Links:

Reddit: Well, Sony just won this generation's console war 

Reddit: Official Playstation Used Game Instructional Video

Well that's awkward, British Gas

I wouldn't recommend watching the gas explosion YouTube clip it is pre-rolled in front of. Or the ad for that matter.

Bet you thought we wouldn't win

You may have seen in Campaign that we have been appointed as William Hill's Digital Agency. This means we get to work with our chums at Fabula on the William Hill sportsbook buisness.

You may have already seen some of our handiwork - the Can You Spot the FA Cup ad bumpers around the FA Cup coverage. There's more to come this weekend with the next iteration of the campaign. Keep your eyes peeled and join in with one of the very few #hashtag on telly campaigns that actually makes sense...

Miami Ad School: Marketing in a Digital World

Nick Emmel - Marketing for a Digital World from Mr President 

Well would you look at that. It's me. Talking. For like, 50 minutes. In that time period the energy that my arm waving generates is approximately 32 Watts.

At Mr President, we do a lot of these digital education sessions. This one spanned two splendid days in Miami Ad School. We organised incredible speakers like Drew Schutte, the Chief Integration Officer at Conde Nast, Olivier Blanchard, author of Social Media ROI, and the splendid James Cooper, International Creative Director and ping-ponger. Oh, and me.

If you ever fancy brushing up on your education, do give us a shout and we'll organise a Digital Day just for you.

Happy Birthday, Mr President

 

Cast your minds back. Remember when I used to be Planning Director of Dare and Claire Hynes used to be Joint MD? I was the bearded one with wavy arms and she was the tall, unfeasibly glamorous one.

Ever wondered what happened to us? Well, despite the multitude of rumours (coming up with an ill-fated promotional stunt for Pussy Riot, helping launch George Michael’s new single at the Closing Ceremony, doing a little PR for Kate Middleton), we were in fact beavering away on creating a sparkling new agency start-up within the V7i group.

And as of 1^st September, we can proudly announce the launch of Mr President. It being merely a little start-up, we have developed small agency syndrome and have hence named it after the biggest, most important thing we could to make ourselves feel better.

Whilst sneaking about under the radar for almost a year, Mr President have been working on lots of briefs for our (amazing) founding client, Bacardi Global. As well as conjuring up campaigns for AXA and a little pro-bono project with LocalGiving.com which is about to go live in October.

You can have a look at a few of our wares on this temporary Tumblr. I designed it. And I'm crap at design. A new shiny site and logo is in the creative department as we speak.

In a few weeks we will be decamping to some new offices in Soho Square with our team of 8 lovely people (mostly Canadians). We will no doubt shout about that when we've nipped to Ikea to buy some chairs to sit on.

In the meantime, we are going to crack open (another) bottle of Martini Prosecco to toast Mr President, and to thank Dare for all the years that myself and Claire were part of the family (as well as for their backing of our new venture). Happy Birthday, Mr President.

Bacardi - It Started with a Party

 

You know I don't work for Dare anymore, right? Good. Well I haven't been sitting around watching Jeremy Kyle. I've been beavering away with a small group of remarkably clever people. And looky here, we've gone and produced some Global ads for Bacardi. Six of them in fact.

Have a watch, enjoy, and feel free to shower us with praise, awards and new business leads. No really.

 

How to judge digital creative

Understanding digital creative

View more presentations from Ewarwoowar

Further proof that I haven't just been idly reading Reddit - another presentation! This time, I've done my best to address the age old problem of helping planners and clients alike to understand digital creative ideas.

You know that subjective tittle tattle that surrounds creative reviews - especially digital creative reviews? Well, here are seven of the most pertinent questions that I tend to ask of an idea. The ones that lead you to objective observations of what the idea is and how it is executed. Rather than those distracting bits of nonsense that result in crap work being bought or great work being made crap.

Would welcome additions and amendmants to the list. You are all clever people, so perhaps together we can get seven questions up to ten. Round numbers are nice.

Marketing for a Digital World 2012

Marketing for a digital world 2012

View more presentations from Ewarwoowar

It's been a while. I've missed you all. Things are afoot, which means I've been mildly distracted with getting that all started. But in the meantime, I'm still doing things - promise. Even if those things involve updating old presentations many of you will have seen before.

So, here it is. The mid-2012 version of the Marketing for a Digital World preso. It will be as inpenetrable as before. But hey, it's pretty. And it has lots of good and bad examples to illustrate it. You have to work out which is which. 

There is a drinks category theme to the whole thing. Hope you don't mind. But we all like drinks don't we? Yes. Thought so.

Those jobs that only come around once in a while

*Thanks to everyone who applied. My word, there are a lot of bright young things out there. We've now closed applications. But do keep an eye out for future opps.*

Do you ever look at the likes of Zuckerberg and Larry Page and think that you could have done the same if you were lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time? Do you get angsty when you see all these exciting little start-ups selling themselves for enormous sums and wonder why you never got a slice of the action? Do you pine to be there at the formation of something great? To get the chance to mould it with your own fair hands?

These opportunities rarely pop up. And when they do, it takes a clever (or lucky) soul to spot them. Sometimes you just need someone to point them out to you.

I'll give you a hint, this is one.

Or actually, two.

We need a couple more people to join our new little venture. It's a rather exciting, nimble little beast. Doing all those digital agency things, but doing them in the way that everyone agrees they *should* be done. 

No process, no politics, no timesheets.

Just clever, quick, creative thinking by a few lovely people. Making proper stuff, properly.

There are two immediate openings for:

A bright young thing

• A graduate, with maybe a few agency work placements under their belt looking for their first permanent gig.
• You'll have an impressive academic record and a desire to keep on learning every day
• Someone, that despite being new to the game, is already thinking about being at the top
• A broad-minded soul, willing to get thier hands dirty in every part of the agency world. Planning, account management, production, even creative.
• An articulate, chatty individual who doesn't get intimidated by senior types or men with beards
• Finally, you better be a lovely person. Being in a small team means that plonkers aren't tolerated.

A digital planner going places

• You know planning. Proper planning. Not writing a funny digital trends powerpoint and the odd social media recommendation.
• No doubt, you have been in the biz doing planning for 3 or 4 years and have some clever thinking and pretty creative to show for it
• You get digital. Not just in a media sense, but how the World is digital now and what that means.
• You don't need your hand held every day. But do appreciate having another planner-type (me) to bounce things off. 
• Learning. Fast. That's what you like. Doing new things all the time or finding better ways to do the same old things.
• You aren't some planning philosopher. You exist to get stuff done, get stuff out, and get the chance to show it off to your mum, even though she doesn't understand it.
• You have an entrepreneurial streak, wanting to be part of something where you will be very exposed in a small team, but exposed to the benefits and excitement that that offers.
• You have a passport and no criminal record (unless it was for something cool).

Drop me an email at nick.emmel@thisisedc.com. It'll be fun, we can chat and stuff. 

Advertising with bells on

 

This makes me very happy. A proper Agency film. Round of applause to Fold 7 and Santa, the cun...