The Write Stuff

There’s nothing I don’t like about South Africa’s clip promoting itself in the run-up the World Cup. Sure, it has cutesy kids, smiling multi-cultural crowds and “ordinary” people doing extraordinary stuff. But from the opening images to the last, it is superbly directed, choreographed (Wendy Ramokgadi), edited and performed. The clip also blends the football theme right into the heart of the ad, using it to showcase the people. It’s worth noting that we don’t get the stock images of landscapes and sunsets so prevalent in CNN-type travel ads. It could make you believe that you can dance. So it gets five stars for making me dream. They are hoping the Diski dance will overtake the Macarena as a novelty. Does anyone know which agency is behind it?

This ad from Saatchi – which I had absolutely nothing to do with – is brilliant at a number of levels. What I like most is the pay-off (nope, I won’t spoil the pleasure). It runs through a series of CGI-enhanced levels before coming back to the most basic appeal imaginable.

We’re all beginning to understand that anything is possible in CGI. If you’ve sat through a dozen ads on steroids at the movies recently waiting for the big show to begin, you know how tiring it can be. So what if the screen shakes when the monster stomps by? Or of the screen seems to melt. We’ve seen that already. So it’s important to reach people with something more conceptual, which this ad does. In fact, it’s not just conceptual, it’s the emotional juice that raises the smile at the end.

Interesting also that it is basically a silent movie (the music is Charles Sheffield, "It's Your Voodoo Working").

The digital sphere is increasingly blurring the lines between audiovisuals and graphics. Although TV documentaries remain relatively straightforward, everything else is becoming more graphic. Double Double is a young production company that is situated right on the edge of both genres. The founding members are graphic designers as well as being directors (and an experienced sound designer too). The result is stylish audiovisuals (the word video is pretty much meaningless by now). The Write Stuff provided the basic text on their website at Double Double.

Having done some corporate vids and drives to promote companies as a good employer, I have to salute this lovely piece for Intel (the thing you have inside but you don’t really know the significance of – an interesting branding achievement in itself). It’s unabashedly nerdy, charming and shows great community spirit. There’s admiration of achievement, blondes, a coffee machine and people singing. My type of office, in fact! The agency is Venables Bell & Partners.

A little shout out to Belgian director Patrick Van Hautem of Made in Brussels, who just picked up two trophies at the Greek advertising business awards, the Ermis. His film for Honda, called “Dreams”, was voted “Best Car ad” and “Best Commercial” in 2007.

Check out a translated version here.

Advertising is supposed to engage us on more than one level these days. It’s also supposed to be entertaining. So here’s a winner from the Cannes Lions festival, produced by WCRS for Transport for London. I won’t say anything more.

I’ve nothing to do with it, so you can safely tell me what you think (but no spoilers, please).

The TV series “Vermist/Missing”, taken from the film of the same name directed by Jan Verheyen, debuts on Belgium’s VT4 channel every Tuesday from March 25 at 9.30pm. I wrote the track that plays out over the end, “Waiting”, with the series composer Steve Willaert. It is available as a download right here. We also wrote a song for the episode called “Kika”. For more about “Vermist” (one of the biggest grossing Belgian films last year), visit VT4.be.

The TV ad for Alpro Soya running in the UK, Germany and Ireland, “Happiness is Easy”, was co-written by the Write Stuff with Sonic Music for TBWA/Brussels. Click the image to try it out.