Lebara Mobile are set to sponsor YouTube’s live coverage of cricket’s Indian Premier League (IPL).
60 live matches will be streamed across YouTube where they are expected to reach a monthly audience of over 16.8m. The brands’ sponsorship includes a leaderboard and MREC on the home page plus sponsorship credits across YouTube.
Lebara Mobile needed a cricket themed banner to increase CTR and drive on-line acquisitions.
Here are the ads:
On YouTube:
It’s a big dilemma when presenting creative ideas to clients: what format should you present them in? Nice glossy visuals… or black and white hand drawn scamps? Let’s face it, Mac visuals can look really impressive, but do they clarify or fog the creative vision?
Over the last week I’ve helped to successfully sell ideas to a client using hand drawn scamps. I’ve also witnessed an agency mess up badly with Mac visuals. You see, the trouble with the latter is that they can cause clients to confuse two very different disciplines: design on the one hand and conceptual creative on the other.
It goes something like this:
1) Client receives pdf.
2) Client opens pdf.
3) Client doesn’t even notice the ideas in the work because…
4) Client thinks: “Hey, you can’t do that with our brand! And that’s the wrong logo! And the wrong shade of blue! In fact it looks nothing like our communications! Send me the head of marketing. Literally.”
5) Very bad things happen.
So that’s it, game over. No sale, unhappy client, unhappy supplier, no chance of the work ever seeing the light of day and no chance of any future contracts. Yet there was nothing wrong with the ideas – they could have worked well with a little client direction. It’s true that Mac visuals bring work to life, but they can also overemphasise minor design glitches that could be fixed in a snip.
There are other problems too. If you sell in an idea with a rudimentary Mac visual, you might find the client likes it too much, preferring it to the more considered idea you present later on. Oh, and I haven’t even mentioned the time and expense of putting visuals together for first stage presentation.
So, as you can see, I’m a big fan of presenting simple scamps. And if the client doesn’t like it they need to learn. Creative presentations are no place to discuss the minutiae of brand guidelines (especially if the client has just undertaken a major re-branding exercise). How good the work looks is irrelevant. This is not a beauty parade, it’s about what works and what will make money.
If the idea is strong enough it shouldn’t need the support of glossy printouts. What’s needed is engaged and strategic thinking that involves the client and let’s them see the work as it develops. After all, this is a team effort and everyone enjoys a good idea – don’t they?
Fuck Painting.
Standing on the bridge of the Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern is quite an experience right now. The sheer scale of Miroslaw Balka’s new interactive sculpture is impressive. A giant, monolithic structure forged from Corus steel, its construction mimics the Tate’s interior, as if the building had been turned inside out. In fact, it looks like it’s always been an integral part of the building.
Scary?
The walk towards its entrance is cleverly planned to give visitors an appreciation of its massive bulk. My excitement was building as I walked along towards the entrance and then, once I’d arrived, a certain childlike excitement took over. I couldn’t wait to walk up the ramp and head inside.
The entrance to Miroslaw Balka’s How it is
Walking into the vast, inky black chamber was an experience but we very soon reached the end – a surprisingly soft, velvety wall. My eyes quickly adjusted to the darkness and after just a few seconds I could see everything around me: lots of people chatting, taking photos and staring out towards the entrance.
This is the biggest problem with the work. At that time of day, in that context the chamber just wasn’t dark or scary enough. Perhaps if I were alone at midnight with only a torch it might have been different (then again, being alone inside the Tate would be scary enough in itself).
Miroslaw Balka must have considered how the public would interact with this space on a busy Saturday afternoon. Couldn’t some way have been found to stop everyone taking pictures, laughing, running and banging the walls? If this was truly a dark interior void why go half way? And why leave a huge open hole at one end?
The piece certainly alludes to recent Polish history; its bulk representing the imposition of a brutal, mechanical force; the ramp echoing the entrance to the Warsaw ghetto and the construction itself resembling a cargo container like those on the trucks that transported Jews to the camps of Treblinka or Auschwitz. The references come to mind easily
But for me the piece seemed more to reflect the inner feelings of the artist towards the Turbine Hall’s enormous space and how he grappled with the overwhelming responsibility of filling it. It’s a scary prospect for any artist, especially when so many of his predecessors have used the space so well, creating some amazing and iconic work.
Miroslaw Balka’s response was to pay homage to the space, reflecting it almost perfectly, right down to the materials used and the sense of emptiness inside. This is a Turbine Hall within a Turbine Hall. The historical and personal context is not misplaced but perhaps this use of venue could have been better thought through.
The client was launching a new product so they needed a brand identity. Here are the results.
Business stationary
Guidelines
