Not Grace Jones, not Chicks on Speed, it’s Trent Reznor, Jeordie White and Peter Murphy.

I’ve been on a bit of a TVC kick recently. The Gruen Transfer’s probably aided this! I do love this ad, just for the concept simplicity - even though the execution might not have been so simple. Released in 1996, it was an award winner for Y&R London.

Take a world class athlete - Carl Lewis, and get him running on all terrain, over water, steep inclines - you name it. Add Quoth by Polygon Window (aka Aphex Twin) for the abrasive soundtrack.

And you get and you get an advert that makes you stand up and take notice.

Got it? Good!

After watching The Gruen Transfer on the ABC tonight, I hit the website and a thread asked “what ads do you think epitomise the best of the advertising art form?” Now, I’m an online guy, so it seems a little wrong for me to focus purely on TV, but I’m going to, because I do love the format. It’s powerful, it’s on a big screen dominating your living room visually and the audio can still be heard whilst you’re in the bathroom, because it’s been increased by 20dB by the broadcaster.

So, here’s part one of my favourite TVCs. I’m going to focus on one thing that I do love - meat, and Australian produce of course.

Falling in Lamb

Clever. The use of the cinema trailer format is indeed clever, and the first time I’ve seen this, for this type of ad. How do you engage and make meat interesting? Make it in a love story of course. Genius!

Dinner with Tom Cruise

Naomi Watts turns down dinner with Tom. What’s funny to think is that when this was shot, Naomi probably would dream of dinner with Tom and certainly wouldn’t turn it down. Today, she’s probably had several dining experiences with Tom, and could conceivably turn down dinner with Tom to have it with Mum. It’s memorable and says two things to me - spending time with the family is a good thing, and if you’re going to do it, sit down to some quality Australian produce, lamb and of course, a couple of bottles of Penfolds Bin 407 Cabernet Sauvignon, or some Coopers Sparkling. Oh, I meant to say South Australian produce.

Serve Lamb on Australia Day

A cracker. I remember when I saw this I laughed. And did I laugh and I asked my friends, especially ones into AFL, “Have you seen the new lamb ad with Sam Kekovich?”. We Australians like to poke fun at ourselves, and this is what this ad does. Reminds us that eating tofu and alfalfa together is a pretty flat combination and wearing your pants showing your boxers is “Un-Australian”. Three years in the running now, we’ll be expecting number four to be released in the week preceeding Australia Day. And again, when was the last time an ad made you laugh?

Next up on my favourite TVCs - beer.

This is what happens when you drop out of school early kids! Here’s MC Steve from Sheffield, and his audition for X-Factor.

“I’d love to have the hip-hop lifestyle. The biatches, pimped-up rides, bling, cars, hotels, free booze…” he says with a level of cockyness that surpasses P. Diddy and John Steffensen, but doesn’t have the talent to back it up. Respect? I think not.

This monster burst out and he ate my whole guts and he ate my whole body and then he ate my cat.

This octopus came out the bath hole and he grabbed me and then squeezed the blood out of me.

Crocodile came out, bit my guts out and bit me into parts, pieces and then my legs went that way and my head went that way.

The latest TVC from HBA. Love it.

“Little Bit of Feel Good”, from the new album “Jim“.

Mad flow from The Poetic Prophet (AKA The SEO Rapper) is back with another marketing rap. This time he describes how web standards and proper design can affect the ranking and conversion of pages on your site.

Lyrics:

Your site design is the first thing people see
It should be reflective of you and the industry
Easy to look at with a nice navigation
When you can’t find what you want it causes frustration
A clear call to action to increase the temptation
Use appealing graphics they create motivation
If you have animation
Use with moderation
Cause search engines can’t index the information
Display the logos of all your associations
Highlight your contact info that’s an obligation
Create a clean design you can use some decoration
But to try to prevent any client hesitation
Every page that they click should provide an explanation
Should be easy to understand like having a conversation
When you design the style go ahead and use your imagination
But make sure you use correct color combinations
Do some investigation, look at other organizations
But don’t duplicate or you might face a litigation
Design done, congratulations but it’s time to start construction
Follow these instructions when you move into production
Your photoshop functions then slice that design
Do your layout with divs make sure that it’s aligned
Please don’t use tables even though they work fine
When it come to indexing they give searches a hard time
Make it easy for the spiders to crawl what you provide
Remove font type, font color and font size
No background colors, keep your coding real neat,
Tag your look and feel on a separate style sheet
Better results with xml and css
Now you making progress, a lil closer to success
Describe your doctype so the browser can relate
Make sure you do it great or it won’t validate
Check in all browsers, I do it directly
Gotta make sure that it renders correctly
Some use IE, some others use Flock
Some use AOL, I use Firefox
Title everything including links and images
Don’t use italics, use emphasis
Don’t use bold, please use strong
If you use bold that’s old and wrong
When you use CSS, you page will load quicker
Client satisfied like they eating on a Snickers
They stuck on your page like you made it with a sticker
And then they convert now that’s the real kicker
Make you a lil’richer, your site a lil slicker
Design and code right man I hope you get the picture
What I’m telling you is true man it should be a scripture
If it’s built right you’ll be the pick of the litter
Everyone will want to follow you like Twitter
Competition will get bitter and you’ll shine like glitter
If you trying to grow your company will get bigger
Design and code right man can you get with it

Thanks to Lucas for this one.

Another quality promo video for Minimal Fuss, featuring Alex Smoke this Thursday night at the Civic Underground, Sydney. See you there. Don’t forget Abe Duque on the Friday night, same location.

A poll of our marketing team shows that 53% are Generation Y, 36% are Generation X, and the remaining 11% are Baby Boomers - which clearly illustrates that members of Generation X and Y are beginning to dominate the workforce.

Each generation after the next often has issues in understanding what makes them tick, and the reverse also holds true. However, at this point in time, it’s rare that you will see a Gen Y’er managing a Baby Boomer. Whilst the younger person needs to be proficient in upwardly managing them (a skill which comes with time) - whilst important, it’s certainly less of an issue compared with opposite, which needs to occur from day one.

David DiStefano, CEO of Richardson - a leading sales training and consulting firm, explains what motivates these workers and how managers can get the most from them.

Courtesy of bnet (which is incidentally, one of my new favourite websites).