100 Years for Formica featured in The Guardian

2013 marks the 100th Anniversary of the iconic Formica brand, best known for laminates. The product was developed in USA in 1913 as a replacement for the mineral product 'Mica' and thus was called 'Formica' and did you know that laminate is made from paper? Many people don't.

The Think Tank has worked with Formica in the UK and across EMEA for the past 10 years providing a range of marketing services including PR and as a part of the 100 years celebrations we have been working to raise the profile of the brand and its history through the media and yesterday saw a great article published on the website of The Guardian Newspaper.

Formica is an iconic product that is used all around us in our everyday lives and, judging by the fantastic comments posted on the Guardian website, many people have very fond memories of the brand. One of the pictures featured takes us right back to when The Think Tank was based in Soho and used to frequent the Piccadilly Cafe - we remember it well.

The article, titled 'Shiny, happy households: Formica turns 100', is written by Oliver Wainwright and looks at the history of the brand, and how it has developed and been used over the years.

To find out more about the history of this iconic brand click here and read the full article or alternatively click here to see 'Formica: our century-old laminate love affair – in pictures', also published on the Guardian website.

You can also click below to view the article in PDF form.

Shiny, happy households_...pdf




Shiny, happy households_...pdf (957 kb)

The US Election Campaigns in Graphic Novel Format

If you've not had enough of the US Elections then here is a great round-up of the whole campaign.

The Guardian has produced an interactive graphic novel format of the candidates' campaigns with all the highs and lows.

A good read for any politics junkies.

Click here to read.

A little 'Hangman' distraction with the Guardian

If you fancy a little distraction then check out The Guardian's weekly Hangman game - simple, vintage fun!

Click here to get started.

Winning advertising at the Cannes Lion Festival of Creativity

This year's the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity saw many of the world's leading advertising agencies win awards for some fantastic creative.

There were 15 individual winners for ads out of the 5,195 entries, a demonstration that the advertising industry is still producing some outstanding quality productions.

See three of the winning entries below or visit Adweek to see all 15.  



Chipotle "Back to the Start" - Agency: Creative Artists Agency, Los Angeles



Canal+ "The Bear",  Agency: BETC, Paris



The Guardian "Three Little Pigs", Agency: BBH, London

What can we learn from Shippams Paste Twitter prank?

The @ShippamsPaste Twitter feed which recently took the online world by storm may have been a fake, but it can teach us plenty about how social-media marketing should be.

Over the last few weeks, Twitter has been agog at the rise and fall of @ShippamsPaste, supposedly written by ‘Ben’, an ‘executive social media intern’ at Shippams.

Through the feed, ‘Ben’ shared events from his life at Shippams, his dealings with colleagues and his search for a girlfriend, all played for laughs. He also encouraged followers to ‘engage’ with the Shippams brand by inviting interaction, devising hashtags (‘#paste’), jumping on trending topics and so on. Once word got out, @ShippamsPaste went viral, rocketing to 8000 followers in three weeks. Then Twitter suspended the account for passing itself off as the real thing, restoring it briefly on the condition it admitted to being fake. Its creator, Ed Jefferson (@edjeff), then went public with a Guardian article explaining his motives.

The fake account parodied the lame way in which some brands use social media, working their way through an established playbook of tactics that utterly fail to engage people. As Jefferson explained, ‘faking a spectacularly inept attempt to "do Twitter" just seemed funny – as did picking a real, but nearly forgotten, brand to do it.’ And it was funny. Very funny. @ShippamsPaste showed exactly what brands should be doing by mocking what they are doing. Using Shippams’ products as a jumping-off point rather than the finish line, the feed took the brand into completely uncharted waters and unlocked a previously unsuspected area of potential appeal.

The @ShippamsPaste account was interruptive rather than engaging, and broadcast rather than interactive. It was more like a traditional TV ad than a modern social-media campaign. As a result, it achieved what respected creative Steve Harrison calls ‘relevant abruption’, grabbing audience attention and pulling it towards a product.

In a world where audience attention is increasingly fragmented, the wise brands may be those who learn to ride waves of publicity – even if they haven’t made those waves themselves.

To read more visit econsultancy.com.