Guess the cartoon character with Lego

These print ads for Lego are by German ad agency Jung von Matt.

They've created a series of ads called 'Imagine' that feature minimalist interpretations of some of the best known cartoon characters.

See if you can work out which is which:

Some hints for you:

Revolutionary Gaul
Underground Martial Arts
On the Street
A Nuclear Family
Not North of the Playground

IronmongeryDirect shortlisted in ECMOD Direct Commerce Awards

Our client IronmongeryDirect has been short listed in the ECMOD Direct Commerce Awards this year.

According to ECMOD (Every Channel Mastered Optimised Delivered), 'The Awards have spearheaded the recognition of business excellence for organisations engaged in direct-to-customer retailing across traditional and newly emerging channels. With categories designed for those targeting sales to businesses as well as for those selling to consumers, these unique awards also seek to celebrate the achievements of businesses of all scales and at all stages of development.'

Well done and good luck in the awards on 27th March.

New insight into the best online advertising formats

The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) has recently completed an international piece of research into online advertising which highlighted that brands are benefiting from bigger online display formats.

The 'Size Matters' study was carried out in the UK, the US, Europe, Australia and South America over a period of almost two years and collected data from 770 campaigns.

The results showed that billboard formats outperformed other online advertising including more recent display formats such as wallpaper and half page, as well as the more traditional ones, such as MPU, banner and skyscraper. Formats were analysed according to five criteria: aided brand awareness, online ad awareness, message association, brand favourability and purchase intent.

The Billboard format performed significantly better across some criteria, scoring three times better in terms of ad awareness and twice as better for brand favourability than wallpaper, the second best format of those measured.

The Wallpaper format offered the highest brand awareness against all other formats and was five times better than the average in terms of message association.

However, not to be left out, the Skyscraper format was the most successful in the purchase intent metric.

Tim Elkington, IAB director of research and strategy, commented, 'The industry can only benefit from the new large display formats, as both brands and consumers seem to be excited by them. The findings from the Size Matters study highlight the advantages of formats like billboard and wallpaper.'

To find out more about online advertising you can find interesting insight on the IAB's website however some of it is only available in full to members.

Stunning staircase at School of Arts

This beautiful staircase was designed by Tétrarc Architects for the School of Arts in Saint Herblain, France. They link two floors within the School of Arts - the 'red conch music and dance theater' on the first floor and an exhibition space located on the second floor.

The project was finished in 2010, however we felt that this stunning design was worth a mention.

Photography by Stéphane Chalmeau 

The secrets behind email marketing revealed

B2B Marketing, the online community for B2B marketing experts, has unveiled its latest Benchmarking Report on email marketing.

The report, which is produced in association with Circle Research, provides a comprehensive insight into the trends, attitudes, metrics and investment in email marketing by B2B brands in the UK.

The research polled 250 client-side marketers on methods of email marketing that provided the best results to boost the performance and success of emails.

Joel Harrison, editor of B2B Marketing, said, “Despite the growth of social media and concerns over inbox overload, our latest benchmarking report has found that email still continues to be a critical weapon in the armoury of B2B marketers.”

Results found that the three key factors that influenced success were Subject, Subject Line and Data.

The research looked at various areas including usage and frequency of email marketing, email marketing budgets and allocation, database relevance and accuracy, ROI and measurement as well as use and performance of email marketing.

You can download a report summary by clicking on the link below or click here to go to B2B Marketing to puchase the full report at a cost of £150 - it looks like invaluable reading!

B2BM Email Marketing Benchmark Summary.pdf (1461 kb)

Goldman Sachs ridiculed across social channels

This was a bad publicity week for Goldman Sachs following the publishing of a letter from a disgruntled employee.   

The content of this letter hit the news worldwide and soon became a social media talking point, at which point it took on a life of its own. From comic blog entries like this one called 'Oscar the Grouch Resigns' (from Sesame Street fame) to a plethora of entries across Pinterest.  

This is a classic case of how just one employee can quickly damage the reputation of a business and how social media spreads the message at an exponential rate. Whether the employee was right or wrong is not for us to judge, however it does demonstrate why businesses should have crisis planning in place to quickly limit the potential damage of such an action. Social Media adds to the potential risk and businesses should be actively monitoring channels to ensure that they are aware of what is being said about them by customers, employees and the general public. A forewarned business is a prepared business.  

It is frightening just how quickly the reputation of a business can be damaged through the posting of video content on social channels - remember the safety demonstration that turned out not to be so safe!



It is difficult to tell just how much this will damage the reputation of Goldman Sachs however in the short term it wiped $2bn off their market value - not a good day at the bank!

New sustainability initative from Formica at Ecobuild 2012

One of our clients, the Formica Group, is exhibiting at Ecobuild (20-22nd March), the world’s biggest event for sustainable design, construction and the built environment and the UK’s largest construction event of any kind. We will be supporting them throughout the three-day event which takes place at the ExCeL exhibition and conference centre in London’s Docklands, and have set up press interviews, designed a special brochure for the event and look forward to making a special announcement at the show relating to a major sustainability initiative which underlines the company’s commitment to meet the challenges of tomorrow.  

Renee Hytry Derrington and Gavin Todd, Formica Group senior executives will be at the stand, offering a unique insight into the company’s product innovation and sustainability strategies.   After 99 years of defining the look and performance of modern interiors worldwide, the company goes all out (excuse the pun) with its innovative exterior facade panels VIVIX which will be showcased in the UK for the first time at Ecobuild. A perfect way to celebrating many decades of innovation!

See more about Formica and the Environment here.

Magnetic flooring offers flexibility

Karndean Designflooring have teamed up with IOBAC ltd, 3M and InterfaceFLOR to offer one of the most innovative flooring system to hit the market in recent times.

Time spent installing or changing flooring can mean losing valuable sales, so a system that allows you to do it quickly and cleanly has to be worth considering. 

The patented metallic resin is applied to the subfloor, left to dry for 60 minutes and covered with magnetised Karndean Designflooring products. You can lift and replace tiles at will to give the ultimate in flexible interior design. 

 See how it works here:

Gumdrop Bin wins Homes and Gardens Award

The Gumdrop Bin is the brainchild of Anna Bullus who noticed that not only was chewing gum a material that was being wasted but it was also polluting our environment.  

She set about solving the problem by creating a bin using recycled chewing gum and called it Gumdrop. It's manufactured from a new plastic polymer using chewing gum and then moulded into shape.  

Anna has just won The Homes & Gardens Eco Design Award 2012 so well done for this fantastic idea. Give gum a second life!  

Click here to find out more.

How 30 great ads were made

How 30 Great Ads Were Made: From Idea To Campaign, is a new book by Creative Review's Eliza Williams.

It takes readers behind the scenes of 30 of the last decade's most successful ad campaigns and features interviews with the key creatives, directors and clients for each campaign. The book offers an insight into how great ad campaigns get made, along with some surprising facts about some of the most popular ads of recent times: for example, did you know that the children's brows in the Cadbury's Eyebrows spot were manipulated by puppeteers rather than CGI?

Each campaign featured is illustrated with imagery showing the stages it went through in development – including sketches and early ideas that may have been abandoned, storyboards, animatics and photos from shoots, and shots of the final ads.

This is a great present for ad addicts. Find out more on Creative Review.

Get ready to cringe. Here comes 'Dads in Briefs'!

This is a very funny ad but also quite disturbing at the same time. Be prepared to cringe!

Here comes 'Dads in Briefs'.



For BHG Air Conditioners it gets its point across very well.

The Ordos Museum lands in the Gobi desert

The Ordos Art and City Museum in Mongolia is an amorphous building that seems to have just landed on this incredible landscape.

It was designed by MAD Archtiects and is surrounded be the dunes of the Gobi desert with stairways and belvederes that grow out of the earth.

Located in the new city center of Ordos, the space itself is deeply rooted in the local culture. To view on ArchDaily  click here or watch this atmospheric video.

The Gopher Hole celebrates its first year in Primary style

The Gopher Hole, an independent space for emerging architecture and design in London, has been in operation for just over a year.

To celebrate this and thank some of their participants, exhibitors and visitors they invited illustrator Shin-Hye Lee to commemorate 2011 with a new work.   

The illustration is the first of The Gopher Hole's annual commissions to an emerging designer. Shin-Hye has made 'Year One 2011' in the style of a primary school tea-towel, using different drawing techniques - sometimes using her left hand - to illustrate some of the figures who have contributed to The Gopher Hole during the year.

A fun way to celebrate a successful first year. See more here.

Cartier ad takes you out of this world

This amazing ad for Cartier aired on Friday night (9th March) and lasts for three and a half minutes. It follows a snow leopard as it travels across the world from Moscow to China and on to Paris.

The cinematography is beautiful with added CGI of giant elephants, golden dragons, pioneering airplanes and a frozen Moscow.

Just fantastic and a must see.

Simple illustrations that speak volumes

We really like the work of the Los Angeles based illustrator Nick Lu. Very clever interpretations in a simple illustration style.

These illustrations are called, 'Play at Work', Hearse and Ice Fishing.

Nick cites his influences as "Hockney, Picasso, Milton Glaser, Tibor and Maira Kalman, Christoph Niemann, Chip Kidd, Chris Ware and many more; I love movies, anything by Wong Kar-Wai, Pedro Almodovar, Wes Anderson; music, sports, books and pretty much everything else I come across that’s interesting."

See more of his work here.

A scary prediction for the paperless office!

In a world that is going paperless, or so we have been told for the last 20 years, Canadian paper manufacturer Domtar Paper is challenging the concept through a campaign called 'Paper Because' by ad agency Eric Mower Associates.

In an ad called 'Office' they show what the digital world would be like without paper.

Let's hope it doesn't come to this for the sake of all our sanity!



Find out more about the campaign here.

Charlie Sheen premieres in two new ads

Advertisers in the US appear to be taking Charlie Sheen under their wing with two new ads featuring the infamous star premiering last week.

The first for Fiat sees him racing around his house in a new Fiat, making a point about being under house arrest, and the second sees him acting out the film Platoon with someone he meets in a Turkish baths for DirectTV.






Not sure whether the association of Charlie Sheen with mainstream brands is a good one and definitely question Fiat's choice of brand ambassador! What do you think?

Casting a new light on wallpaper

These LED wallpapers from Architects Paper are a great innovation and will make quite an impression in the right environment.

The paper has LED lights embedded within a circuit board design.

The designer comments, "The LED wallpaper offers very thrilling possibilities to illuminate rooms: Dimmed, enigmatic light hardly revealing where the shine is coming from or an urban vibrating atmosphere – to mention only a few options."

"It’s magic! A big advantage also is that the LED wallpaper can be hung in more or fewer strips and lengths according to the architecture and furnishing of a room. Interior designers have the choice."

See more on Trendir.

Invisible ink makes a come back

The solar energy association in Austria has recently issued its annual report. This may not be a mention-worthy event usually except that this year they have printed it on light sensitive paper.

When indoors the paper appears to be blank but as soon as it is exposed to sunlight the details start to appear.  This is a great way to reinforce the message from the association but must be a bit frustrating if its raining outside!

Remote control cafe demonstrates bad design

This year Helsinki has the accolade of being World Design Capital and as a part of the legacy of the event the organisers wanted to engage with a wider audience of local residents to explain why design is so important in all our lives.

They decided to get the conversation going about the impact of good and bad design by creating a remote controlled café. This cafe included a range of badly design items, to demonstrate what good design means to us all, whilst anyone could remotely control the environment through a web interface.

When local residents popped in for a coffee they would find their chairs raising and lowering, whilst tables adjusted and items like sugar and napkin dispensers just did not work.



The interactive space was a great success and gained a lot of publicity, including a feature spot on the national news with the newsreaders getting into the action.