welcome to optimism

asimo's impossible dream

Stories in The Guardian and The Times yesterday about Honda's Asimo robot debuting as a conductor. He led the Boston Symphony Orchestra in a performance of 'The Impossible Dream'.

The Guardian said, 'Asimo wowed the audience and even impressed some of the musicians. "The movements are still a little stiff, but very humanlike, much more fluid than I thought," said bassist Larry Hutchinson.'

The Times reported: “It is absolutely thrilling to perform with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra,” said Asimo, when the performance was over. “This is a magnificent concert hall.”

The musicians themselves seemed to enjoy the experience. “The nice thing about this conductor is that it always does the same thing twice,” said one trumpeter.

Quite gratifying for us that Asimo chose to conduct The Impossible Dream, as it neatly brings together two strands of the work Wieden + Kennedy has developed for Honda UK.

nike live

Behind the scenes on set last night, prior to filming.

Last night saw the recording of Nike Live: The Cesc Fabregas Show in front of a live studio audience in Wembley. It's a one-off TV event celebrating the success of the young Arsenal star. Over 7 months in the making, it was a big number. One of the biggest projects that Nike UK has ever undertaken, while it was hard work - in true Nike style - it shows their determination to push for and develop truly creative, innovative work. The initial idea came from AKQA and has been developed in partnership between them, W+K London, Attention Seekers and, of course, Nike UK. The atmosphere last night was electric - with 600 hundred young arsenal fans hailing Fabregas and Arsene Wenger.

 

From a communications perspective, this is just the start. We have already created and seeded key pieces of content seeded to some of the most influential bloggers in football. See below for a couple of sample clips.

We'll release further pieces from last night's live show to drive traffic back to the main hub so as you can download / watch the show in chapters from the site, which is at http://www.skysports.com/nikelivefabregas/.

 

The full-length show featuring Cesc, Wenger, star guests and, er, Cesc's mum and dad, will be broadcast on Sky Sports from next week.

The audience waits for the show to start.

Interview with the man himself. Below: a couple of the viral / teaser pieces created by W+K:

cleaning up the streets

On the way back from an ordinary Guardian meeting on an ordinary Monday
morning, something weird happened. Karen, Emma and Beth stumbled across a
proper East End crime scene - graffiti besmirching the pristine facade of W+K's palatial offices. Thanks heavens for Ronny's handy miniature paint roller/tray combo: the status quo was quickly restored.

way of life!

When we first met Honda, we were worried about their global strapline, 'The Power of Dreams'. We thought about changing it. We wondered if we could make it really small and hide it. But we learned that it came directly from the philosophy of Soichiro Honda, the company's founder. We worked with it and used it as a way to explain Honda's point of view. In the end, 'the power of dreams' turned out to be a good thing for our work.

But I'm not so sure about the line I've noticed Suzuki has been using to sign off its UK campaign: 'Way of life!' Apparently this is intended to convey that they make "vehicles that are designed for life enthusiasts – those who choose to live life to the fullest and not simply watch it go by".

But I can't help being reminded of the strange and charming 'Japlish' sometime used in Japanese brand names and slogans - 'Pocari Sweat' drink and T shirts that say things like 'Active sports life I maintain'.

(Kind of the Asian equivalent of western people who have T -shirts or tattoos of 'cool' Japanese kanji characters but don't know what they actually mean.)

The exclamation mark on Way of Life! somehow enhances that perception. But, rather than acknowledging the Japlish vibe and exploiting it to acquire a bit of Japanese pop culture cool - like Uniqlo has been doing recently - the Suzuki UK campaign seems to be trying to ignore the whole 'Way of Life!' thing. Instead, it's borrowed Harp's old 'Time for a Sharp Exit' campaign and adapted it to 'Time for a Swift Exit.'

It's a bit of a missed opportunity, as it would have been great to see the Swift advertised with a line like,"Go super young sexy driving life like me".

hello helen

This is Helen Foulder who has just joined us at W+K as a full time account director working on the Nokia business. She is from Liverpool. She lives around the corner from here – which is handy, but I don't think the convenient commute was the only reason for her decision to accept the job.

difficult is worth doing (again)

Wieden + Kennedy's 'difficult is worth doing' TV work for Honda breaks today in the UK, as reported (above) by The Guardian.

You can visit the 'difficult is worth doing' blog here.

Here's another of the teasers:

difficult is worth doing

First elements of a new Honda TV campaign break on Monday. We're putting together a blog on which you can find further info about the production: http://difficultisworthdoing.typepad.com/

Previews of the TV teasers can be seen on Youtube.

curry in brick lane

Welcome to Optimism by name and nature, the Wieden + Kennedy blog is a nice look at life in a trendy advertising agency. It's on-brand and does a good job of marketing W+K.

So says this week's Campaign magazine. And here is another trendy post from London's fashionable East End.

Above: Neville (apparently a hypochondriac but he did get a nasty infection in his foot) and Emily (a little bit apprehensive about how mum will react to the new lip piercing.) Emily claimed this was the first time she'd ever been for a curry.

Below: Ben. (Remarkably, and somewhat alarmingly, Ben eats McDonald's for lunch almost every day.)

save the children - burma

Save the Children were the first aid agency to be active on the ground in Burma. They've already helped over 50,000 children. But that's only 10% of  the 500,000 that are homeless as a result of Saturday's cyclone.

They need your money. And fast.

So please get your credit card out and save some kids. Every little helps.

http://www.savethechildren.org.uk/

 

pitching (3)

Here are the team, in a basement at the Department of Health, minutes before this afternoon's pitch presentation.
L-R: Gav (IT wizard), Lisa (Planning guru and footwear fetishist), Andy (Account Director and sky jockey), Frank and Sam (Creative team and big thinkers). Not shown: Neil (Management and vocals.) Also not shown: vast army of people behind the scenes that made the pitch possible.
Fingers crossed for the next round.

pitching (2)

Around 11.30pm last night. No panic yet, but there was evidence of tiredness as we gathered in the studio to fiddle with stuff.

let's get lost (not)

New executions above from a campaign just breaking in india that we created for the Nokia 6110 Navigator, a handset that is designed to help you find your way around via built-in GPS and Nokia Maps. This is particularly beneficial in India, where availability and use of traditional maps have been low. The lettering on the posters was all shot on location in India from street signs and the urban environment.

pitching

Our pitch for the COI/Department of Health anti-obesity campaign is tomorrow. Pitch timing means that, as well as several weeks of development up until now, the team spent the sunny bank holiday weekend working away in a sweaty basement. Do the laws of physics prevent any pitch being finished ahead of the night before the presentation so that everyone can go home on time and rest? In my experience, at any agency I've worked at, it seems that way.

24 hours to go now...tension mounting, but panic hasn't set in yet. That usually comes at around, oh, 2.00 am.

Sam Heath (creative) runs through work with Kim (CD).

nokia evolves

Wieden + Kennedy has just created a site for the Nokia 3110 Evolve, Nokia's new environmentally friendly handset. You can see the site and learn more about the 3110 Evolve at http://www.nokia.co.uk/evolve
The site is divided into four sections. Each section features a video interview with someone from Nokia who worked on the development of the handset, talking about the thinking behind it.

Sally Turner, Lead Designer on the Nokia 3110 Evolve.

The handset is made from bio-materials and uses a low-load charger that stops using electricity once the 3110 is charged.

 

fun with homonyms

Nick Cohen (W+K Shanghai) meets Nic Owen (W+K London). 

things you don't see when you work at Saatch & Saatchi no.231

Noe's fiercely individual approach to fashion continues to break new boundaries.

doppelganger

Above left is a pic we posted recently of Wieden + Kennedy planner Lisa Prince with one of the W+K rats.
Above right is Lisa's rather spooky Spanish lookalike, who writes:

Good afternoon, Lisa:

My name is Helena and I work as a copy and art director in an Avertising Agency in Seville (Spain). Today we (some of my team's people and I) were looking into advertising agencies around the world which had blogs in the internet, and so i came across a photograph of some girl that looks just like me. I went through the "people" entry in the main webpage and found this email address. I don't know whether you're the same Lisa that appears in the photograph with the little white rat, but if you are, i think you should have a look at my face. It's amazing! I just wanted to share my surprise with you.

I hope you'll enjoy this coincidence as much as we did.

Regards from your spanish you.

Separated at birth?

honda mojave

In our ceaseless quest to get further under the skin of Honda (or as Renny would have it, 'sub-dermal') a crack W+K team  including Jon Tapper (second from left) and Tony Davidson (human windmill) tried to break into the Honda R&D facility in Mojave today.

Got as far as the front gate. Probably just as well.

philosophy

This is the wieden + kennedy philosophy (such as it is), expressed in visual terms. This poster was created by WK12 in Portland. (Click on the image to enlarge.) The guys just sent us one over, so we're going to frame it and hang it up somewhere.

the finest street legal antiperspirant that you can get outside of mexico that's not poisonous

Honda: drive every drop

Our first campaign for Honda in Asia, created and developed in partnership with Wieden + Kennedy Tokyo, is starting to appear. First manifestation is the drive every drop website.

The site invites visitors to find out about a road trip across Asia in a Honda powered by the new i-VTEC engine. If you log on to the site you can add a drop of petrol towards the journey and help choose who drives the car, where it goes and who it visits on its real life road trip. There will be a spare seat in the car to enable people to hop on board for part of the trip. From May you'll be able to follow the journey on the website via blogs and webfilms.

The idea behind the campaign is to get people to think about fuel used on journeys drop by drop rather than gallon by gallon, and to consider the environmental benefits of the i-VTEC engine, which is designed to get the most out of every drop of fuel.

Hate mural

Here's a little mural for anyone who's ever hated. In reception of Honda UK's offices in Langley. Based on our Grrrr commercial.

new Honda campaign

Popping up on poster sites across the UK now: the beginning of a new Honda campaign from Wieden + Kennedy London. (That's us.) More to be revealed shortly.

watching the watchmen

Comix fans will know that Alan Moore's Watchmen is one of the most critically acclaimed graphic novels of all time.
It's currently being made into a film and the director Zack Snyder has had a cool idea: he's asking fans to create fake advertising to be used in the background of the film.
An interesting new spin on user-generated content. And a great way to start spreading fanboy buzz while the film's still in production.

You can watch director Zack Snyder explaining the thing on a Watchmen YouTube channel here.

Will be interesting to see how many people actually take part. The quality of the ads that you can see on YouTube so far is, er, not high. Here's one:

Rat Chat

Hi there Rat Fans!

Milk Teeth

This week kids, Mel and Anna show you how to make a big set of teeth

project: free the walls (2)

This morning, our back stairs have gone peculiar. The stairwell has been subject to an intervention.
No longer is it a dead space, left neglected and unloved. From today, it is a communal art space that is to be FREELY infected with whatever W+K folk wish to put on its walls, stairs, shelves or floors. The process has been started by a team of W+K Culture Clubbers.
Numerical wiring on the second floor:

Beaded curtain on the entrance to the basement:

Some strange little egghead fellas:

The wiring has turned into a sprouting pot plant.

Not 100% sure what this is.

Stairwell designated meeting area:

Map of the world made from the appropriate national stamps:

One step beyond:

A cupboard made from a Nike shoebox:

I wonder what's inside. Ahh... a pair of tiny trainers.

They're so wee. Perhaps they belong to rock mini-god Prince.
This is only the start of the project.

There's  still a lot of space to use.

FREE THE WALLS!

project: free the walls (1)

Last night, under cover of darkness, a dedicated crack team of W+K Culture Clubbers worked away to transform our back stairs...

lisa's bike

Lisa's bike is fitted with an unusual form of upholstered crash protection.

Hello Jason

Nerd alert: this is Jason Clement, our new Director of Search. You can check out Jason's blog 'The Real Jason Clement' here. He needs the hits in order to differentiate himself from the other Jason Clement. Jason's message for readers of Welcome to Optimism: use CSS. (Cascading style sheets.) I initially thought this was a reference to CSS, the Brazilian dance-punk band.

Jason explained why Cascading Style Sheets are a lot more interesting than the band behind "Music is my hot hot sex". Clearly, I have a lot to learn about search optimisation.