Claire Beale On Advertising: It's time adland wised up to Twitter

If you follow these things you'll probably know that the biggest topic trending on Twitter in the US last week was something called SXSW, a painfully fashionable gathering at the cutting edge of music, film and interactive media. It takes place every year in Austin, Texas, and is cooler than a Mr Whippy. The SXSW (or South By Southwest as it's known by those...- 22/03/2010, Advertising

Claire Beale On Advertising: Fighting crime is clever marketing

Isn’t it interesting that it’s taken vulnerable corporate balance sheets to really get big businesses thinking carefully about how to make life better for all of us. Adland’s cynics had expected the recession to put a brake on all those fluffy marketing initiatives designed to tell consumers how green and caring the world’s bigg...- 15/03/2010, Advertising

Claire Beale On Advertising: It's time to go easy on the airbrush

I was having lunch with a creative director who makes ads starring what you might respectfully call a mature actress. "So how much touching up do you do?" I asked, and it occurred to neither of us that the question might have any meaning other than a digital one. My creative rolled his eyes. "Oh my God, loads," he said wearily. "It's like t...- 08/03/2010, Advertising

Claire Beale On Advertising: A screen veteran at the age of five

When you think about it, digital years are like dog years. Only shorter. Twelve digital months are perhaps 10 years in the real world; change happens fast and fads die young. So as YouTube celebrates its fifth birthday this month it is already a digital granddaddy, with a rich well of history and experience and oh so many embarrassing moments ...- 01/03/2010, Advertising

Claire Beale on Advertising: Why the Redknapps make adland sick

It is, of course, fabulously ridiculous. The image of golden glossy Louise and buffed hubby Jamie Redknapp pouting and posing on a package holiday. And don't they drool on about it. "We dream aboudit. We fantasise aboudit. We chill ouw on it." Fair enough, their package holiday is not like any you and I have ever been on. No check-in...- 22/02/2010, Advertising

Claire Beale On Advertising: An Absolut break from the norm

Director Spike Jonze has made his first love story. It's a short one, a 30-minute film. And strange. Naturally. Its melancholic and dreamy, loved-up stars are two robots, one a librarian, the other a free-spirited lady android. They're all plastic and wire, like reclaimed computing cast-offs from a decade or two back. Retro, for robots. But t Th...- 15/02/2010, Advertising

Claire Beale On Advertising: Dove goes in search of the real man

Yesterday was Super Bowl Sunday and America tuned in. For US advertisers it’s the biggest event of the year. You can do things with a TV ad in the Super Bowl that you can’t do anywhere else. Like reach 100 million people in one place. You can move a nation. This is testosterone television, so it’s no surprise that one of the worl...- 08/02/2010, Advertising

Claire Beale On Advertising: They've already got an app for that

Respect to Beattie McGuinness Bungay. As the world balanced on the edge of its seat last week to see Steve Jobs parading Apple's new iPad, BMB had already designed an app for it. Even before we all knew what it was going to look like, what it was going to be called, even if – actually – it was going to exist at all, BMB had unveiled the fir...- 01/02/2010, Advertising

Claire Beale On Advertising: Smaller, fitter, leaner – and older

The advertising industry is shrinking. Literally. The number of employees in the sector decreased by nearly 2,000 last year. Everything's getting smaller, from the budgets to the fees to – inevitably – the teams producing the work. Two thousand people might sound like a small chip, but advertising is not a big block. For an industry that make...- 25/01/2010, Advertising

Claire Beale on Advertising: Parties primed for a digital election

There's no point denying it, advertising doesn't always tell it quite like it is. Of course, all ads have to be honest and decent and true. There are rules about that. But sometimes the truth isn't quite pretty enough. Take David Cameron. Is he really the unblemished cherub of the recent Tory poster campaign, even-toned and smooth as a baby's bottom? Or ...- 18/01/2010, Advertising

Claire Beale on Advertising: An industry bruised by its own hand

Trust the ad industry to kick off the new year in some style. Last week a new campaign which set out to prove the power of advertising imploded embarrassingly under the weight of a serious consumer backlash. And the ad business found itself, bloodied and bruised, under siege. Again. The cause of all the trouble was a campaign launched by the poster industry...- 11/01/2010, Advertising

Claire Beale On Advertising: Consumers will shape brands in 2010

As the new year breaks, you'll find the advertising industry clutching a whole new set of forecasts and predictions (fingers crossed behind their backs) in the hope of offering their shell-shocked clients some clarity on what lies ahead. Time, then, for a little crystal-ball tickling. - 04/01/2010, Advertising

On Advertising: Compare the best ads of 2009? It's easy

They say that hard times foster great creativity: so in a year of almost unrelenting doom, adland optimists were waiting for a new creative dawn. It didn't come. There were pockets of extraordinary and inspiring work, but 2009 was far from a vintage year for the ad industry. Here, though, are the 10 best ads of the last 12 months.- 28/12/2009, Advertising

Claire Beale On Advertising: Amid all the jitters, Twitter is the winner

Will anyone in advertising be sorry to see the back of 2009? No one at the sharp end of commercial media. If your business relied on advertising for its revenues this year, you've almost certainly been screwed. Advertising revenue ... well, you know the story: down, down, down. Newspapers, magazines, TV, radio, posters, the web: content has been ...- 21/12/2009, Advertising

Claire Beale On Advertising: Sony needs to set the ball rolling again

Go on then, what's the best ad of the last decade? Which commercial has taken you by the scruff, held you rapt, entertained you, moved you (and, yes, the best ads should be able to do all of that)? There's no right answer. We probably won't agree, but here's what I think. The best ad of the last 10 years was created by Fallon for Sony. It's calle...- 14/12/2009, Advertising