6. Giants thinking small

There are a ton of bad ideas out there, some good ones, and the occasional great idea. So when I find news of an ad outside of sources that would usually be talking about such things, I take notice. Honestly, I can't recall exactly where I found the topic of this post, but it was likely Reddit.

Anyway, on to the the meat of this conversation. Usually banner advertisements bother me for the sole reason they distract from the content I'm actually on the site to view, but this is different. Furniture giant Ikea created a tiny version of itself that fits within a banner ad while containing 2,800 products. Here is the video Ikea posted on Vimeo giving a little background, and this is the link to the banner itself.

I could get lost in here.

What is not to love about this? Ikea clearly communicates the importance of saving space that it holds dear and they do it with style. Browsing through 2,800 products is surprisingly easy and also fun. Plus, the addition of using the products to divide the banner into five categories representing their contents is just plain awesome.

5. Know your audience

As some of my classmates have no doubt already discovered, Miller Lite has a new punch top can. The first time I saw the ad was without sound, as I was in the library sans headphones, so I was forced to interpret using only the images provided. Doing so is actually rather fun, like a game, and I suggest you do the same.

(My Thoughts)

Without audio: A can designed to alleviate the problem that Miller Lite spends too much time in contact with your unfortunate taste buds?

With audio: Spot on.

Though the video says that the can is designed for a smoother pour, it's easy to tell, even without viewing the large amount of blog coverage it has received, that this product is really meant for shotgunning. Disregarding my opinions on the product itself, I honestly think that this is kind of cool. MillerCoors knows that Miller Lite is not a drink consumed for its quality, people drink Miller Lite quickly and in large quantities.

I admit that I much prefer the slogan "Great Beer, Great Responsibility." Sort of like the Spider-Man of cheap alcohol.

4. Quick tidbits

The teacher of my fourth and fifth grade classes at the small elementary school I attended did not have television. I found this fact scandalous, and somewhat horrifying that people could be so out of touch with the times and world around them. Ten years later, and I can completely understand how he managed to do it.

While television may only be one of the many venues that a brand communicates with the world through, it does offer a convenient lens to see how certain brands think of and present themselves.

So for those that also lack a television I offer a few cool places on the internet.

Besides the obvious choice of adweek, I think that Bēhance is a rather nice site for seeing what people are creating, Good does a good job of letting you find something interesting no matter what you're looking for, and AdPorn and its sibling subreddit AdGeek offer up some interesting content.

3.The perfect pen

If one were so inclined they could easily label me a doodler, or possibly a doodling enthusiast. A short trip through any notebook that was once mine, from grade school onward, would reveal that my hand cannot resist defacing any paper in my possession. Had my parents not been concerned with my success in school I would probably still have the habit of drawing on homework assignments.

Likely similar to many of my classmates, I have a preferred pen that I use to doodle and draw; the Pigma Micron .35mm by Sakura America.

Who knew pens could be so alluring?

Once I decided that ballpoints were no longer my thing it only took a short amount of time until I settled on my current favorite. Not once did I look online for the best pens of the year, ask any friends, or see an ad for their product. Although I know it's not really possible, I sometimes wish that I could select my purchases like I choose my pens: going into a store and testing every single product. Everyone is looking for something different in a pen, so being able to feel the pen and how it touches the paper, along with the width of the stroke and qualities of the ink, is rather important. I honestly don't know much about pens but I know without a doubt that these are my favorite so far, and Sakura doesn't scream in my face to purchase its product, it lets me decide that the Pigma Micron is the product for me.

2. VitaminWater makes the internet feel bad

I spend a lot of time on the internet. A lot. So when I saw an ad for VitaminWater between my allotted doses of The Daily Show, I was sad, like a little girl who just had her puppy run over by the horse trailer taking her pony to the glue factory. Watch this and find out what I mean.

I can't tell if this is a really good example of trying to force the cool factor or if VitaminWater wants to ruin what little life remains in memes, possibly both. Saturating a video to the point of critical mass with memes robs them of what little value they have left. This video is like a new acquaintance that learns every in-joke between a group of friends, only to end up regurgitating the disembodied husks of things that were once humorous. This stark and lifeless presentation only makes me doubt whether my entertainment was justified in the first place, and it just screams "LOOK AT ME! I AM FUNNY AND RELEVANT!"

No, no you are not.

1. Of blogs and things

Blogging really isn't my thing. I know that many others aspire to be in the advertising industry hope to attain recognition for their achievements, but that's really not my shindig, which is probably why it's taken so long to get around to creating the first post to this blog. It isn't that I lack interest in the advertising world, it's just that I don't really care if people know what I think, that could totally be the point of this whole blog assignment though... so I'm going to give it my best shot (there is a lot of interesting stuff out there).

As the thing that inspired me to start typing up my thoughts so their bones can be picked apart by the ravens of my class, beer is interesting. In this case the wonderful -- I normally am not a big beer fan -- Deschutes Brewery Hop Henge IPA.

 Breweries face the problem of creating something that can not only stand out from the rest of its family but also from the multitudinous legions of other beers available on the market. So the design of the labels for these bottles are often memorable and aesthetically pleasing. A small example can be seen here. Hop Henge does this well also, at first the label is a simple but memorable depiction of Stonehenge, but upon closer inspection not only is the artwork representative of the large variety of hops in the brew, but all the information that really needs to be located on a beer are just presented in such a nice manner as compared to some other breweries, such as Ninkasi (no hate, I promise).