'The Process' of Making a 686 Parka

We're approaching a world where you can print out your party shoes the same way you used to print out study notes. This makes it easy to forget what kind of work really goes into producing something you bought off a rack ... especially if it was hanging there with five other windbreakers that looked exactly alike, accounting for differences of size.

686 takes us to a factory in China to show us roughly what goes into producing one of its jackets. I still don't know how a sewing machine works and am afraid of learning at the risk of having my fingernails stapled permanently to their nailbeds, which is sort of embarrassing when you think of how many other people's nailbeds are at risk so I can have orange snowboarding pants.

Poll: Favourite Monsters.

Someone once told me that you can tell a lot about a person based on their favourite monster. I think I have always liked vampires because of their hipsterish sadness. They have eternal youth going on, coupled with the whole "being alone in the dark with no one to love me is so lonely" thing. It's the human condition, except their cocktails of choice are alienating.

They are also nicely dressed and seem to favour the arts and solitary forms of leisure, I guess because what else are you going to do for all eternity between eating sprees?

So. What's your favourite monster and why?

Because Your Eyes Have Better Things to Do. Like Dart!

In "Vision" for Verizon FiOS, McCann NY captures a moment we've all experienced and can immediately recognise once we see the punchline. We'll give you a hint: it puts you in a trancelike state of wait, but instead of relaxing you it makes you want to kill small mammals.

Very clever, and the pacing doesn't rush the message in. Nails a problem we've learned to live with (the worst kind!) right on its head.

A Story 'Framed' on an iPhone 4S

There's nothing flashy or tech-sexy about Maël Sevestre's "Framed", but that's what makes it special. Sometimes it helps to be reminded that, as handheld technology improves our production capacities, we can still tell timeless, slow-moving stories in addition to the hard stuff that dilates pupils.

This is also solid soft marketing for the iPhone 4S itself, which boasts an 8 megapixel camera that drive-by photogs, camera guys and citizen journalists can use to better capture what's going on behind their eyes.

(Not so) Strictly ballroom + the private label content evolution

Sosh, a new mobile brand owned by Orange, has released this gorgeous homage to dance, appropriately titled "Danse(s)", with help from photog/director James Bort.

The Bortstah on its roots:

I wanted to pay homage to dance, all forms of dance, like a piece of music played with multiple instruments. The idea was to reunite seven dancers and as many universes, countries, styles, ages and personalities.

The casting call happened September 19 via a number of socnets, including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Amateur and professional dancers are included. Production happened in early October at Paris Beaux Arts.

This is one of many fresh inroads in premium social branding. (Consider. And also!)

Humor me ››

Proof that We Are Masochists

I didn't care much before, but now I really do want that goddamn 4S so I can sing to her and she can push me away in her coquettish robotic doing-the-best-I-can-knowing-I-can't-sue-you-for-harassment-because-I'm-not-human kind of way.

Siri, will you...?

Via the one, the only So Particular.

(FYI, AdVerveBlog.com is currently tumblr-transitioning so in the meantime I'll be impulse-posting here more than usual. Probably. I am still trying to think of personal things to say that don't involve poo but am having trouble. Oh! I got my hair cut today. And while gazing up at the spotlights during the washing part, I saw sunspots shaped like pixellated LOLcats. I swear to God this happened.)

Scorsese's George Harrison Documentary...

...looks so epic that I'm getting stomach cramps. There's something about Beatles memorabilia that makes me feel desperately nostalgic for a time I didn't even live.* How does that happen?

---

*These kinds of feelings are like dangerous black holes that you have to watch very closely, because if you're not careful you could topple into them and become one of those wild-eyed dusty people whose homes are decked out in Sgt. Pepper posters and Beatles biographies. I sometimes also feel this way about Star Trek: Deep Space 9. Like, when I've had too much to drink and am feeling dejected, I am filled with the conviction that all my competencies would be appreciated on DS9, and I would be well-loved and witty like Jadzia Dax, and it seems wildly unfair that this world in which I so obviously fit is completely inaccessible -- not because it's the past, but because it is fiction.


This is the kind of stuff that can devastate you emotionally if you're not careful. So take a sip (in this case, WATCH GEORGE HARRISON'S BIOPIC) but don't fall into the bottle like Alice did.

Air France, "L'Envol" + the Sublime

This ad by BETC Euro RSCG, an Air France piece called "L'Envol" ("The Flight"), is my favourite :30 thing in the world right now. It doesn't overexpress and leaves ideas about flying, trust, well-choreographed harmony and abandon simmering quietly under your skin.

Here's the making-of. The director's comments are great.

   

 I've just returned from MIPCOM in Cannes; more on that later. But this was passed to me by my friend James and was exactly what I needed after a week of "transmedia" chatter and too many watered-down vodka tonics. You want home, you want to feel safe, and you want all of it from the very beginning of the return journey.