The Best TV Christmas Ads

I wrote this on the Cybercom Blog, a round up of the best TV Christmas Ads...

1. The first ad on the list could only be one ad. Coca-Cola were the people who made Santa a fat man with a white beard and red suit, and now we all accept it. Possibly the best marketing ever? These are the two we like best - ad & ad


2. Of course it wouldn't be Christmas without an ad for everyone's favourite stout!


3. This John Lewis ad is brilliant - clever idea and a perfect execution.


4. There's a good chance if you're not Scottish you won't like Iron Bru, but their ad is hilarious.


5. This isn’t just an ad, it’s an M&S Christmas ad. Recently reused, this is more of a technically brilliant ad.


6. This creative concept has possibly been dragged out too long, having said that, this ad definitely touches the right emotions of anyone who has family coming home for Christmas.


7. Ah but with your tv ad you are spoiling us. A nice Christmas ad from Ferrero Rocher seems to exist at Christmas.


8. We only remembered this BA ad when we saw it (probably not a good sign) but it's worth remembering that there was a time when they had some of the largest budgets in the world.


9. There are some ads that you remember as if they've been around forever, and this ad is certainly one of them - great stuff from Budweiser.


10. Finally, when it comes to mushy feelings, this may be the best Christmas ad - Kellogs managed a cuteness factor of 120%

Mapping the Future

If you haven't come across this site, you must check it out. Basically it's a timeline charting the progress and development of various aspects of society through to the end of 2012. Each node is clickable and gives a wealth of industry informations.

How To Do Digital

Check out this fantastic post over on Scamp, by guest writer James Cooper, creative director of Dare. It's funny but ultimately completely true.

1. Keep it simple
2. Be original.
3. Doing digital is harder than TV.
4. Great digital work usually comes from teamwork.
5. The digital equivalent to ‘Balls’ is Nike +.
6. It’s actually easy to win an award if that’s all you want to do.
7. If you are going to use celebs, do it in an interesting way rather than just plonking them on a site.
8. People talk a lot about community and social networking.
9. Don’t take yourself too seriously.
10. What’s with this conformity?

YouTube removes Satriani/Coldplay videos

It’s been a rough year for Coldplay. Sure they’ve managed a hit number one album but they’ve also encountered two separate accusations of plagiarism. First up was Andrew Hoepfner, lead singer and songwriter of the Creaky Boards, who accused Chris Martin of stealing elements of their song 'The Songs I Didn't Write'. The case was shaky and was quickly put to rest. Unfortunately it didn’t stop there. Next came Joe Satriani. He accused Coldplay of plagiarism for lifting elements of his song "If I Could Fly" for its hit song "Viva La Vida". The Satriani case is still pending resolution.

What’s interesting is that it has emerged that the many videos, which show the similarities between the songs have started disappearing from YouTube. All this is apparently the work of Coldplay's label, EMI, who claim the videos infringe on its copyright. That would all sound very plausible except that you can still hear Coldplay songs elsewhere on YouTube, including in user-generated videos. So is it one rule for one and another for the other?

It therefore looks most likely that EMI is removing these videos due to their embarrassing nature to Coldplay. It’s not hard to think that a court would think if it saw one of these videos.

Luckily, here’s one that is still live (for the time being):


The even more shocking is that all three bands, Coldplay included, may owe something to this guy, Günther:


All this aside, what is most interesting here is that EMI are using copyright as a way to remove certain videos that it doesn’t want to be seen, while allowing other versions to remain online.

Toshiba announce a 512-GB solid-state drive for notebooks

On Thursday InfoWeek reported that Toshiba have announced the first 2.5-inch, 512-GB solid-state drive for notebooks. The devices will start to roll out as samples in the first quarter of next year, with mass production scheduled for the second quarter. Toshiba have not mentioned pricing to date

These second-generation SSDs utilise a multilevel cell controller that can give read/write speeds of 240 MBps and 200 MBps, respectively.