6 minutes worth spending on branded entertainment c/o Coca Cola

Call it AFP (ad funded programming) or BE (branded entertainment) as you wish, but here's a stunning piece of animation from Coca Cola as part of their Happification series. Take that as praise indeed from someone that's worked in the industry and knows a thing or two about quality production values. Maybe it's my inner industry nerd but I was rather disappointed not to find any credits on the end.  Nevertheless, nice storytelling, composition and animation and a pleasant way to spend 6 minutes of distraction, that will no doubt engender positive feelings towards the brand and I don't even like drinking the stuff!



AFP & BE are both terms which are increasingly being bandied around by clients and agencies at the moment, but there still seems to be far too much hot air and not enough commitments made.  There are many many marketers who frequently can't see beyond a 30" or 60" commercial, ignoring the talent of the many many uber creative little production companies out there (and some of the bigger ones too) that can make a lot of great content for very reasonable money considering it's value stretches way beyond the average wear-out life-cycle of product related advertising now that we live in a multi-media multi-platform long tail world.

Sure, 6 mins of high quality scripting, storboarding, composition and animation / post production won't come super cheap but divied up across a brand with a worldwide presence it's tantamount to peanuts.  I see so many times that company structures from a pre-digital mass age crippling opportunties. Such a shame.

Cartoon Musical Fun

I'm bonkers busy at the moment. The list of posts I intend to write gets longer, but time is short, so look out for my coming soon musings on the launch of the Alexander Orlov book, complete with Pop Up Shop, my first impressions of the Samsung Galaxy Tablet which launched last week, and increasing irritations with some mobile apps. In the meantime here's a piece I wrote recently on Microsoft Kinect and how we need to design more physical forms of interaction into our brand experiences, and there's some fun bits and pieces I've posted recently over on my Posterous.

Meanwhile, here's a musical cartoon medley I found on YouTube. Maybe it's my background working in animation, but listen carefully to the lyrics. How many cartoons can you spot that you recognise?  I love the fact that there are people out there that have the time and the talent to do this stuff. Fun, original, and made my smile. It's a great recipe for sharing.

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