these4wallsgroup

BLOGS WORTH READING

... or James' cunning way of keeping links somewhere. Please do add any useful links to good planning, marketing or advertising blogs. But only good ones, please. Ta.

John Grant's Brand Tarot

Marcus Brown

 Digital Agency

Mark McGuinness' Wishful Thinking

Fallon Trend Report

Influx

Brand Seeks Idea

Planning Outside In

Talent Imitates, Genius Steals

Holy Cow

Russell Davies planning blog

FutureLab

Make marketing history

Brand New

W+K London

AdLiterate

Mark Earls' Herd

PAAB

Where's the Sausage?

CRACKING LYNX/AXE ADS

This is quite simply a wonderful piece of marketing communications. Loving it.

THE TOP UK AD BLOGS

Some kind of official UK advertising blog top ten type thing. Compiled by Scamp. See it HERE too.

Top 10 UK Ad Blogs

			(world
			ranking)
1	Russell Davies		162,185
2	AdScam		384,282
3	FishNChimps		423,089
4	Scamp		537,700
5	Welcome To Optimism		553,748
6	Adliterate		1.21m
7	What If...		1.45m
8	Gwen Yip		2.88m
9	Beeker		2.89m
10	Faris		2.89m

ORANGE AD: YOU HAVE TO LOVE IT

JOHN GRANT PODCAST

Co-founder of St Lukes and now a leading freelance planner, thinker and author, John Grant gave an interview to blog, Life In the Middle. Some cracking thoughts from an altogether nice man. Check the post HERE (links to the 'casts at the bottom of the post).

SIMPLE IDEAS SOMETIMES THE BEST: THINK ABOUT IT ...

Cracking ad for VW's Touareg SUV. Took me a while to get it, but when I did, I got that warm feeling of having cracked a great ad. Lovely stuff lads.

BELGIANS FORCE GOOGLE RETREAT

The nation that refused the Nazi army free passage against impossible odds has taken on an even more unstoppable juggernaut. Today, the Belgian press said no to Google News and has forced the company into retreat by arguing that Google ought to pay them if it wants to copy their content. Google will appeal of course, never a company to let something as trivial as a 15 centuries of legal tradition stand its way, but for now the case raises a question mark over the future of news aggregators generally.

What's interesting about the case is that we're still not sure how to treat the internet. If a company in the real world were to copy newspaper extracts verbatim, for commercial gain, no-one would be surprised when they were shut down by some Apple-style legal aggression. But in the world of the web, it's not so clear cut, even among supposedly grown-up companies. Should Google be allowed to get away with its "act now ask if anyone minds later" approach?

Even if we're agnostic on this point, can Google sustain its current approach? With some media owners pulling their content on YouTube and now Google News, could the search giant some day find itself disadvantaged against search engines with better business relationships and more content available to search?

For now they seem to be getting away with it, but as "traditional media" increasingly sees rivers of advertising cash being diverted online, one of Google's PR challenges is to keep them on-side. When content creators come to the table demanding a bigger slice of the cake, Google's reputation will play a key role in getting the company the best deal and keeping it ahead of its competitors.

MARS CHILLED: THE ODDEST AD EVER MADE?

One of the oddest ads that you will likely ever see. Creative for the Mars Chilled range. So cold that it makes your penis disappear. Now tell me, why in God's name would any man want to consumer this product? Random ...

MORE LYNX WORK

More guerilla work for Lynx/Axe in a "spray more, get more" style.

CHE MAGAZINE CAMPAIGN

Smart ads for men's magazine Che. Loving the work.