One of the unspoken jobs of ambitious aspiring creatives, I believe, is to seek out and discover new companies and products to do campaigns for. Some of the best spec work that students have done was never assigned, so I’ve been told.
In thinking about this lately, and having kept an eye out the last few months, I’ve compiled a short list of some products that not only interest me, but would be incredibly stimulating to work on. Each has its own specific benefits and unique qualities and are anything but parity.
If anyone out there is inspired/compelled to try your hand at these, go for it.
And let me know what you come up with.
In no particular order:
1. The Napkin Notebook
According to their website:
-The business plan for Southwest Airlines
-Picasso’s earliest sketch of Guernica
-The first sentence of A Farewell to Arms
All done on cocktail napkins. Along with probably tens of thousands more ideas, quips, sketches, jokes, and grand world-changing schemes throughout history. Not a terrible idea to bind these alternative, innovation-wielding palettes conveniently together and market them to people whose job it is to come up with ideas.
According to him, some of Ed McCabe's best headlines were written on this medium in wild abandon at insane hours of the night.
The company has a wonderfully simple site where you can actually draw your own sketches as well as see some of the ideas of other visitors.
For $6.50 you get 20 spiral bound cocktail napkins with one ball point pen. Yes, they even throw in a pen.
2. Flip Cam Video
(See post below)
3. Emergen-C
I use this stuff pretty much every time I get the slightest hint of a sniffle, throatache or cough. With about 10 times the vitamin-C the average person needs in a day, it instantly fizzes in 6 oz. of water, doesn’t taste half bad, and knocks out any sickness that you might be starting to get.
I keep a 36-pack (around $10) on my desk.
Not even in my desk.
On it.
That’s how much I use it.
4. The Jack Lalanne Power Juicer
I’ve been juicing since about 8th grade, (not so much lately), but long enough to still know what the hell I’m talking about. In fact, the first ads I ever did were for this product. My internship Creative Director two summers ago almost slapped me for even showing them to him during our interview.
Needless to say, out of the goodness of his heart, he let me work for him anyway.
I can’t even begin to tell you how good this product would be for every family to have in their homes in terms of fitness, weight control, promoting healthy eating habits in children, increased energy, and overall healthy living.
Maybe one day you’ll see it all in a campaign that doesn’t suck.
Hopefully one that’s not confined to latenight informercials targeting the elderly and nitwits who buy anything. I am, in fact, one of those nitwits who was duped into dropping a cool hundo on one.
5. Purell Hand Sanitizer
For anyone who's ever ridden a NYC Subway, by now you should know that this stuff kills 99.99% of most common germs, and can be used anytime, anyplace, without water or paper towels.
But how many people do you know actually utilize such a blessing?
My thoughts exactly.
6. I-Doser
While complaining that I often have a hard time falling asleep, my brother told me about this particular product as we drove back from a family vacation in New Hampshire this afternoon. It is one of the most intriguing things I've ever heard of.
According to their website:
"The I-Doser application scientifically syncs your brainwaves to achieve a specific mood or experience, as outlined by the dose you are taking. It does this through the use of a binaural beat dose that changes your brainwave patterns to make you feel a certain way. Binaural brainwave doses for every imaginable mood."
In other words, you download a bunch of tracks, sit or lie down, close your eyes, put on headphones, and let your mind wander to exactly where you want it to wander.
To give you a better idea of what they're all about, here are some of their track names:
-quickhappy
-marijuana
-energizer
-hangover cure
-nitrous
-opium
-orgasm
-hand of god (their premium track, supposedly costs upwards of $200 to download)
Call it self-imposed hypnosis and/or a legal alternative to illicit drug use, if this stuff actually works and takes off into the mainstream, you're looking at a large chunk of what the future could and probably will be.
The most technical, boring, uninspired, ad campaign could sell this thing like crazy.
Imagine what an insightful one could do.
7. Sony Reader
On our trip to the National Gallery, my friends and I were treated to something truly special in the D.C. Metro: Absolutely shit advertising for an absolutely terrific product.
I’m talking literally, “Carry a stack of books in one hand” terrible.
Not that you’d ever need 160 books on you all at once (unless you're an astronaut on a 10-year space station mission). Plus most people like to physically build a nice library collection (which I believe will never go out of style, even with the advent of e-book technology like this).
But it is still a fascinating product that could be pretty useful for commutes, vacations, or wherever else people like to take along portable reading material.
At the very least, it deserves 3 decent D.C. Metro posters.
dubs. out.
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