watch and learn from the watchmen

A friend sent me this vid promoting Watchmen earlier this week. I'd already seen this one on the origins of Dr Manhattan. I absolutely frickin' love them. Executionally I love the fact there's no super or voiceover to finish them off, they are their own thing. They don't treat you like an idiot. And there are so many sweet touches to make the world of the story part of our own. What a great example of how films can promote themselves, creating content that yields more, making you anticipate more. It's not a first, I know, plenty of others have done it. The Wire's backstory pieces about McNulty, Omar et al spring to mind. And I know from Tash that children's books can also do this. But it did make me think, even if you're not a content brand, how might you spin out the stories about your product or service in a way that interweaves with people's sense of real life? Like Ted says, Howies' Hand-Me-Downs are a good example of backstory being traced into the product. But I'm sure lots more could be done by many others. And what an interesting world it would be.

rubbish signs 12

After a bit of a hiatus, it's an (un)welcome return for rubbish signs. I've seen this ad, promoting the Guardian's writing series, up in train stations for ages but I haven't managed to place what I felt was wrong with it. I was perplexed, because I really like their design-centric approach to communications...I think it was in Creative Review where I read an interesting piece last year about their approach to being a content brand and how they try to remove any suggestion of positioning in favour of clean, neutral reportage. (It's a nice idea, complete bobbins when you have the actual product in your hands or on your screen of course. More thoughts on content brands soon-ish.) Then, on my way back from the pub last night, it came to me. This ad's all about words, right? And whoever has done it has deliberately, conspicuously, made a choice to avoid any punctuation throughout, bar the apostrophes where you need them. Which is fine. But that's why the ampersand on the last line annoys me like you wouldn't believe. I'm probably just too pedantic. Bah!