School of getting famous # 008: "Recycle"

This summer Studio Total burned 100 000 swedish kronor in order to show injustices in wages between men and women. A lot of people in the advertising industry have complained that our campaign wasn't "original".
Like we ever said it was.
In fact destroying money (and getting attention for it) is as old as money. The early christians did it to show their contempt for materialistic ways of the Roman patricians (actually it was coins thrown into a fire). Italian surrealists did it. Russian anarchists.
(There is a beautiful anecdote from fin de siècle Paris where a famously cheap Baron drops a golden coin on the floor. He goes down on all four to search for it. Another nobleman puts fire to a banknote, worth ten times the amount of the coin. He holds out the burning note to help the Baron search)
And the KLF did it.

All of these times the bonfires have gotten a lot of attention. And none have been original. In fact (by definition) only one person can be truly original, and that is the first person in the world to put fire to a banknote. Ironically, as much attention as that might have gotten him in the day he is today totally forgotten.

So what do we learn from this? We learn that 99,999% of the time, recycling an idea is better that coming up with a new one. Because our aim is NOT to be original but to get attention. (What perhaps is original is burning money or starting a political party as MARKETING but that is another discussion)

Now, to show you another example, let's move on to something more recent. A week ago Studio Total helped amelia with a campaign in wich they put in an ad for a "beach tester". 
The ad was featured in blogs, TV, radio and newspapers all over the world. Just in Sweden the media value would be calculated in millions of dollars. Now where did we get the idea?

* Well, in 2006 Studio Total helped Canal+ put in an job-ad for Zombiehunters. The Ad spread across the world and millions and millions of people heard of it. The CEO for Canal+ called it the best value for money advertising ever.

* In 2009 we put in another ad for "Festivalbesökare". It was featured in all the biggest swedish magazines as well as in countless blogs. During the time, arvikafestivalen sold a record amount of tickets. The same year, an australian agency got even more attention offering "the best job in the world".

So, was our new ad "original". Hell no. However, it IS sort of ironic that most of the criticism comes from people whose alternative to our non-original marketing consists of the truly original art of buying advertising space in TV4.

*

Some cars.

*

För skvallerintresserade.

School of getting famous # 007: "Move"

Studio Total probably can't strike a deal with KappAhl, but we get job-offers from American Apparel. If your surroundings don't share your dreams. Change your surroundings, not your dreams.

PS. Become our friend on Facebook!

School of getting famous # 006: "Get an enemy"

Apple vs. Microsoft.
Nike vs. Adidas.
USA vs. Russia.
Jesus vs. Muhammed.
Studio Total vs. Viggo

Be careful in choosing your friends but even more careful in choosing your enemies. Today many people are in the habit of wanting easy fights. That is not sexy. Choose someone you barely can fanthom defeating.
It has nothing to do with right or wrong. Who wants to see Goliath killing David- even when David is a real swine.
(Ok, we know. Viggo isn't exactly Goliath, but he looked that way from the barnyard we grew up in)

School of getting famous # 005: "be mysterious"

School of getting famous # 004: "make it BIG"

The worlds biggest wall? The worlds highest building? The worlds tallest man? Heard of those?

We built the worlds biggest iPod speaker.
Now for all you people working in retail: try the "worlds most expensive". Worlds most expensive car, worlds most expensive hotel, worlds most expensive drink. The good thing about "biggest" or "most expensive" is that you don't have to sell one product before getting the attention of a record breaker.

Sometimes the code is not that difficult to crack.

School of getting famous # 003: "people have no idea what they want"

Most intellectual women don't believe they prefer dramas about upper-class people yet 99% of costume dramas are set in the top 1% income bracket.

Almost nobody say they want to marry a boring idiot. Yet look on the wife of Jan Björklund.

People claim they want good prices, quality and environmentally friendly food yet MacDonalds is the worlds most profitable restaurant-chain.

People have no idea WHAT they want or WHY they want it.

Advertising is not about giving people arguments, but by fueling desire.

When desire is there, to poor fools (like ourselves) will find their own arguments.

Like the Björklund wife claiming he's good with animals or the Sense-and-Sensibility- watchers claiming they just watch what is ON or the forty-million people eating at McDonalds every day doing it as an "exception".

School of getting famous # 002: "Follow the trend"

Death and rebirth, the old always die eventually.

Right now Mother London has roughly 10-times as many hits on Google as Studio Total do. In two years it will be the other way around. How can we know? Partly because we are megalomaniacs. Partly because trends continue.

Nokia is going down and Apple is going up. In four years Nokia will be bankrupt and Apple be valued at 10 times as much.


http://www.google.com/search?hl=sv&safe=off&client=safari&rls=en&q=%22mother%22+advertising&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=

http://www.google.com/search?hl=sv&safe=off&client=safari&rls=en&q=%22studio+total%22+advertising&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=

School of getting famous # 001: "make it simple"

Modern society = no effort. Theatre, books and discussions all require thinking. Therefore there is less theatre, books and discussions and more football.

School of getting famous # 000: "sex"

People say society is full of sex. Eh. I've been to 753 dinnerparties and 256 meetings and not ONCE did different positions for oral sex come up (except when I mentioned it). There are no pictures of people fucking on billboards, or blowjobs on morning TV.

In reality modern society is among the least sexually open civilization that has existed. What our world is full of is titillation, and that is a completely different thing. Just try to mention sex on a meeting, in advertising or at a dinnerparty and people will frown.

But they will also want to fuck u.
And that is why sex in marketing still is one of the best ways to make people want your product.

Now- there are people that claim it is immoral to "use" sex to sell things. Those people are your best friends. By attacking your ads they draw attention to you. As to the argument that "sex can reinforce stereotypes". Sure, but that is like saying "words can reinforce stereotypes". If you don't wanna reinforce stereotypes- don't reinforce stereotypes.

Lesson: The people that hate you the most also want you the most.