...are chuffed to be quoted in Pete Barry’s ‘The Advertising Concept Book’.
At the end of last year I received an email from an old friend in New York, letting me know about his two year labour of love, writing a retrospective book of great concepts in advertising. Pete had been teaching advertising and copywriting at
Syracuse University for the past 7 years. He moved to New York with his fiancé (an old work colleague of mine at
Fitch and
Imagination) Jean Koeppel, giving up his job as art director for
Ogilvy in London.
Pete’s highly original angle for the book was to look behind the glossy finish of so many great advertising campaigns and get to the core of their concepts. To do this he painstakingly created over 400 hand drawn illustrations, tracing over original billboard posters and TV ads, so the reader only looks at their most important feature – the concept – and is not seduced by the finished aesthetic. He choose a wide variety of campaigns, from classics like Pirelli’s Carl Lewis billposter to MTV2’s ground breaking 3D website.
Alongside a number of Pete’s contacts in the industry (including Nick Roope from
Poke and Seb Royce from Ogilvy), Pete asked if I could give my opinion on the future of advertising in the digital domain. There has been much talk recently about the death of the traditional 30 second ad and how advertising can survive in the YouTube era. Digital technologies bring interactivity and dialogue between the product and the consumer. With figures now for digital advertising taking over traditional media advertising, the digital age has no awareness or respect for the ad break as it seeps into the cracks of original film, television and music content. In many ways multi-disciplinary design companies are much better equipped than traditional ad agencies to deal with these new forms of advertising, (hence why you see people like
JWT partnering with the likes of
Digit). Although at Kin we have no ambitions of moving into the advertising game, we are interested in that grey area of where consumers and brands meet, with interaction as the key form of communication.
Kevin Palmer
If you'd like more information about this or any other kin project, email us at:
questions@kin-design.com
‘The Advertising Concept Book’ is available for purchase
here.
