It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

In the wake of Cannes week, it behoves us to ask one important question -

Are you a corpse or a c*ck-sucker ?

Because, according to some leading lights of the music industry, people who work in adland are either one or the other.

According to Will.i.am, “”Ad agencies are yesterday”. He was speaking in Cannes, as the guest of the world’s ad agencies,  and he went on to say
“Yesterday’s ways of informing people don’t work today”.

Which, given the overall importance of “yesterday” in life, means that ad agencies are dead in the water.

Those corpses you can see floating in the harbour with little orange slides on them – they’re ad agencies.

And then in Private Eye you could read how Plan B had complained that there was too “too much c*ck-sucking” in the music business and then went on to mention his ad for Hewlett Packard.

(Actually the disparagement came from Private Eye rather than Plan B. Maybe the link of “c*ck-sucking = working for an ad agency” hadn’t occurred to Plan B. Whereas Private Eye, god bless ‘em, have always seen a strong link between a career in marketing and a love of the Aussie kiss.)

But Will.i.am’s  attack on the ad industry had a bit more rigour.

He said: “Right now it’s a unique time, because TV’s not what it used to be. It’s old technology. When you compare it to that guy’s tablet – he took a picture with it. Big old tablet two seconds ago. It changed.

“That smart tablet he has, the smart phone, it’s more powerful than the TV. It’s more powerful than any magazine, all the magazines at once.”

He urged the industry to find new, innovative solutions to cut through.

And I couldn’t agree more.

Here are a few cool ideas that do that, from all over the place.

Some of them even come from ad agencies.

VW hid tickets to a festival in several locations in Brazil.  Relevant tweets powered a Google map to zoom onto the various locations.

And ‘people searching for stuff’ went into overdrive with this amazing  Jay-Z idea from Droga5

http://205.186.166.242/cannes/decode_jay-z/cyber/

Here’s an interesting example of using your Facebook network to form a more interesting network  – a “F*ck-tree”

I love this bit of Youtube interactivity to make music,  from some ad students

Or this in the real-world crossover  – taking  a stand against the death penalty

A beautifully layered, complex interactive documentary -

http://interactive.nfb.ca/#/pinepoint

Data exploitation, courtesy of the BBC:

http://howbigreally.com/

There’s a lot of really good weird sh*t happening re Augmented Reality

Like Esquire’s AR edition:

Or Word lens for translation:

Or this tube-station-finder:

A couple of interesting games …

http://www.chromaroma.com/

http://www.m-ms.dk/spaceheroes/

I liked this incredibly  collaborative art project

http://frida-frommen.de/awards/walloffame/cyber/A16/

Ikea creating content

http://entries.se/e/ikea/lullabies/site/

Viv mag pushing the boundaries with iPad

http://www.alexxhenry.com/cannes/

And finally, an amazing musical App:

A great idea whether you’re a self-confessed player of the pink oboe, or not.

Let’s face it. When the ad industry gets its arse into gear and doesn’t moan about what’s happened to TV, it doesn’t suck c*ck.

It kicks arse.

Credits:
Stimulus: Kathryn Parsons
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” – Charles Dickens
“Self-confessed player of the pink oboe”  – Peter Cook
“Corpses with little orange slides on them” – Author’s own