Touch, Pause...Engage: It's Rugby World Cup Time

September is just beginning and for the rugby fanatics among us that means that the long awaited Rugby World Cup is almost here. At last.

A month ago I was bursting with excitement in anticipation of this competition but after spending August watching Ireland splutter and fumble their way through four frustrating warm up losses my excitement has been slightly dampened.

But I’m not here to vent and rage about dropped passes and knock-ons. And anyway, no-one cares what a guy who gave up playing rugby when he was 13 because training clashed with Eastenders (No, I’m not proud) has to say.

But I am here to talk about ads and with a global audience of over 4 billion people advertisers are wetting themselves with excitement, not at the thought of watching six weeks of scintillating rugby, but at the opportunity to capitalise on people’s passion for the sport and its premier showpiece.

So over the past few weeks we’ve seen more and more rugger related ads grace our screens. And if you couldn’t give two hoots about 30 men putting their heads between each other’s legs and chasing an egg shaped ball around a field for 80 minutes then unfortunately September is only going to get worse for you.

So what kind of ads are people putting out there?

Well, the New Zealand company Telecom, who sponsor the All Blacks, put their heads together and came up with a foolproof plan to encourage people to get behind the competition and their team – they asked people to abstain from sex to show their support.

No really, I’m serious.



It won’t come as much of a surprise to discover that the campaign was cancelled before it even launched. What, you mean New Zealanders found the idea of abstaining from sex to support their national rugby team to be stupid and embarrassing? What’s wrong with these people?

Across the water O2 and our auld enemy England have come up with a nice little idea to encourage people to get over the early kick-off times and get behind their team – free breakfasts.



Now I actually quite like this ad and the free breakfasts idea. Sure it’s nothing special and it won’t have awards juries picking their jaws up out of their Cornflakes or grinning from ear to ear, but it’s a nice idea and it’s well done, even seeing the big happy heads on Martin Johnson and Chris Ashton doesn’t make my blood boil too much.

My only qualm would be the line ‘Get up for England.’ Maybe I’m being childish and juvenile but it just feels like there’s more than one way to interpret it, and one of those interpretations is the complete opposite to what the folks down in New Zealand were being asked to do.

Or do I just need to grow up?

Over here O2 have enlisted the help of a few of the players for their RWC campaign too and have offered fans the chance to play them next.

I’m not really sure when or where you get to play them but if you do then it’s quite a nice idea to get people involved. People always like seeing their sporting heroes in contexts other than on the pitch and of course plenty of people would sell their granny’s false teeth for a chance of a kickabout with Messrs O’Driscoll, O’Connell and Sexton.

Possibly the best ones I’ve come across are from Sky TV in New Zealand. Unlike Telecom they’ve managed to have a bit of a larf without making complete tools of themselves in the process.



No need to reinvent the wheel when you’re trying to be funny. Just take a bit of a sideways look at things and you’ll usually be onto something. There’s another one of these here.

We could go on and on here folks. Everyone wants to join the party. Mastercard have done a series of short videos celebrating rugby traditions in Samoa, New Zealand and South Africa. Quite nice they are too if you’re a rugby fan. Probably just more noise if you’re not.

Toshiba have covered your walls in crayon and colouring pencil but don’t worry, they’ve much better drawing skills than your little 4 year old terror. Powerade and Heineken have gone down the passion route. Fine, if that’s what you’re into.

And of course it wouldn’t be a global tournament without Coca Cola getting in on the act.

I’m sure there are tonnes of other RWC ads out there so feel free to share any others you find.

In the meantime I’ve got to go catch up on recordings of Eastend…eh…Britain’s Toughest Gangs. Yeah, I only watch the manly stuff me. Innit!

Moving House

Why on earth would anyone choose to move house?

Seriously, it’s so much hassle it makes planning a campaign for the upcoming presidential election and keeping past indiscretions away from public eyes and ears seem like a walk in the park.

In my case I’m moving because my better half has gotten a new job across the other side of the city and doesn’t fancy a 2 hour, 2 bus commute to and from work each day. Seeing as I work in the city centre I theoretically have an easy commute from anywhere.

So we’re packing our whole lives into boxes and moving into a smaller, more expensive apartment in a ‘cooler’ part of town, whatever the hell that is.

Packing can be quite a demoralising exercise when you realise that you’re filling box after box with clothes that no longer fit you and photos and memorabilia from your J1 trip back in ’06. I find myself wondering what the hell I’ve been doing for the past 5 years, aside from eating too many Oreo Double Creams and staring at my brand new runners sitting, lonely and unused, by the door.

For sure there’s something exciting about moving house. Getting the keys to your place and beginning the process of making it home.

“Where’ll we hang this picture, the only one we have in seven years of dating where we’re both looking at the camera, eyes open, nice smiles, not looking like something that’s just been dragged through a bush backwards?”

“Yes I want to keep that oversized cardboard guitar I snuck out of the Irish bar in San Fran. We’ll find room for it somewhere. Sure isn’t it signed by yer man who was nearly the guitarist for The Strokes, we can’t throw it out.”

“Oh and make sure you leave room in the press for the smoothie maker I got for Christmas two years ago and have only used once, I’m definitely gonna start using it again once we’ve settled in.”

It’s also a big massive pain in the arse! I was happy where we were, I knew the whole setup. Rent was due the day after wages landed in my account – sweet. I knew the neighbours. OK they didn’t really speak any English and there were what seemed like 18 of them in a two-bed apartment, but at least I knew they weren’t crazies and they did give us a jug of milk that time we ran out so they must be sound.

And the recycling. Oh God, I’ll have to get used to a whole new recycling system. At least in the old place I knew that drinks cans could go with plastic bottles but food cans had to go in a separate bin. And paper always went in its own bin. What if it’s different in the new gaff? What if I end up inadvertently mixing dry recyclables and, well, not dry ones? Jeez, I could be making enemies of the bin men before I’ve even had a chance to mumble an awkward hello as I pass them in the morning – and they’re pretty menacing looking guys.

Then there’s parking. This new place only has on-street parking and, ashamed as I am to admit it, I never learned to parallel park. I’ll probably end up using a car park in town and getting a bus out to the apartment. Sod the expense, it’s easier than having a queue of angry drivers beeping at me as I try for the fifth time to reverse my little Corsa into a space the size of a village in Kerry.

OK my panic levels are beginning to get a little too high. Time to take a deep breath, lie down and maybe watch some telly to relax.

GODDAMMIT! This couch doesn’t have my groove in it and I haven’t a clue how to work this bloody remote.

Call the old landlord, tell him we’ve had a change of heart.

Social Media After You Die

I came across this interesting TED talk about what happens your social media profiles after you die recently.

It's something not a lot of people ever really think about but if you died tomorrow how long would your Facebook or Twitter profiles last and what kind of lasting memory would it leave of you?

I remember a few years ago when Bebo was still king I knew of a few people who died tragically young and I remember seeing all the messages left on their page in awful txt speak and it just didn't seem right. The setting and style of the messages just didn't seem appropriate.

On the other side of the coin a friend of mine passed away a little over a year ago. He was in his early thirties and was an extremely popular guy. In the few days after he died his Facebook profile turned into a collection of stories and memories people had about him. They were all really nice, funny and fond memories of the guy and I'm sure it would have been nice for his family to read, given that they probably hadn't heard a lot of them before.

Adam Ostrow looks at it from a slightly different but still rather interesting perspective in this Ted Talk.



It's something that we'll start to think about and discuss more and more as a generation of people who grew up on social networks begin the long walk towards the light.

Give Brando a Sweet

Brando, the agency I'm currently interning at, are running this really clever and fun project via Twitter. It's called Tweet Sweets and it makes going into work even more fun than it was before.

Some of you will probably have seen an awful lot of #imjusttestingthisatbrando and then, more recently, #tweetsweets appearing in my Twitter feed. Apologies for clogging up your feeds with annoying hashtags for a while, things should go back to normal now.

'But what the hell is going on?' you're wondering?

Well, the clever kids a Brando have hooked a gumball machine up to Twitter so that whenever someone sends a tweet to @Brando_Digital containing the hastag #tweetsweets.

There's a live webcam set up so when you tweet us a sweet you can watch us collect and eat the sweet. We also get up to all kinds of silliness and crazy antics just to entertain our tweeters (and to avoid having to do any real work).



I'm not sure exactly what I'm doing in the photo above but on Friday I made a fool of myself on camera by doing the Hucklebuck, the David Brent dance, playing Rocky and Harry Potter, among other things.

It's great fun and a great way of having conversations with people.

We've had an unbelievable amount of sweets tweeted in so far, the collective weight of everyone in the office has probably risen by several stone in the two days it's been live, I shudder to think how many sweets we'll all have eaten by the end of next week.

The magic gumball machine is resting for the weekend so it's ready to pump out sweets again come Monday morning.

Be sure to pop over to the Tweet Sweets Website on Monday, send us a sweet and make us do something silly.

Are you a Plank or an Owl?

Me, I'm neither. And never will be. I should hope you're the same.

Everyone's seen this new 'craze' sweeping the globe and clogging up my twitter stream - Planking and Owling.

I'm not going to soil this blog by posting pictures of either activity here - I'd rather post pictures of a certain female former minister for health dressed in her birthday suit - but if you don't know what they are a quick google image search will show you everything you need to know about this moronic activity.

Seriously, is this what we've become? I just don't get it. How or when did this become accepted as something that we not only tolerate but that we actually encourage people to do, and then look at their stupid photos afterwards?

We are (supposedly) an incredibly advanced race, capable of amazing and wondrous things. We've been to outer space and to the bottom of oceans. We've created the internet, a mindblowingly powerful communication tool.

And what do we use it for? To post photos of people lying on random objects and squatting as if they're about to poop on top of a chair/table/person/wherever the hell you think it's funny.

I despair, I really do.

Thankfully karma can be a bitch, and has a great way of righting some of the wrongs that these planks and owls have inflicted upon us.

I have no sympathy for this girl. But I do owe her a huge thanks, she made me laugh almost as much as the weird clown girl dancing to Beyonce.



Please be sure to share and more videos of spectacular planking fails.

Apologies for the amount of anger and vitriol in this post but it's Monday, I'll cheer up soon, I promise.

Right, I'm off to curl up in a ball and lie on a lit barbecue, I think it could catch on.

Ireland in Bitesize

I really enjoyed this video with some interesting and 100% accurate observations about Ireland from the brilliant Colm O'Regan.



Colm is playing at Whelan's tonight tonight (and I'll be there, not performing, possibly heckling) and you can find more info about his upcoming shows and read some of his previous articles he's written for The Cork News I suggest that you pencil in a free afternoon for these because once you've read one or two you'll want to read the whole back catalogue) at his website.

Now, time to go enjoy a bit of this rare sunny afternoon.

Er, Keep Your Bits In Luv

So circumstances* conspired against me recently, which resulted in this blog being cast aside like an old mattress when you've just bought a fancy new memory-foam one. Well fear not old mattress fans, I have returned, sans memory foam.

So I know this is a few days old now but I just wanted to throw my 2 cents into the ring on the ad that's making a few waves in the Irish advertising scene at the moment - the new Club Orange ad.



To be honest I don't find it offensive, obnoxious or rude, although I can see why other people may react that way to it. I just find it a bit stupid. I know, I know, the whole point of it is to be controversial, get people talking about it, generate word-of-mouth, get as many mentions on blogs and social media as possible, yadda yadda yadda. I get that that's how ads like these work I just think it's the easy option.

We all know that sex sells. We all know that controversy generates word-of-mouth and that there's no such thing as bad publicity. But it's easy to put those ingredients together and come up with something like the ad above. What's much more difficult is coming up with a clever and engaging way of selling your product, a way that will grab people's attention because of it's creativity or it's uniqueness. Just throwing a few hot women in bikinis in your ad is talking down to people and treating them like morons, it's not trying to speak to people on their level in a way that's never been done before. I'm sure this ad will be pretty successful but for me successful advertising doesn't necessarily mean good advertising (Let's leave aside the discussion on what is 'successful' and what defines 'good advertising', that's for another day).

So fair play to Club Orange, I'm sure this ad is doing exactly what they had hoped it would but in my opinion they've taken the lazy man's approach to advertising.

I really enjoyed this blog from Una Mullally over on The Anti Room about it and there's a good debate going on in the comments there too, well worth a gander.

Anyway, I've given the suits at Club Orange exactly what they wanted, a few extra views of the ad and a bit more discussion around it. I'm just another cog in the machine.

*In reality I was completely snowed under with college work in the final build up to the industry presentation, which went really well, thanks for asking. After that I was getting stuck into job hunting, which I'm happy to say was successful as I've somehow managed to land myself an internship at Brando, an awesome digital agency in Dublin. Wish me luck