4 Fuks Saké

Beauty & The Bollocks

According to The Guardian yesterday this was ninth in one global viral video chart. 80% of people who watched this film in the US, said they were less likely to text when driving. It cost £10,000 and was made by a film maker and local students in Gwent.

How much did Diageo pay to shoot 7 minutes of Robert Carlyle's beautiful looking whisky epic? How much money will they spend on media, on seeding costs, on promotion and PR of said film? How much time was spent in meetings, presentations, focus groups and rounds of research to produce it? How much more whisky will be sold as a result?

1. Which do you think is the most effective piece of work?

2. Who are the winners and losers here?

Big Business

Big Brother "axed" says The Sun. Before you take the piss, was it your idea to knock up a portakabin and then make £25million a year? The format deserves to go down as one of the great business achievements in television history.

Channel 4 and Endemol deserve nothing but respect for devising a format that is commercially stupendous, and still looks ahead of its time, (even if the content it produces has become just a little predictable). Its simplicity is everything. Stick some people in a box, peer at them via your TV, mobile, computer or tabloid newspaper and then persuade people to spend more money sending texts, making calls, buying the sponsor's products. People do.

Endemol CEO Tim Hincks says Big Brother "is the only really convincing multiplatform idea and format in the UK". He could add the world - the format has been exported to over 70 countries. In reality, there are shit loads of them - but Hincks' people showed them the path to gold.

Can't wait to see the back of it myself. And that's nothing but pure jealousy.

My Talented Colleagues: ref Sky+HD

Last night's screening of Titanic in high definition for Sky+HD, by my work mates. The Oscars are broadcast in HD for the first time this Sunday, on Sky Movies Premiere and Premiere HD.

Opera Does MTV (a bit)

A little taster of our work for Sky Arts and their sponsorship of the English National Opera. Opera doesn't have promos - like what you get on MTV to flog singles and stuff - until now. Werner Herzog, Sam Taylor-Wood and Dougal Wilson are the talent....

Telly

It's been a great week for black men on TV. Lenny Henry's got some catching up to do.

It's obviously unfashionable - coming from a one-syllabled agency in Soho which does digital/brands/integration/360/wankery to suggest that television still has a major role to play in the lives of the world's citizens. Twice this week I have been sat with my four month old son and we have watched two wonderful moments play out in front of us. Scarcely the bread roll - let alone the hors d'oeuvre for what was to come, was Lewis Hamilton's F1 triumph. ITV deserve credit for squeezing every last drop out of the drama played out on the track. As Hamilton whipped round Glock on the last corner, I jumped for joy. Jack shat himself.

Obama's use of the Internet will be a module in its own right in political / media classes. The full magnitude of his - and the country's achievement revealed itself in all its glory through television that will last with us forever.  It began with the beautiful orotary of Obama in Grant Park presented against the backdrop of the Chicago skyline at night. Cutways to the elated rainbow of faces, the tears of Jesse Jackson and the sheer volume of people was the start. People and more people in Times Square, Capitol Hill, outside The White House - being sat on a sofa at 6am in zone 6 South West London, watching it play out was a very moving experience.

Telly is great. It will be for a while yet.

Age

Am I moving closer to Radio 2, or is Radio 2 moving closer to me?

You Don't See This Too Often Either

Fire alarm goes off during C4 News. Krishnan whatever his name is, does a runner.

You Don't Get This Kind Of Stuff On ITV

BBC Sport have unveiled their Gorillaz work for the Beijing games. There's all sorts of widgets, gizmos and irritants around the main characters Monkey, Pigsy and Sandy.

Have a look at this though....the 2 minute movie that will form the basis of their opening titles for the Olympic Games.

15 days to go - personally, can't wait. The sanctimonious whining of anyone from Spielberg to Konnie Huq can be parked to one side. Seeing China have its well deserved moment in the sun will be captivating, breathtaking and awe-inspiring. Londoners are about to get a big wake-up call.

Spain. Possibly Holland. Anyone But Germany.

Deep down, other than Brian Glanville, James Richardson and the 3 subscribers of World Soccer, who really gives a shit about Euro 2008?

BBC Sport are giving it the best possible shot. Their campaign is a cracker. Simple insight (no-one's got anyone to supoort therefore they won't care), matched with simple idea (who will you support?), execute it smartly (like they always do) and then throw the kitchen sink at it (the campaign is everywhere on telly and online). There's just a chance with them, that this won't be buried on BBC3 alongside Garth Crooks.

Come Friday night and a few pints, my mates and I have all agreed that all of us are alright at being marketers / PRs / accountants / fund managers / solicitors / whatever. But we'd all be geniuses if we were given the chance to do the music for the all the montages on Football Focus. I don't think so somehow.

Here's the trailer.
Here's their Top 10 Euro goals.
Here's their video archive.
Here's the blog.
Here's their Twitter feed.
Here's their Flickr stream.
Here's their Youtube channel.
Here, even, are the opening titles from Euro '96.