What do T-Mobile & Filipino Prisoners Have in Common?

The new T-mobile ad aired on Channel 4 on 16th Jan 2009, by 10pm on 18th Jan it had had 690,782 views on You Tube. It is a brilliant ad.

This is the first ad that I've seen that seems to have found inspiration from other You Tube videos. I'm not saying that it's been copied, I'm just noticing the similarity and I'm interested creative inspiration has been found from a new media source. It shows the balance of power continues to move towards the people with the event of user generated content. Judge for yourself if you think there are similarities. 

Asics Origami Storytelling Genius

Today I watched an amazing video about the Asics brand story. Thanks to Gabriel Rossi for bringing this to my attention.

This is not any old boring marketing video; what's so engaging is that it is told in origami. If you have ever tried origami or even have been able to make an paper aeroplane fly better than spiraling into the television, you'll appreciate the true beauty of this style of the story-telling.

It's also a great story of how the Asics brand grew, from humble beginnings on a borrowed desk in a single room in Japan. It was a piece of octopus stuck to the bottom of a bowl which created the inspiration for the first pair of basketball shoes, with suction pads on the sole. That was in 1951.

Asics has now got state of the art research and production facilities; it sells 30 million shoes a year, has appeared on the winning podiums at every Olympics since 1964 and is worn by every second runner in the New York Marathon. Pretty impressive. What's really lovely about the Asics story is that still holds the values it held when it started: 'sound mind, sound body'.  

The lesson told is that 'it's the beginning of the end when you start to appreciate your own success'. All business and all brands have to start somewhere. Thus begins their story. What's also true is that they need to keep developing their story, their products and keep on delivering on their promise. Otherwise the story will change for them. 

I believe story-telling is an art that we are losing over the generations. People don't tell stories as much as they used to, not as many of us have a faith and tv and internet have brought storytelling out of the family. I believe that user generated content is starting to bring story-telling back as people start to wonder about their own story and are now telling it online to thousands of people across the world.