I have always found myself very interested in ingenious, eye-catching, and memorable television commercials and advertising campaigns, even when I was little. It is probably the reason I flirted with becoming an advertising major in college, only to be sucked into the campus newspaper and eventually earning a journalism degree (then working at an advertising agency, who knew?).

So last week, while I was relaxing at the Jersey shore on my vacation, I spent lots of time watching the television coverage of the Olympics. One commercial drew my attention for its timliness, as Visa featured a Morgan Freeman voiceover ad congratulating Michael Phelps on his eight gold medals, which aired during the commercial break IMMEDIATELY after he won the eighth medal in the medley relay.

But I was also hooked on two commercials, both of which (not surprisingly) were created for Nike. After some Googling, I found that an ad agency named Wieden+Kennedy handles most of Nike’s TV ads, and had helped create two amazing Olympic-themed ads. The first followed a tried and true Nike strategy of catchy music (in this case, The Killers’ “All The Things That I’ve Done”) with fast-moving video clips and photography. The ad is called”Nike Courage” and is as simple as it is noteworthy:

The other ad was centered on the USA men’s basketball team, and apparently will air in different lengths, including a full 2:30 airing, at least once during a Team USA game. It features clips of Team USA, and all of its NBA stars, practicing, spliced with video and audio of Marvin Gaye’s unique rendition of the Star Spangled Banner. Just watch it, it’s a brilliant commercial that will get your patriotic juices flowing:

My love for commercials and innovative ideas is what drove me to the marketing and advertising world. And at DDA, I’m surrounded by people who share that same love for new ideas. Whether you’re a copywriter, video specialist, graphic designer, programmer, SEO specialist, or photographer, you’re expected to come up with new ideas and think outside the box. We have turned small ideas into huge projects, and perfected a marketing strategy that hadn’t even been invented yet (search engine marketing and optimization). So no matter where you sit at DDA, or what you’re working on from day to day, you know you will have your hand in something new and exciting.

And maybe someday, I’ll help create a commercial that gets 500,000 YouTube hits.

Apple is always coming out with new and exciting technologies, and along with them, cool and trendy marketing  campaigns and video tutorials.  I can go into a slew of their various computers and gadgets, but I think we are all now pretty familiar with what they offer.  Their website includes elegant videos, packed with guides and tutorials on the various functions of their products. The overall message being that you are purchasing a solid, clean, cool and smart tool (which for the most part they are). A number of clients reference Apple’s videos and tutorials for their projects. The basis of the Apple videos are fairly straight forward; direct, uncluttered, smooth and featuring good music. With all of our projects at DDA, these elements are always part of our formula for creating a great video. But at the same time, we bring a unique approach and experience to each client and their project, making them stand-out from all the other Apple want-a-be’s.

Last week, one of our actors from the DDA Actor’s Network came to our studio to shoot video for an AARP commercial. It was fairly last minute and unfortunately the actor didn’t have the chance to bring a digital file of the script. We setup the script about halfway  between the actor and the camera lens, with the paper being below the view of the camera lens. A quick read through the script revealed that the setup wouldn’t work, with the actor’s eyes clearly breaking contact with the camera and looking downwards to the script. It was obvious that we had to spend the time to transcribe the script and have the actor read from the teleprompter. The script file is projected onto a one-way mirror positioned directly in front of the camera lens, allowing the actor to have direct eye contact with the camera  yet still be able to read the scrolling text. Even though time was limited, it would have been pointless not to take the time to setup the shoot properly. Sometimes it can be a very fine line between what makes video look amateurish or professional.