Raad Afyouni's blog about the advertising, social media, and marketing insights blazing enough to reach the same sizzling temperatures we get here in Kuwait and the GCC (though its measure is not in fahrenheit, but in celcius!)
Creative Commons Spurring Arab-Originated Digital Content
By: Abdulhadi Hafez
If you are an agency (creative, advertising or digital), publisher, blogger, artist, or you want to do any of the following, then Creative Commons is for you.
- Let people share and use your branded visuals (photos, videos, graphics, etc.), but not allow companies to sell them.
- Encourage readers to re-publish your branded content (blog posts, articles, press releases, etc.) as long as they give you credit.
Creative Commons is a non-profit organization that aims to enable the sharing and use of creativity and content through free and easy-to-use copyright licenses. Here’s a video to feed your visual urge and to give you a better idea of the concept.
With the ever-growing popularity and need for branded digital content and entertainment, protecting such work has become even more important seeing that it is so easy to copy and paste other people’s creative work.
Fortunately enough, we’re now starting to see this become more active in the Middle East, especially seeing that Creative Commons Qatar just celebrated their first year anniversary. Creative Commons Qatar has become an affiliate partner in order to help spur and protect arab-originated digital content. Check out the video they recently created:
Great job Qatar! Arab countries such as UAE, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt have also joined the affiliate network. We hope to see more Arab countries become official affiliates especially Kuwait seeing that we’re based (or should we say ‘biased’?) there and all.
As you may have noticed from the video these licenses do not in any way conflict with nor replace copyright. Rather they work alongside with them to allow for greater protection and flexibility in the sharing and usage of creative work. Here’s a list of the licenses that Creative Commons offers (compiled by the Australia Affiliate.)
Lessons from The 100 Most Creative People in Business 2012
You’ve gotta love Fast Company, a blog written for, by, and about the most progressive business leaders, especially for writing articles such as the recent 100 Most Creative People in Business 2012. For example, here’s the top 9 on the list.
The great thing about this article, is that not only does it tell you who those creative people are, but what advice and lessons they can offer us to inspire us and spice up our creative skills.
What’s even better is that they break down the lessons into really cool categories, giving each category an awesome headline and title. For example, if you want advice and tips on “how to be weirder” then here’s how! See the below image to see what we’re talking about.
The categories are broken down even further, with headings such as “how to do good well”, “how to rethink” and “how to sell.”
Mike Brown of Brainzooming.com wrote a great post on this topic named Creative Strategy Lessons from the 100 Most Creative People in Business 2012, where he compiles a list of the lessons provided to save you time and to accommodate those are either too busy or lazy (lol).
29 Ways to Stay Creative
This innovative blend of interactive media with billboard advertising will soon revolutionize the marketing industry. Check out the video.
Funny Comic About the Importance of Digital Strategy
We stumbled upon a great blog post on the Brand Architect, titled “Just Being Digital is Not a Strategy”, and nothing can explain this statement better than the above comic by the amazing Tom Fishburne. If a picture is worth a thousands words, a funny and enlightening comic is worth a thousand pictures.
It doesn’t take a genius to set up a Facebook page, a Twitter account, or any other social media channel as part of the fact. It does, however, take a Creative genius to know how to properly utilize those channels to attain top marketing and organizational objectives, whether it’s to attain leads or generate awareness around a brand or cause.
Furthermore, the post provided a table (feel free to click on the image for a larger view) by management consultancy McKinsey to highlight social media’s four primary functions: monitor, respond, amplify, and lead consumer behavior. This proves to use even more just how much more there is to strategy in social media.
Red Bull With Another Creative Marketing Stunt in Kuwait
By: Jameel W. Karaki
We’ve written about Red Bull before and their creative marketing stunts such as the previous Art of Motion, but this time they are inviting free style football fans to attend the Worldwide Freestyle Football competition “Red Bull Street Style”, which kicks-off Sunday, April 19, 2012 at 6:30pm at the Marina Crescent in Kuwait. The top 16 freestylers in Kuwait will compete but only one winner will qualify to the World Final that will take place in Rome, Italy on September 2012.
CCS which stands for Control, Creativity and Style is the name of the game at Red Bull Street Style. The Judging panel in the final will feature of Ahmad Al Mutairi (Kazma football club star) who will evaluate the Control category. Marzouk Al Ajmi, head of sports in Annahar newspaper and Media Coordinator of the 2006 FIFA World Cup will evaluate the style category while Khris Njokwana the Freestyle Champion from South Africa will handle the creativity category.
The Red Bull Street Style final will see the best 16 freestyle footballers compete against each other in head-to-head battles for a ticket to the World Final. Each battle follows the same format: 3 minutes, 2 players, 1 ball, with each freestyler having 30 seconds to impress the judges before passing the ball back to his competitor.
Keep it up Red Bull, and continue on to show us just that marketing and advertising does not have to be in the form of push, one-way communication, but rather interactive events and themes that are actually of real interest to people.
A Commercial Created Using Twitter and Twitter Only!
By: Abdulhadi Hafez
You’ve got to admit, there is very little room for creativity on Twitter, with only 140 characters. Yeah, you can always add an image or a video and have them show up right there under your tweet, but that’s old news, everybody does it.
If you want to see creativity at its best using 140 characters, go to Smart Car’s Twitter account for Argentina. Their social media team managed to make what is equivalent to a TV commercial using “some ASCII art and a lot of patience”, as cleverly stated by The Next Web blog (we’ve gotta give them a shout out.)
Here’s a video of what you’ll see when you go to their Twitter page, and scroll down or hold the “J” button on your keyboard. Now this is the perfect example of how you can offer branded entertainment using a bit of social media creativity and a lot of patience. Way to go Smart Car Argentina, you’ve shown that there’s no limit to creativity, even when you have a limit of 140 characters!
35 Amazingly Elegant Pieces of Typography Art
Check out these creative and inspirational pieces of typography art created by Andre Beato. Typography is the art of mixing and arrangement of type, symbols, illustrations and type design and then modifying them to make certain elements more prominent than the others.
Not only does this enhance legibility and usability (as in the case of using typography in Web design) but it also adds a taste of creativity and style to each piece of art. In modern times, typography has been put into motion—in film, television and online broadcasts—to add emotion to mass communication. (Vas Blagodarskiy, Kinetic Typography and Mass Communications.)
Here are 35 great examples of how typography can make your advertising or web design type more elegant and stylish. Enjoy!
Most Popular Fonts of 2011
As a graphic designer or creative director, you need to be constantly feeding your urge for style and art, especially when it comes to the text you use in your advertising or design pieces. For this reason, MyFonts.com compiled a list of the most popular logos of 2011, in no particular order and with each of them available as a webfont, as well. Enjoy!
