Charpie

Food for Market, a food styling, advertising, branding and strategy business owned and operated by Shannon Charpentier, now has an online presence! Yay for food! We’ve initially created a simple, one-page site showcasing capabilities and offering the necessities for the new business to get off the ground. The new site will give them a pretty face on the internets and world wide webs while we work on building out a more content rich version. Delicioso!

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Well, I’ve been kind of a stranger to the blog lately. With a whole bunch of stuff going on around the holidays it’s been tough to keep up. That said, I’m back with some big news!

Our production team, Dandy Dwarves, along with director, Mike Goubeaux, have landed a seat in the top 5 for Doritos Crashing the Superbowl contest! Wheeeeeee!

I guess the winner won’t be announced until the spot actually airs live during the Superbowl, so Doritos has been kind enough to ship everyone there for the game.

We need your help! Vote for our entry, “Too Delicious,” as many times as you want until January 25th. Ok, not as many times as you want, but they do allow voting once a day so get on over there as much as you can.

Check out our entry, “Too Delicious.”

Check out the Top 5 entries.

Finally, the iPhone has a true competitor. Introducing the Pomegranate NS08 smartphone. Yes, that’s right. Goodbye iPhone.

The NS08 includes a vivid touch screen, built in camera, email, full internet browsing capabilities, MP3 player and GPS navigation. Yeah, yeah. Boring, right? Well, those are just the basic features. The Pomegranate phone also has a built in projector for displaying large images whether it’s for a business meeting or simply a replacement for your plasma or LCD television you just bought. As if that wasn’t cool enough, try out it’s built in coffee brewer, electric razor, and harmonica.

Ok, by now you’ve gotta be thinking what you’re reading is ridiculous. As badly as we’d all love a mobile phone with a built in harmonica, the Pomegranate NS08 is actually part of a $300,000 campaign for Nova Scotia. The Canadian province has set out to get people to take a look at what they have to offer through some very non-traditional means. In my opinion, it’s very well put together. Whether you’re sifting through the site watching all it’s videos and downloading wallpaper or you simply click a link that takes you right to the kicker, you’re sure to get a chuckle. It may be the kind of chuckle that you give Uncle Larry after a really lame joke, but a chuckle nonetheless.

Regardless, good for them. I’d never actually looked into Nova Scotia, but this at least got me to further check out some of their material. I’ve heard they may be getting some bad remarks for spending over a quarter million in taxpayers’ money, but if you ask me, that money spent will have a lot more legs than if spent on traditional media.

Yesterday I attended an AdFed luncheon with speaker Robert Campbell of 808inc. He didn’t have too much to say that I hadn’t heard before. However, it still was thoroughly delightful to listen to because sometimes you just need to hear something over and over again to keep you on your toes. It was a great slap in the face if you’d found yourself is some mundane groove that you didn’t know how to get out of or even cared to get out of until now. Here’s a few of his tips that I liked best:

“Don’t give the client what they want. Don’t give the client what they think they want. Don’t give the client what you think they think they want.”

In other words, give the client what you think they need. Because, after all, that’s what they’re paying you for.

“Don’t tell the client anything they don’t need to know.”

Check. And lastly,

“Don’t be afraid of losing money or clients.”

I think I might take this one too far. Anyway, use your on discretion.

Pepsi is about to launch an entire brand overhaul.

Looks like they’re not only changing the face of the logo, but changing the face of the logo several times over. The widely recognized spherical red, white and blue emblem will take a personified twist when the company decides to turn it on its side and make a little smiley. Sorry, that’s the best way I could describe it. However, that’s not all. Depending on what drink it appears, the smiley’s facial expression will change. For example, Diet Pepsi packaging will have a little smirk while Pepsi Max will have a wide open chuckle.

Mountain Dew will also become Mtn Dew and get a much needed, in my opinion, facelift. I was dang sick of the logo as they continued to try an modernize an old image. You can only skew type and round corners so much.

I can understand the opinions of both those opposed and for the decided rebrand. It can certainly feel like it’s a rebrand just for the sake of some short term publicity. However, as a designer, I know what it’s like to get completely bored with something and a little refresher may do the trick in bringing back some excitement. Is that a good reason to spend nearly $100 million while the economy tanks? Probably not, but who am I to judge.

Check out some more packaging examples at Brand New

It’s official, Doritos trees exist! But is their fruit too delicious?

Check out the latest spot from the Dandy Dwarves. Excellent work!

This is probably getting a little old; my Microsoft ad campaign banter. But they just make it so easy. This latest ad is a perfect example. What’s with the line at the end?

“I’m a PC and a human being. Not a human DOING, not a human THINKING, a human being.”

Huh? You don’t DO or THINK? You just BE? It seems to contradict the entire ad showing many people with their accomplishments. Obviously they must have been both thinking and doing. 

Microsoft has aired their followup to ‘Shoe Circus.’ The four and a half minute ‘New Family’ segment is no doubt thoroughly entertaining and stays true Seinfeld’s ubiquitous ‘a show about nothing’ genre. So what is it, a campaign about nothing? I think most viewers would think so. I say, “who cares?” It’s entertaining and fun, something Microsoft is not very well known for unless you count Xbox which they were afraid to put their name on for years.

The story, however, is taking a bit of a turn. Apparently, Microsoft is dropping good ol’ Jerry. Sources across the interweb say the move was planned by Microsoft from the beginning, but it seems a bit fishy that it comes after a buttload of not so positive feedback toward the campaign’s first two spots.

So, I really tried to give Microsoft credit this time. I thought the spots were fun, even though they didn’t really bring any hard substance to the table. Turns out they may be as lame and out of touch as I initially wanted them to be.

It will be interesting to see where the $300 million plan heads now.

Just completed! To help launch the new Redline ‘Redefine’ campaign we’ve completed this quick, action packed animation. It will be used to tag on to existing Redline videos while we continue our work to bring everything up to speed with the new look. Charpie teamed up with fellow production crew Dandy Dwarves and Mike Goubeaux to make it happen.

Dandy Dwarves | Mike Goubeaux

This week will mark the beginning of a brand overhaul for Minnesota-based Redline Performance Products. The company had been widely known in the performance vehicle industry for their snowmobiles, but they’re letting go of the snow-chained vehicles for a more dynamic, all terrain genre. They call it a Sport Terrain Vehicle (STV). Think of a dune buggy after a case of Red Bull, throw in some Fox shocks, a 72hp Weber engine and hit the trail; be it dirt, snow, or sand. These machines truly rock any terrain, and they do it right out of the box.

I got an opportunity to ride one of these devils a couple weeks ago. It’s a thrill that has to be experienced. I’m not a skilled enough writer to even attempt putting it into words. I can say that I about crapped my pants on the first jump I took at the company’s two and a half mile test track. I was not expecting to get the air that I did and was definitely not expecting such an easy landing. It was as if I shot into space and came back down on a cloud.

Getting back to business, the above type treatment utilizing the new campaign tag ‘Redefined’ is the first snippet of an all out makeover. What’s to come? New print pieces, a dealer kit, online video campaign, and a few other surprises. Stay tuned. This will be a fun one to watch.

Microsoft’s new $300 million ad campaign to counter Apple’s PC vs. Mac ads has debuted with a somewhat unusual approach. It kicked off with a 90 second tv spot featuring Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates last Thursday. It’s definitely entertaining, which is not something hard to fetch when featuring Seinfeld. I could sit and watch him eat a churro and probably laugh my ass off for hours. Maybe that’s just me. However, what did the ad accomplish besides seemingly mindless banter about shoe size? Many don’t seem to know, and I don’t think we’re supposed to know.

Yet, anyway.

As much as I dislike Microsoft, they’ve got superstar agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky heading up the campaign and with their track record I know they’ve got something interesting up their sleave. But what is it? So far, the ad is seeing some harsh reviews and they’re probably from people who just aren’t seeing the whole picture.

Either that, or Microsoft just sucks. We’ll see.

The Dandy Dwarves have produced this pretty good spot for Full Throttle energy drink. Enjoy!