If you want to be part of this for 2010 please send us your agency or brand xmas cards or promotions so submit@bannerblog.com.au Subject: Xmas cards 2010
If you want to save us even more time also send a 550x322 sized jpeg with your submission also.
Bannerblog's Top Picks
Every agency in the world with the same brief, the same as the year before. The agency xmas card is the toughest gig in the industry. Here is Bannerblog's top picks for 2010.
Excentric: The Digital Story of the Nativity
Very well researched although I'm still confused where the guy from the North Pole comes into the story?
7.5M+ views. Has to be the #1 Xmas piece this year. Congrats.
Matt Mullholland: O Holy Night
Truly sums up the meaning of Christmas. Play this loud in the office!
Schwinn: Schwinn Bell Choir I'll be having nightmares about voiceless, attractive smiley people following me in a red escape less room.
Schwinn will either donate a bike! for every e-carol sent or $1. Which one depends on which Facebookpage you read or how you interpret their vague copy. I'm hoping it's a full bike.
Lasenza: Cup Size Choir
With 2M views already this has been quite a success for Lasenza. Proving once again boobs are awesome. Next year they could have the girls riding bikes...
Torchbox: Starry Ipad
OK GO are pissed as this was their next film clip idea.
Quietroom: Santa Brand Guidelines
You can't help but have a chuckle at this.
Big Spaceship: Corpsify
Why waste all that energy on a season card when you can launch an internal project for xmas that will live on forever. Hat tip to you Big Spaceship.
Mug: Fake Busters Fake Santas beware there is an armed task force on your ass.
Toyota Prius: Tea Cosy
I like the Prius Projects site on so many levels. This knitted cosy for the Toyota Prius is cute also.
Saja Farki: Advent Calendar
This is nicely done with each day being worth opening.
PNC: Christmas Price Index
I love this and the story behind it. Beautifully crafted and interesting. Read about the history of the PNC Christmas index.
The rest (in order of submission)
Here are the rest of the submissions. There are still some nice pieces below.
Hill Holiday: S.H.E.D
Nice little trick with the Google image search.
Blue Hive: #MerryDoodle
One female designer and one giant doodle....
Check out the flickr images because Blue Hive will change their homepage at some point.
Framestore: Photo Maker
There's a Facebook version also available.
Other Source: Sock Fillers
Nice and simple.
Brownstein Group: Augmented Reality Card
I wonder if the Yeti costume is a rental?
Agencynet: Gifting Good
Choose how AgencyNet should donate it's time and money. I like all the options and I hope they do all four.
Liquid Interactive: Whodunit
A Xmas mystery to be solved. If you're interested they have revealed the culprit.
Adam & Eve London: Vordomas
No idea who Vordo is but it's related to this iPhone app for Fosters.
White Space: Christmas Stencil
I need to buy me some snow in a can!
Market Mall: Santa Tracker
The over produced Xmas marketing site
Mod Cloth: Christmas Tree in a Can
Handy for the secret Santa where you want to give someone something useless.
Traction: 12 Days of Grouchmas
The grouchy side of Xmas is one not often explored by agencies.
Create: The Machine
It does xmasy stuff.
A+B Studio: Knitathon
A never ending knitted scarf goodness.
Colle McVoy: All-Set Card Set
A set of cards for every season. Why just celebrate Christmas?
Chobani: Snow Angels It's a Greek Yogurt and all Greek Yogurts need a Christmas story video.
MetaioAR: A Magic Augmented Reality Christmas Tale
When your company makes Augmented Reality software there is little question on which technology to use for the xmas card.
Vizu: Brandy the Ad Man
O.....K. moving right along here.
180 Amsterdam: Delft Yourself
BB: Why would I want to Delft myself?
180 Amsterdam: Well let me counter that with "Why would you not want to Delft Yourself?"
All State: Christmas with Mayhem - Dean Winters
This is the type of Christmas ad you can watch over and over.
Martino Flynn: Butcher Rudolph
The singing sucks but I'm always happy to see agencies donate $5k to charity.
SS+K: A Little More Holiday, a Little Less Card
I'd be excited too if I got a SpongeBob SquarePants laptop! (1:49 in)
Ogilvy Sydney: Naughty of Nice?
Naughty or Nice mobile app. How have your friends behaved this year? Let them know what you think with the Naughty or Nice mobile app.
Dentsu USA: Message to the World
Getting all their staff to turn the lights on and off in the right sequence has taken a LOT of practice.
Draft FCB: The Baristas
What's missing here is an explanation as to how these two people are and why their edit suite doesn't have a color filter.
EVB: Holiday Fax
Send a fax to one of the many agencies on the list. Why? because wasting paper is awesome and it was too expensive to deliver hand written letters by bicycle.
Eyewonder & Limelight: Xmas Magnets
Drag and drop words to create your own message of seasonal brilliance.
Fallon: Live Stream
This wasn't working when I tuned in but from the looks of this snapshot I believe it involved live video of their office and donations if you share the page.
After checking the CR blog that's exactly what it is! Brilliant work Detective Ringrose!
VICTORIAS SECRET: Holiday 2010 Commercial
Nuff said
Second Melody: Origami Christmas
The best way to reuse wrapping paper this christmas.
Profero AU: 2010 Leader board
What did people like in 2010? Find out on Profero's leader board.
Publicis NY: Cheer Happens Here
Add your cheer and money goes to charity. Simple enough.
The Concept Farm: QR tree
When will QR codes die? Especially those used online!
Razorfish: Photos with Santa
Choose your story naughty or nice. Naughty was more naughty than I expected too.
Portfolio School: Resolution Generator
Maybe it was luck but it created a the perfect one for me.
Fresh Networks: Santas on Bikes
You can get away with anything when you are a gang of Santas on bikes.
Small Army: Santa's Rebrand
The Small Army Team get wasted and work on Santa's brief.
Odato Marketing: The Pitch
There is no way you pitch to Santa with b/w scamped story boards :)
Also someone buy the staff at Odato something colorful to wear!
Squint/Opera: Christmas Desks
Nice optical illusion for the office space. Check the making of video here.
Ico Design: Tweet Flakes
Snow flakes made from the actual words in a tweet.
W+K: Tweets of Snow
W+K again use their street frontage for xmas. Every time someone around the world mentions snow on Twitter, a special tweet snowflake will fall over our neighborhood.
Sad that it couldn't be recycled paper but W+K promise to plant some trees. Ahh that's nice at least the paper is being used for a good cause...
Studio-Output: A Christmas Tweet
Data viz for festive tweets.
The Great Twitter Secret Santa
I got in too late for this one but it was a giant Twitter based secret Santa.
McKinney: Virtual Mistletoe
It's like a safe Chat Roulette.
Wasserman: The Client Holiday Card That Almost Never Came to Be
Archibald Ingall Stretton: Christmas Records
I'm a sucker for lighting stuff on fire. See them break many other Christmas Records this Christmas such as Most People on Santas Knee, Most Keepy Ups With A Brussel Sprout and Longest Time Holding Gift Tag With Forehead.
Pixolut: Facebook Profile App
Pixolut have created an app that lets you easily generate the images needed for funky FB profiles like this.
Mind Clay: Stop Motion
I hate it when the agencies change their homepage for the xmas card. The link will be dead in a month. At least they blogged about it.
TBWA Buenos Aires: Two Santas
No shorts!? That's how Australian Santa rolls on this side of the world.
Planit Agency: Xmas Rock stars
Rock and or roll with Planit
Carrot Creative: Holiday Hot Fire
Yep it's another xtranormal video.
Nix Bros: Total Ghost Christmas Film makers + too much time = fake band: Merry Christmas.
Samsung: Tweet Paper
Have your tweets turned into wrapping paper! Why because you're that crazy about Twitter.
Luckily you can get a roll of the paper printed for you for free..... wait we're too late but you can buy a roll for $6.95 (USA only)
Wunderman UK: The Longest Cracker
Watch the video or experience it here for yourself.
This is a world first in "fist recognition software" too. I look forward to it being used in an a domestic violence awareness campaign.
Adobe XD: What Ever Your Resolution
Fun and political at the same time.
Gap: Project Reindeer
Eight reindeer strapped with GPS devices which you can bet on to get deals at Gap stores. Like Poke's Spot the Bull.
Props to Deep Local and AKQA. Also the reindeer handler Josh has an awesome radio voice. He should be on This American Life.
Gap: Give With Style
For every like they receive on Facebook for this video they will donate $1 to a charity. Visit here to make it happen
Mention viral30 in stores for a discount?! Nice festival codeword there.
Modea: Buzzword Bingo HD
Modea wanted to do something different for their agency christmas card so they made a Buzzword Bingo Ipad app.
Dan&Jo: Night Before Internet
The first submission to mention Wikileaks.
Scream: 2010 Year in Review
The only entry so far with a laugh track.
Think RLA: Win Beth's Mom's Christmas Jumper
I arrived to early to secure myself one warm looking jumper. I'm not sure I have the patience to wait around or the desire to enter my email address though. Think RLA you can just mail me the prize!
GoldBach Group: Contraption
I was expecting a punch line at the end but a friendly message will suffice.
Video Game Industry Cards
Seems like every major developer gets into the spirit. Check out Kotaku's roundup.
Design Royale: Snowball Royale
I hope Santa brought them a sound library for Christmas.
Euro RSCG: Euro Birds
This started out as a sexiest internal email and then ended up as an Angry Birds clone.
FBI Recruitment: Santa Snatch
FBI still on the recruitment drive for a decent game designer.
Sterling-Rice Group: Feral Carols
The agency brought in Improv group Hit and Run to help them out.
Gelia: Holiday Strategy Game
Do you have the right strategy to avoid an awkward Christmas moment?
Manning Productions: Tweesp
The algorithm recommends for me Rihanna and Rambo?
It also suggests a Camarguais Bull (no idea how that got into the mix) which is rated 5 stars on Amazon and makes reference to it's realistic 'male anatomy'.
Lowe Roche: Twanta
Kudos for the HTML5 implementation but seriously an Audi R8 Spyder for xmas? They are paying the Lowe Roche staff too much.
Sectio45: Naughty or Nice cards
Hoe Hoe Hoe Boom Tish.
Inferno Group: Auntie Carols
We cannot disprove that these woman are called Carol but we hope for authenticity sake they are.
Saatchi & Saatchi LA: Nog Pong
Deeplocal at it again and this time with a web controlled ping pong machine. Get the ball into the cup and a Saatchi staffer has to have a drink. Sadly the festivities are over.
You can however look at the making of here or a more detailed breakdown of the card at Notcot.
TBWA\London: Make a SnowflakeYours
The snowflake chandeliers are pretty neat.
And for every snowflake that is made £2 is donated up to a total off.... wait for it.... £500. Better than nothing I guess.
Collective London: Christmas Charitree
Take note TBWA\London, Collective have out up £5,000 for their charity donations. We think you should match dollar for dollar.
Sprint: Awkward Family Photos
In partnership with Awkward Family Photos who have been getting a lot of advertiser love lately.
Vodafone: Christmas Phones
This would have been even more awesome with 532 real mobile phones... with messages accepted by Twitter.... and the phones suspended in the middle of the city from a crane. But looks like they just didn't have the balls.
The Jamboree: Christmas Carols
Sadly I do not know a Carol to have her join the other Carols.
SME Branding: Santa's LeBron Style
SME Branding sneaks in with the minimum requirement. A single jpeg on a URL.
I'm not sure if this is Santa doing an impression of LeBron or he's enjoying a Ectasy induced joyful moment with a huge handful of E's.
Glade: Virtual North Pole
Love the "patent pending" popup message when it takes a photo. Nice work Pixfusion you made the experience worse for no reason at all.
Seems like all the money was spent on the licence fees instead of a designer :(
Disney: Phineas and Ferb Winter Wonderland at Your Command!
Great for kids as you don't have to type you can just speak into the mic, bad for anyone without an American accent :(
Host: Merry Twitter Tree
I'm waiting for the giant robot arm cameo.
Publicis Mojo Brisbane: Jingles Bells
Free jingles for anyone who submits their details. They missed an awesome BJ joke with the first one....
Maybe that's why I've never written a jingle :(
Ideaworks: Decembeard
Forget Moevember it's all about the beard.
Bernstein-Rein: Mashup
Wise choice not making the staff sign but make sounds.
Soap: Zmas
It was either Zombies or Unicorns and zombies won the vote.
Seek: Elf Chimney Seeker
Elf + Cannons = Fun
BC Hydro: Maze
This Christmas BC Hyrdo want you to donate your patience.
The Connelly Partners: Regift Auction
Crappy gifts are always safe territory for Christmas
Critical Mass: Holiday Survival Kit
Some useful tips from Critical Mass
Merry Christmas from Grolsch
MMmmmm beer
Monster: Holiday Harmonizer
Autotune your holiday message
White + Partners: White House Party Crashers Invite
This invite requires you to know who these two people are. Read here. Then watch this.
Ripcord: QR Card
The QR code takes you to their Facebook page where you have the chance to win a $100 voucher. It's mine so don't enter!
Adobe: Inspiration is Powerful
However this ecard is not.
After reading the 7 predictions for gaming in 2011 on Mashable I was shocked that at some of the predictions and how badly researched they were. So many huge topics in gaming were missed. Social gaming being the most obvious.
Even the topics covered there is nothing in the predictions that is not completely obvious (iPhone games continue & Angry Birds sequel) or totally misguided (Apple to make a gaming console & Gears of War to break sales records).
So while I would contacted various developers, publishers and the gaming media for their opinion and then put together a detailed predictions post I don't have the resources. So here is my personal list of 10 Real Predictions for Gaming in 2011.
1: Companion Gaming will be huge
It already started in 2010 but companion gaming will continue to be hot with game publishers in 2011 and beyond. AAA titles will now be backed up with a social, browser or mobile game to match. I know this as I'm working on one of these right now for a major title to be released in Q4 2011.
Microsoft titles such as Crackdown 2 which rewarded players special "duck" grenades for playing a simple puzzle game on Facebook while Fable 3 players could earn coins by participating in the location based game Kingmaker.
I'll even throw Dead Rising Case Zero into this mix which became the fastest selling XBLA & PSN game ever and was basically the games demo which you paid for. The full game itself went onto be a huge success for Capcom.
Other publishers won't ignore reports like that. They are already planning their payable demo or companion game right now. Expect more of the same and some bigger ambitious projects in 2011.
2: Indie vs Big Guys on the iPhone
With the recent release of the Unreal Development Kit for the iPhone expect to see more large developers getting serious about iPhone games. With Infinity Blade pulling in $1M in 5 days, other developers will look to have their huge development teams develop smaller games in between their 2-3 year AAA projects. The small indie guys with big hits like Half Brick (Fruit Ninja) and Rovio (Angry Birds) will continue to have hits as they utilize their established install base. I expect an Angry Birds TV show to be locked in also.
3: Social Gaming Overload
Who will buy Zynga? How will EA and Disney leverage their purchases in 2011? All I know is that Social Gaming will, like it was in 2010, be huge with ad agencies, media companies and brands take a lot more interest in in the scene.
There are no brands with a top ranking social game but expect that to change in 2011.
Expect social gaming to capture all the headlines in between how much money the latest game franchise made
4: 3DS = Fail
I'm going to go out on a limb and say the Nintendo 3DS will fail. You can't advertise it properly as the 3D won't display and the 3D is a gimmick. The DS was a breakthrough and created games that could not exist on any other platform and the 3DS will just be 3D. It'll sell like crazy in Japan but fail to take hold anywhere else. The 3DS does have a gyroscope so that is probably more interesting to developers than the 3D feature.
5: Battle of Big FPS
After making so much money from first person shooters I'm going to stay on safe ground and say that the big developers will stay within that familiar and well paid territory as they announce their new titles in 2011.
Activision with the biggest gaming franchise Call of Duty, will announce a paid subscription game (probably to be released in 2012) in addition to the next installment into the franchise for 2011. EA will announce the title from Respawn Entertainment (ex Infinity Ward) that will tear the Call of Duty fans in half. Bungie will tease their new non Microsoft, non Halo IP towards the end of the year. Insomniac Games will announce their first multi-platform title thanks to the EA deal and knowing them it could be any genre.
6: Cloud Gaming
onLive and Gaikai will both be fully launched but like most new technology might be a little ahead of it's time. Looking at onLive's game collection they will need to increase the titles to make it attractive to real gamers. Also Australia won't see either until it's $50B National Broadband Network is ready in 2018-2020 and by that time another similar start up will have launched and crushed them both.
7: Browser 3D Games FTW: (Unity and Molehill)
Between Unity (which is getting much more mainstream acceptance since going free for Indie developers) and Flash 10's Project Molehill, expect to see a lot more browser based 3D games in 2011 and beyond. Yes HTML5 can do a nice little platfomers but people want to see stuff like this below.
8: ASIA ASIA ASIA
Why work hard to grow in the saturated western game market when your existing titles have huge growth potential in the Asian market? Expect to see publishers going hard at Asia (mainly China and Korea) in 2011 and beyond as they try and adapt and create franchises to fit this huge but totally unique market.
Activision have already made moves and even on the social side Zynga ported it's Farmville over to Chinese. Even on the flash side of browser gaming Mochi Media (the largest casual games media network) was bought by Shanda games in 2010 and has been pro-active in porting flash games over to Chinese.
9: Motion gaming all about Kinect
Sony are all about 3D in 2011, while Microsoft will all be about Kinect. Families, fitness and moms were the core focus at launch but expect to see Kinect titles aimed at the more hardcore gamer in 2011. Will we see a COD Kinect? Probably not, but we won't see the same level of shovelware that the Wii endured. Expect to see titles having Kinect features that allow controller and Kinect to work together. Well, persoanlly that's what I'd like to see.
Disclaimer: This post has been created as an unbiased and personal view of Ashley Ringrose. He currently works with the following companies via his role at Soap Creative: Xbox Australia, Activision, Ubisoft, Namco Baindai, Insomniac Games and Naughty Dog. You can check his gaming credentials here. No privileged or sensitive information was used in the preparation for this post.
Yes mobile gaming will continue in 2011. That's a easy one. Windows Phone will get some noise but what about the other Android handsets too? What will the new tablets bring to this mix and how does the Nintendo 3DS fold into this? What a waste of a predictions
2. Backfield in Motion
Motion gaming sales wont keep up with the titles. Agreed, and this is like any new console launch it takes a few years to build up the software catalogue and have developers get used to the software. Kinect porn? It'll be there as a hack but Microsoft will never allow this to be officially released.
3. Flash Crash
HTML5 games will dominate browser-based gaming? Way to bring out the hyperbole. We'll see more social games using HTML5 but Flash will dominate for many more years to come. Why? The sheer number of developers out there. A framework like Impact may be leading the way but it's very early days and doesn't have any Mochi Games type support to allow developers to make any money. Unless they want to develop an iPhone app and in that case they might as well learn Objective C than this new framework. Also who hates HTML5?
4. Wii Want HD
Would that be the Wii2? Why not put it out there that a new console will be announced in 2011. With the 3DS coming it will be very hard for Nintendo to ship to pieces of hardware in the same year so expect a Wii2 in 2012.
5. Bringing the Pain
Oh dear. A whole prediction on Gears of War 3?
"Its sales are practically guaranteed to break all records." That would be XBOX360 sales only right? What a joke. No mention of the plethora of other gaming titles coming out Killzone 3, Uncharted 3, new COD, COD MMO, Resistance 3? Just list through the VGA award announcements if you're having trouble.
6. Apple Console
Why would Apple try to enter the console market when it already dominates the handheld gaming market? Once they release their desktop app store this should turn any Mac into a gaming machine anyway.
7. Avian Anger
An angry birds sequel or DLC packs. It's obvious that the #1 selling game which has released a couple of expansion packs this year will continue the ride.
Vodafone & Host have set up a giant Pinata and have invited people to destroy it via a Facebook app.
Why? no reason but it ticks a few of my boxes.
1: Breaking shit
2: robots
3: Ironic use of Mexican Culture.
4: The web controlling something in real life (still trying to sell one of those ideas in despite numerous attempts.
5: It's not a flash mob or a building projection or an ARG.
The official post by Vodafone says "a little something something for no other reason other than your enjoyment" so I'm glad they called a spade a spade.
The queue system worked well and I was ready to start smashing in no time at all. I would say the robot needs to get a little angrier as I can see the pinata never getting smashed. The prizes are a nice lure but it seems if you're smash is the winning one you don't automatically win. You have to be one of the first to claim. I look forward to seeing the resolution of this/
In other Vodafone news (they have been very busy lately) Vodafone & Tongue also launched a new fragrance last week in a move similar to BK and their "Flame" scent. This time it's Eau De Engine fragrance by TeamVodafone to celebrate their sponsorship of racing. Their line "Why smell like a man when you can smell like a V8" is cute although the use of oil in the TV ad doesn't translate 100% to being that of synthetic nature.
For the upcoming TRON: Legacy film, Coke Zero has released Coke Zero LiveCycle, a location-based mobile game that lets you play the movie's light cycle game in real-life. Build your light wall by moving about in the real world and earn points by forcing other players to crash into it.
