Ideas We Love: September Pick 'n' Mix 🍬🍭🧁

Issue Number 29: A few of our favourite things we've seen since being back at school

Hi there!

How are you?

After a pretty fallow few weeks that had us scraping around trying to find things we liked, never-mind loved coming out of ad-land, the #IWL💕 WhatsApp has been firing at all hours across the past week with ideas that that have tickled our fancy.

So rather than write about one fine thing this week, we’re giving you a party pack, a pick’n’mix, a mega-mix of 7+1 ideas we’ve loved from recent weeks, with links throughout to ideas they reminded us of for those of you keen to go down a rabbit hole of likeminded examples.

We hope you love ‘em as much as we do.

Idea #1. Pizza Hut resZAmes 🍕

In a pretty grim job market right now, Pizza Hut found that 75% of resumes are never even read. If they are being read, at the first stage they’re increasingly likely to be screened by Bots. How depressing.

To help job-seekers in this predicament, they’ve created ResZAmes.COM… where with a simple upload of your CV they’ll print it on the side of a pizza box and send it to an employer of your choice with a delicious Pizza.

Now that’s a lovely way to get around the CV bot.

Some nice punning too : )

If you liked this you’ll love 💕

• A bunch of talented creative industry professionals, who in various stages of job hunting came to realize the most pressing concern in today's job hunt is determining “the least sad-trombone way of telling LinkedIn you're #OpenToWork.” So they did what they do best and made a film about it that we dedicated #IWL20 to - plus lots of other recruitment shaped acts from both side of the hiring line.

• Similar to Pizza Hut, another packaging-shaped play from Liquid Death we featured in our Superbowl Special that helped them stand-out across the game-week by using their packaging as a promotional device they offered up to small-businesses across America.

• Spotify’s attempts to get the attention of hard to reach marketers (and their ad budgets) by recording one-of-a-kind Songs for each CMO on their hit-list.

Lovely stuff.

Idea #2. Prada x RedBull x Mountain Bike x Moving Train 🚂

The world’s first mountain bike ride… on a moving train. Why not?

The latest in a long-running partnership between Prada & RedBull sees Dawid Godziek ride a mountain bike course, outfitted in Prada Linea Rossa, across a moving train. Jump after jump over 10 carriages, Godziek seems to float against an unmoving background thanks to a surreal freeze frame effect, as the Red Bull Express speeds underneath him at 23 km/hr.

The athletic feat is the latest showcase of Prada’s partnership with Red Bull that’s previously seen them stunt it up on the slopes and across the waves to spotlight different parts of their athleisure range.

If you liked this you’ll love 💕

• Some of Red Bull’s back-catalogue of ideas across the years we featured IWL#19.

• No brands, but some wonderful gravity-bending artistry from Yoann Bourgeois.

Idea #3. Smarty Mobile. Dialling-up flexibility 📱

U.K. Mobile provider SMARTY Mobile has created a lovely series of stretchable posters to spotlight the flexibility of their sim-only smartphone plans.

Ooft, love these; makes us think back to this little guy.

If you liked this, you’ll love 💕

• IWL#25 that we dedicated to a bunch of breakthrough OOH executions.

• Matt’s love-letter to OOH, the swiss-army knife of mediums over on his A to Z of Media Planning Project; which detailed 12 different ways brands are using OOH at scale and over 50 examples of those approaches in action.

• What the team over at Global Street Art are building in this space.

• This loop-the-loop, bendy barge built by artist Alex Chinneck.

Idea #4. Curry’s Swallows The Urban Dictionary 💬

UK Electrical retailer Currys, similar to other social stalwarts such as Aldi, Ryanair, Specsavers & Paddy Power have a great social media presence – using viral videos, memes and actual staff to create mini masterpieces that go viral (on LinkedIn).

Here’s how they recently posted around the ever popular air fryer, for example.

Continuing down this path, Currys was one of the first mainstream brands out of the trap to jump on the Gen Z slang trend; with some beautifully staged awkwardness..

No skibidi, just infinite aura.

If you liked this, you’ll love 💕

• The inverse of this trend teaching old dogs, new tricks via new tech…where in issue IWL#4 we saw McDonald’s NZ teach Gen Z about how we had to do things in the 90s by reviving fax-machines to create a one-of-a-kind sales-promo for their revived Kiwiburger.

Idea #5. Nando’s Mango & Lime Bikes 🍗

The McDonald’s idea, of reviving old menu favourites is a nice segue to this next idea.

Where Nando’s collaboration with Uber’s Lime bikes celebrates the return of Mango & Lime to the menu - with a competition for people to share pics of the bike for the chance to win delicious, fruity, citrusy chicken.

Sometimes the ideas write themselves.

If you like this you’ll love 💕

• IWL#12 where we shared Nando’s first sauce they’d created in collaboration with Arsenal & England’s MVP Bukayo Saka; in researching that issue we were surprised at just how few colabs they’d done with other brands and talent in the U.K. - if this new activation is anything to go by it seems the juice was worth the squeeze.

Idea #6. Slings for Statues 🗽

Campaigners calling for better paternity leave in the U.K (it’s officially s***) have tied babies to famous statues across the capital with baby slings. Lovely.

If you liked this you’ll love 💕

• Issue #21 where we wrote a love-letter to political activist group #LedByDonkeys who are holding power to account through all sorts of inventive uses of Out of Home, the spirit of which they’ve taken into other mediums.

Idea #7. Liquid Death & YETI. The Casket Cooler ⚰️

Liquid Death. Doing Liquid Death things. This time with YETI to build a one-of-a-kind cooler (in the form of a casket).

Keeping drinks cool even in the after-life.

All that’s missing being a cameo from The Undertaker.

If you liked this you’ll love 💕

• Our love-letter to the art-collective MSCHF we featured in IWL#9 who seem to come at ideas from a similar angle to the folks at Liquid Death.

BONUS IDEA. Features We Love 📳

For those of you who aren’t familiar, Soren Iverson is an American web designer who’s built a keen following by posting satirical/sensible app features he mocks up for his followers.

From pondering “wake-up” calls from Uber Drivers…⏰

…to making the snooze button a little easier to hit…🥱

…to creating features that show people other people’s reactions to your calls…🙄

…to suggesting better ways you might spend your time…😭

…Soren’s feed is a constant source of amusement and left-field inspiration when thinking of improvements to UX for any software we’re building internally and discussing with clients.

Give him a follow here 📥

Until Next Time

Which of these did you like, or even love? What did we miss out on this week?

Let us know in the comments or drop us a DM across the socials and we’ll do our best to weave them into an upcoming issue.

Big Love,

Matt and Tom 💕