Ideas We Love: Zed Anwar
Issue Number 55: A love letter to a constant source of creative inspiration
Hi there. How are you?
The process of selecting what we write about each week is probably best described as organic. Most weeks we’re driven by a desire to be timely, covering a topic or campaign whilst it’s still fresh in our - and your - minds. On other occassions, one of us may have been thinking about a topic or a brand for a while, before a final prompt emerges and provides a hook, just as it did in the recent Lego issue.
The focus of this week’s issue isn’t an idea per se, but instead a creative who has been a regular fixture in the IWL Whatsapp chat for almost as long as we’ve been writing the newsletter…..
Zed Anwar is a freelance creative director whose work we first encountered on LinkedIn & Twitter/X. Zed’s creative work for brands and the relentless stream of conceptual work that he publishes online (often in response to challenges set by the brilliant One Minute Briefs) is a constant source of inspiration and interest to us both.
He has produced work for brands as varied as Guinness, OceanSaver, Nivea, Unilever, WWF, The Dian Fossey Gorilla Trust and KFC… and his online portfolio is full of brilliant conceptual work for the likes of Burger King Mercedes, McDonalds, Nike, Kleenex and many more besides. He is also not afraid to use his creative skills to dramatise and address some of the bigger societal issues facing the world today, often calling out injustice or the brands he feels are complicit in perpetuating certain problems.
What is really interesting to us though is the toolkit Zed uses.
As far as we understand, the vast majority of his work - especially the conceptual work - is built using Generative AI tools like Midjourney and Runway. Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock for the last 24 months, you’ll know that the use (and potential abuse) of Gen-AI is the spiciest topic in the Advertising and Communications industry at the moment. Last week Group M rebranded as WPP Media, clearly stating that the media holding company had evolved and is now ‘a global media collective built for the AI era’.
Long established industry structures are going to be not just upended, but potentially abandoned, as this technology matures and is baked into working-processes. More prosaically, the recently launched Chat GPT-4o Image Generation product from Open AI saw the internet flooded with derivative Studio Ghibli self-portaits and people ‘reimagining’ themselves as action figures.
The danger of any new transformational technology is that we lose sight of the fact that tools are a means to an end, not an end in themselves. History also likes to tell us that we can, on occassion, get out over our skis when new stuff comes along (NFTs & Web3, the Metaverse anyone?). The risks of Generative AI are manifold. The ubiquity of ‘slop’ is a clear challenge: with the potential to deplete our attention but also re-write reality. Against this backdrop, Zed’s work stands out: strong strategic and creative thinking, that uses Gen-AI as a means to accentuate and enable his innnate human creativity rather than replace and dilute it.
The best place for you to find out more is by going directly to Zed’s website or by following him on Linkedin. In the meantime though, here are some of the pieces of his recent work which we’ve enjoyed the most.
#1. Nerf 🧑🏭
A brilliant suite of creative work which “isn’t a toy ad, but a movie trailer for your inner child”. This route reimagines children - and nerf - as the stars of famously action orientated movies…. We included the Leon homage at the top of the newsletter, below is a bullet-time version inspired by The Matrix. Find the full suite here.
#2. Lucozade 🏈
Simple stuff - but a brilliant suite of imagery imagining oranges as sport’s balls - brining together the world of flavour and performance for Lucozade Sport concepts. Full suite of executions can be found here
#3. Greenpeace ☮️
This campaign was recently awarded Best Social Film at the AIMI awards. Again, dead simple and a visual reference we all understand in the blink of an eye. Find out more here
#4. Audi 🚗
A series of ads that superimposes the Audi logo - a series of rings - into situations in nature. Whilst Audi is known for it’s technical prowess, “Audi’s iconic four rings aren’t just a symbol of engineering excellence... they echo patterns we see in the natural world”.
#5. Mercedes Benz 🇩🇪
A concept that went viral last year. An amazing marriage of brand identity and pop culture - Simon Biles reimagined as the iconic logo of Mercedes Benz. The spec ad generated over 300 million impressions across social channels. Read more about it here.
If you liked this, you’ll love 💕
There is clearly alot of stress in the system where Generative AI and creativity is concerned. Where does the source training material come from? How does it get paid for? Will the machine replace the human hand in creative processes, both artistically and commercially? What will happen if the internet is flooded with weird, derivative content? Despite these concerns - there are some brilliant artists, like Zed, who are using the new tools to create work which captures the imagination. Here are some of our favourites
#1. Nice Aunties 🍣
The Nice Aunties project aims to ‘preserving and reimagining the Auntie archetype through AI, surrealism, and social commentary’. A heady mix of Sushi, Ramen, Cats and older ladies caring for their community.
#2. Roope Rainisto 🇫🇮
More surrealism (a style of work that Gen AI feels particularly adept at rendering) Of his work Rainisto says “I realize most use of AI (be it image or video) aims for natural realism, but I'm always drawn to the space parallel, creating something that would be close to impossible without AI. The dream space”. We’ve spent far too long watching his recent work Deconstruction of the Fables.
#3. The Dor Brothers 🗽
Based in Berlin, The Dor Brothers use Generative AI to create scathing satires of politics and technology, often through the prism of pop culure. Ready for 2025 is a two and half minute long fever dream set to Gorillaz - and Influenders which they published last week picks up where this left off.
Until Next Time 💕
Thanks very much for reading! We hope you’ve enjoyed.
Until next time. Cheerio.
Tom & Matt x