Sneakers and Paintball Action

New Balance goes straight for the sneaker freak jugular with a beautiful campaign via Mother, New York. Each pair of the new limited-edition '574 Clips' shoes comes complete with a unique Polaroid picture showing where in the US it was made. This has a code on the back which connects the consumer to their own video hosted online - expanding on the origins of each individual pair. Users can then 'claim' their video before sharing with friends across various social networks and blogging platforms. http://574clips.com

Pop art via paintball on behalf of snack brand, Bon Yurt for Leo Burnett, Columbia http://tiny.cc/popart515. The full campaign features seven limited edition labels made by students www.bonyurt.com

Wii & The Never Ending Why

Hockey Moms are the subject of a witty campaign to launch NHL 2K10, a hockey game for the Nintendo Wii. Via 72andSunny in Los Angeles, the campaign stars three moms who use the game to vent their aggression. http://tiny.cc/nhl2k10Wii

Finally, check out Champagne Valentine’s beautifully interactive promo for The Never Ending Why, the new Placebo single. Through Nexus in London, the multi-sensory experience steers the viewer through a landscape of shadows, monsters and psychedelic colour. http://tiny.cc/PlaceboChV

From Red Bull to a boot or that little sports car

Just a couple of quick things we like....

It’s not quite Mark Ecko tagging Airforce One, but Red Bull Cola has taken laser tagging to the M16 building in London thanks to Agents of Change, making the point that the brand’s natural cola has nothing to hide. www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGbShQOwjjo

Hasbro has just kicked off Monopoly City Streets. The game is a limited-run massively multiplayer online interface that, thanks to Google Maps, allows players to develop property anywhere in the world in real time. More here www.monopolycitystreets.com

Ian stands up for design in Australian Creative

Some pearls of wisdom from Ian in Australian Creative...

http://www.australiancreative.com.au/blog

Putting our heads above the parapet

the hub stirs the pot. Goody.

http://mumbrella.com.au/parents-stop-blaming-ads-grow-a-backbone-and-say-no-9401#more-9401

Creative Without The Baggage

Well, we're finally launching our new service - idea creation without all the baggage. That is, creating idea’s against briefs but then allowing clients to bring those ideas to reality in terms of applications, layouts artwork etc.

What this means is that clients who have their own internal designer or preferred freelancers, can get the benefit of a creative agency for idea generation and creative thinking without the subsequent expense of a full agency structure to turn those ideas into actual communications. None of which they need if they have their own resources.

We’ve found that with so many clients now having their own internal design teams (as do you), that often they just need a good idea, a strong creative concept, which they can work up to layouts, artwork, online content etc. themselves using internal resources.

We reckon there's a market for this...

Melbourne - do yourself a favour.

Have you been following the furore over the new city of Melbourne brand identity. Well, in a nutshell, public money used to commission Landor for new brand work. Herald Sun goes ape shit over the whole expense ($240k); gets a bunch of students to knock up some alternatives.

So, what's my beef? Not the money, not the design, not even the outrage. It's the cheapening of the whole process through the low quality debate. Yes, it could have been done for less. Yes, it could have been given to a Melbourne agency to do. But the public debate has, not surprisingly for journalism, gone for the lowest common denominators. Money; not invented here; it's "just" a logo; my kids could do better. Frankly, from the self proclaimed city of culture the debate is rubbish (one great exception from Peter Singline commenting in B&T).

If Melbourne wants to do it's brand a favour then they could start by elevating the level of debate about a really important question - what is Melbourne?