News
Optimism seemingly abounds this week, based on the number of companies announcing ambitious plans.
Angry Birds publisher Rovio will pull back on the slingshot and fire its first video offering into the media universe on 16 March: An Angry Birds animated series that will be viewable in-game and via a number of on-demand services.
Leo Burnett's ambitious plan involves nothing short of re-inventing the way brands are built, at least according to the agency, which launched the Leo Burnett Institute of Behaviour. Based in Singapore but with designs on expanding worldwide, the institute will combine quantitative and qualitative research into human behaviour with brand consulting and innovation. Needless to say, time will tell whether the endeavour is something significant or just hand waving.
In other launch news, Forbes announced a Thailand publication, BBC World News and BBC.com kicked off a worldwide repositioning campaign, VML moved into Japan, Swiss International airlines appointed Mindshare for its arrival in Singapore and Italian furniture maker Kartell moved forward with plans to build its brand in China.
Catch up on all the week's news here.
Analysis
We looked into how real-time response is helping brands prove their relevance, examined the recent hijacking of a piece of Coca-Cola work by critics, pondered what advertisers can do with 72 million (and counting) high-speed LTE subscriptions in Asia, assessed the market potential of the older demographics in Hong Kong and tried to predict what will become of the Lonely Planet media empire. In addition, our DigitalMediaWorks event in Beijing resulted in a series of takeaways that any digitally minded marketer should peruse.
Check our Analysis and Opinion sections for more.
The Work
Tokyo-ites were delighted by a beanstalk sprouting out of the pavement (actually a 3D street art promotion for the film Jack the Giant Slayer), Huawei touted some success with online videos, and a New Zealand man watched his wealth draining away in a spot for Westpac Bank.
And finally
Time for Friday fun. Here's a few odds and ends we noticed—emphasis on the odd.
Item 1: Acclaimed actor Jean Reno as Doraemon and recently graduated AKB48 singer Atsuko Maeda as Jaiko in a live-action take (by Dentsu) on the beloved animated manga series. The spot promotes Toyota's new pink Crown model.
Item 2: A potentially NSFW PSA video about safe sex featuring, well, there's no other way to put it: a pair of blue balls, who lament their fate at great length in (what else?) blues style (list of credits / who to blame available here):
