Seen and noted

This week's guest judge is Colin Lamberton, Co-ECD at Grey Amsterdam.
At the insistence of his copywriter, Seyoan Vela, Colin reluctantly gave up van driving for a job at Lowe Howard-Spink, and was lucky enough to work on clients like Smirnoff, Heineken and Vauxhall.
After seeing the fantastic Chiat/Day London offices, the pair moved to work on First Direct, The Observer and The Bodyshop. In 1995, they became founder members of St. Luke's, and had a lot of fun putting Eric Cantona on the Eurostar, making shorts films for Radio One, using Gremlins to improve Adult Literacy and generally enjoying the Nathan Barley-style madness of it all. After nine years they opted for a different kind of madness at Euro RSCG London, as CDs on Evian, LG, Uniqlo and Co-op.
In 2007 they started their own company, Ether, to explore alternative advertising methods, and after working with Grey on successful Toshiba and Fortis pitches, moved to Amsterdam as ECD's.
In his spare time Colin enjoys boring people about typography, playing video games, and writing about himself in the third person.

The other day I was exploring some of the further reaches of the old pumping station that houses Grey Amsterdam, and I discovered a hidden cache of old D&AD and One Show Annuals. After a few hours I was evicted by a security guard who wanted to go home, but before I left I excitedly told him my two observations:
1. Sometimes it was easier to do 'good' stuff in those days. Obviously less had been done. This was a time when an ad could be an ad, it didn't need a website, social media strategy, twitter feed etc. attached. It didn't need to come with an explanatory case study video.
2. But the ads spoke to people. They weren't all puzzles you had to work out, with a tiny packshot or logo (in the bottom right corner as your only clue). Maybe this was a less international time, before the rise of Cannes and Lurzers archive. They didn't always want to start a conversation, but they told you something.

BEST PRINT
Anyways, I was surprised when going through the ads to review this week and saw one of the ads that struck me so. Surely this Daffy's ad was from the early 90's. Are they running it again. Either as part of the recycling effort or to try and beat the recession? Dunno, but it's a great ad even now- strong tone of voice, traffic stopping visual, on a price brief too.

BEST TV
TV was a only little harder to chose a favourite. I liked the idea of the Brandt commercial but was fiddling around on Facebook long before the payoff. I liked the direction of the Volkswagen commercial but being a dad myself found the strategy off-putting. The ad I would most like to have done would be the Chin Chilli Day for Vegas. I like the strategy - it would have been easy to just show the highlights of that picturesque city - but it's the execution that really takes things to another level and genuinely made me laugh.

BEST OUTDOOR
And for outdoor? Well, that was pretty tough. If you look at a lot of 'outdoor' executions these days, and weigh up the proportions of the logo and endlines, you wonder who they're aimed at. People with incredible vision and an unusual interest in advertising? It's a loud and proud medium. Posters need to be simple and bold. It's possibly the hardest medium because of these restrictions, but hey - that's the game. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it. So for me the only execution that worked as a poster was the Allan Gray quilted execution 'Patience is our virtue'.