Osmosis > Futzing !: What's the difference between advertising and ironing water ?

Why ? We ask ourselves has advertising become a commodity, with it's bland generic thinking bordering on extinction.
We have become dinosaurs using outmoded ways of working and strategizing.
Advertising agencies have become comfortably numb, while the rest of the indust has moved on. they are under threat from various quarters with every man / woman andhis her dog clamouring for business.
Consultancies have mushroomed overnight and more importantly a new generation of thinkers such as Ideo, St. Lukes, Crispin Porter, have started to encroach on established territory. These new thinkers do not even call themselves advertising agencies. The problem with advertising is just that, it is advertising. It has lost credebility, it has become so ubiquitious it runs the risk of being taken forgranted.

Advertising has to compete with the big wide world out there, music, sports, reality tv, mtv, big brother
war, the internet, life is exciting,much more exciting than advertising. People are not fooled by advertising, they are very advertising literate, brands have replaced politics and religion as part of our
social fabric, yet advertising still isn,t working.

So where did it all go wrong.
Maybe advertising as we know it has passed it's sell by date, advertising has become as effective as ironing water.

It is refreshing whenwe come across a company that has broken free from market conventions, companies such as St. Lukes, Crispin Porter, and Osmosis. Recently we identified radical advertising
work that did not follow the norm of either brand building or product advantage - in fact advertising was
not the primary medium.

Let's take a step back from theworld of advertising to look at things from a different perspective, to realize that real change only comes about through total discontinuity.

Discontinuous change at the company level or product level does not happen every day - that's where advertising fortunately comes in.

Disruption in advertising can be the catalyst for change that touches all facets of our lives, companies and brands.

When we look at advertising throught the world and not just here in Africa, we realize that advertising disruptions are rare, infact real life out there is far more disruptive - you only have to think back to 9/11and how our lives have been irrevocably changed forever. There are many more examples ( Madiba's Release, Giving Birth, Divorce, Starting your own business, Winning the Lotto. etc )

A large number of advertising companies are boringly predictable, safe and bland, these ideas tend to litter and polute the mind rather than stimulate.

Which brings us back to that magical word, " Disruption " and how it can change the way we view not just advertising but life.

It is the brainchild of Jean - Marie Dru who says " Disruption is about finding the strategic idea that breaks and overturns convention in the marketplace, and than makes it possible to reach a new vision" it is a sort of mental Tsunami.

Disruption occurs when the strat planners and creative thinkers reject the conventional formulaic approach, when a non linear advertising methodology is encouraged.

This unfortunately, is not what a lot of us out there are doing - we continue with the insanity of formulaic repetition, each time expecting a different result. So called big ideas seem to happen by accident. Finding great ideas at random shouldn't neccessarily be the way.

There is another way, through the implementation of a " Disruption Strategy " we introduce a methedology that refuses to accept convention. We break with tradition, it's a sort of undisciplined discipline - called Disruption.

Mind blowing creative executions are not enough, with Disruption we want to introduce Value Innovations and thinking about our clients brands before we even get to the stage of creative work.

Disruption is the thinking behind the thinking .

Disruption has become a shared mental model, a disruption methedology has been developed by Jean - Marie Dru and his agency TWBA - Paris, practiced very successfully by other offices all over the world, St. Lukes of London have their own form of deviation , Osmosis has found it's own path that also disruptivates from the norm.

Disruption is the way we should communicate with the world, do business everyday, think bold sell brave ideas, create dramatic business results for our clients and ourselves from life.

Are you ready to be Disrupted ? Isn't it time we stopped ironing water ?

For more on strategies that deviate, disrupt and are posotively subversive we invite you to e - mail us at osmosis@zappanet please feel free to print , download the content on this blog.

Osmosis disrupts Yahoo Think Tank !

Osmosis recently posted a disruptive/creative brief on the Yahoo Think Tank a global online creative innitiative - THE BRAINCHILD IDEA OF GLUE SOCIETY : glue society the ozzie ideas guru's who concieved this gr8t viral campaign ! Ozz creatives along with Kiwis worked out of a perspex think tank in Sydney harbour - creatives were given five minutes to respond to briefs posted , this was often evident in the poor quality of the ideas concieved - but the main idea was to have fun and demonstrate the power of online creativity ! Osmosis was pleasantly suprised to learn that our disruptive / creative brief lead to the best creative execution as voted by online viewers out there ! visit www.yahoothinktank.com click through to the top ten ideas & viola = osmosis disruptivation , check out www.gluesociety.com for a gr8t / disruptive / innovative / viral

ideas company down under !

Osmosis does Lan Party : Riverside Mall gets Fragged Dude !

NeoGeek - Custodian - Spider - BioPhreek - Bogus - Bloodflow - Raddit - Ice - Sonic - Serb - Phrantic - Nightzombie - TheSaint - Immunity - Killerent - W itch

A gathering of Geeks & Psycho Gamers get Fragged - Show no Quarter .

Osmosis collaborates with the Apocalyps Now Clan, over a weekend in the Riverside Mall , Mapumalanga - 14 Gamers from the AN Clan challenged the Geeks from Mpumalanga and surrounds.

This Viral Marketing Campaign was carried out in conjunction with Riverside Mall the perfect venue

for a LAN Party - Osmosis seeded the campaign through a postcard campaign , posters posted within the Mall as well as guerilla tactic floor decals that were strategically placed throught the Mall.

Radio was also an important part of this viral campaign that lead to strong buzz - word of mouth

being a large contributer to the success of the Lan Party !