Little Teo

A few days ago, Arnaud managed to clone himself and this was the result, a healthy bundle of joy :) Little Teo was born just two days ago and we'd like to wish Arnaud and Lavinia all the best with their second child.

Apocalypse Now

My Troops make me proud! Tonic completely annihilated the competition tonight at the AdNation Paintball Tournament :)

Thanks to "Fast" Dennis, "You-Won’t-Have-Time-To-Say" Arno, "Rabid" DogBoy, "Precision" Makram, "I’ll-Make-It-Personal" Andre, "Wondering" Kris, "Late" Haytham, umm Iya's husband and Iya as official cheerleader and professional photo-reporter... we won both legs of the elimination round. We are therefore in the 1/4 finals and more if we continue kicking ass the way we did with the Active’s and UM7’s.

You see, we're not just an award-winning, super-creative, ridiculously good looking agency!

For more info visit adnationme.com/adnation-paintball-tournament.html

It's Good to be Evil

This week, Rollan aka Dogboy of the Brown Monkeys, launched Evil Wear. This is what he had to say:

“With the rising concern of too much commercialism and profiteering, we have to rethink and go back to the basics. Evil is not only a shirt or a tag. It's a concept. The Evil Symbol is a combination of two fun characters: Mickey Mouse (USA) and Modhesh (UAE). Highly regarded for their entertaining attributes but a great vehicle of commercialism. Probably that's what’s happening now in UAE. Too much has been publicized about everything, but in the end, its not too pretty at all. Everyone's complaining. Too much of everything is Evil.

I hope by wearing a shirt, I can share the propaganda. I call the owners of the shirt an "Evil Doer." Every owner will email me back a picture of them wearing the shirt holding a knife. I will blog this daily and post it on our website, creating a small "EVIL community". In the future, Limited edition will be printed, customized by designers and artists. As a result, we create a mini hysteria.”

So grab a T-shirt for only 90 bucks and say no to ummm profiteering :)

http://brownmonkeys.multiply.com/

All hail the King

It’s not every day you get to spend an afternoon with royalty. That’s exactly how some lucky shoppers spend their afternoon at the opening of the newest Burger King restaurant in Dubai Mall. After walking about 5km around the mall you tend to work up an appetite and what better way to calm that hunger than with a triple Whopper served by his royal highness. Long live the King!

Tonic sees RED

As far as I know, and I know, we are the first agency to shoot a TV commercial on the new RED Digital Cinema camera in the Gulf. Undoubtedly, this is the best camera we’ve ever used. As far as resolution, functionality and design go, this camera takes it to the next level. I really feel that using this camera has simplified the process, especially when it comes to off-line. Amongst some of the advantages, is that you can grade and edit on site and the resolution is so good, you can rack into a shot 5 times more than you could of on any other camera. These are just some of the advantages of using this amazing new camera.

As Scott Billups said on their site, "It's not that the RED is really that far ahead of the technological curve, it's just that everything else is so far behind."

We used the RED to shoot four new spots for Burger King with Zoe in Beirut. Currently the spots are in post-production, but they’ll soon be on our site and the blog once they’re done, so watch this space.

Tonic gets a taste of Riyadh

It took about six trips to the Saudi consulate and a lot of umm paperwork, but they eventually decided to give me a visa. It's not on the top of my list of must see cities, but our trip to Riyadh to see our Burger King clients was a fruitful and an educational experience. Apart from visiting the first Burger King ever in the Middle East, we had the opportunity to see the sights and sounds of a city that many people misunderstand. BTW, if you're going to drive, get life insurance :)