Burger King Open Late, Beware!

Our latest offering to Burger King, comes in the form of these press and outdoor ads. We were asked to communicate that Burger King stays open until the wee hours of the morning. Thomas and Kris came up with the following campaign showing the villains of the night that we know all to well, enjoying their favourite meal after a umm night out. The ads were shot in South Africa and Dubai by French photographer Ben Dauchez and retouched by Thomas himself. A job well done! The series comprises of four ads which will run in press and outdoor.

Creative Director: Vincent Raffray
Art Director: Thomas Derouault
Copywriter: Kris Richardson
Photographer: Ben Dauchez

Nando’s Bus-ted by CID

In the early hours of yesterday morning the police mistakenly confused the Nando’s Staff bus for an Israeli tank and promptly impounded it. It’s the military style design that seems to have upset them even though we received full RTA permission for the design to be used on the bus. Unfortunately the Nando’s staff, aka the Nando’s Commandos, will have to find their way to work using ordinary civilian vehicles.

Kill The Red With Croma Eye Drops

Our latest campaign comes in the form of these three lovely little print ads (if I don’t say so myself :) for Croma Eye Drops. Communication for pharmaceutical products has never been easy due to the fact that there are so many restrictions attached and so many levels of approval to get through. It doesn’t mean that the work has to be boring.

Client: Croma Eye Drops
Creative Director: Vincent Raffray
Art Directors: Valerio Battagli And Thomas Derouault
Copywriter: Dario De Albuquerque
Photographer: Tejal Patni
Illustrator: Amin Faramarzian

Tonic Cairo - An Office With A View

This could soon be the view from our new office in Cairo. OK, I admit it's been through a few Photoshop filters to remove the smog, but you know... Let's hope the Nile brings us the same creative energy we've had here in Dubai over the years. If you're keen to come up with award winning ideas while staring out the window at this view, then call Khaled now and all of this could be yours :)

Burger King Ambient Stamp

Burger King wanted to communicate that they are open until 4am. We wanted to target those that were up that late – the partygoers. To do this, we simply modified the entrance stamps that partygoers usually get when entering a club. This was our attempt to jog the inebriated memories of those looking for a late night snack. Not only did we suggest Burger King as a possible destination, since they are open until 4am, but we also gave partygoers simple directions to follow (or to mumble/show to a taxi driver)

Dubai’s main traffic artery is Sheikh Zayed Road. Six lanes in both directions (with the Sea on one side and a desert on the other) that are broken down into 7 major intersections (Int 1, Int 2, etc). When you give directions in Dubai, you must give the closest intersection to exit or you will be unable to find your way. On our stamp, we’ve given the locations of the Burger King Restaurants located directly off of the individual intersections that were closest in proximity to the bar selected.

Good Stuff For Your Ears

We’ve always been great admires of the guys at BKP and we use them regularly for the production of our radio ads. We were recently ask to come up with some ads for them and in true Tonic style, we created the following campaign. Art Directed by Thomas Derouault and photographed by Thomas Derouault and French photographer Ben Dauchez this campaign simply cannot be ignored.

Instead of using models, we used BKP's target audience - normal agency folk like you and I, not that there's anything normal about these people :) The following three ads are running in print and the last three will be used as posters.

Happy ummm Valentines Day

Our anti-Valentine cherub is at it again (guess who didn’t get any roses this year :) If you remember we shared some of her Valentine cards on this blog last year. This year Renata sent the agency this image – her latest creation against the conformists.

Burger King Mural

This is the new "Have It Your Way" Burger King digital mural. It's a towering 2.7m height x 8.4m length installed in the food area at the biggest mall in the world, Dubai Mall. It's a massive print sandwiched in acrylic panels.

We pushed the idea of pop art into functional visual communication, attracting new set of customers, fun and outgoing, preaching the "have it your way message." Lines like I cannot imagine myself without onions, I'm an extra cheese kind of guy.

The mural was designed by our resident Brownmonkey, Rollen AKA Dogboy

The Italian Stallion strikes again

Some compromising photos of our resident Italian Stallion – Valerio have surfaced. It seems like Valerio was having a great time at last years Campaign party. Now we know who was responsible for opening all those poofs.

Panty Fetish

There’s a rumor that one of our Art Directors who we cannot name… ah what the hell, it’s Valerio :) has been spotted around town collecting women’s underwear. We usually turn a blind eye to our employees strange little fetishes, but when he started bringing his umm habit to work, we had to say something. It turns out, that Valerio was actually working on a secret project that will be unveiled in all it’s glory in the days to come… so he says…

Spot the difference

The Tribe (next door to us) recently came up with a really nice ad for themselves. The ad implies that because we're right next door to them, we steal their ideas. Please, we use the old award annuals for that :)

Anyway, this was our response a day later. See if you can spot the difference.

Gulf Finance Win

Starting the year with a new piece of business is always a good thing especially if that year happens to be 2009. The pitch was for Gulf Finance and after sprinkling a little Tonic magic, we were appointed to manage their strategic corporate communication, all re-branding aspects and corporate PR.

New Campaigns

While some companies have been moping around because of the financial crisis, we’ve been pretty busy in the past few weeks. Yes we’ve seen some budget cuts and have had some clients “disappear” over night, but that hasn’t stopped us coming up with ideas that were pretty inexpensive to produce thanks to the skills of our Designers and Art Directors. The first set of ads is for the Kids Park Zoo in Abu Dhabi created by the Rio Brothers Valerio and Dario. These simple executions show us that you can keep costs down and still create a memorable campaign that kids will love and remember.

We’ve used illustrations in the past for Burger King with our BK Joe campaign and it worked wonders. There’s a lot of freedom with illustrations that you don’t necessarily have with traditional photography and here is another example. These illustrations were beautifully created by Renata Giovannoni and the stories written by Kris Richardson. Full of fun, full of drama and perfect for the product on offer – the deliciously indulgent Burger King Chocolate Soufflé.

The new face of Tonic

While everyone is retrenching staff left right and centre, we decided to do the same so that we could afford to hire this guy – Thomas Derouault. He has the style and grace of a giraffe and the personality of a rock star and he’s French (we can’t all be perfect) and last but not least, he’s a brilliant Art Director who has already worked his magic amongst our ranks. Thomas joins our Obama lookalike Copywriter Kris Richardson.

Gone, but not forgotten

First of all, apologies for the state of our blog. A few weeks ago every image that was posted mysteriously vanished into thin air and it’s taken weeks to find most of them. We’re still missing quite a few and I fear to say that we may never get them back. But that’s ok, there’s no use dwelling in the past because it’s today and tomorrow the future that is important. Here’s to the new posts that will grace these electronic pages and may the fleas of a thousand camels infect the crotch of the person responsible for taking away our precious memories :)