Tuesday, August 30

Shackleton's Mythical Ad

It seems that this legendary ad taken out by Irish adventurer, Ernest Shackleton might just be that: a legend. (Shock, horror 😱))















Smithsonian.com has a piece that despite extensive searching with a diligence Shackleton himself would have admired, no one can find any record of it appearing in print. Nor indeed, perhaps, even the 5,000 supposed applicants.


Apparently the archives of The Times from 1785 to 1985 (oh and he died in 1922), the South Polar Times, The Blizzard and the Geographical Journal among others have turned up nothing.


























Good job then Shackleton was able to immortalise himself otherwise with what's probably the greatest survival adventure of all time after The Endurance became ice-locked. It culminated in his rescue of the entire crew from Elephant Island on this day 100 years ago, August 30, 1916.

Below is master-photographer,  Frank Hurley's famous "all safe, all well" shot of that rescue. Or is it?















Always print the legend.

Monday, August 1

Expressway with feeling

How a coach journey might make you feel.

Enjoyed making this spot for Expressway with John Moore again for Strategem iLabs. And yes, we actually did stick Big Red on a rig with gorgeous little Isabel Connolly in his arms and race up and down the M11 a couple of times. This is John Moore after all.

Expressway - "Way Better" from Russell Curran Productions on Vimeo.


Friday, April 29

Introducing NFL Star, Tom Brady to the Easter Bunny

NFL star quarterback, Tom Brady (eh, AKA Mr Gisele) was a great sport to muck about with our Easter Bunny in this web film for UnReal Candy. Along with top illustrator, Steve Simpson, we've been working with the all-natural confectionary brand in the US for a couple of years on everything from developing the creative strategy to packaging & merch design to online content creation. Great opportunity to work with the remarkable Michael Bronner too.






Thursday, January 14

Wearable Tech: the rise of the fitness tracker

In the world of technology, there’s possibly never been such a rapid and concentrated proliferation of ideas, designs and iterations as with wearable technology in the last five years. Here's my quick round-up of some of the latest products for The Irish Times.

"Even the phrase itself would have provoked much head-scratching until recently. Now it’s not unusual to see friends casually comparing step counts on their smartphone’s app while the launch of the Apple Watch prompted a mainstream media feeding frenzy. There are personal monitors to measure everything from sleep patterns to heart rates, to nag wearers to do more exercise, even some which track periods."


The Irish Times, Jan 14, 2016.

Friday, December 18

Christmas Homecomings with Charles Dickens

Here's a simple little low budget film I directed for Strategem iLabs for its clients, Expressway and Bus Éireann to celebrate all those Christmas homecomings they're part of. Richard Kendrick shot the pix, with additional footage from Hugh Chaloner and Conor Smyth cut it.


The text is an extract from A Good-Humoured Christmas by that up and coming writer, Charles Dickensread rather beautifully by Ned Dennehy (himself no stranger to Dickens) and recorded at Beacon Studios.


Tuesday, December 1

Getting UnReal in Time Square

It was also great to collaborate with the mighty Steve Simpson on a 60m tall digital screen for UnReal Candy in Time Square NYC. Part of its Halloween campaign, we created a 30 second animated loop with Steve's fantastic Day-of-the-Dead inspired skull and kinetic text elements. The animation and post was done by designwest.ie.



(This is only a mocked-up comp as the actual screen burned out when filmed at night.)

And here's Steve throwing shapes in Midtown.



Wednesday, November 25

NFL Star makes Halloween Stunt Fly

NFL star quarterback, New England Patriot's Tom Brady was a great sport to go incognito to help us out on a Halloween video which I wrote and CDed for all-natural US brand candy, UnReal, as well as creating content for packaging, web and POS.



What do you think of my Halloween quarterback sneak?? UnReal #GetUnreal
Posted by Tom Brady on Friday, 23 October 2015


Tom hid personally autographed messages and other goodies like match tickets for young fans in 3D Day-of-the-Dead inspired Halloween buckets, featuring fab illustrations by Dublin's own Steve Simpson. Steve also designed the amazing skulls too and a whole heap more. The buckets were then stashed in Whole Foods Markets all across the Boston/New England area.

Needless to say, TB12's profile meant the promo and the video - shot on the run and cut by Mark Higgins - really took flight on social and mainstream media as you'll see below, with almost 500 million impressions.



See what happens when you believe Everything is Possible.