ACM’s Distraction In Action #4
ACM’s Distraction In Action #4
Gold medals, silver screens, big blue news: five links that are dominating our chat
Your new Distraction In Action email from All Conditions Media is here. Scroll away to get a look at the latest links and talking points from our team chat, so they can successfully distract you from work just as much as they did us…
1. LAND A DREAM JOB (AGAINST THE ODDS)
When co-founder and CEO Jojo was asked to write the intro to last week’s newsletter - one anchored to International Women’s Day - there was a surprising moment of hesitation. “I actually find IWD quite nauseating,” she told our senior copywriter Chris, before using her opinion to create an authentic and impactful opener to the authentic and impactful advice from our network of female adventurers, aimed at anyone looking to get their foot in the door of the outdoor industry. Know someone who needs to see this? Forward it on. And while we’re at it, know someone who identifies as a woman and is a keen surf filmmaker? Check out Finisterre’s very very good Women Of The Sea comp.
We learned: “Stop chopping the wood and sharpen the blade” is a phrase that will stick in your head right through the weekend.
2. PREPARE FOR THE LATEST CHIN FLICK
Are you religiously spending your Monday evenings with the undead mushroom heads of The Last Of Us? You’ll know what we mean by the warm feeling of safety that comes with the choral “Aaaaaah” as the HBO logo flashes up in the opening credits. It’s a sound that guarantees what you’re about to see is great. Curb Your Enthusiasm. The White Lotus. Game Of Thrones. Succession. Oh, Succession. It’s the same “five popcorns out of five!” anticipation that flares up with anything Jimmy Chin and Chai Vasarhelyi attach their names to. The exciting trailer for Wild Life, their profile of Kris Tompkins - one half of the couple with their names scratched into the foundations of The North Face and Patagonia - just landed. It explores the emotional peaks and troughs of a decades-long pledge to donate 10 million acres of land to Chile - the biggest land donation in history. No doubt, it’ll be more “nice down jacket!” than “keep it down at the front!” in your local Odeon come its April release.
We learned: Ten million acres is about twice the size of Wales.
3. HUG A SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER
Social media managers can be split into two categories: those who do admit to accidentally posting personal content to their client accounts, and those who don’t. What unites all SMMs, though, is their ability to break the sound barrier as they rush to delete their toes in crystal-clear holiday waters, with the caption “Out Of Office!”, before anyone notices. Social media is an anxious business at the best of times, and even more so when you have a finger hovering over a post of historic proportions. Ask our pro social team (who all admit it, by the way, but claim “it was long, long ago”), who spent this ski season forensically following the medal count of adidas’s Mikaela Shiffrin, as she nudged her way closer to resetting the record books and, eventually, became the winningest World Cup alpine skier of all time. Thanks to an incredibly tight creative/copywriting/reactive publishing plan through the winter weekends, we were privileged to push an adidas TERREX post that marked this occasion the moment it happened. It not only ended a mammoth roll-out strategy, but the beginning of a new chapter in skiing. 87 golds. What a ride.
We learned: How to say “congratulations Mikaela!” 100 different ways.
4. READ SOME *CHECKS NOTES* GOOD! OCEAN! NEWS!
Billed as the most important talks nobody has heard of, you’d have been well within your rights to expect nothing but guff and bumf to come from the global “once in a lifetime” High Seas Treaty talks - a political conference designed to save the vast majority of the world’s oceans. The future of our salt water? In the hands of delegates from the 193 member states? You wouldn’t put your house on it, would you. Incredibly, though, something seems to have clicked. UN member states this month agreed on a historic treaty that lays out a framework to ensure ‘marine protected areas’ can be established in two-thirds of the planet’s blue spaces, helping to protect wildlife and biodiversity, and make the once lofty goal of conserving 30% of the ocean by 2030 seem like an actual, genuine possibility.
We learned: These talks have been 20 years in the making. Damn.
5. DON’T LOOK INTO THE GOLDEN LIGHT
We went to Mexico last year to finish up a full production shoot with the country’s road cycling community for adidas Cycling. We came back with footage we’d happily rave about until someone slowly pushed their finger over our lips, and a real need to get back out there for a proper holiday. It’s probably why we really like this. Coming down from what we imagine was the most incredible disaster comms strategy in the history of marketing in the wake of the virus, Corona’s Unfilter Mexico campaign locates a real “huh, I totally never saw it that way” nugget in the form of the Yellow Filter. It’s a common Hollywood tool that paints the beer brand’s home country in a stereotypically negative light, and that Breaking Bad, for example, is super guilty of. See this once and you’ll never unsee it.
We learned: This trashy Netflix beat-em-up turns the yellow up to undeniably ludicrous levels.
CREW TO-DO LIST
Every fortnight, one ACMer reveals the tasks that’ve been getting their head cogs whirring, so we can all make sure they’re working hard enough introduce our super talented crew and showcase what they bring to our creative process. This week it’s the turn of ACM’s resident granite crusher, Charlotte Taylorson-Smith-Pritchard…
You made it all the way down here? Here’s a gift for your troubles:
END OF THE ROADER’S BONUS NUGGET
Imagine turning up to check your local slab and Nathan Florence appearing in a rented Peugeot
How was that newsletter for you? Let us know in a comment below
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