I bought a copy of Frankie last week. Strolling to the office, an annoying and small piece of advertising fell to the ground from inside the magazine's pages. Upon opening I see Hunter S. Thompson, Karen O and Sid Vicious, amongst others, staring back at me with that type of attitude always used to sell something. "Pfft!" I say with fervent annoyance. "I cannot be sold!" But the closer I got to work, the more I began to fool even myself.

I have read Fear & Loathing, I felt uniquely hip when I first listened to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, I even spent a whole night watching YouTube videos about John Lydon and Sid Vicious to feel closer to that now ancient scene. I have also had a pair of Converse shoes - something each chosen 'star' seems to be wearing, and the brand that I soon realise is trying to influence the burning hole in my pocket. The part about the shoes is not why I feel connected to these people, but is surely a connection Converse is trying to cultivate.

To be completely honest, I don't really care what Converse want to say to sell their shoes. I feel as if the shoes have enough of an identity in their own right without the corporate side feeling the need to be involved. If the shoes were to speak, I'm sure their disconnected sole would flap, "We're not related!" As far as brands go, it is one of those rare icons loved so much that it becomes practically owned by its consumers, rather than the corporates swimming in the cash it shovels them.

What I am interested in however, is the agency that brought this campaign to life. And I have since found it truly is a campaign, not just a crappy, flappy, piece of rubbish magazine insert.

This is where I introduce the agency responsible, Anomaly. And yes, they are one of those agencies. In the vein of KesselsKramer, Mother, Taxi, Fallon, Strawberry Frog, etc; Anomaly are one of the many new model agencies making a name for themselves.

I should really start at the beginning. A few months back, I saw a billboard at South Yarra station for The Converse Century using the connected converse stars imagery you see at the top of this post. To be honest, I thought it was a complete wank. Associating the Converse brand with 'cool' people was to me not too dissimilar from putting Ray Ban Wayfarers on a kid and calling them cool. It was easy, it was a cheap idea (not in the monetary sense of course) and it presumed the cool kids would associate with cool people on face value alone. No wonder I had such pre-conceived ideas of the campaign when I opened Frankie months later.

A few weeks ago, I was flipping through Creativity Magazine and stumbled upon an article heralding the acquisition of Urban Outfitters (America's General Pants) Creative Director Kevin Lyons by Anomaly. I presume around the same time as this happened, Anomaly landed the Converse account. Before Urban Outfitters, Kevin had worked as Art Director for Tokion Magazine, AD for Girl Skateboards (Spike Jonze's company), Design Director for Stussy and Senior Designer for Nike. A pretty tight heritage if you ask me. From that point on, Anomaly had no excuse not to make some genuinely interesting cultural work.

I've mentioned the billboard and magazine insert already, but what else have they done to get inside the minds of hip kids globally? I thought you'd never ask...

The campaign website, ThisIsTheIndexPage, is a genuinely original and well thought out idea. Basically, Anomaly bought a whole lot of domain names and made them all unique, simple and enjoyable for impatient Gen Y'ers like me. But what is even better, is that in this post-Web 2.0 climate, they have made an entirely bloggable range of sites that can be debated and discussed in the many forums created by the Web 2.0 phenomena. I've heard it called Web 3.0 before, but that's a debate for an entirely different post. Bottom line is: simple idea, clean execution, made specifically for the medium and completely digestible for the target market. Personally I believe it spells the end of the 'viral video' era, and heralds the official beginning of the 'ideas that go viral' era. I suggest visiting the Converse Spelling Bee page to see the best example of this.

But the fun doesn't stop there.

They made a song. But not just any song mind you. A pretty good pop song. Which is the most you could hope for when making art to sell a shoe I'd say. Just like choosing the right photographer to shoot your precious print ad, choosing the right producer to make the perfect pop-tune is an important choice. Anomaly's choice? Pharrell Williams. Who is in my mind the most successful pop producer of the last decade. Along with his successful 'band' N.E.R.D, Pharrell has written or and/or produced some of this century's most successful and half-decent pop tracks including Kelis' Milkshake and Justin Timberlake's Justifed album. And yes, I know. The answer is 'yes they are' and 'no I don't'. But never underestimate the sound of amazing production and progressive music-making. Big tick for choice of producer. Oh and he performs in the song too.

Add Julian Casablancas from The Strokes and international hipster-on-the-rise Santogold to the mix, and you have a potent combination of the right amount of cool and the exact amount of risk-free money making brands can only dream of.

Before I go further, watch and listen below.



Finally, the choice of Psyop as the directors for the video is as inspired as it is perfect. Psyop have for many years been innovators in the motion design scene, paving the way for the likes of Qube Construct here in Melbourne. It's all money, and no one other than a brand owned by Nike could afford to do it. But they did. And they did it well.

Surely Anomaly own some rights to the song too. Which is free to download from the Converse website and is getting a bazillion plays on many mainstream and online radio stations alike. If they don't, then I'll be surprised.

Quite seriously, I don't think Anomaly could have done any better with what they had to work with. Billboards and magazine inserts are inherently consumerist mediums that when used say nothing but 'buy my product' at the end of the day. But building new and different websites, writing songs and throwing parties are the perfect balance to all that above-the-line claptrap that they no doubt had to do, for whatever reason.

Having said all of this, I have no idea how well the campaign has tracked. I also know there are far more components to the campaign that I haven't gone into, some of which include parties and art exhibitions. But what I can say, from a completely personal view regarding the mix of strategy and creative, is that this sort of work really excites me about the future of advertising. Don't get me wrong, I still think it's all a load of money-making wank (which is important in retaining my reputation as a self-respecting hipster, apparently) but it's clever wank, well targeted wank, and the best use of the resources Anomaly had wank that will sell the most amount of shoes possible. Which is, after all, why we do what we do.