|
AdGasm
|
||||
 |
|||||
Vista Gets a Second Life. Of Course. With live concert, billboards everywhere imaginable, a big pretty theme park and yada yada yada. So ... Vista's still trying to be down with the homies and Second Life's still trying to colonize reality and the internet, all at the same time. Ho hum. Get a first life, Vista. Mini Yo-Yos Precariously Over Heads of Potential Purchasers Agency BBDO Italy is to blame for this fiberglass life-sized Mini Cooper that actually does bob up and down like a yo-yo. We like Mini's forays into the whimsical to illustrate its compact size and playful personality, but the fact that it's slightly more wee than a regular car probably doesn't comfort those driving under the billboard. More images here. Handmade Phaeton Promoted with Hamburg Handiwork Isn't it beautiful what hands can do? That's the question VW asks at the end of this Phaeton ad by Grabarz & Partner Werbeagentur out of Hamburg. With a playful instrumental and impressive handplay, Volkswagen draws attention to the potential of hands to do more than grope, play games and spread the flu. This is meant to showcase the notion that the Phaeton is as elaborately handmade, though we're hard-pressed to imagine a set of European craftsmen sitting around adding final details to a VW. We agree with Motionographer that it's probably not the most effective ad. It's a long, patient watch and these are not prized audience characteristics. But we like the thought, talent and attention to detail that went into putting it together. If ads are the art that will speak in years to come for society today, we'd rather it be Volkswagen's elegant handplay than, well, this. MARKETING JOBS
Discovery Channel Rewards Dirtiest Jobs in Sweden It's not often you're rewarded for your dirty fingernails. Discovery Channel Sweden aims to change that with Dirty Jobs, a contest for consumers who have the filthiest jobs imaginable. A winner is picked each week for five weeks, and each gets 1000 Euros to spend on a vacation away from the latrine they're wallowing in. The contest is promoted on custom printed toilet paper, courtesy of Miami Guerilla Agency in tangent with Discovery Channel's Zenithmedia. At the outset we considered trashing the firm for being just the umpteenth to think wiping one's ass on the company logo is a good idea, but we find the use of toilet paper apt for their purposes. Right now big contenders for the prize are nurses, pig farmers and heavy divers. It might do well to enter Chuck McBride into the mix, as he seems to be the only one happily at work in his plasma-splotched mass murder scene of an office. Oh wait, he left. Never mind. Wal-Mart Claims Proof Julie Roehm Had Affair New York Magazine is reporting what we all already know. New York Magazine tells us Wal-mart has proof Julie Roehm had an affair with Sean Womack, writing us, "Wal-Mart has told New York Magazine exclusively that it has 'irrefutable and admissible evidence' that fired senior vice-president of marketing communications, Julie Roehm, had an affair with Sean Womack, a vice-president who reported to her. Roehm is the subject of an upcoming piece in the magazine by Steve Fishman. Wal-Mart had remained nearly silent since the firing of Roehm and Womack on December 4." We're not sure we want to know what that "irrefutable and admissible evidence" is because, well, that sort of thing is just gross. Kind of like a President's "fluid" on an intern's dress. Ew. Roehm isn't taking it lying down telling New York Magazine, "I guarantee there is nothing because it didn't happen. I know what they have, and it's not evidence of an affair. It's irrefutable evidence that we're really good friends. He's like a brother to me." Even more ew! Can we just get past all of this? Fergie Joins Celeb-Filled Candie's Campaign Candies's love celebrities. From Hilary Duff to Jenny McCarthy to Kelly Clarkson to Ashlee Simpson Destiny's Child to the Dixie Chicks, it's all celeb, all the time. Now the fashion brand is hooking up with musical artist Fergie (Stacy Ann Ferguson) for its spring 2007 campaign which kicks off with a spot during the February ll broadcast of the Grammy's. Print ads will appear in Teen Vogue among others. GoDaddy Says 'Basic Instinct,' CBS Says 'Try Again' Every year we have to endure the painful submit, reject, submit, reject saga GoDaddy forces us to live through as it tries to get the network to accept its commercial for the Super Bowl. No one's in the dark here. Everyone knows Go Daddy CEO Bob Parsons is submitting ads he knows will be rejected simply to get the press that rejection generates. And, dammit, he has us doing it too with his latest reject, a Basic Instinct-style spot in which Candice Michelle does the Sharon Stone leg cross thing while some dude voiced by Philip Baker Hall. Oh the pain Parsons puts us through. Oh wait. Candice is kind of interesting to watch. Travelport Throws Blank Page on Browser, Calls it Marketing The Flea and JND Technologies in Mumbai join forces to create an allegedly creative marketing campaign for client Travelport Holidays. The campaign is a hark back to Evian Detox, which promoted purity by overwhelming websites on which its clean glacial banners sat, except it's much lazier. The Quietest Place on the Web brings you to a white screen with the following sentences: "Welcome to the quietest place on the Web. The next time the noise of life gets to you, do drop by for a little bit of peace and quiet." The wandering eye then meanders down to the bottom of the page for lack of anything else to do, where it finds a link to Travelport India, another website that's not terribly stunning. Unless Travelport has a huge demo of people seeking to visit the Tibetan monks or the inside of a padded room, we're just not seeing how this initiative will help them draw vacation clients. Dove Puts Women Back on Judgment Block in Debate Campaign We're under the impression that the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty was meant to change existing standards about beauty by bringing real women to contrast. We're just not sure whether the debate portion of the campaign, in which we're asked to tick off whether a given woman is "wrinkled" or "wonderful," really continues down that vein. Isn't it just putting women back on the platform they strove oh-so-hard to part with? Oh, well. Maybe consumer-generated ads will save the day. It usually does. BlogAds Powers Ads With RSS, Google Wallows in Profit- Advertising Age shifts into high Super Bowl gear with its Full Coverage section of Super Bowl Ads 2007. - Google's quarterly profits have tripled. Funny how AdSense publishers' profits haven't tripled as well. - BlogAds has introduced a new ad unit that receives part of its content from an RSS feed. New, fact, figures, product, info and basically anything can be fed into the ad unit in a continually updated manner. - Yawn. Yet another Grounghog Day promotion. Super Bear Shuffle Revisits Chicago Bears' Super Bowl Shuffle OK, so this isn't exactly a Super Bowl ad but it's kinda fun. Adrants reader Benjamin George tells us it's a "parody of the 1985 Chicago Bears' Super Bowl Shuffle with Yogi, Boo Boo, Smokey, Pooh, and other cartoon bears." For anyone that was around in 1985, we suppose it'll bring back some memories. Or nightmares. Called Super Bear Shuffle, it was created by Big Game Hunters. It's Bigger. It's Better. There's More to Touch It's bigger. It's better. It's voyeuristic. There's no harness. It's smoother. There's more to touch. There's less crying. There's no waiting to get in. It pumps you up. It can never be too big. It's more satisfying. No, you perverts, we aren't sharing with you that second time we hooked up with that cute freshman red head in the back of the parent's station wagon. It's Comic Con, silly. More precisely, a video that expresses just how much more fun it is to go to the comic book convention Comic Con a second time. And yea, it's the well-worn "let's make it seem like we're talking about sex but not" approach but it still works. Maybe that's because the topic of sex never gets tired. Oh wait. Maybe that's just us. Sorry. Pardon the interruption. On with your work day Bics So Permanent they Reincarnate with You Adpunch points us to this clever campaign by Bic, who's attempting to break into Sharpie territory by pushing its own permanent marker. Premise: that Bic sticks so well the ink will follow you into your next life. Copy: "Permanent. Even in your next life." We can only imagine what kind of guy the frog was. There's a snake variation too. This reincarnating ink thing is something we've never considered before, and it might actually yield the answers to questions we've had for a long time. Like, perhaps the inked "MONKEEEEY WAS HERE!!!!" scrawled all over our ass is not from a drunken night we don't remember. Perhaps it's from a previous life as a less responsible person. That takes a big weight off our minds. Turner Broadcasting Marketing Stunt Causes Terrorism Scare In Boston We're not sure whether to laugh at or be concerned for Boston which got quite angry with Turner Broadcasting's for its ten city publicity stunt which, over the past two weeks, placed circuit board-like devices throughout each city, including Boston, to promote the the company's Cartoon Network Adult Swim Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Wednesday, all hell broke loose in the city of Boston when a commuter noticed one of the devices under a highway overpass above Sullivan Sqaure Station in Charlestown. Bomb squads were called. Subways were shut down. Traffic was diverted. Newly seated Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick said, "It's a hoax and it's not funny." Boston Mayor Thomas Menino threatened legal action. All because a few promotional items were placed around the city. One Final Jab From AdJab As Its Plug is Pulled by AOL AdJab's Chris Thilk told us a few weeks ago AdJab would be ceasing its operations at the t'end of January. Well, the end of the month is here and that last jab has been published. Four of the main contributors to the site, Chris Thilk, Tom Biro, Adam Finley and Bob Sassone leave their parting thoughts and send AdJab off into the good night. We're told all of its content will live on to be forever indexed by Google and referred to by those of us in the advertising industry. SFR Keeps Secrets In, Genitals Out In what may possibly have been his only chance at a chick that hot, the protagonist for SFR France's latest ad demonstrates the frustration of getting close-to-laid before your doctor decides to leave a message about your genital problem on the answering machine. Wish we could sympathize with the guy, but he's kind of a tool so the ad only made us feel a warm tingle as the girl slid away and started putting her clothes back on. Great way to demonstrate that with a mobile phone, a personal call is actually personal.
Written by Angela Natividad
Comments (0)
Jan-31-07
UK Women Get Mean in Adland A source points us to a UK trend of snippy little domestica ads showcasing women acting out the spectrum of nasty human emotions for love of a product. The ads run along the same undercurrent: antagonists have a quality about them that's shared by kids who get in trouble long after 3rd-grade because they still haven't learned to share. (We know what happens to those kids. They grow up to be amazingly magnetic sex gods and goddesses who write ad news for a living.) A couple of illustrative ads include this one for Toyota Yaris, where a woman passive-aggressively crashes her boyfriend's plane after he kicks the door shut on her car; and this creepy Quorn one where a girl with a fork acts out over health food. If this is any indication of quietly growing womens' sentiments in the UK, we're disinclined to visit anytime soon, particularly if there are forks nearby. Feel free to send in more of the same or an explanation if you happen to have one. Brazil Pushes Expat Education with Peer Pressure Prints Santa Clara agency throws together several ads for Unifieo's Export Quality Courses, programs made to teach Brazilian youth global skills. The ads encourage them to take the courses, which could lead to positions better suited than under-the-table positions for the self-entitled and sexy. There's also an au pair and cook variation. We think the imagery is gorgeous and mixed with subtle irony. While Brazil trains youth to find better jobs outside the country, American post-collegiates break the doors down in Europe and South America for plebe positions, aspiring to live out overseas fantasies that would do Marie Antoinette justice. Priority issue? Despite the uncute factor of underpaid all-hours work, Brazil sees no end to young hot foals willing to take them. VoteVets Says Stop Iraq with One-Handed Man Okay, there's more than just a one-handed man in the spot we're about to show you, but for us that's what stuck out, and we think that's what they wanted because they saved him for last. Veteran group VoteVets is raising money to put this MoveOn-supported ad on air during the Super Bowl. It's meant to stop the escalation with the same (occasionally effective) psychological tactic 15-year-old boys use to get girls to put out in the backseat of cars: If you support escalation, you don't support the troops. Click the above link to help them raise money, or just watch a series of vets try making you feel real real bad. Like we said, it's a fairly effective method. Mazda Reinvents Bond with Boobs and Ass for Topdowns We are big on the Bond reinvention characterized by Daniel Craig so maybe it's only natural that we'd be mildly iffy about this new campaign by Mazda, which takes the freshly-lit Bond torch out of Craig's hands and puts it in the claws of the usual two-dimensional leather-clad woman who skulks in the dark. Building on the 12 Second Thriller campaign, which might as well have been a series of Viagra shorts, Mazda brings us Every Drive's a Thriller, boasting two :30 films directed by Luke Scott, Casino and Desert Treasure. We'd say that we're turned on enough to buy an MX-5, and the whole power woman in black motif is always a bit exciting, but the Zoom-Zoom thing makes it feel a bit silly, a lot like the compressed and cartoony "Hello Moto." Really. What can't you sell between two long leather-clad legs? Germ 2 International Viral Awards Launched Channel 4 and viral site BoreMe are launching Germ2, the 2nd annual International Viral Awards which seeks the best viral work. Last year London based viral agency Maverick won the Best Commercially Produced Viral for a campaign to promote the racing simulation game Juiced. The awards are also open to individuals around the world, not just professionals. Entries can be submitted at until March 31st. Hotel de Maxim Brings Luxe to Super Bowl with Slew of Marketers Maxim brings VIP-exclusive event Hotel de Maxim to the South of France to celebrate the Super Bowl in style. A nod to the jet-setting days of St. Tropez in the '60's, Hotel de Maxim shoots to bring party-goers a fete that will make P. Diddy's parties look like visits to The Jungle. With a mix of martinis, slots and caviar, Grandmaster Flash on the tables and live Sirius broadcasting, all it's missing is a vice orgy replica on Second Life. Marketing cameos will include Cadillac, which will be sporting its White Diamond Escalade; Absolut, bringing its Flavor Fountains and martini station; Coors and the Bullet Girls; and Samsung, who'll be setting up an LCD TV Video Wall Garden. Hotel de Maxim PR guys asked us to picture Bridget Bardot walking barefoot across the beach as Mick Jagger pours Champagne, but after detailing the scene we're thinking more along the line of Penelope stumbling around with a bowl full of cocaine in Blow right before the cops bust in. Decadence is decadence. Not a huge difference, yeah? TAOW Inks with Diamondback Bicycles in Joined Effort to Nail BMX Lovers Portland, Oregon-based TAOW Productions just nailed a contract to manage Diamondback's BMX bike team. This means they manage their events and activities, getting the BMX lifestyle out in the open and hopefully also increasing consumer demand for Diamondback's products and services. TAOW thinks it's looking at a new kind of model for experiential marketing intended to nail "cool market" influencers, a phrase we find lame, but short of "jaded and bitchy" we can't think of anything more polite to address the demographic they're referring to. TAOW's other recent efforts included icons like hip hop's Kanye West and Rodney Pete, formerly of the NFL. Their brand partners also include prominent lifestyle labels like Red Bull, Diesel and American Express. So maybe "the little agency that could" knows something other marketers don't. Garmin Releases 'Maposaurus' Super Bowl Spot We think people are going to like this new Super Bowl commercial from first-time advertiser Garmin which is promoting personal GPS. We saw the music video of the spot earlier but here is the finished :30. It's 50's-style battle between a monster than emanates from a driver's wind blown road map and the driver whose personal GPS device converts him into a monster fighting super hero. It's just weirdly different enough to achieve some decent recall. Though, it might suffer from the dreaded "what was that commercial selling?" problem the morning after. Fallon created the commercial for the first time Super Bowl advertiser and will launch a corresponding microsite this Saturday before the game. There's also a blog that digs deeper into the world of the Maposaurus. Blogs Launch, Online Ad Spend Up, Toy Explains, Brands Clueless - Former Gawker Founding Editor Elizabeth Spiers, now founder of Dead Horse Media plans to launch several new blogs. One will cover organic living. - Online ad spending is predicted to increase 18 percent in 2007 while media spend in other media decline. - If you want the background behind those 20 websites Toy, New York created for OfficeMax, here's the video that recaps the project. - Apparently, consumers aren't the only ones having trouble understanding a brand's positioning. In a recent Louws Management Corporation study, it was found just 1/4 could clearly articulate their company's brand positioning. Oops. - Incumbent Riney is out of the Sprint Nextel pitch. Goodby, O&M; and Y&R; remain. - Boobs and bikinis are now hawking coffee at coffee shops.
« PREVIOUS | NEXT »
|
|
