In a witty jab at "smell like a lady" mens' fragrances, Old Spice whips out a full on man's man to tell us what real men are all about. Sadly, ladies, your man isn't this man and he can't give all the wondrous things the man in this commercial can. Unless, of course, your man uses Old Spice. And sits on a horse. On a beach. With diamonds. And tickets to "that thing you love."
This commercial is funnier than any Super Bowl commercial in recent history. It pokes fun at the competition without being too negative. It acknowledges the fact Old Spice is far from one of those fancy schmancy fragrances you can buy for $100 per ounce. And it celebrates the fact all men need not smell like a Metrosexual a please their women
It's not like a spoof of the Google's Parisian ad which ran during the Super Bowl is any surprise. It's how funny it is that surprises. Another gem from Landline TV. See how easy it is to conduct a kidnapping and demand the sale of a company as ransom.
In a different kind of Movement, Chevrolet will send eight teams on a road trip to Austin for SXSW. Departing from San Diego, Detroit, Lansing, Chicago, Atlanta, South Florida, North Carolina and New York in early March, the teams will be given a series of clues to various destinations along the way and be asked to participate in several challenges (50 per team in all some of which will be "crowd sourced") such as using OnStar to assist someone along the way, stop at an animal shelter and give a dog a walk, grab a pen from a Chevrolet dealership, stuff the trunk of the vehicle full of balloons, meet up with a Twitter follower and give them a ride in the vehicle, sing in a public place and more.
Drivers and their teams will blog their adventures on a Posterous blog. GM is clear to point out speed to Austin is not part of the challenge. Winners will be determined challenge performance and the level of audience engagement they engender along the way.
Every year we talk about the Super Bowl. Mostly for its entertainment value as compared to the blood, sweat and tears of the play-off season. As far as football itself goes I'm a fan of two teams: the Patriots (don't get me started on their 09-10 season) and whatever team is making Peyton Manning cry. This year's Super Bowl was good for that.
While the game sometimes offers up some action, each year we gather 'round the onion dip mostly to watch and talk about the ads. This year was no different. In terms of the ads, we had a few of the usual stand bys: Celebrity Sightings, Babes in Bikinis, and Stupid Human Tricks (category renamed from the former: Guys Doing Stupid Shit). All were present and accounted for in this year's game too. In this wrap up report, here's the good, the bad and the ugly.
Hey, didn't some other brand just do the "your ass will look better if you wear our shoes" thing? Now Reebok's doing it. Or was it Reebok in the first place? We're too busy at a conference having fun to take the time to find out. And besides, why analyze an ad when it needs no analysis? A hot ass attracts eyeballs. And in advertising, that's half the battle. And it might even sell some shoes.
Now go buy some Reebok's so we can claim we know what we're talking about as opposed to appearing to be some sort of ad hack with nothing better to do than leer at women's buttocks like a Neanderthal who's been away from his woman on a long hunting trip.
There were no standouts,commercially speaking, in last night's Super Bowl. Unless of course, you believe USA Today's Ad Meter which ranked the Betty white/Abe Vigoda number one. Or if you believe the Mullen/radian6 Brand Bowl which, through social media comment and positive sentiment, gave top honors to Doritos (the brand, not an individual spot). Or if you place credence in Bob Garfield's watch-them-all-before-the-game approach then the top slot goes to Audi.
Or if you are a fan of Adland's Ask Wappling, the love went to Volkswagon's Punch Buggy ad. Or of you can't get enough of Make the Logo Bigger's Bill Green then it's Google's Parisian ad. Or if Hulu is your gig, then the top slot was Doritos to own for its consumer-generated House Rules ad. Betty White's Snickers ad and Google's search ad faired well there too. As did the hottie-in-a-tub Megan Fox ad for Motorola...which distracted us enough to mostly miss the VW Punch Buggy ad which followed. We know. Predictable behavior around here at Adrants.
Or if you can't get enough Barbara Lippert, Budweiser's Clydsdales or Bud Light's Asteroid. Or, well, she really isn't clear on which one she liked best. (In a later article, she named Google her fave.) Or if you're a commenter on Bob Garfield's Ad review, then honors, it would seem, should go to Google. Bob didn't even comment on the spot because, well, he watches all the ads (at least the ones that have been released), forms his opinion and files his story before the kick off. he misses in-game context and late/un-released commercials.
But it's not just a movie commercial! Which we don't even pay attention to. It's an ad for the new Universal Studios Harry Potter attraction, The Wizarding World of Harry Potter. So pay attention to this. Oh wait. Don't bother. It's lame. If you've seen any of the movies, you've seen this ad.
But the ad was done by a tiny shop outside London called Rosso Media which created, shot and post-produced. So be nice. Oh wait, We weren't very nice. Sorry guys.
You've seen the teaser for Kia's first Super Bowl commercial, right? We've seen the whole thing. Sorry, can't link until it airs during the third quarter.
It's not bad. It's fun. But it's really just a longer version of the teaser. No real surprises. Well, except for maybe a lady wearing a yellow bikini in a hot tub. You know. These are the things marketers have to do to appeal to the stereotypical block head who watches the Super Bowl, right? But the ad does end with a focus on family. No, not that kind of focus.
Once again it's the battle of the Twitter Super Bowl hashtags. Last year, there were about four that played prominently. In fact, we had one of our own. Can't even remember what it was. And we don't care. This year, we're letting someone else do all the work. An agency with, unlike us, an army of talented creative and technical people who can put stuff like Brand Bowl 2010 together.
So make sure you leave a tab handy in your browser for Brand Bowl. You can see how the ads rank based on tweets and other metrics. You can log in right from the Brand Bowl page and barf your Super Bowl commercial opinion for all to see. Oh, and there's a sweet link to Hulu where all the ads will be house once they air.
So for this year's Super Bowl Twitter hashtag, we're putting our money on #brandbowl. Sorry #sb44, #sbad, #sbads, #sbads10, #superbowlads, #admeter, #superbowl and all the rest of you.
It's a journey. It's a math problem. It's a religion. It's American football. It's a Super Bowl commercial! Well, not really. It's just a pre-game commercial but still.
This Gatorade commercial is a creative collaboration between NFL Films and Smuggler director Henry Alex Rubin (he of Whopper Freak-out, Adidas Brotherhood and Murder Ball), and is voiced by Common (Terminator Salvation and American Gangster).
It's kinda fun. Poking fun at things. The dude is old! And yea, we have no idea what Favre's career will look like in ten years but Hyundai wants us to know your car will still be under waurentee. Here's the outtakes and here's the Facebook page. Hmm. Blueberries. GPS balls.
- Check out Whose Voice is That? It's all about celebrity voiceovers and they've just posted a Super Bowl commercial roundup that looks at ten classic Super Bowl spots making great use of the narrator and/or voiceover.
- "The Real Men and Women of Madison Avenue," an exhibit that celebrates the contributions made to American business and to popular culture by the real stars of Madison Avenue, is coming to San Francisco for its first public showing outside of New York City at the Academy of Art University's 79 Gallery on New Montgomery Street February 24, 2010 for a one-week showing.
That agency with our favorite name, Wexley School for Girls, has developed Everyone Deserves a Snow Day, a site that offers employers, employees and the unemployed tools to petition their boss, co-workers, supervisors, husbands, wives, girlfriends, boyfriends that they really, really need a day off to go skiing.
On the site you can, like making your porn start name, create your ski patrol name. And amont the many other available goodies, there's a Snow Day Soundboard tool that makes "sick noises" such as a cough, hack or sneeze among others, you can click on while in your office to spoof your boos into thinking you need a sick day. Which you, of course, will use to go skiing at Copper Mountain.
So if you like to ski, give this site a visit and let us know if it works.
So social media is all the rage. Consumers are all over it. Marketers are all over it. And it's changing the way people and marketers communicate with each other and amongst themselves. Baltimore-based Carton Donofrio Partners wants to leverage this and has launched StopTheAdness, an "online laboratory where industry and consumers can collaborate on a new social contract for advertising."
On the site advertisers and publishers can sign a pledge that promises to help make advertising better by adhering to some practices and abandoning others. Consumers can post examples of "adness" (bad ads) and they can opt to play a key role in contributing to the future of media.
So here we go again. Someone claiming a big brand stole their idea for a commercial. Occasionally, this stuff has merit. Occasionally, it's just sour grapes. In this particular case, we're going with sour grapes. After all, it's not like showing a collage of images is a patented idea or anything. Although we will admit the Pepsi commercial is quite derivative of the original video.
Bryan Chang, who submitted both videos, wrote, "When ad agencies rip off work, is there an obligation to inform the client where the ideas are coming from? I imagine so."
If you're a chicken, get out of town. Take a vacation. Hide. Tell your boss you have jury duty. On Tuesday, Denny's will be after your egg-laying ass because it needs a LOT of your unborn babies for its second Free Grand Slam Day. You might want to go hide with a a few renegade chickens who plan to hide out in a basement during the Denny's chicken slaughter and find out how you can disguise yourself and maybe, just maybe, avoid being forced to pump out baby after baby for the pleasure of egg-loving humans.
You can thank FILTER Creative Group for putting you in this unfortunate situation.
Most effective ad of 2009? Dettol's Surface antibacterial spray according to a TNS Research International study which measured how "motivating" ads are. And this ad does motivate. Mostly by graphically illustrating the problem the product solves - the killing of potentially harmful bacteria in a kitchen.
The survey, which measured more than 250 ads over the year, used an "early warning tool" called Mercury to measure how likely consumers are to buy the product or service after watching an ad. TNS claims the study can determine whether the consumer engaged with the ads and how they felt emotionally when they viewed them.
Paul Baker, the head of Mercury at TNS Research International, said: "In 2009, Swine flu dominated headlines and directly affected a lot of people. The awareness of how to keep the flu bug at bay was exceptionally high and Dettol pitched its ad just right."
We love a solution that involves chemicals. We wonder what Method's Shiny Suds would have to say about this product. Oh wait, let's not go there again.
In a friendly little tit for tat (tweet for twat?) exchange between Amber, Mike and iJustine, Heinz is getting the word out about its new individual serving packaging.
For the first time in 40 years, the ketchup king has redesigned its packets. The new packets, which won't replace but be sold alongside existing packets, are shaped in a way that makes them usable for both dipping and squirting on food.
We're not claiming this is necessarily anything more than organic word of mouth. But if you know anything about Justine, she does love a good burger.
- Foursquare just might end up trumping Twitter when it comes to a revenue model.
- That head chef in those new Domino's commercial? Not really the brand's head chef at all. He's the organization's VP of Innovation. But he does run the test kitchen and does wear a white chef coat. So that makes it all OK, right?
- Have an iPhone? Like looking at hot, half-dressed women? Then download Maxim's iPhone app. Pretend to be texting while your ogling hotties.
Really. It does. According to Raging Grannies who whipped together a little anti-CBS sentiment for the networks decision to accept the Tim Tebow ad but not ads for other causes such as MoveOn or The Light.
The women sing, "CBS - Corporate Bulls Shit , they won't take ads from Moveon or The light , but take three million from right-to-life, they're hypocrites that won't give a voice to womens choice"
OH MY GOD! Little girls! In "lingerie!" Posing next to a stripper pole! Alert the blogosphere! Call out the cause groups! Notify the evening news! What, wait, why?
Everyone is in an uproar over the 9-year-old sister of Miley Cyrus and some other young girls posing around a "stripper pole" for a line of children's clothing. Everyone jumped to the immediate conclusion: the clothing is lingerie and the marketer is into kiddy porn.
Untrue says Oooh, La La! Couture Founder Annie Dugourd. "The story is completely false...it's a total lie...we don't make lingerie. We just make tutu dresses, tank tops attached to tutus."
Dugourd blames Perez Hilton for blowing the thing out of proportion.
Of course, underage dressing like like they appear to be looking for more than just an innocent pat on the head is entirely another issue.
In the "Did they really do that" category comes this bit of not so subtle word play from Spirit Airlines. Furthering its middle school boy locker room sense of humor, the airline follows its MILF-themed "Many Islands, Low Fare" witticism with "Many Unbelievably Fantastic Fares"
Yes, we are now muff diving for low air fares. Upon banner clickage, you are told "you are almost there." Yes, boys, you're almost a rug muncher. See? Even we can be rude and crude. And lame. And kinda funny too. Whatev.
Hahahaha. Nice Tim Tebow spoof. It's probably better than the real ad will be. What else is there to say? Enjoy. And get ready to be unimpressed when you see the real thing during the Super Bowl this Sunday.
- Doritos leads CPG advertisers with 51% share of voice, Mars second place with 16%
- Denny's leads restaurant advertisers with 50% share of voice, Papa John's and Taco Bell second with 25% each
- Coca Cola leads beverages advertisers with 58% share of voice, Bud Light second with 22%
- Overall, Super Bowl conversations are mainly positive in nature
- The controversial Focus on the Family commercial causes the most pre Super Bowl buzz this year online
- Four out of the six automakers with an ad airing this year make it into the top 10 for early buzz
- Dodge and Honda have the most polarized posts compared to other commercials receiving early mentions
