Weiden + Kennedy has created another beautiful commercial for Nike. This one is direct by David Fincher and illustrates the glory of life's successes and accomplishments by following the life of child athlete turned San Diego Chargers football player.
Adding appropriate emotion to the commercial is a remix of Ennio Marricone's moving L'estasi Dell'oro from the classic film The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, a film everyone should see if only for its grandiose spaghetti western cheesiness. Not to mention Clint Eastwood in his early cowboy years.
There are so many reasons to launch a consumer-generated media campaign. They save money and think time, encourage brand appropriation, and are pretty easy to sell to a client. ("Think of all the engagement opportunities and cost savings!") Doritos alone has done it, like, four times (make that five!), all your friends did it, and hey, even Tide did it -- with reasonably good results.
Besides laziness and balls, what's keeping you from leaping aboard the Goodship CGM? ...A platform,* by gad! Because building grids where users can input their own content and browse through others' is hard, right?!
Waffle no longer, love. Photrade just launched a photo contest platform that enables anybody (even you!) to follow the well-trod user-generated media trail.
So what are you waiting for? Get out there and start ingratiating your unwitting client with casual photographers. Think of all the engagement opportunities -- and cost savings!
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You probably know Baz Luhrmann by reputation, if not by name. He directed Strictly Ballroom, a tribute to the art of dance; Romeo + Juliet, his altar to the written word; and Moulin Rouge!, a garish but dazzling musical homage to pop culture.
He's just completed his latest film, Australia. I don't know much about it, but -- here's an interesting twist -- he's promoting it through a tourism gig.
DDB Worldwide -- which represents Tourism Australia -- tapped Lurhmann for its "Come Walkabout" campaign, which is technically for Australia but also for Australia. In the debut spot, a mystical (and naked?) little boy encourages a stressed woman to defect from her unraveling life.
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- MySpace MyAds, live in beta.
- OMG Elle and Stardoll!
- Celebrating 10 years as pop star and leader of the new world order, Google walks down memory lane with some happy worker bees. I'm guessing that the gushers chosen weren't day care patrons. Or hungry.
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Why are these people staring off into space and accepting bribes in the form of Pepsi? Why do they look like they are somehow detached from the realities of their lives? Why is it so inconceivable to believe these situations would actually take place?
Oh wait. This is advertising. Reality is irrelevant. All that matters is cool art direction and great photography. For that we give thanks, or not, to CLM BBDO Paris for this Pepsi print campaign.
- Hearst Magazines will close CosmoGirl with the December issue. It first published in 1999.
- CBS has schedule the annual Victoria's ecret Fashon Show to air December 3 at 10PM. It wil take place at the Fontainebleau Miami Beach hotel.
- As only George Parker can, DraftFCB gets some sage advice concerning its penchant for repeatedly tooting its own horn.
- The Ladders takes a unique approach to illustrating the attractiveness of its $100K talent pool.
- Google does the green thing with project 10 to the 100th.
- Citizens Bank customers get happy together karaoke-style. It's bad. Really bad.
- TAMBA is out with Granny Bash Bingo, a game in which granny deflects attacks from a bingo machine which has had enough from its grey haired oppressors.
AdFreak's David Gianatasio craps on the efficacy of the results highlighted in a new study from Bzzagent which claims the profit from an eight minute brand conversation is 38 cents. Apart from David's rant on the ridiculous eight minute length, we'll chime in on the 38 cents as in that's all? We're actually getting excited about making 38 cents for eight minutes of a person's time? Like David admits, perhaps we're not getting the point of the study either.
Or maybe we are and we're now supposed to hate BzzAgent even more for reducing the value of people's time to a mere 38 cents for eight minutes of their life.
While the stunt angered some Lancaster, CA resident, others came to love the "musical road" created by Honda which played the William Tell overture when cars drove over specially designed grooves on Lancaster's West Avenue K. While musical roads have been created before in Japan, it's quite new in America.
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Video. Everyone's doing it. Everyone's sticking a camera in your face at conferences while asking you to spout intelligentsia. Everyone's screaming, "Buy a Flip! Buy a Flip!" Given the video craze, it would seem proper yet another capitalization on the trend should arise. And we have Big Fuel to thank for this one.
Using visual mapping technology, the agency will take videos from marketers interviewed at DMA this week, along with those collected from consumers and aggregate them based on key concepts to www.bigthinking.tv. Big Fuel tells us anyone and everyone will be able to glean insight into consumer trends or patterns of behavior. The site will go live October 20.
 Money Shot, Butchered May 8, 2005: When Tiger Woods made that famous 16th hole shot, leaving the Nike golf ball hanging on the edge of the cup, swoosh visible for two long seconds before dropping in, the ad industry speculated wildly over over how Nike would turn this moment into a commercial. Well, three weeks passed, nothing was released and the industry gave up hope. In the meantime - actually, the day the shot occurred, Joe Jaffe, pointed out this perfect opportunity for Nike and created a spec spot on his own. Simply and without un-necessary editorializing, Jaffe's version illustrated the miraculous moment and ended quietly with "Just do it." It took a fantastic sporting moment, which needed no additional explanation, and commercialized it beautifully.
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June 10, 2007: We never thought we'd tire of the millions of erectile dysfunction spoofs that have found there way to us but we finally have. It's just not that much fun anymore to listen to a fake voice over drone on about 36 hour erections while a dude walks around with a big dick prop sticking out of hin his pants. Except, of course, when that dick prop and closing elevator doors are in the same scene and the spoof stars Cuba Gooding Jr.
February 24, 2006: OK, we finally get it. This Pigs Anonymous thing. To promote the Advertising Women of New York's Good, Bad & Ugly Awards, Lowe created a site that calls men pigs. Oh but wait. We don't think anything's wrong with it. After all, men have been calling women bitches hoes and sluts for years. Payback's a bitch.
Certainly, you've all noticed how men have to be the stupid one in all commercials now, right? That's payback for all they years men made women stand in front their refrigerator glorifying it as if it were some sort of Godlike orgasmatron needed because no man gave a crap about a woman having an orgasm in the fifties.
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December 6, 2007: Hey kids! Guess what? If you study hard and get good grades, guess what you'll get? No, not a college scholarship, sillys. That would be too boring. No, if you get good grades on your report card, you'll get a Happy Meal coupon on the card that you can use to get fat...uh...have a free lunch.
Yea, people, you read that right. In-school advertising's idiocy has spread to report cards. Yes, report cards. For covering the paltry $1,600 printing cost of Seminole County Florida's 2007-2008 report cards, McDonald's was able to place the coupon on the report cards of kids who received all A's and B's. Yes, you also read that right. Only smart kids are allowed to get fat.
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May 6, 2007: With the simple but true tagline, "The Faster the Speed, the Bigger the Mess," this :60, launched April 26, from Ireland's Road Safety Authority and Northern Ireland's Department of Environment delivers a powerful but simple message: The faster the speed, the bigger the mess. Entitled "Mess," the commercial is born from statistics that find 30 percent of Republic of Ireland and 24 percent of Northern Ireland road fatalities are due to excessive speed. The spot is part of an increasing trend towards the use of reality-based shock and brutal honesty to deliver the message.
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April 8, 2008: With a link like slinkyfoxvideo.com and a red lingerie-clad, girl-next-door hottie like the one in this video, viewership is almost guaranteed. Here at Adrants, we've seen a lot of videos used to promote all sorts of things. A lot of them. Most of them terrible. This, though, is one of the best. One could argue it's just another trashy sex-sells piece of crap but one would be wrong. The content of the video is directly related to what's pitched at the end of the video and it's wonderfully done.
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- MediaWeek has announced its 23rd Annual Media All Stars. If they provided a link, I could actually share the winners with you. You'll just have to wait for the November 10 issue for the list.
- Hallmark Channel (UK) has hired digital advertising agency Ralph to produce an interactive viral campaign to promote series 9 of Law & Order Special Victims Unit, season 9.
- For some strange reason, Vodafone thinks it's the only company that can make things that fit properly.
- Want to scare the shit out of trick or treaters this year? Get this.
- For the first time, the Academy will allow ads for movies on the Oscars.
- YouTube is testing click to buy ad units which will appear alongside the video and feature items in the video.
- The Levi's Unbutton Your Beast thing reached the pinnacle of mass exposure with a mention in Jay Leno's monologue.
In what appears to be nothing more than slapping the Green label on Bank of America's Keep the Change program, Citizens Bank has launched the Green$ense Campaign which pays customers ten cents for every electronic transaction they make but only up to $10 per month and $120 per year. Even without the facade of "greenery, Bank of America gives up to $250 per year with its program. And people don't even have to be green to get the $250.
Of course it's all to motivate people to bank electronically which uses less paper which, yes, is an admirable "green" effort. But, seriously, the real reason any bank would motivate its customers to bank electronically is to cut overhead (by hiring fewer tellers) and increase profit.
With cutesy headlines like "Being eco-friendly just got eco-nomical" and "The environment is like a bank account. Every little bit helps," the campaign rolls out in print, radio, outdoor and television.
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If you've been reading Adrants for a while or if you've worked in the ad business for more than a day, you are well aware sex plays a big role in advertising. You are probably also aware, or should be, the phrase "sex sells" really isn't all that true all the time.
While everyone likes to create a hot ad featuring hot people who spew endless double entendres every once in a while, it's not always the right direction to take for every brand and target audience. Many times a sex-laced ad can turn people off and do more harm than good to the brand.
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Keepin' It Realtor, a blog devoted to rewarding realtors for being true ground-floor creatives, is objectively awesome, if only because you've sat one too many times on the face of a grinning stranger who's plastered himself all over your park bench.
I used to be partial to the "great wings" guy, but Mr. Lamb at left really takes all. Wondering whether realtor ads grow more conservative -- or just more insane -- as the economy whirls down the porcelain funnel.
Vans partnered with FunMobility to disseminate all kinds of "Off the Wall" crap for your phone. Most of it is free, because all of it is an elaborate ploy to get your cell phone number, zip code and gender.
Raaad.
Following their Tuesday debate, both Obama and McCain's campaigns have released ads riffing off something the other person said. Well, that's not completely true. Both ads appear to revolve entirely around Obama, actually.
See McCain call Obama not presidential. See Obama accuse McCain of wanting to tax businesses for health care coverage.
The usual down-to-the-wire campaign crap, but I prefer how Obama's positioned himself as the calm guy who elucidates muddy slogans. McCain, as always, pulls the fear card.
Thirsty for more? See more McCain and Obama ads.
I don't know about you, but as a wee lass I yearned for the hip style advice that only Ford (the car company, not the modeling firm) could give me.
Responding to these dormant desires, Ford Fiesta is launching an e-zine called Neon Candy, "an uber-cool digital magazine set to feature the latest trends in music, style, movies and culture every young woman should know."
But will it teach me how to put on a menstrual belt?
The 'zine includes a web drama profiling the fictional Jen, a journalist desperate to ride the cutting edge of pop culture. Wait, isn't that the plot to Almost Famous -- and every essay ever written by Chuck Klosterman?
Neon Candy is UK-based and, confusingly, comes fast on the heels of Tango at the Tower, when Fiesta strained to associate itself with love.
- Doritos is holding another CGM contest for the Super Bowl. Ooh, but there's a twist: win $1 million if your spot becomes the FIRST EVAR! consumer-generated ad to take No. 1 in USA Today's Ad Meter. (Here's what won last year.) Entries welcome 'til November 16.
- Given that people and dinosaurs walked the earth at the same time,* it's totally probable dinosaurs caught the social media bug from its Homo sapien homies. Isn't Facebook, like, 200 million years old or something?
- Bill Gates in a condom ad! No, not really, but that penis makes a resonant impression.
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The UK's Hallmark Channel and agency Ralph are promoting series nine of Law & Order: SVU with an online stress test. (Not to be confused with any such test you might have taken on a subway.)
Find out what it's like to operate as an undercover cop. You'll have something like five seconds to memorize a criminal profile, then you have to watch clips -- on which you'll be tested -- while pushing Space Bar to the sound of a pulse.
We were groggy when we did it, which I guess is no excuse; we fared horribly and are utterly unqualified to bust rapists for a living. Well, there goes my back-up career.
There once was a time when it was perfectly fine to use the word gay to describe something other than a person of the homosexual persuasion. In fact, my grandmother used to use the word all the time in a perfectly harmless manner to describe a joyous occasion. The use of the word gay in that manner, while not incorrect in terms of its definition, isn't all that culturally acceptable any longer. Just like titling the chapter of a Hardy Boys book "The Big Boner" (as in blunder or error) wouldn't go over so well in today's publishing world.
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