This somewhat creepy campaign is by Stena Lines, a major international ferry line. Apparently parents travel free if they bring at least two children.
Coolz0r points out it's typically kids who travel free when parents bring them on trips, but in this case the rules are reversed: kids become, in effect, authority figures as they're in control of the dollars being spent. (Don't they do that anyway though?)
These ads do a good job of illustrating that notion. There's just something unfailingly Mini-Me about them that rings funny. Check out another version here.
Now here's an interesting way to promote your geeky tech blog. Find an attractive female friend, have her hold signs with witty tech double entendre's like "charlielive.com gives great ajax" and "charlielive.com bigger is better" and upload the images to Flickr leading unsuspecting viewers to believe Charlie Live is some sort of cross between Engadget and Fleshbot. It's neither and it'll only be of interest if you understand that ajax isn't a cleaning product when it comes to programming.
The alleged first e-governor, Jeb Bush, had his beloved Blackberry included in a portrait that'll go down in Florida governor history.
If you're curious about the whole e-gov moniker it's because he often responds to his thousands of e-mails, which is pretty rare for our high-profile political chums.
We don't think anybody should be called an e-anything until they've started a blog of some sort but we're sure Jebbie probably has some officially sanctioned one somewhere.
Thanks Boing Boing for tipping us off on the Blackberry thing.
Condom Shop says "Don't be stupid" with some print that illustrates how forgetting a condom is the same as leaping into the line of fire wearing nothing but your bare ass. Sounds logical to us. We thank Ad Arena for this one.
Show us somebody who's not concerned about saving some money in this economic climate, and we'll show you a liar. The Daily Reel lends help by pointing us to its Bodega spotlight, an online film by Casimir Nozkowski of Crying While Eating.
"Bodega" is a tongue-in-cheek pseudo-documentary on surviving in the Bronx, the poorest urban county in our fair nation. Coloured with tips on adequate dietary requirements for survival on a budget, hosts drop occasional profundities like "The economy is fucked the fuck up" and less-than-known tidbits like the fact that Nutz pork rinds have zero carbs. Clever. We enjoyed it even if their tonal repetitions of "Bodega" drove us the fuck crazy.
Update: As of 1/10, Oh Word releases a full version that includes another 2.5 minutes of the Bronx duo's street wisdom.
An odd new year greeting from Mono invited us to play a game of mix-and-match with facial features, a lot like getting to play with Mr. Potato Head without having to buy him.
The site includes a gallery where you can look at all the possibilities thrown together thus far. Apparently there are over 750,000.
Trouble with the site or our computers made it so we could only screw around with the lower part of the face and not the top. This got in the way of our fun-having, and we dislike anything that gets in the way of our fun-having. Oh, well. How much could a Mr. Potato Head possibly be?
Update: The darlings at Mono fixed the bug. We are happy.
Packaging Girlhood lists the best and worst 2006 marketing campaigns aimed at girls and their sometimes less-than-savvy guardians.
Worst includes the Dora the Princess campaign for turning an educational show into a stock purveyor of pretty-in-pink stereotypes. The Bratz Party Plane with juice bar also made the cut.
We always thought Bratz' eclipse over Barbie apt. Barbie was inspired by a German doll named Lilli, actually meant for adult males. That our 21st-century improvement over the Nordic sex kitten was a multi-ethnic series of skanks with DSL lips just kills us.
The list for Best include the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty whose crowning glory was the oft-spoofed Evolution ad of '06, and the transformation of Super Mario's Princess Peach into an entity capable of making her own rescues.
So cheers to real girls who say no lip gloss and aren't afraid to stomp in puddles.
You'd think a vehicle mark notoriously known for lacking originality would make at least a slight effort to step their game up if they've got major marketing dollars to throw behind an idea. Any mediocre idea can be prettied-up with cash. Even cutting another project up, tossing it in the air and making it slightly unrecognizable would be fair game, and it would only take five or six more minutes. But maybe that asks too much of Suzuki.
Make the Logo Bigger unpacks a delectable rant on Suzuki Films, a Suzuki marketing effort aimed at inspiring audiences to move from television to the 'net to find out what happens next in a sultry French Connection-style multi-platform drama called "The Briefcase," which suspiciously echoes BMW Films' "The Hire."
"Maybe it's fitting they copied [BMW] since Suzuki is an imitation of a real car," Bill snarls.
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- A case is made for the implementation of browser level ad filtering.
- New York City cabs get decked out like bulls to promote televised bull riding on cable channel Versus.
- Sprint is on the hunt for a new creative agency for its $1.6 billion creative account.
- Advertising Age's Jonah Bllom likes the new Wall Street Journal.
- Qwest won't jack you up, mobsters recycle, Mini beats SUV in bullfight and more new commercial in Advertising Age's TV Spot of the Week.
- Merrill Lynch says U.S. ad spending will increase 2.9 percent in 2007. Traditional slows but isn't dead.
- In response to FOX's cancellation of The O.C., tweens and teens mourn throughout the nation.
- England has now banned the advertising of cheese during children's programming.
- The Webber Dance School is has placed footstep patterns on treadmills in health club so people can try to learn the steps while working out on the treadmill. Nifty, indeed.
Slapping down over-expectant fiancées, college-bound sons and horse-loving daughters, Titus Cycles claims there are far more important things in life than over-priced engagement rings, stuffy colleges and thoroughbred horses. Namely, over-priced bikes for those who think a perfectly good Schwinn is only good enough for a mailbox. Check out the witty print campaign by TDA here, here and here.
Smartly opting to name themselves Three Melons instead of Two Melons, thereby avoiding comparison to an entirely different set of melons, the company has launched a site to promote Sony's Muteki Home Theater in Argentina. We are told Muteki means "invincible" in Japanese which, apparently, motivated the agency to create an online game in which a young samari, trying to be invincible, works towards becoming a powerful warrior.
To play the game, an agency representative tells us, "The whole site is in Spanish (we are translating it) but I don't think you'll have trouble to play. Just click where it says: "HAZ CLICK AQUI PARA JUGAR" (you must accept the site conditions). Then use the mouse to move the samurai and click once to jump or to use the katana. Collect 5 yellow symbols and you'll activate the Muteki Power (double click to release it)."
We had a few minutes of fun with it but we don;t think we became invincible. Give it a try and let us know if you can.
Just as search engine marketing was undervalued earlier this decade but turned out to dramatically exceed all growth estimates, Right Media CEO Mike Walrath, in a post on his company's blog, contends the industry just might be in the same place with online display advertising. While acknowledging the existence of unsold display inventory, Walrath argues a confluence of events - traditional media moving online, improved metrics and open ad platforms - may fuel display as search was fueled earlier by its own confluence of events. To be clear, Walrath's Right Media plays in the area of open ad platforms making his argument appear to be self-serving but his arguments are sound and worth considering.
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