We've been to plenty of ad conferences and we've seen plenty of people sitting on the floor with their laptops checking their email or IMing a colleague but we don't recall seeing too many women wearing very short school girl-ish skirts sitting with their legs in a position that would allow all all to see...well, all. While some of us might like seeing that, we're thinking it's fairly unlikely to become anything more than a fantasy in the mind of an away-from-home conference goer.
However, the ecomXpo thinks it's the norm according to one of their recent brochures promoting this week's conference. The brochure has four people - two men and two women (because, after all, we are totally PC in this industry) - sitting on the floor using their laptops. Both women's skirts are short but one is quite short and of the pleated plaid variety, her legs, in all their glory, fully exposed. We have no problem at all with this style of dress. In fact we wish we saw it more often. Sadly, we just don't think it's something one would see too often at a trade show. Except, perhaps, during that fantasy-cum-reality hotel room tryst.
Of course, the fact the ecomXpo is a virtual trade show and not a physical one, short, plaid, pleated mini skirts on women with long legs and the fantasies they fuel make perfect sense.
This playful little campaign by Grupo W, Mexico is for Hershey's Icebreakers, and the object of each interaction -- for those who don't speak Spanish -- is to demonstrate how "The truth tastes better." Especially with Icebreakers.
There's also a companion site that roughly translates to The Flavor of Your Truth, where you can spell out your personal truth and create a new brand image out of pictures tagged with the words you used.
It all sounds very Dorian Gray. Do you really want to know what your truth looks like?
This spread is part of a campaign by THE REPUBLIK, Durham for the Fayetteville Area Convention & Visitors Bureau.
If you squint your eyes long enough to read it, the text describes the two occasions where Fayetteville failed to bring a warm welcome to America's major men of war. A little bit of southern spunk comes out with fists at the ready. It's wholly unapologetic. We like it.
The tagline reads, "History, Heroes, a Home Town Feeling!" -- just kitschy enough to warrant a sportsmanlike grimace after a kick in the pants.
Hrm. All right. These spots for the Honda Ridgeline are kind of clever. In fact, they remind us a little of that Honda Fit series we just looked at (with the comic-book headlines and abrupt punchlines), except a little less...
...what? Is it wit we're lacking? Well, they certainly make an effort. Watch tough meet classy, rugged meet spacious, tradition meet innovation, and rough meet smooth.
Due props go out to RPA and LA-based MJZ for the use of Chuck Norris, a lumberjack and lasers, though. It's rare when those elements don't coalesce into a hit of mind-boggling proportions.
You know you're stunningly geeky when you suffer edge-of-seat anticipation for the next installment of a Sony ad. (Will it be like Paint? Will it be like Ball?)
Shedwa finally ends our wait - and the final result isn't much like its predecessors at all. Created by Fallon with the work of 40 Passion-based animators, this is arguably the smoothest, most well-orchestrated use of stop-motion animation -- and, well, Play-Doh -- we've seen yet.
The ad also has an emotional pull that can probably be attributed to use of The Rolling Stones' "She's a Rainbow." Ad editors call this laziness - pop hits always bring easy emotion to a piece.
Which is the perfect segue into a still bigger buzzkill: Looks like the ad was a rip off a panoramic originally created by, but not credited to, husband/wife team Kozyndan.
Come on, Fallon/Passion. Credit your muses. How can we love it now?
- Wendy's get all high and mighty with it's new Saatchi & Saatchi-created online promotion for its Hot Juicy Burger!
- We all thought those VW Crash ads were pretty good. Not so much anymore though after seeing this crashtastic ballet-style ad for Renault.
- Dove follows up its Evolution commercial with an equally powerful one called Onslaught in which an innocent girl is pummeled with adult imagery.
- And this week we got even more big boobs from our big boobed Cheerleader friend, Amy, who's doing her best to promote the movie The Comebacks.
- Dutch agency TBWANeboko did a very nice illustration-style campaign for TomTom's Mapshare.
- Leo Burnett grew a a lettuce garden on a billboard in Chicago to promote McDonald's fresh salads. Beautiful.
- Sony unleashed its third Fallon-created commercial. Called Play-Doh, a bunch of bunnies are animated around the streets of New York. Too bad the idea was stolen from an artist.
It's like pulling teeth to find an ad that gives you practical information in a clever way without bashing you over the head in either direction.
But these retro-vibing :15 spots for the Honda Fit manage to be quick and informative with a witty -- but thankfully minimalist -- "WTF?" aspect. Eyes was like a speedy sci-fi take on the Nissan Rogue ad, which also debuted just recently. And Gas Mileage, while slightly less memorable, maintains the campaign's pace and says everything it needs to without tempting you to push fast-forward.
a52 produced the spots for agency RPA out of Santa Monica, CA.
- Mini Cooper has a couple of new sites up. One provides better things to do with your lunch hour and the other...well, you have to wait until lunch time to find out.
- What could possibly be exciting about insurance? Right. Nothing and Insurance .com knows this so they've launched May the Best Win, a video competition.
- Why be bothered with the expense and annoyance of interacting with real people an an industry trade show when you can go to a virtual one while sitting at your computer in your underwear?
- For Boston's Hatch Awards, Arnold created this opening video spoofing the creation of a 1984-style Apple commercial and a focus group which trashed it.
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For a medium that is nothing more than a giant board atop a metal structure, billboards continue to impress with their seemingly endless flexibility. Of course, none of that impressive flexibility would be possible were it not for inventive creativity. Leo Burnett pleases us by proving to us that, yes, there still are new ideas floating around the minds of agency creatives.
While we can't prove no one has ever before affixed a living thing to a billboard before, Leo Burnett's placement of actual, growing lettuce on a billboard in Wrigleyville for McDonald which spells "Fresh Salad" is refreshingly original and, at the same time, simplistically succinct in conveying the intended message.
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We suppose it's a good thing to stick up for endangered species like the NRDC's Mobilizing America For Our Environment is for the Gray Wolf in and around Yellowstone park. We're guessing those in favor of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's plan to kill close to 600 wolves this winter think the creatures are predatory and a danger to humans. We're not here to judge (OK, sometimes we are), we're just going to point you to a not so great spot calling attention to the cause. We'll let you decide.
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