This is "Ca$h," a fun little ad for a gratuitously violent game called Mercenaries 2: World in Flames. I love how it illustrates the acquisition of profit by unethical means: the seedy backdrops, filthy oceans, and characters' faces all bear the delightfully crisp stamp of currency.
And the song! It's convivial and music-hallish, the kind of thing you learn the words to, then leap around and mouth while blowing holes through the furniture with your bad-ass mercenary fingertips. What a feast it'll be for the PTC when these role models invade their living rooms.
Put together in HD by Shilo for DraftFCB/San Francisco. Electronic Arts debuts the spot on August 31 Stateside, and September 5 in the United Kingdom. I can hardly wait to see what it looks like on TV.
You'd have the best of two depraved worlds: a gaudy lustfest and some seriously decadent cake. Kind of like the ad at left, which was ganked out of last month's Travel and Leisure magazine.
Tagline: "Everything's sexier in Paris Las Vegas." I don't know about sexy, but it's sort of pretty after a few Pernods, and David Hasselhoff makes the occasional cameo. Plus, who can beat rooms starting at $89? Okay, okay, besides Circus Circus.
To supplement the use of big balloon dolls (dubbed "Fidolls") in its guerrilla campaign, Canadian wireless firm Fido deployed whimsical floating Fidoll-shaped bubbles into the air.
Charming -- even if, after the Bravia bubbles effort, it falls a little on the scant side of sudsy.
In addition to repping Fido to both the earth-bound and the airborne, the campaign -- which invites users to text 411 to 10987 -- invites users to free "Fido Sessions," which cover topics like art and design. Artists involved in the sessions have included The Dark, Nicholas Di Genova and Jamie Campbell.
Nice to see a wireless provider -- whose services are so integral to city-trawlers' daily lives -- engage users in a way that enlivens their own creativity.
You've probably seen the American version of this iPhone ad, and you've probably not thought twice about it, but the United Kingdom ain't having any.
The Advertising Standards Authority argues the ad suggests iPhone users have access to all the parts of the internet, which technically isn't true. Two viewers complained, and the ad's been pulled.
If Apple wants to run it, it'll have to give Mr. Voiceover something less, oh, all-encompassing to say.
In addition to protecting big spenders from Apple's appalling dishonesty, the ASA's also railed against mascara deception, erosion of religious values and unsafe car dancing. Unrealistic depictions of nipple elasticity are okay though, because bright citizens know better than be to duped by that.
Good to know there's a discerning body keeping the UK safe from uninhibited agency machinations.
- "Fuck it! We'll do it live! Fucking thing sucks!" You tell 'em, Bill, you wild animal you.
- The hood ornament is an endangered species. Is this what people want? We can save pandas but not the Spirit of Ecstasy?!
- New Shepard Fairey exhibition in SF: "Duality of Humanity." Inspired by Joker, the peace-sign-sporting Vietnam soldier in Full Metal Jacket, the show mashes up conflicting symbols of violence and peace. The project also has a strong Red-propaganda-meets-mass-media feel. Tasty.
- It's Bible stories! And Legos! Suddenly Sunday's looking like a party.
- With a nudge from those rascals at Deep Focus, AMC decides the Mad Men Twitter characters -- which it was so quick to boot -- are okay after all.
- Pepsi apparently did a better job of associating itself with the Olympics than Coke did. And it probably spent a helluva lot less money.
Yell.com, a UK-based competitor to YellowPages.com, debuted its first standalone TV campaign this month. The effort revolves around a party planner called Fresno and his whiny little clients, which vibe like rejects from My Super Sweet Sixteen.
This spot went live on August 20. It's about Marcus, a Surrey brat who wants his Roman-themed party changed, practically overnight, to a bling-heavy gangsta-gansta street bash. Fresno, aiming ever to please, insists all this and more can be accomplished at the drop of a (pimptastic!) hat. Meanwhilst, his anxious assistant trots behind him, tapping queries into Yell.com at a feverish pace.
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Some won't like this commercial because, once again, Levi's, with help from Cutwater, is attempting to position its brand as something much more than it is. Oh wait. No. It's not. It's actually acknowledging the fact it's a simple jeans brand. The fancy things in life aren't as important as your favorite pair of jeans and all that comes with them.
The spot, shot backwards, follows a model as she leaves a photoshoot and returns to her normal life, complete with her perfect, properly facial-haired, exotic-ish-looking boyfriend. It will debut during the season premiers of Gossip Girl September 1.
It's well done and, OMG, we like it.
Pondering the question, "Is the Internet awesome?"' Barbarian Group has put together an Easter egg-filled site which, in many different ways, answers the question with a resounding "yes." Oh, and that picture of the bloodied girl on the hospital bed accompanying that story? 420, my friends. 420.
Sometimes if you want something to sound much better than it actually is, you sort of highlight and exaggerate the effort that went into making it. As part of a campaign that aims to position Popeyes as Louisiana Kitchen where "great tasting food requires slow, careful preparation," some twisted logic is employed to make that point clear.
In a new commercial for the brand, "Chef Ed" approaches Popeyes customers to explain how much time went into making the chain's $1.49 loaded chicken wrap. Because the chicken in the wrap was marinated for 12 hours, Chef Ed says the $1.49 wrap should really cost $72 based on a $6 per hour labor costs. Where the logic gets fuzzy is the assumption it takes any effort at all for chicken to soak in sauce for 12 hours. Does Popeyes pay employees to stare at the chicken for 12 hours? Is that part of the marination process?
OK, OK so there are preparation and refrigeration costs but still. Is having a dude side up to your table randomly to tell you your lunch should have cost 48 times what you paid for it really the best way to sell a chicken sandwich?
Some people look ad ads and see one thing. Others look and see quite another. That seems to be the case with a recent billboard for the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard in England. What could be seen as a perfectly representative image depicting life at sea back in the day when men were men and women had a raw deal, others see as representative of another form of life at sea. One which portrays a very different sort of relationship between a captain and his mates.
What's that saying? Oh yea. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Or something.
I just got word that Ice Cream Man, which I guess hocks freezer pops to indie bands and starlets, is looking for events to sponsor. In addition to being liberally photographed with all the right people, the company's mission is to travel the world giving ice cream away for free.
Wish they were around when I was a kid, because seriously, those suburban ice cream truck guys were stingy. They wouldn't take pennies, for a start. If you're gonna make a living driving 2MPH and playing a repetitive tune in order to bait children into racing over to your goddamn truck, don't act like you're selling ribeyes in SoHo.
Household brand method doesn't just make lick-worthy, scum-swabbing "salad bowls"; it also uses biodiesel fuel in its spankin' new delivery truck. (And it wants you to know. Really, really badly.)
I found out about the biodiesel delivery truck in a method email blast sent out to promote Smarty Dish, its new dishwasher detergent. This may just be personal, but I open almost all the emails method sends me.
A few minutes ago, I wondered why that was. I decided it's because I signed up for its "People Against Dirty" movement two years ago, and while the time in my life for feeling enthusiastic about lavender wood polish is over, I still feel excited when I see that slogan in a subject line, because some irrational part of me is convinced it may be a private message for the movement's eyes only.
method's like the in-crowd of habitat fumigation. You're just flattered to be involved, because deep inside you* know this brand isn't just about being clean and good; it's about radiating that inexplicable, effortless cool.
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Time's drawing near for the September 2 debut of 90210, the CW's remake of '90s pop classic Beverly Hills, 90210. Worried that the network will slut it up a la Gossip Girl, the Parents Television Council is admonishing advertisers not to sponsor the show unless a pre-screening is released.
Read the elongated back-and-forth. In a nutshell, the PTC insinuated that the CW won't release a pre-screen because it doesn't want large, socially-responsible advertisers scrutinizing all that naughty, dirty, bad, baaaad content. The CW says it just doesn't want to spoil a highly-anticipated premiere. In the end, it'll probably win this girlfight.
Concerns about poisoning our pure American youth aside, the PTC's got a definite beef. For its last Gossip Girl print campaign, the CW used the headline "Mind-blowingly inappropriate!", a statement the PTC made to rebuke the show, to promote the new season.
Hilarious. Anyway, the PTC ain't going down without a yowl. It's contacted 136 major advertisers about the 90210 pre-screening issue. Cheers to the virtue of vigilance.
Image credit: the NY Post blog.
Red-blooded brand Ford partnered with Microsoft to produce SYNC, a 28-city nationwide tour that kicked off at the 2008 Super Bowl. The power pair tapped Xperience Communications -- which either ran out of Xtra Es or pulled its name out of a retro hat -- to help fuel tech enthusiasm.
The tour sought to educate attendees about Microsoft technology in Ford vehicles: hands-free calling, audible text messages, voice-activated music, instant voice recognition (one would hope), automatic phonebook transfer, and multilingual capabilities, among other exciting distractions.
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To advertise its 100 percent whole-wheat pizzas, Papa John's flattened about six acres' worth. The delectable crop circle at left was created in a wheat field in Commerce City, so in- and outbound Denver International passengers can get a nice big eyeful of pie in the sky.
For those that may find this particularly inspirational, a company called Circlemakers specializes in producing crop circles for brand names. Clients have included Microsoft, Nike, Greenpeace (nothin' like a single serving of in-flight guilt), Hello Kitty, BP, and The History Channel. Oh yeah, and there's also Ad-Air, a gigantorama billboard maker that's infinitely less creative than a crop circle, but it could probably cover up a bad wheat-shaving nick with ease.
Many thanks to Keith at HR Bartender for the Papa John's tip.
This Nokia campaign, where a Personal Navigator leads the lost to their final destinations, probably wasn't meant to encourage emo-stricken weirdos to trust friendly strangers. But from here on out, if I ever want to kidnap a giant chicken in dire straits, I'll probably pull on a "Personal Navigator" shirt and try taking it by the hand.
Also see bickering pirates locate misplaced X, a lost alien get alienated, two goths find love, and -- my favourite -- Pacman outrunning the ghosts, which also have a Personal Navigator.
The campaign was seeded across the 'net by Unruly Media. Its happy task is to endear the Nokia N78 -- featuring maps! -- to the navigationally-challenged. The music gave each piece a Chaplinesque feel, which made things seem that much sadder when it all went horribly wrong.
Bowing to its slogan, "Change or die," North Carolina-based agency The Republik is inviting users to shoot the living crap out of its old website.
Choose from a 44 Magnum, a shotgun or a sniper rifle. The Magnum is by far the most satisfying, and after about 10 hits, a fancy new Republik site appears. It's got a lot going on. Existing projects float across a galaxy of polka-dots, and the top nav is vaguely reminiscent of Modernista, except without all the distractions.
When clicked, a floating dot labeled "don't click here" brings users to an alarmingly red self-promo page. Not a bad gimmick, but gimmicky all the same.
If I had the cash and a cause, would I tap The Republik by merit of its site? At the very least, I'd want to hear them out. I could be wrong, but I think they get it.
The freakish looking transgenger queen Amanda Lepore -- who had her first cosmetic surgery at age 15, decided to have a sex change in high school, led a failed suburban housewife life and then hit New York for fame and fortune -- appeared in a Jawbone ad in this week's New Yorker.
Having already fronted M.A.C., Armani, MTV, and Swatch campaigns, Lepore appears in one half of a spread. The other half features what appears to be a plastic surgeon with a somewhat dumbfounded look on his face, possibly in reaction to the overly "worked-on" Lepore.
One always aims to be a bit eye-catching in advertising. This ad certainly accomplishes that.
AMC didn't take too kindly to the onslaught of Mad Men characters appearing on Twitter and sent a Digital Millenium Copyright Act take down notice asking Twitter to remove @Don_Draper and @PeggyOlsen. The accounts are currently suspended. There are other accounts on Twitter for the Mad Men characters Roger Sterling, Pete Campbell, Joan Holloway, Paul Kinsey, Sal Romano, Bertram Cooper and Bobbie Barrett. Many are still active though @joan_halloway has recently been suspended as well.
AMC was not behind the appearance of the characters on Twitter but its legal maneuverings may go down as the single worst use (misuse?) of social media. One of the characters, @paul_kinsey, was created by Mario Parise. When he created the account, he immediately contacted AMC to tell them what he was doing and if they had any problem, he'd immediately cancel the account. AMC never contacted him; it chose instead to take the legal route.
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ANPE, the National Agency for Employment in France, tapped TBWA\Corporate to preach its gospel to disheartened work force rejects. What TBWA came up with is respectful of ANPE's traditionally risk-averse style, but also playful in a Where's Waldo? sorta way.
The prints are detail-rich and do a nice job of connecting the online world, which is big but can seem solitary, with the bustling offline world. The ad at left features a city intersection flooded with people. It reads, "700,000 CVs online to find your next business partner."
See variants:
o 300,000 offers online everyday to locate your future office.
o 400,000 people log on anpe.fr everyday to save time.
What fun. It would be great to see these, larger than life, in a Metro somewhere.
- Calvin Klein hopes a new e-commerce subsite will help it unload some "white label" (that is, very expensive but still mostly nylon and cotton) sports gear.
- For marketers hoping to retain a healthy base of Internet Explorer users, IE8 might turn cookies into a sometimes friend. Its InPrivate feature blocks them and automatically clears users' browsing histories once they end a session. Some writers are fondly calling it "porn mode."
- Free din-din at Google: officially off-limits, unless you happen to be an engineer. Not to worry, less twitchy Googlers won't starve. Lunch and breakfast remain a perk.
- PhotoShelter is selling some of its photographers' work as limited-edition art. Check out the existential phone booth.
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Arnold, with help from Yeehaw Industries letterpress, has launched a campaign for Jack Daniels consisting of wild postings near the Republican and Democratic national conventions as well as newspaper and a Discobama promotion at Denver's Lip Gloss. The creative, with headlines such as "Sometimes common ground is small enough to fit on a cocktail napkin," Drinking champagne is a perfectly acceptable way to celebrate being elected president...of France" and "Jack supports all parties," is presented with a 50's and 60's looking political campaign style.
It's well know Diesel does some weird/interesting/racy/bad advertising. They did that global warming thing. They did that two-hotties-in-a-room-S&M thing. They did that Aarif Smaks dance instructor thing. Now Diesel offers up some photogasmic "fuel for life" for, well, its Fuel for Life line of fragrance for women.
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Um, right. And we're supposed to believe a simple pair of Timberland sneakers can somehow enable us to climb to the top of a multi-thousand foot, snow-capped peak? With out any climbing gear at all? Oh wait, this is an ad. Of course you can climb to the top of a snow-capped peak with a pair of sneakers because, well, it's all about the apparent fact "everyone dreams of standing on a podium."
Calm down. Calm down. Maybe it's been a while since you've had the pleasure but let's conduct ourselves like the adults here and discuss this rationally. Humans, perhaps as a sick joke by our creator, were seemingly programmed to be obsessed with ass. Though when you think of it, an ass obsession is really kind of gross. After all, an ass's purpose is nothing more than a built in cushion upon which we can sit and rest our weary bodies from time to time. Oh and the gross part? Well let's just say it's home to that area through which unneeded refuse passes. And that's just nasty.
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