HP Does Improv for Product Demos

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HP's enlisted improv actors from the Upright Citizens Brigade and the People's Improv Theater to spice up its YouTube learning center, gleefully dubbed MasterPC Theatre.

The point of the campaign is to teach you about the different capabilities of HP products in a refreshing and irreverent way, which it succeeds in doing whenever it's not bringing comedy traffic school to mind.

Expect to see the spots in rich media banners if "the economy picks up," said Don Russell from Source. Produced by Streamline Content, edited by Fluid.

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by Angela Natividad    Nov-18-08    
Topic: Brands, Campaigns, Online, Video



That's a Pretty Chic Biscuit, All Right.

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Or it's spec for Tom Tykwer's Perfume Deux: Redhead's Revenge. Dude on the chocolate bit looks kinda like Grenouille -- but really he's Le Petit Ecolier, a wee schoolboy who's served as the face of this snack since 1850.

For Lu Biscuits, which is currently having a chic little identity crisis. Okay, not really, but I seriously LOL'ed when the website started blasting ambient music. Because come on, all this for a biscuit. A saucy biscuit, sure. Even with a turn-on of a tea to pair them with, biscuits are still like less sexy cookies (NSFW).

by Angela Natividad    Nov-18-08    
Topic: Brands, Campaigns, Magazine, Online



Macy's Brings Thanksgiving Day Parade to Flip Books

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The Macy's Day Parade is coming! Oh yes it is! For those unlucky souls who won't be in New York to enjoy the parade, Macy's has teamed with Flippies to create flip books which, with the flip of a thumb, will show two familiar parade scenes; Tom the Turkey making his annual pilgrimage down Broadway and Santa's arrival at Macy's during the parade's grand finale. The parade without the cold and the crowd. What's not to love about that?

The books will be made available at a limited number of Macy's holiday events across the nation. Originally invented in 1882, flip books create the optical illusion of motion when images stacked in sequential stages of movement are flipped.

by Steve Hall    Nov-18-08    
Topic: Specialty



Like, OMG, Chelsea OMG Goes to London!

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OK, so like. Oh My God. Wait, what? Like, scratch that. We, like, can't even, like, fake the lameness of Chelsea Puck, the bimbo, like, fronting a Bebo web series called Chelsea OMG which, like, has the American airhead in London, like, acting all stupid and, like, shit.

Sure. Chelsea's full of bubbleheaded cuteness and we'd definitely hire her as an intern at Adrants. If only to have her in videos, like, OMGing about ads and, like, stuff. But, like, OMFG, she gives us a headache! Check out all her video goodness here as well as on YouTube. Especially endearing is her Cloverfield-like freak out at the London Bridge and her Palin impression.

As pseudo bimbos go, we much prefer the cheerleader bimbo who did several videos to promote the move, The Comebacks. But we still wouldn't kick Chelsea out of...oops...sorry, that's disrespectful.

by Steve Hall    Nov-18-08    
Topic: Online, Social, Video



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This Creative Was Rejected by the WSJ and NYT.

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And that's pretty much all the PR people have going for it. The idea behind "Recess is on" is for Morgan Hotel Group to look like a bad-ass place to party amidst the crippling buzzkill of a recession.

See minimalist rebel prints:

o Don't Jump. Dance.
o Fuck the recession. Powerful in brevity.
o Fuck the recession -- reprise. This ad also includes a letter written by Morgan Hotel Group to a personified Recession, flippantly declaring its intention to raise hell and whatnot. "Fuck off" is written at bottom in surprisingly girly script. (I think a sharp, all-caps and slightly Nicholson-esque "FUCK OFFFFFFFFFfff" would have done the job better.)

The website, linked above, also includes an epilepsy-inducing :60 video that'll be projected upon some unfortunate building. Or not. Word has it the creative will be changed and repeated use of "fuck" will be scrubbed.

"Whatever happened to defiance?" the rep from Pronto Stockholm asked us. Well, fuck if we know.

by Angela Natividad    Nov-18-08    
Topic: Brands, Campaigns, Newspaper, Outdoor, Poster, Promotions



Wait, So Will the Zune Make Common My Homie?

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It's not immediately clear what's going on in this spot for Microsoft's Zune, featuring Common and Afrika Bambaataa. In it, a girl puts Common's Universal Mind Control on the spin. She gives props for it, then Common and Afrika Bambaataa leap out of a cloud of images and start sparring over it.

At first the whole thing rang like a poorer rendition of HP's "Hands" campaign, which does a good job of connecting the essence of a celebrity to the machine he's using.

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by Angela Natividad    Nov-18-08    
Topic: Brands, Campaigns, Celebrity, Commercials, Strange, Television



VeeV Spikes Vodka, Sprint 2-Point-No, Lessons Learned from Motrin Mayhem

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- Yesterday's news: Pepsi shafts BBDO for TBWA. BBDO held the account for nearly 50 years.

- After a year and a half of fumbling at the throne of Yahoo, CEO Jerry Yang exits stage left.

- Wieden + Kennedy scores the Nokia Nseries account, worth about $150 million. Lowe London held it before.

- VeeV, an acai-based spirit with delusions of grandeur, brings you The End of Vodka, complete with vodka bots. The site's goal is to show users how much superficiality vodka's introduced into our lives over the course of the past decade. Yeah. If by superficiality you mean lasting friendships and insta-forgiveness.

- "Is this Miley's fault? Ugh, she wouldn't know a legendary jazz man even if he walked up to her and shot cocaine into her neck."

- Sprint's web 2.0 clusterfuck.

- Big Takeaways from the Motrin crisis. (How is it Motrin gets shut down but this goes on undeterred?)

by Angela Natividad    Nov-18-08    
Topic: Agencies, Brands, Campaigns, Online, Opinion, Social



Comcast, TiVo Grow Up and Get Hitched

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To promote the fusion of Comcast DVR with TiVo, Biscuit Filmworks USA and Goodby, Silverstein & Partners give us "Separated at Birth."

It's a love story about a pair of TVs that part at the assembly line and serve two people in two different ways. In the end, the owners -- which start out as kids -- grow up and get together. Just like their favourite TV services.

Almost too cute to stand. The split ad format keeps eyes bouncing back and forth, and a simple narrative prevents captive audiences from snapping out of it. We'll even be willing to ignore the fact that TiVo hasn't been around long enough to have served any twenty-something from her budding days as a grade school control freak.

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by Angela Natividad    Nov-18-08    
Topic: Brands, Campaigns, Commercials, Good, Television