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'Behind every detail ... there's a detail.'

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In "House of Cards," Lexus showcases its buttery engine and vibration absorbing capabilities with not one but many houses -- and towers and turrets and a single Parthenon -- of cards.

The mini-monuments are built over and around a jet-black Lexus, with final flourishes added by a concentric figure in jeans and wavy hair -- the kind of guy you'd expect might know something about cardplay -- just to prove the work is legitimately fragile.

As the narrator sets the stage ("What happens when you take one of the smoothest engines anywhere ... and add 88 separate measures to absorb vibrations?"), the engine starts, underscoring the punchline: "Absolutely nothing."

more »

by Angela Natividad    Feb- 3-09    
Topic: Brands, Campaigns, Commercials, Television



OfficeMax Organizes the Sky ... and You

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To promote an office organization product line spearheaded by Peter Walsh, this OfficeMax outdoor campaign wryly de-clutters crows, pigeons and seagulls -- a billboard's many friends.

Heh. Clever. Also, we like the rubber band ball. It's friendly.

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by Angela Natividad    Feb- 3-09    
Topic: Brands, Celebrity, Guerilla, Outdoor, Promotions



Our Super Bowl Faves: Doritos, Cash4Gold, Pedigree, CareerBuilder

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For the first time in many years, the ad blogs didn't live blog the Super Bowl. The reason for the change? Simple. One word: Twitter. With at least four different hashtags (words that let you follow a particular Twitter stream), a cascading waterfall of real-time opinion flooded through for all to see. Thousands of people could live tweet their thoughts in 140 character bits instead of a few attempting to type 3,000 words a minute to publish three stories per ad break.

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The Twitter stream we arranged along with AdFreak, AgencySpy and Adland was #superads09. It was near impossible to read every tweet but some information did bubble up. People liked the CareerBuilder spot. They liked the Pedigree ad. They liked the Hulu ad. The like all three Doritos ads. They liked Pepsi's Bob Dylan spot.

They hated both GoDaddy commercials. They hated H&R Block. They hated SoBe Life Water. They hated Toyota's Faces. There was debate over the Teleflora ad which not so subtly made fun of, shall we say, less that beautiful people and just how much backlash that spot might generate.

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A service called Thummit asked Twitter users to give each ad a thumbs up or a thumbs down and tallied the results here. Oddly, Bridgestone topped the Thumbs Up list with its Hot Item spot. That was followed by the Doritos remote control spot, Coke's Heist and Monster.

Topping the Thummit Thumbs Down list were, no surprise, GoDaddy's Shower and and Baseball commercials. They were followed by Toyota Faces, H&R Block's Death and Taxes and Cheetos Chester the Cheetah.

Over at the USA Today Ad Meter, Doritos topped the list with Free Doritos (Crystal Ball) followed by Budweiser's Circus, Budweiser's Stick, Bridgestone's Potato Heads, Doritos' Power of the Crunch and Car's.com.

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by Steve Hall    Feb- 2-09    
Topic: Creative Commentary, Opinion, Super Bowl 2009



Quick Dry Still Life, De-Classed Coke, Analytics Dig Deep

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- TIME's Super Bowl best and worst. If that feels a little constricting, see what the Twittersphere thought.

- Coke drops "Classic."

- DesegreGAYtion: easy to spread (a la Obey Giant), AND it packs max punch.

- Quick dry polish. Har.

- Analytics gets a little too personal. Oh wait! Be warned: THIS IS A SPOOF.

- Last Saturday Google search marked everyone as malware. Including itself. Awkward.

- A little bird pointed out that this Mammoth Mountain campaign looks a lot like something Keystone did last year. Oops. (Keystone's campaign, BTW, was by CULTIVATOR ADVERTISING & DESIGN.)

by Angela Natividad    Feb- 2-09    
Topic: Brands, Campaigns, Promotions



It's an iPhone Advergame! Help Name It.

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Fuel Industries is preparing a new iPhone game for client Vans. But it's not really sure what to name it, so it's soliciting help from Y-O-U. See demo.

It's not immediately clear how you can get your ideas over to Fuel if you have any, but hell, we're sure they'll be perusing this page from time to time, so comment away if you want. (If you're thinking BoardX in honor of jPod, don't bother; we already did.)

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by Angela Natividad    Feb- 2-09    
Topic: Brands, Campaigns, Games, Mobile/Wireless, Online



US Cellular Wants Your Inside Jokes.

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Hoping you'll contribute to its waning pool of inspiration, US Cellular (via Riney) put together YourInsideJoke.com, where users can exploit that kind of between-friends humor that doesn't really scale to the world at large.

See Mustache and Finger Puppet.

by Angela Natividad    Feb- 2-09    
Topic: Brands, Campaigns, Online



Adidas Takes Up 'Real Women' Torch

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Failing to observe this approach has already been mined dry by Nike and Dove -- among others -- Adidas launched "Me, Myself," a girl power campaign that rings like a modern-day sports riff off celebrated femme manifesto Our Bodies, Ourselves. The campaign release, for example, is heavy-laden with buzz words like distinctive, inspirational, individuality, confidence and -- our favourite -- intimate portraits.

WNBA MVP Candace Parker lent her face to the in-store/online program. Members of the fairer sex can submit "real" stories about their training struggles and successes on the website (where incidentally, you can also "mix and match outfits"!); three entrants will become the face of "Me, Myself" alongside Parker.

Parker synopsized the effort thus: "[Me, Myself] celebrates women of all ages and athletic abilities and shows that despite our struggles we can achieve our impossible."

Guess that's somewhat more productive than eating your feelings.



Adrants Real Time Super Bowl Advertising Twitter Stream

For easy tweeting without having to add #superads09 manually to every tweet, check out TweetChat. Log in with your Twitter details, join the superads09 room and tweet away. You'll see all the #superads09 tweets and you will be able to easily add yours with #superads09 automatically added. (Sadly, tweeting from TweetChat doesn't always work)

by Steve Hall    Feb- 1-09    
Topic: Super Bowl 2009



Thumbit Ad Ratings For Super Bowl XLIII


by Steve Hall    Feb- 1-09    
Topic: Super Bowl 2009



Our Apologies

On January 15, Adrants posted a depiction of the downed US Airways plane as a Virgin America ad. Certain topics are fodder for humor. This is not one of them. Our endorsement and depiction of the downed US Airways plane as a Virgin America ad was inappropriate. The posting was in poor taste, we were remiss in drawing further attention to it and corroborating it without checking our facts. As a result, we want to offer our apologies to the crew, passengers, families of US Air Flight1549 for making light of this accident. It is clear that Virgin America had nothing to do with the original false ad and that they and the entire airline industry takes issues of safety very seriously.

by Steve Hall    Feb- 1-09    
Topic: Announcements



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