Specsavers Offers 'Goal Line Technology' to World Cup Refs

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Now this is just funny. Specsavers has taken advantage of the controversial disallowed goal during the England Germany World Cup match Sunday. It will run in The Sun, The Daily Star, The Daily Express and The Daily Mail today.

by Steve Hall    Jun-29-10    
Topic: Brands, Campaigns, Newspaper



Burger King Gets Juicy With Xenia Tchoumitcheva

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Hmm. Since when did Burger King ads go high fashion? Well, whenever one has the chance to put a hottie like Swiss-Russian model Xenia Tchoumitcheva in a campaign, anytime sounds about right to us.

by Steve Hall    Jun-29-10    
Topic: Campaigns



Conversations on Quitting the Cancer Stick

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This is a post about smoking, which I wrote to precede my sunshiny Lions wrapup. It is randomly scattered with pictures of the events and people referred to, in part for context, but also so you don't have to scroll through all the "fun" shots without perspective.

In advertising, we pick up a lot of habits - "creative" habits, mostly - that we occasionally are and aren't proud of, depending on our mood and who's looking. The Cannes Lions becomes a magnifier of all those habits: there, trapped in paradise for a week, people don't just drink until 5 in the morning; they often smoke as if all the weight of the world depends on it.

"Last night I knew it was time to go home because I started chainsmoking," complained Shannon Stephaniuk of Glossy. "I hate smoking more than anything else in the world!"

I suppose I believe her. I've never seen Shannon pick up a cigarette, not once, and I smoke a great deal, which usually outs the casual smokers in party atmospheres.

Anyway, this Cannes phenomenon leads to a lot of semi-casual conversation about why we all started smoking in the first place, which naturally drifts over to quitting and efforts to get there.

This is why I started smoking (in earnest, not counting the flirtation I had in college when my best friend gave me a pack of Vanilla Dreams for my 18th birthday): to eke a promotion out of a boss who only discussed "the future" with his subordinates during smoke breaks. I was 19, maybe 20.

"You know what Gabriel Garcia Marquez did to quit?" began Draftfcb ECD Mark Fiddes, rather grandly, at a beachside luncheon for production firm Mad Cow. "Gabriel Garcia Marquez buried his last packet of cigarettes. Big mound. It was something he could walk by and look at every day."

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"That's how he quit?" I asked incredulously. Garcia Marquez was a heavy smoker - six packs a day at worst, I think.

"That's how," Mark said smugly.

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Verizon Can't Hear You Anymore But They Plan to Rule the Air

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This is one of those questionable moves that brands make or, rather, CMOs make when they get bored and think the brand needs a little kick in the ass or, rather, the CMO needs to mark his territory, when, in reality, everything is just fine. Yes, Verizon is dropping "Can you hear me now?" in favor of "Rule the Air."

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by Steve Hall    Jun-29-10    
Topic: Brands



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