Ads:
We like Stanfield's. We like Stanfield's because it knows it's a corny underwear brand (as opposed to the other extreme), worn by a bunch of mama's boys. Or at least agency John St. does. (It probably doesn't help that the company is Canadian.)
Stanfield's latest campaign, "Separating the Men from the Boys," takes a handful of "unmanly"-men and adds embarrassingly "manly" characteristics to them. One such man brings inordinate heft to an exercise ball. Another turns down guy's night for book club. And another sports the power of polar-therm by conducting a conversation in a cold freezer.
The audio is slightly disconnected from the video, so try not to let that drive you crazy.
Virgin America has launched a campaign with a self-deprecating look and feel, slightly a la Perrier. By poking fun of its own neurotic clientele and unique flight experience (the vibrating chairs, the plugs, the as-you-order food), Virgin demonstrates it can laugh at itself while laughing ever-more-loudly at the competition, which just doesn't promote in the cool-as-shit way it does.
The animation used in the campaign was popularized by jaded kids floating shorts from Sick Animation or episodes of Adventure Time, which use the medium that first taught us about society to bitchslap it across the face.
Our favorite spot is "Plugs." The campaign was created by Anomaly, our new heroes for the next 10 minutes.
Steve Portigal from Portigal Consulting notes this ad for UK health club Cannons with the headline, "Because a new girl has started at work and she's hot," wouldn't play so well in America or Canada because we're a bit more politically correct than our forefather nation. While the ad is harmless enough, we agree. No doubt, an army of cause groups would be all over this one as soon as it hit the streets.
If you like farms with pigs, cows, fish, farting farmers, aliens and atomic bombs that launch out of grain silos, you're gonna love this new site for Butternuts Beer & Ale from Woods Witt Dealy & Sons. just click around and have fun. Don't forget to click on the tractor in the back.
Along with the website, the campaign also includes print ads, table tents, packaging, posters and a MySpace page, all of which can be seen here. In one of the print ads, the cans are celebrated with the write-itself headline, Nice Cans. The ad is also carries a blue ribbon honoring the breweries position as best brewery in Garrattsville, New York. Not that there's any other brewers there which , of course, is the entire point of the ribbon.
Dubbed "farmhouse ale" (whatever that is) the beer's got great names like Porkslap, Heinnieweisse and Moo Thunder. If a microbrewer has to set itself apart from the pack, aligning the brand with farm nomenclature is certainly one way to do it.
It's not often we're surprised by an ad. This one by Campbell-Ewald for Farmer's Insurance scared the crap out of us. And the guy in it kind of looks like Kevin Spacey.
Other spots from the taglined "Sanity makes a comeback" effort were equally interesting. There's this wind insurance one where a woman's papers keep blowing around (wait for the part where she slams into the wall and breaks it - that's pretty funny), a confusing one where a woman leaps on a garbage truck and hitches a ride with a cop on a horse (it was fun guessing what that was for), and a pretty good one about transient suburbanites getting by after a house fire.
We like this campaign a lot - it does a neat job of crawling into the minds of people actually dealing with hazards in real-time.
We need another award show like we need another email newsletter from MediaPost. Oh wait. Sorry. We used that one already. But wait. Read further. Maybe we do need another award show because the really good stuff...the stuff that should win awards but always gets killed by the client...needs its own platform on which to seek praise.
Enter The Speckies. Yup. An award show for great work that got killed, canceled, spat on, trashed and otherwise suffered the indignity of pompous, know-it-all clients who crapped on it just to feed their ego-driven power trip. So here's your chance to slap down those pontificating morons and show the industry your true, unfiltered talent. Or something like that.
Ever feel rushed during sex? Or, perhaps feel it's a bit too rough? Apparently, that's the vibe Peugeot is tapping into with this print campaign that features lovers in helmets in case, well...
We're not sure but we'd love to do it in an all-white room like that sometime, if only for the purity of it all.
Several years ago, Patrick Sell, who has a history in marketing with stints at Doremus and Reuters, launched a site called I Do Nothing All Day. Aptly, the site contains nothing more than videos he takes while out and about in New York City. Of course, they aren't just any videos, they're videos of beautiful women walking down the sidewalk or in the park. Originally, Sell envisioned I Do Nothing All Day as a site where all kinds of New York City imagery would be captured and shared but as we all know, nothing attracts more attention than a beautiful woman walking down the sidewalk on a hot summer day.
Now, before you go and label Sell a perv, check out the site. It's nicely done and he asks everyone permission before he films them. He's not doing anything more salacious than you'd find in your average fashion magazine or on fashion show runways anywhere in the world. The work is just a simple appreciation of natural female beauty. Now that we have that clarified, Sell has expanded, launching Turning His Head, a site which sells women's clothing featured in I Do Nothing All Day videos.
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Derrick Beckles from the truth campaign is back at it again. This time he's outside a "major tobacco company" office building with 20 empty moving trucks. He's there for the shutdown a tobacco company CEO promised if it was proved cigarettes caused cancer. Well, apparently they have been and Derrick is there to help the company shut down and move out. With a megaphone. With onlookers wondering what the hell he's doing. Well, there you have it. Yet another truth campaign spot. We must admit, though, this one isn't so idiotically over the top as have been most past efforts. Crispin Porter + Bogusky and Arnold created.
For its home loan component in Australia, Virgin Money hits us hard with the notion of long-term commitment.
You mean there's sex after 65?
To be fair, shots of geriatric lovin' may deliver a muddier message than the mortgage guys would like. Who's to say this is a happy long-term relationship and not a racy first date? Or better still, a short-term but lusty (interest-only, har har) affair?!
Anything is possible. Or else we've just been watching too many French PSAs.
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