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DRGM Las Vegas celebrates its agency femmes by creating a pin-up calendar of said women - except they're all being parodied by the agency men.
DRGM creative director Bernice Bamburak explains, "[T]hese guys make us look sexier than we are -- did you see the legs on Miss July?" She also notes that clients, who know both the men and women in the agency, love the idea. Last year the women parodied the agency men.
We need to create a compendium of all the ways this pin-up concept has been abused in the name of things like cheese, theatre, coffins and even fat as pets. What happened to the days when things were simple and we just took pictures of girls with pom-poms and team-coordinated bikinis?
For Smirnoff's Break the Ice campaign, Denmark-based Leo Burnett releases an online-only video of some douchey wallflower doing hackey sack-type tricks with a bottle of Smirnoff. We like the ending and don't want to spoil it for you. Let's just say there's a reason hackey sacks are soft and squishy.
For their snazzy new Halo videoconferencing tool, DreamWorks and HP commission Goodby, Silverstein and Partners (who, by the way, just won US Agency of the Year courtesy of Adweek) to help make magic.
To illustrate the medium's visual benefits and the idea that people can work together without actually being together, the agency called on The Ebeling Group to create a series of vignettes meant to be played on HDTV split-screens at events and such.
The spots, directed and conceptualized by Tennant, are esoteric but pretty, which is what they were shooting for so we suppose they succeed. They also get that complex "work together without being together" idea out nicely. We haven't added the Halo videoconferencing system to our nighttime prayers, though.
One of the spots can be seen on The Ebeling Group's website. They're fun both to watch and listen to, and we can only imagine what it must be like trying to watch the ads in entirety when they're playing 20 feet above you on either side of your face. They must blow the mind. At the very least we figure people will stop, stare and do that awkward back-and-forth foot pivot for a second or two. That weird reaction on its own is almost worth putting ads up high and splitting them apart.
For client Vitae, the largest homeless shelter in the EU, McCann Portugal runs a rather unsettling holiday campaign in which people find a hollow-eyed homeless man in their trash bins with the appeal, "Help. So that no one have to come here for food."
Coming from a country in which passing change to the homeless is discouraged, we're hard-pressed to work out the call-to-action here. Do you give them a potted plant? Drive them to Vitae? Bake them a pie?
The robber in this Crime Stoppers ad holds up a bank while barking out full name and contact info to the teller facing the gun. After spitting out his number he quickly adds, "...and if you can't reach me there, try--"
We laughed for a moment, then realized this is no laughing matter. Jokes aside, today's customer-oriented world demands a different kind of criminal. You have to make sure the people you're robbing are happy. Post-filesharing, stealing's gotten seriously legit. Apparently even pirates have to report hard-earned plunder to the IRS.
And all this time we thought stealing was a cop-out. That just added a whole new complication to tax season.
Agency credit for "Bank Robber" goes to DDB Canada. Perhaps one day the thoughtful antagonist can graduate to business cards like any other corporate raider.
One day we got thirsty so Shawn over at Shedwa offered us a sip from his water bottle, the contents of which had a distinctively sharp odour. We would have drunk it anyway but when we saw the label read ADEQUITE, we knew better.
Actually that's a lie. And the Adequite water in this print ad is probably similarly unfounded considering how pissy Lohan got over that "Be adequite" thing getting out and making her look all stupid. And as the little red celebu-hoodrat is so fond of sporting her AA pins, maybe she's not even an alcoholic.
We're on your side, Lindsay. It's actually we who are the alcoholics. And we're drunk with love of you.
The Sopranos and A&E pair up for Suitcase of Cash, an intelligent though slightly labyrinthine campaign that aims both to court interactivity and get people more involved in their advertising (rather than having them turn in a bunch of manic self-aggrandizing homemade videos).
The game coincides with the January 10 premiere of the show and recalls McD's annual Monopoly contest, though it makes better use of multiple media. Users collect game pieces to arrange on a virtual gameboard.
The game pieces are banner, print and outdoor ads, which can be photographed and uploaded, then mailed to an address that uses military face recognition (kind of like MyHeritage?) to ID the piece in the photo. For online ads, users just need to click, which we're sure will generate higher numbers for everybody's media kits this year.
Our heads are spinning but it sounds like fun and a $100,000 grand prize ain't small pickin's. It would be awesomer still if there was an Assassin twist to it - knocking people off and taking their game pieces would be right up our alley and even better for the Soprano's tie-in.
It shocked us a little that for 2006 somebody will actually get credit for doing more than being you or spending money. But instead of dicking around like its counterparts, AdWeek stays on track by asking vital questions like, "What's more important, growth or creativity?" which they say contained the big answer for which agencies deserve the gold stars for blood, sweat and tears.
And that's why they've awarded Global Agency of the Year to TBWA, which orchestrated the oft-spoofed but beloved Mac v. PC campaign.
AdWeek also gave Goodby, Silverstein & Partners the coveted US Agency of the Year Award for their "Got Milk?" campaign, featuring an odd alien twist and even some scandal in '05.
Hats off to Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, to TBWA and to AdWeek. They deserve an award for not shirking the responsibility of doling out much-earned credit in favour of that consumer-as-marketer hype. But we can't just blame Ad Age and Time for slacking when lately even major brands prefer to beg for ads instead of creating something themselves.
But hey, it's a fine line between generating legit consumer interactivity and generating yourself out of a job, yeah?
Women's health and reproductive rights organization IPAS campaigns to get women to speak up when they've been sexually abused. The ads well illustrate both the rage and sense of isolation that occurs when a person's been compromised. The little tear on the right cheek is helpful too, and the font is nice and raw.
The ads were put together by Santaclara, a spankin' new Sao Paulo agency. Well, this is a good strong start. Ethnic variations for IPAS are here and here.
Time revamps its tired old site to better serve the interests of 2.0-savvy readers who'd rather sift through snarky blogs than stiff Reuters streams.
The new site vibes like a cross between Yahoo, ZDNet and AdAge, which can be useful if not totally confusing. Critiques about Iraq rub shoulders with Top 10's, quotes du jour and wincing-hip TV-related titles like "Whiteyz with Attitude." Urg. Well, it'll definitely make eye-candy for the scroll-happy.
Time will provide 24/7 news and, in a surprise move that contrasts those of major papers like the New York Times, rendered the entire Time archive of stories, covers and images - from its 1923 debut! - available for free.
Neat. For a brand so big we're sure they'll come up with a way to keep profits from hurting during this most curious process. And we probably won't be the only ones watching closely.
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