Following Denver's Obamamania at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, the Twin Cities are preparing for their own slice of mania by urging area resident to properly welcome the Republican party. Quite often when big events come to a city, be it the Olympics, a major trade show, a Presidential visit or, yes, a Presidential convention, a city likes to put it's best foot forward to properly welcome its guests. Sometimes that includes bending a city's - even life's - realities to properly accommodate as this UnConvention commercial depicts.
Just as China rolled out the red carpet for the world the last few of weeks, Minnesota residents are ready to welcome the Republican party with open arms even if it means slightly altering their lifestyle for a few days or so.
This Cutwater-created commercial for Levi's is stupid. Yes, it's not polite to stare and objectify by either sex but come on! We are all human. We are all sexually attracted to one another. It's natural. It's innate. It's normal. Just admiring the beauty of another human doesn't mean we are all lecherous sex maniacs deserving of a body slam. Sometimes it's just nice to look at and appreciate pretty things. It isn't always about dirty thoughts
And by the way, the pretty things who get looked at, male or female (which, by the way, that stupid PC ending in the commercial is just stupid), shouldn't always assume the onlooker is out for anything more than the pleasure one derives from looking at a beautiful painting in a museum.
Cut the scrap, Cutwater. Your sunglasses idiocy was better than this!
For those of us that seriously thought John McCain would go the predictable route for Veep, the Maverick whips out a trump card: Sarah Palin! Gotta say, McCain/Palin '08 isn't the ickiest choice of bumper sticker.
The Alaskan governor -- age 44, anti-abortion and alarmingly photogenic -- is expected to split women voters that would've otherwise put their weight behind Hillary (and failing that, her choice of POTUS). According to The Weekly Standard, honey's got an approval rating in the 90s and is allegedly "the most popular public official in any state."
Sounds like a dish the media won't be able to resist, even at the expense of the latest Obama mashup.
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The tireless MoveOn.org is giving free Obama buttons away to anybody willing to part with their email, mobile number and address data. (What a tradeoff!) Packages include:
o One free Obama button.
o Three Obama buttons for a $2 donation. Just think how spiffy your tatty old backpack will look this September.
o 45 BUTTONS for a $20 donation, which, stylewise, would put you in direct in competition with this here little lady.
A moving ticker on MoveOn's site reports over 1,776,804 buttons have been ordered so far. I smell a trend afoot. Don't get left behind!
At left: featured ad on my MySpace today. I like how, after scaring the warmth out of your cockles, it takes the ultra-subtle "click here for tips!" approach.
Click-thru brings you here. I'm guessing the ad is for Celebrity Sexy Teeth, because it's the only product on the list I've never actually heard of, and it happens to be number one, and there's even a handy-dandy illustration on how you (yes, YOU!) can access a hidden discount link on the site.
Suspicions are confirmed upon scrolling to the bottom of the site, where Celebrity Sexy Teeth is promoted once more for good measure alongside this subtle arm-twister: "For women wanting to enhance their appearance, a good teeth whitener is a must!"
But I thought Mr. Right, and my ass-pinching boss, would love me no matter what I looked like?
Old friend The Reverse Cowgirl points to yet another example of an ad agency's use of an artist's work without obtaining permission or providing credit. Writing on Constant Siege, Clayton Cubitt claims BBDO Athens created a direct rip off of photographer Jamie Nelson's work for an ad they did for Dexim. The photo used in the BBDO-created Dexim ad bears a striking resemblance to a photo Nelson took in 2006 and had published on the cover of July/August 2007 issue of Blink.
When contacted, Nelson provided Adrants with an armful of information supporting the notion BBDO Athens did, in fact, closely copy her work. BBDO Athens has been contacted but they have not yet responded. Likely BBDO Athens fully intended to mirror Nelson's work but somehow the permission process was mistakenly overlooked. I'll reserve final judgment until I've made contact with BBDO Athens to hear their side of the story.
UPDATE: We mis-reported (bad source information) the agency in question was BBDO Atlanta. It is actually BBDO Athens. Thanks to Atlanta-based Brent Terrazas for pointing out the error.
What do a penguin, a beauty queen and a crownfish have to do with each other? Nothing unless they are the main characters in a Samsung commercial in which a Penguin rescues the beauty queen who has just caught herself a Crownfish.
It's all very weird. Very noir. And it all points to Samsung's See the Whole Story website.
So Labor Day weekend is upon us here in the States. It's the time when we're supposed to remember, uh ... what was it? Oh yeah, laborers.
Labor Day originated in 1882, when the Central Labor Union of New York City aimed to create a day off for working citizens. It became an federal holiday in 1894.
Today, we mostly treat the holiday as another excuse to get in our cars, sit in traffic and scream at fellow citizens in an attempt to make our way to islands, beaches or mountainous regions to squeeze out that last ounce of summer before autumn slaps us in the face with colder weather, back to school insanity and, usually, a heavier workload.
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Toyota wants to be your friend. It wants to lavish you with gifts, invite you into its inner circle, suckle from your ideas. From now until September 10, members of its social network HEYA can pitch the company their :30 ad ideas.
And no, the HEYA thing has nothing to do with Andre3000's frequently mashed-up hit. "Heya" is Japanese for "room," and Toyota thought it would be a good name for an intimate, join-the-round-table! kinda social network.
Sign up here. (Damn, that's a lot of questions. Toyota's not fuckin' around!) Once IN!, you're free to submit write-ups or storyboards for a :30 ad concept. The top five will be chosen, and members vote for the best one.
Finalists are announced September 16; the winner is named September 22. In addition to airtime, the grand prize includes a Flickr Pro account membership. (Diggin' how it knows what people want.) Runners-up get a 1GB iPod shuffle.
Still others can be used as weapons for the defenseless. That's the impression we got from this ad by Amnesty International, which is admittedly about a year old and maybe 1:30 too long. The animation and the idea are good though, and I like the sound of the scribble over the music.
Walking in the footsteps of Jay-Z and Nelly, Justin Timberlake is backing a line of expensive but delightfully ass-perking denim wear: William Rast, launched in partnership with Trace Ayala. (The brand is a combination of their grandfathers' first names.)
I haven't seen any TV ads, but the site's hosting trailers about the life of fictional character William Rast, played by Justin Timberlake. Mostly he's seizing the opportunity to forget shaving, play with make-up and explore self-fellating videocam angles. Oddly (or not so much), they made me think of Tila Tequila's video blog.
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It's always a little irksome when a film boasts an "all-star cast," because if THAT'S the card it's playing, there's probably not much else going on.
The Women, a remake of a movie from 1939, has just such a cast. Think Candace Bergen! Annette Benning! Jada Pinkett-Smith! Meg Ryan! Bette Midler! Eva Mendes! It's a walking, talking line-up for the cover of next month's Vanity Fair.
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- Because what the world needs now is a hot blogger calendar.
- The CW's decided to let advertisers see snippets of 90210's content after all. I guess this means the PTC will be throwing itself a self-congratulatory cocktail party.
- OMG, OMG, a Facebook movie? ...by the co-creator of West Wing? Does that mean there's a parity of significance between Mark Zuckerberg and the ruler of the free world?
- MySpace was the top display ad publisher in June; Microsoft the top display advertiser. Most of its ads were for Live Search.
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For some, imagery of schoolgirls (or any female for that matter) in pleated, plaid miniskirts presents an irresistible urge to let fantasy fun rampant and to, well, just be really, really bad. While that imagery may not be what Marc Jacobs, who signed Russian duo t.A.T.u. (Lena Katina and Yulia Volkova) to front his fall fashion campaign, intends to foist on the public, one does wonder just how he will present the fun-loving couple in upcoming campaigns.
The pair have been out of the limelight for a while but that won't really matter. Marc Jacobs will doll them up (or down) and present them in a deliciously delectable manner easily obsessed over by all. Lesbians. Rocks stars. What's not to love?
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Never mind petitions, Greenpeace wants PICTURES. The organization's asking community members to submit photos of dearly-loved things being threatened by global warming. Users are also invited to write a tear-jerking message explaining the photo. All photos and notes will be sent to the Representative for your district.
There were only a couple of submitted photos when I clicked on the link above, and at the time it seemed like it would be hilarious if a bunch of people got together and deluged the site with shots of their ice trays. Then I choked on some tea, and I'm over it now.
Sadly, for some, the LA County Fair bimbos (1, 2) have been retired after a two year run bringing attention to that annual geographical anomaly, the LA County Fair. For others, the appearance of Obama and McCain in the campaign will be a welcome change. And for bovine lovers...and 14 year old boys, well, farting cow jokes are always welcomed. The work comes from The Rogers Group and Ideology Advertising.
The three (out of a total of ten) executions are here, here and here.
When it comes to getting yourself tested for certain kinds of STDs, you can be reasonably sure the tested parts are your own and you have a pretty clear history of the part's activities. That is unless you are Frankenstein about to have unprotected sex with his first love in this Danish commercial.
Now if I could only remember that "detachable penis" song from like 20 years ago.
Ever watch a horror movie and begin to scream at the screen because the bubble-headed, big-breasted, airhead insists on answering the phone or opening the closet door rather than just...um...just walking away? Or some other totally illogical idiocy? Of course you have.
You'll want to do it again when you watch this DDB Stockholm-created commercial for McDonald's. You will scream, "Just lift the fries up to your mouth, you idiot!"
Logic. Who needs it in advertising?
Walking through the Mall of America, there are, no doubt, plenty of distractions. Sound good. Some bad. This new ad technology from Modernistic used by Best Buy to promote their new store in the mall falls into both categories. It's bad because who wants a holographic projection talking to you and youu walk through the mall. It's good becasue al you have to do is walk to the side of it and it disappears. Something for everyone. What's not to like?
In its continuing quest to transform the tragically unhip into something, well, not quite hip but into something people will at least consider using. Weiden + Kennedy is out with two more commercials illustrating the transformative powers of Old Spice Swagger (seriously? Swagger?). One features Brian Urlacher. The other, LL Cool J. The basic message? Even manly dudes like Urlacher and LL were losers until...they began using Old Spice products.
Funny thing. They probably were using their dad's Old Spice back in the day and that didn't seem to help. Perhaps, once again, it's advertising that's the transformative thing in people's lives.
After viewing these commercials hyping The Big Ten Conference, one is led to believe the great American sport of football is running scared fearing of the "real" game of football everyone else in the world plays could jeopardize the sport. A drive by any field in any town in America reinforces that fear to some degree. It seems every kid in every town across the country is playing soccer. Well, maybe not in Texas but everywhere else, it seems.
Could soccer - called football everywhere else in the world - ever come close to unseating American football? Not likely but a drive by all those fields makes one wonder once in a while.
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We know there are a lot of soccer...uh...football stars out there who can manipulate the ball in ways you never thought a ball could be manipulated but we haven't yet seen a manipulator who can get all the balls in one pocket all at the same time. What we really want to know is: did that hurt?
There's always a new way to sell underwear, isn't there?
This is "Ca$h," a fun little ad for a gratuitously violent game called Mercenaries 2: World in Flames. I love how it illustrates the acquisition of profit by unethical means: the seedy backdrops, filthy oceans, and characters' faces all bear the delightfully crisp stamp of currency.
And the song! It's convivial and music-hallish, the kind of thing you learn the words to, then leap around and mouth while blowing holes through the furniture with your bad-ass mercenary fingertips. What a feast it'll be for the PTC when these role models invade their living rooms.
Put together in HD by Shilo for DraftFCB/San Francisco. Electronic Arts debuted the spot on August 18 Stateside; it'll start running September 5 in the United Kingdom. I can hardly wait to see what it looks like on TV.
You'd have the best of two depraved worlds: a gaudy lustfest and some seriously decadent cake. Kind of like the ad at left, which was ganked out of last month's Travel and Leisure magazine.
Tagline: "Everything's sexier in Paris Las Vegas." I don't know about sexy, but it's sort of pretty after a few Pernods, and David Hasselhoff makes the occasional cameo. Plus, who can beat rooms starting at $89? Okay, okay, besides Circus Circus.
To supplement the use of big balloon dolls (dubbed "Fidolls") in its guerrilla campaign, Canadian wireless firm Fido deployed whimsical floating Fidoll-shaped bubbles into the air.
Charming -- even if, after the Bravia bubbles effort, it falls a little on the scant side of sudsy.
In addition to repping Fido to both the earth-bound and the airborne, the campaign -- which invites users to text 411 to 10987 -- invites users to free "Fido Sessions," which cover topics like art and design. Artists involved in the sessions have included The Dark, Nicholas Di Genova and Jamie Campbell.
Nice to see a wireless provider -- whose services are so integral to city-trawlers' daily lives -- engage users in a way that enlivens their own creativity.
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