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Natural Women Make Comeback, Joy it Forward, Period Propaganda

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- Hey, little girl, feel better about your period.

- Joy it forward. Every time a beverage uses a happiness synonym that's not "happiness" (as in Happiness Factory), you can reasonably conclude you're dealing with Pepsi.

- "People like it, but they won't buy magazines with large women in them." More story here, props to MTLB for the link.

- Zippo makes branded entertainment leap.

- Intern-on-intern music video mayhem.

- Twitter elevator pitch contest. You have until tomorrow to enter and win a Flip!

by Angela Natividad    Aug-25-09   Comments ()    Bookmark and Share     
Topic: Brands, Campaigns, Magazine, Online, Trends and Culture

Kimono: Smooth Application for Your Head, Not Your Shoulders

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Drawing a comparison between the silky texture of its namesake and its own, uh, "silky smooth sensation," Kimono Condoms dreamed up the print ad at left.

It features two smooth bodies intertwined; the man's arms bears the beautiful ornamentation you'd expect to find on geisha fare. The total effect invites a long linger.

by Angela Natividad    Aug-23-09   Comments ()    Bookmark and Share     
Topic: Brands, Campaigns, Magazine, Poster

Why Paint Around it When You Can Coat it in Liquid Death?

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Clearex acne treatment gel works a lot like Clearasil acne treatment cream (or your fluoride-rich toothpaste of choice): you rub it onto your pimples at night, then pray they're dry enough to pop or scratch off by morning.

Grasping for a clever way to market the stuff, which you either do or don't have in your cabinet, agency Shalmor Avnon Amichay/Tel Aviv dreamed up this print campaign.

Each piece is an uncomfortably close close-up of a blemished individual. The offending red dots are camouflaged, age-five-at-the-boardwalk!-style, with festive but decidedly unsexy face art. Okay, the Pacman one was kinda rawkin'.

Tagline: "Don't hide it, clear it." Inelegant but straightforward.

by Angela Natividad    Aug-20-09   Comments ()    Bookmark and Share     
Topic: Brands, Campaigns, Magazine, Outdoor

Entertainment Weekly Bows 'Advertisement of Seismic Proportions'

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Hopping right on the "we'll do anything to increase ad revenue" bus, Entertainment Weekly is out with Andy's Richter Scale, an advertorial on the magazine's Must List page pimping the Conan O'Brien show, Andy Richter himself and HBO's True Blood. Wait, what's this ad for again?

Whatever the ad may be for, we love the riff on vampires which ends with, "And have you ever noticed that their real-life fans are ust renaissance fair types with substance abuse problems?"

As advertorials go, it's a good one. So good, it took us three days to realize it wasn't just an editorial sidebar to the Must List. But one wonders. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

by Steve Hall    Jun-15-09   Comments ()    Bookmark and Share     
Topic: Creative Commentary, Magazine, Opinion

Force Fed Diversity Nets Photoshop Disaster

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We're all for diversity but not when it becomes forced efforts both in real life and in Photoshop hack jobs like this cover of Toronto-based Fun Guide. You can't fake diversity which is exactly what the magazine did when it chop shopped a perfectly decent, racially-nebulous photograph of a family for its cover.

Nope. We need a black man, stat!

more »

by Steve Hall    Jun-10-09   Comments (2)    Bookmark and Share     
Topic: Magazine, Opinion, Worst

Emma Watson Brings Charm to Burberry

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Fresh out the Harry Potter franchise, Emma Watson returns to earth on behalf of Burberry, which managed to score her in full postpubescent splendour.

She's clearly not the geeky kid witch we all took her for -- although this Mary Poppins-esque carpet bag leaves us with the sense she may have a few tricks yet. Or maybe she's just hiding an oversized umbrella that conjures the east wind when she needs to make life-changing nanny trips.

Brought to us by the incomparable Jeremy Dante.

by Angela Natividad    Jun- 9-09   Comments (3)    Bookmark and Share     
Topic: Brands, Celebrity, Magazine, Poster, Sponsorship

Dank!: Aesthetic Imperfections Cut the Pain Out of Price

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Here's a clever little campaign for Dank! Second Hand Furniture. Each print zeroes in on a piece of furniture; whatever defect mars it visually also mars the ostentatious price that made the item unattainable.

Also see Table and Chair. By the clever visual acrobats at DDB&Co./Istanbul; via.

by Angela Natividad    Jun- 5-09   Comments ()    Bookmark and Share     
Topic: Brands, Campaigns, Magazine, Poster

Gain: So Sweet-Smelling, You Might Attract Hop-Ons

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This print effort for Gain could probably have done with better execution. I had to read the tagline -- "It smells that good" -- and even then I had to look hard. And it was like, "Oh, it would appear that there's a person stuck to that other person."

But it isn't immediately clear that they're trapped there because they're smelling, and not because, oh, they got sat on and taken-with when their host got up again.

Variants include Gallery and Airport. Work by Leo Burnett/Toronto.

by Angela Natividad    Jun- 5-09   Comments (1)    Bookmark and Share     
Topic: Brands, Campaigns, Magazine, Poster

Because Who Needs Hands...

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...when you've got a bra that turns your mammaries into superclamps? And consider this: if women had more paws for shopping bags, they'd probably be a lot less depressed. For the next eight minutes, anyway.

Just another support-illustrating gem by Wonderbra (via y via).

Previous efforts to break the mold with basoomas have included the glass-breaking bus shelter ad, the extra caution line at metros, and the, uh, "we hold big boulders" approach.

by Angela Natividad    Jun- 5-09   Comments (2)    Bookmark and Share     
Topic: Brands, Campaigns, Magazine, Poster

Louis Vuitton Aligns Itself to Moonmen

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Sally Ride, Jim Lovell and Buzz Aldrin bring stargazer's wonder to this piece by Louis Vuitton. Shot by Annie Leibovitz, the astronauts will grace July issues just in time to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission to the moon.

Antoine Arnaut, head of communications at LV in France, says each spacewalker donated a "significant" portion of their modeling fees to Al Gore's Climate Project. As for the bag at left, it's the Vuitton Icare -- an elbow ornament named after Icarus, an icon of Greek myth who dies after flying too close to the sun, losing his wings and plummeting back to earth.

Not the bag I'd've chosen to feature with survivors of a successful sky-bound mission, but hey, I suppose it's nice that Icarus, Aldrin, Lovel and Ride all have something in common: a lust for that final frontier.

Oh, yeah. You may have noticed Neil Armstrong is missing. This wasn't an oversight on LV's part; after an entreaty or two, "he thought it probably wasn't the right thing to do," Arnault admits.

by Angela Natividad    Jun- 2-09   Comments (1)    Bookmark and Share     
Topic: Brands, Campaigns, Celebrity, Magazine, Trends and Culture

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