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It's no secret that the US's slow divorce from oil dependence is a transition frowned upon by some. But to joke about it? Publicly? Quel faux-pas.
That's why we dig Toyota Prius' ballsiness. This ad, put together by Saatchi & Saatchi in Poland, throws an ice breaker into the discourse. It doesn't make the Prius any prettier, but it certainly makes the brand more appealing.
Something about the sheikh's despondent expression brings to mind those sad westerns in which ways of life get torn asunder, and natives cruelly displaced, by the new guys in town. Oh sheikh, don't mourn too long for the past. We'd pat your shoulder, but we probably wouldn't recognize you through the tinted windows of the gold-encrusted Hummer.
What, exactly, is going on in this Dolce & Gabbana ad and does it really matter? Don't fashion labels get a pass when it comes to raciness and imagery that connotes culturally questionable activities? According to National Organization for Women President Kim Gandy who told BrandWeek, "It's a provocative ad but it is provoking things that really are not what we want to have provoked. We don't need any more violence," the answer is no. Her organization plans to protest the ad and has added to a section of its website that highlights ads it feels are offensive.
One could argue the ad certainly paints a questionable picture and perpetuates an activity that certainly does not need perpetuating. Others might argue the ad, and many other fashion ads, is so over-the-top cartoonish in its desire to be "edgy," that it's a harmless toss off passed over as one glosses through the fake world of fashion magazines. What do you think?
We pride ourselves on our unsurpassed potty-mouthage, so we feel a little outdone by this new Earth Day campaign that's kind of sponsored by Greenpeace.
The naughty prints are only "kind of" sponsored by Greenpeace because Exit3a copywriter Tom Mullen admits to AdCritic they haven't told the organization about the print series yet. "It's probably not legal, but there's too much paperwork, meetings and phone calls involved to get the campaign approved in time for Earth Day," he explains. "I figure Greenpeace is too busy getting sued by conglomerates to bother suing a few people who are trying to promote the cause. They can always officially deny the vulgarity."
If fortune favours the brave, perhaps that grace extends to those disinclined to ask permission for slapping mom-fucking ads out into the open and signing it Greenpeace.
We call this the conjure-bonds-by-insulting-the-source technique. This strategy occurs on the playground all the time, except it's done in crayon and usually ends in tears or angry phone calls. We have a feeling Greenpeace will be getting a few of the latter.
Back in the dark ages of the seventies when women thought men with tons of body hair were sexy, the very hairy Burt Reynolds graced the pages of Cosmopolitan with his famed centerfold pose. If only Philips' Shave Everywhere could have been on the scene. My how times and styles have changed. Today, men and women can't seem to get enough hair off their bodies. In the seventies, hair ruled.
Acknowledging hair length and style never stops changing, perhaps DIRECTV thinks it's ahead of the curve here and we should expect some sort of Shave Everywhere backlash with chest and pubic hair making a rampant return after having been tamed for so long. Or, perhaps, as the "Everything should be seen in DERECTV HD. Well not everything" headline indicates, the satellite company just wants to grossly counteract the usual satisfaction one feels when paging through the annual Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue in which this Burt Reynolds ad appears.
This hairy seventies freak show comes to us courtesy of Deutsch LA.
Bye Helmets is running a print series under the tagline "Change your head." After staring for a very long time, we shook off the impending agoraphobia and concluded they're trying to say their helmets lend the same kind of protection you perceive you're getting when you reflexively throw your hands around your head before an impact.
Later in life a pessimistic teacher told us that strategy doesn't actually work when there's shit falling on you, so the best thing to do is crawl under a doorway or desk. But maybe lots of hands offset the risk. It would be hard to wrap doorways or desks around our heads.
Work by 1861 United, Milan. Clearly the Milanese are more playful with bodies than we are.
It's unsettling to watch people do unnatural things with their bodies, which we suspect is why The Exorcist became a horror classic.
This print campaign for Ashtanga Yoga Center uses a similar technique, turning the idea of supple flesh into something more ... elastic.
Leagas Delaney of Milan put this one together. We think it's an effective if bizarre way of demonstrating how yoga brings a willing body to an unwound, even disconnected state. Still, if we wanted our feet and hands to fall in all the wrong places, we'd play Twister. It may not bring us to om but nobody ever outgrows the odd fondle.
Dennis Publishing's lad-mag approach to publishing seems to have peaked, flattened and dropped in the past few years and MediaWeek reports the publishing company has retained media investment firm Allen & Co. to offload/restructure 31 international editions of Maxim, licensing deals with its Las Vegas casino, its steakhouses and lounges and even its line of fashion bedding. Men? Men! Where have you gone? How can you stray from the pioneer who mastered the art of nudity without really showing nudity? Traitors, we say!
Stuff, Blender and The Week are also in the mix with Dennis publishing possibly headed for neighboring unfortunate territory Emap's FHM navigated last December when it folded.
Adrants reader Marcos Rozen, editor of the Brazilian AutoData, sent us this scan of a Chevrolet ad that appeared on page two of the February 5 issue of Automotive News. In the upper right hand corner of the ad, interlocking metal rings are hanging from a fence. One has to wonder how an ad with imagery so similar to a competitor's logo can make it through the lengthy approval process without being caught. We're thinking someone caught some serious shit for this and furious calls were made to Automotive News asking the magazine to yank the ad. At least we hope so. It'd be sad to think any brand would allow this to happen.
Hmm. We wonder how effective an ad campaign is if you have to read the agencies description of it on their website to figure out what that little blue ball of fur is they placed in a campaign for a cookie seller. JWT in Kuwait (yes, we cover advertising news from all over the world) created a print campaign for their client Choowy Goowy, a cookie retailer that delivers cookies in jars to homes and offices.
We suppose we can't complain too much. If they used the actual Cookie Monster, they'd have to get into all that nasty licensing and royalty fee crap. Still, a ball of blue fur as a stand in for the Cookie Monster? A stretch to say the least. Oh wait, it's just a piece of his fur that fell off while he was chowing down the cookies. OK. Now we get it. Silly us. And ho long did we ave to stare at the ads to get that? Hopefully, our explanation will spare all of you the embarrassment of idiocy we just went through.
You can't buy publicity like the kind that comes with an appearance in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue or on the publication's Swimsuit 2007 site. We never thought of the iPod and a piece of clothing but we rather like how model Marisa Miller wears it in this photo. Can you imagine a Zune here instead of an iPod? We thought not.
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