We really hate it when lame music gets in the way of our ambient in-the-zone iTunes mix. But that's really the only beef we have with this microsite for TurboChef, which in all other respects is suspiciously too cool to be kitchen appliance-related.
The Oven Reinvented was put together by mono and it gives demonstrations on how the TurboChef cooks food. We watched the asparagus segment about six times. While cooking, the food sort of floats in midair while lasers shoot through it from both directions.
It's so Teleportation Pod Meets Wolfgang Puck.
In its pressie, mono calls TurboChef "15 times better" than the typical "me-too" luxury appliance. We're not really sure how the agency arrived at the number 15 but we're guessing it's probably similar to the way we pretended to count the number of times we saw the asparagus segment. (Actually, we only watched it once.)
Radiohead, which according to Chuck Klosterman is somehow both over- and underrated as a band, has decided to take a stand against third-party online music dealers (cough-cough-iTunes) by letting fans decide what to pay for its latest album Rainbows.
Manager Bryce Edge explained, "We're prepared to take a risk and we might come out looking very foolish. But we believe if your music is great, then people will pay for it."
The 10 tracks are available on the Radiohead website and costs allegedly vary from nothing to 100 pounds (not the weight; the currency). In fact, we can't even open it because it keeps crashing from the mad rush of fans trying to get to the goods.
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We were actually surprised here. This spot poses as a home video taken by a proud father of his baby's first steps. If you've ever witnessed a child walk for the first time, you know what a triumphant feat it is - and that it doesn't last long.
That's the first thing that sticks out.
The kid seems to be walking for an impressively long time with the dad following closely behind, cooing in paternal awe. Then they get to the front door, and POW! -- the kid's off like a shot! Pops couldn't keep up if he wanted to. The ensuing mayhem made us LOL.
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Agency.com has just prepared a new online campaign for British Airways. Visit Upgrade to British Airways to get the gist.
Using both flash and HTML, users click on the logo and find themselves zooming ever nearer to teeny weeny little images that seemingly make up the bigger picture. Once you get as close as you possibly can to each element, you learn a neat little fact about the British Airways experience.
In the same way the Tin Man subsite loops after about 10,000 scenes or so, images are repeated without hurting the effort much -- meaning you could pretty much sit there clicking forever.
If Tin Man and British Airways are any indication, it seems like Ad-ville is developing a preoccupation with ... what could you call it? Immersion? Digging deep? Life in macro? Vertigo?
If there's anyone who can bring even the remotest bit of excitement to the mundane category of data security, it's John Cleese. As a follow up to Dr. Harold Trainwreck's The Institute for Backup Trauma, JDW Marketing has given us the equally humorous Friendly Advice Machine which aims to explain just how important data backup (with Iron Mountain, of course) can be. Written and directed by Captains of Industry and produced by Thunder Sky Pictures, a collection of videos feature Cleese answering data backup-related questions as only Cleese can.
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We hold a special place in our hearts for little girls carrying cupcakes because of an ad for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints that we used to see all the time when we were kids.
To this day, it still makes us hungry for multiple halves of love-smattered confections.
Along the same altruistic vein (except without the whole changing-religions part), Merkle launched an interactive bakery called Cupcakes for a Cause to raise money for Cancercare. Every virtual cupcake sold means $1 toward research for a cure.
But talking of cupcakes would be lame if you couldn't actually eat one. The campaign also involves bake sales with sponsoring homes and bakeries. Oh heaven.
Here's some food for thought as you consider just how smartly your marketing budget is being spent. Recently, a media buyer refused to place a buy on a site because the site's content was deemed unsuitable. All well and good but then the same media buyer placed the same buy on a blind ad network (a buy that is made without knowing on which sites the ads will appear).
We bet you can guess what happened next. Yup. The ad appeared on the site that was deemed unsuitable because the blind ad network buys ads from the same, so-called unsuitable site. One, perhaps, can't fault the buyer since they had no idea the ad would appear on the site they thought should not be part of the buy but doesn't the entire blind buy thing seem idiotic? It's like, "Hey, let's throw some money at a stripper and see what sticks to her thong." Not the most efficient use of one's cash.
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This "Infinite OZ" subsite for the Sci-Fi Channel's Tin Man does little besides guide passive visitors deeper, deeper and still deeper into worlds sitting inside other worlds, kind of like those marbles at the end of Men in Black.
Entrance looks and feels like the rabbit hole Lewis Carroll's Alice fell into, except slower and scarier (vestiges of Pink Floyd, maybe?). Advertisers will also be happy to know that the first thing a person sees upon penetrating the refurbished Oz is a billboard.
Granted, it veers into a totally fucked-up, scary and apparently deserted world, but hey, this is very good news for those seeking a more interactive user experience.
And oh god. Did a disembodied female voice just say "There's no place like the O-Z"? You did not go there, Calle & Pelle Sjonell. (This is their last gig for Fallon, Minneapolis before they move on to BBH, NY.)
Tin Man premieres November on the Sci-Fi Channel. After traveling for 10 minutes into the void with no end in sight, part of us does want to see the show.
We haven't heard a peep from Saturn since the Aura's mad diss by Bob Garfield. But the company hopes to reinvent itself with the Astra (try not to confuse the names), targeted directly at MySpacers.
To celebrate its call to "Rethink," users are invited to take a test drive. Try to work out what's going on with the laggy PowerPoint-esque site while trying to ignore the corny copy: "Go. Stop. Look. Turn. Repeat. Is this really how we fall in love with a car?"
It may not be the formula for falling in love with a car, but it sounds suspiciously like the directions on a shampoo bottle, except with too many confusing demands.
This playful little campaign by Grupo W, Mexico is for Hershey's Icebreakers, and the object of each interaction -- for those who don't speak Spanish -- is to demonstrate how "The truth tastes better." Especially with Icebreakers.
There's also a companion site that roughly translates to The Flavor of Your Truth, where you can spell out your personal truth and create a new brand image out of pictures tagged with the words you used.
It all sounds very Dorian Gray. Do you really want to know what your truth looks like?
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