For its darkly strange and surreal radio campaign for Mercedes, BBDO Johannesberg brought home the Grand Prix for Radio Tuesday night at Cannes. The agency last won a Grand Prix in 2009 for Virgin Atlantic. The campaign, Accident Avoidance Features, has people who've been in car accidents taunted by the people they hit.
The copy is wickedly weird. One spot reads, in part, "For my birthday, he sent me a half sheep and 27 emotionally fraught mix tapes. He is intimately acquainted with the contents of my bin. I know he's touched my earbuds. And he likes to knit things for me too. Things like ponchos, cat suits and eye patches. To think, if I'd been driving a Mercedes-Benz with Lane Assist, that nifty accident avoidance system, we never would've met."
Other Gold Lion winners include:
- Y&R Bangkok for Mai Tan
- Network BBDO for Galderma
- Lowe & Prtners for Samroc Paint
- Three Drunk Monkeys for IKEA
- LatinWorks for Cin Las Americas
- Grabarz & Partners for Modern Music School
- DDB CoNetwork BBDO for lumbia for Armed Forces Columbia
- Jung Von Matt for Noah
Non-profit organization The Pop Luck Club, which supports gay fathers in Southern California, is out with a new ad campaign, Raise a Child, that aims to raise awareness and garner support for gay fathers and their families. Subjects such as surrogacy, fostering and adoption are explored with radio PSAs and bus shelters in and around the Los Angeles area.
Explaining the campaign, Pop Luck Club Co-President Richard Valenza said, "We make lunches for our kids, get them to music and karate lessons...just like every family. With this campaign, we are putting a real face on gay parenting."
The genesis of the group in 1998 was the gathering of gay fathers for pot luck dinners and the sharing of lifestyle issues. The group has since grown to over 500 members.
With Halloween right around the corner, New York City is preparing for the usual deluge of idiots who can't figure out how to have fun without becoming assholes. Aimed at eliminating drunk driving among the males 21-39, the You the Man campaign includes online and radio with the copy, "You, who explained that the cop wasn't wearing a costume..." and "You, who convinced me that my costume didn't mean I was Superman..."
It's pretty basic but, hey, so is making sure you have a designated driver on hand before you head out on the town for some costume-fueled foolery.
An Anne Summers radio ad promoting a line of Halloween-themed outfits has been blocked by the UK's Radio Advertising Clearing Centre which claimed the ad contained, "fairly overt sexual references in terms of sound effects."
The spot contains sounds of fear-based screams which then transform into more pleasurable sounding screams. In other words, women having orgasms. Nothing wrong with that in our book, of course, but according to the RACC, the spot overstepped the organization's guidelines regarding taste and offense.
As spokesperson for the RACC said, "The ad contains fairly overt sexual references in terms of sound effects. We believed that it was too strong for broadcast on commercial radio, notwithstanding timing conditions."
Anne Summers, on the other hand, thinks the ad is just fine with CEO Jacqueline Gold saying, "We have appealed the decision made by the RACC and would love to know what the great British public think. We are proud of our brand that always sparks debate and we hope this gets people talking about sex in a positive way."
An Arbitron and Edison Research study from April 2010 indicates that about 27 percent of U.S. online users, or roughly 70 million individuals, listened to online radio in the previous month. Seventeen percent, or about 43 million people, listened to online radio in the previous week. That's up from 33 million in 2008.
"Music forms the soundtrack to our lives and, increasingly, that soundtrack is being delivered digitally, often via the Internet," said Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO, IAB. "Advertisers have taken note of this, and marketers are incorporating digital audio into their campaigns across a number of significant verticals."
While the revenue stream may not yet have followed, radio has made a successful transition to the internet. We venture to say better than TV has done to date.
Last night at the ceremony I livetweeted all Gold and Grand Prix winners in the categories above. If you weren't following along at @luckthelady, here's a breakdown of the Grand Prix winners.
Click on the category to see the full list of Gold, Silver and Bronze winners.
Media: Leo Burnett Sydney for "EOS Photochains," Canon EOS DSLR cameras. A cadaver exquis-style execution where users can post images, then other photographers take a piece of that image to continue the chain with a photo of their own.
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In which we play a big game of catching up on the news:
- Tony Mennuto and Gregg Singer have launched RadioFace, a creative agency where copywriters and comedians "work together to elevate the cache and effectiveness of the radio medium."
- 175,000 men trained to examine women's breasts for lumps by playing with a model's boobs online.
- Want a throwback to the 80's? Watch this Goldfrapp video directed by Geremy Jasper and Georgie Greville (Legs).
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As if we weren't already lazy enough what with voice activated menus and all manner of click and swipe, we can now sit on our ass even longer and have a radio ad dial our phone for us.
And come on! It takes more energy to get the phone than it does to dial it. This seems like a lot of work: Getting off your ass to get the phone. Pushing the button for a dial tone. Holding the phone up to the radio's speaker. And actually being able to make the decision you want to dial the phone with just thirty to sixty seconds of advance warning.
Oh right. We don't have to write the number down and we don't have to waste any valuable brain power to remember the number so we can then dial it if the radio spot didn't do it for us.
And the march towards Idiocracy continues.
And what's with the strange Barry White-ish voice over on the demo video?
And...just becasue technology makes it possible doesn't mean we should do it.
Having viewed yet another truth interview commercial and made the decision not to bore you with it, we decided, instead, to share a different take on quitting smoking. And it has to do with readjusting to a life without smoking.
From GSD&M Idea City (wasn't plain old GSD&M good enough?) comes this Ad Council campaign for Legacy called EX. Along with two television commercials (see below), there's a website on which those who hope to quit an share their successes and challenges.
There's also radio, posters and branded air fresheners. See all the campaign elements here.
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"The campaign features three 30-second television spots that use the element of surprise to build excitement for the new Minnesota Millionaire Raffle game Each spot features a game-show-like host who wheels a large raffle drum into busy locales where unsuspecting patrons are encouraged to play an instant raffle. The spots are built on genuine reactions as people go from shocked and reluctant to actively participating and cheering"
Now that's some well-written PR copy. And we didn't have to go digging through a collection of attachments or ridiculously worded releases to find the nugget of information. Thank you, Colle+McVoy.
Now on to the campaign. Generally, we're not a fan of marketing stunts that involve random appearances in unlikely places. After all, if we're shopping, we're shopping. If we're eating, we're eating. Then again, you can't do stunt marketing (or most any kind for that matter...yes, we love you inbound marketing) without a little bit of interruption. So we can't complain much about this campaign.
The campaign also includes print, radio, outdoor, transit and mall. You can view the three spots here, here and here.
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