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Sparked by a handwritten note marked "How do you ask a Ninja for a free hug?", Twist Image disseminates its take on the holiday card, which is less holiday card and more video collage of happy 2006 moments. Some inclusions: the "free hugs" guy, the live-action Simpsons intro, Animator v. Animation and the viral OKGo treadmill video.
Lee Hopkins claims this is the best Christmas card he's ever seen. While we think those are strong words, we're inclined to agree, and not merely because they remembered to include Ask a Ninja (which automatically grants all-star status). We wish the cats at Twist an equally happy holidays.
OK, then. Anytime we receive an email from Playboy, we're more inclined to open it than an email from, say, paypalebayscam.com. In response to our call for entries relating to Sullivan Higdon & Sink's We Love Holiday Sweaters holiday card, Playboy Enterprises Public Relations Manager Traci Coulter sent us a picture of her and three others decked out in cheesy Christmas sweaters found at Salvation Army shops for a recent Santa Crawl the foursome embarked upon. Cute. But, Traci, which one is you in the picture? We need these important facts for completeness, you know.
Oh it wouldn't be an agency Christmas party without pole dancing, would it? Of course not which is why several Arnold staffers, during the agency's Boston in-office Christmas party, headed into creative director Pete Favat's office, where, apparently, a pole is in place to hold up the ceiling and did a little pole grinding. The Boston Herald's Inside Track reports there's a video on the agencies Intranet of employee Lawson Clarke doing dance moves while dressed in a red Santa bikini. Those of you at Arnold reading this....please oh please provide us more dirt. You know you want us to scoop Inside Edition, don't you?
UPDATE: Well, that didn't take long. Here's the video of Clarke.
UPDATE II: Oops. It's gone now. Damn. Should have saved it.
Once upon a time we noted ad people would rather shoot movies than make boring ads. To illustrate this desperation we get tons of contrived holiday videos. But considering adland's love of video production in general, you'd think more artists would be thinking, "By gad. I'll get Ogilvy to position my bikini-clad models!"
Well, U2 did. Nix the bikini model part. For "Window in the Sky" they tapped Modernista, the only agency we know that self-promotes to an audience that perhaps prefers to remain unawares about agencies lurking behind brands. The resulting video is gorgeosity and includes multiple musical influences, icons and audiences.
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- Verizon's Giant's Stadium text message contest suffers from bad "can you hear me now?" reception.
- Looks like the pre-holiday layoffs are rolling in. Time Inc. just laid off 27 from its consumer marketing unit reports MediaWeek.
- If you just couldn't get enough of the fake Sony PSP blog, The Consumerist saved the entire site and reuploaded it to humiliate Sony even further.
- coBRANDit's Owen Mack attended the recent Word of Mouth Marketing Association conference in Washington DC last week and created several video interviews.
- IQ Interactive singing heads sing Christmas carols.
- Who knew? USA Today says the wise-ass Windex bird commercial was the most-liked ad in 2006.
- AdMashup, the site that collects submitted ad mashups was featured in the 2006 Advertising Age Book of Tens.
We think we've found one of the more amusing agency holiday cards with Sullivan Higdon & Sink's We Love Holiday Sweaters. But come on guys. Leave the political correctness at home. It is a Christmas sweater after all and not a "holiday" sweater. You don't want to encourage the horror of people wearing these fashion faux pauxs every holiday do you? Once a year is enough! Anyway. On the site, not only do you get to wallow in the absurdity of the Christmas sweater, you get to create your own! Yes, advertising people. Leave that boring client work behind for a moment and test your true, unapproval process-hindered creativity in the knitting section of the site. Let's see who can create the best (or is it worst?) sweater. Email your creation to sweater@adrants.com and we'll feature them here. Or, just leave the link in comments.
absurdity of the Christmas sweater
Pop quiz. What do you get when you combine an advertising agency Christmas card with the Second Life fad? An agency Christmas card video set in Second Life, of course. Leo Burnett Detroit, one of the early agency entries into the virtual world has forgone the typical, boring, so yesterday, "real world" holiday card and, instead, given us an avatar-filled, winter-themed, Second Life hip hop jam. Hmm. Different. Nicely produced (by Millions of Us). Though it doesn't look like the Second Life we know. No lag. No half-built sims. No clunky interface. Just a lot of happy, dancing agency avatars. What's not to like?
Remember the creative department douchebag? This is him, cooler.
Iron Creative throws together the ultimate douchey holiday card personality, a sequel to last year's snowman story. Yeah, it's another holiday card. Yeah, we're as sick of them as you are. And yeah, we're going to keep throwing them up here since creatives seem to love making them.
In Iron Creative's defense, it is amusing to think of a snowman as the next big VC. Or covered in the limbs of writhing hot cartoon women. He's ice cold, baby. Ice cold.
In Lives Connected, 44 Peter A Mayer employees revisit their Katrina experiences. Far from the usual give-us-money pitch, the courage-tales nod to a tradition of legacy storytelling prevalent in New Orleans, with recurring themes weaving through each piece. The site launched around the same time hurricane season bowed out.
The NOLA-based agency calls this an "interactive data visualization" - a busy buzzword for "oral history" that we probably could have done without. But Mayer's shtick happens to be civic pride. Its slogan is, blatantly, "We wouldn't want to be anywhere else."
"[The purpose of Lives Connected] is to highlight the resilient nature of the agency and the spirit and dedication of its employees," explains a representative.
We're pretty sure somebody's going to shit all over this and claim it's an exploitation of high emotions and turbulent events. That's cool. But we liked the gesture and there's room in the Katrina narrative for more than just body counts and weepy stories. Those don't really help anybody or bring business back to the community. So nice job, guys.
Some time ago, Danish comedians Wulffmorgenthaler created a comic strip that showed a frog being carried away by a fly stuck to his tongue. Earlier this year, DDB Berlin let loose a Volkswagen commercial that showed yes, frog being carried away by a fly stuck to his tongue. The usual pissing match has ensued. Some think DDB should apologize. See the strip here. Watch the ad here. What do you think?
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