To promote its hot new Ariake running shoe, K-Swiss enlisted the face of Sebastien Foucan, the founder of free running. ("Free running" is when you go jogging and, instead of hauling ass around an obstacle, you do an impressive Ranma-style aerial flip over it. Seriously.)
The print ads are very Zen. There's no copy, just images of Foucan being Foucan and a small K-Swiss logo at bottom. They were put together by Perfect Fools which is based in Sweden and the US. The ads will be accompanied by a wannabe-viral (which we haven't yet seen) and a website.
See Foucan variant. We're not really sure whether people will put two and two together and go, "Okay, Ariake = running! Got it." Because we were all, "Acrobatic skater gear?"
Here's another weird Coke Zero spot that elaborates on Coke's newfound fixation with body parts. (If you're all "huh?", see the Brazilian tongue spot we covered yesterday.) Just so you know -- if Coke Zero collaborates in ANY WAY with The Vagina Monologues, we're going on strike.
It's in English this time, so hurrah. The characters: a statuesque Coke Zero (sort of like a golden calf), an ornery French eyeball, a bull-headed British tongue and a pothead Californian finger.
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Crispin Porter + Bogusky, the cats that gave us our two most recurring nightmare monsters (him and him), just won the privilege of promoting Windows products to consumers.
The budget was undisclosed, but Advertising Age pegs it at upwards of $300 million. In '06, Microsoft spent $1 billion in measured and unmeasured US marketing, so it's obviously got cash to burn like mad.
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Coke Zero's throwing weight behind tongue-piercing parlors in Brazil. Seriously.
Shops in Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Porto Alegre and Salvador are giving free piercings to people that agree to take a picture with a fresh new Coke Zero stud. Coke's calling the concept advertasting. (Not to be confused with this.)
See TV spot with talking tongues that for some reason are bitching out a bewildered-looking eyeball with legs. It (hopefully) helps if you speak Portuguese. The shop responsible: Espalhe Marketing de Guerrilha.
You know method: people against dirty? We love how their ad copy is always a little provocative, but not so saucy that you can point fingers and go, "HEY, that's DIRTY!"
We opened our emails this morning and found ourselves face-to-face with this promotion for method's latest "Bathroom Buddies": le scrub + little bowl blu. (You know, like your favourite song!)
Suddenly tag-team toilet cleaning time seems ... sexy. And strangely mod.
Sprintcuts, a handy-dandy Sprint campaign, gives tips on how to quick-peel a banana and dry nail polish in a blink.
The campaign leads people to Waitless.org, which shares other somewhat-productive tips on "time rebates" that are supposed to leave you with the sense that Sprint = time savings.
We've actually seen this spot, Instant Baby Soothe, a few times on either Hulu or ABC.com. We thought it was cool, but until this very moment we had no idea whose ad it was. Which would actually be helpful, because then we'd know who to blame when our relatives "WTF?" us as we carry their spawn to a nearby sink.
Big-ups to Candace for sharing.
Here's an ad for Gmail by Saatchi, Moscow (thanks for sharing, Armando). Like these Stateside spots (1, 2) it's got that "collaboration makes us whole!" feel -- except in Russia, Google had to pay an agency to contrive it.
Guess it's tougher to find free evangelists and moon-eyed employees outside the motherland.
We're a big fan of white space. We hate ads that cram so much shit into available space under the misguided belief people will actually read the shit. Car dealers ads immediately come to mind as do many billboards whose creators seem to believe every one is a speed reader and blessed with binoculars for eyes.
So whenever we see an ad that gleefully makes use of white space, we can't help but love it. Especially when it actually serves the intended message as does this Swedish McDonald's ad which promotes the chains ginormous coffee. Thank you, DDB Stockholm for giving us our fix.
To a fault, even. More here and here.
We've got no idea what No Nice! is. But based on the occasional martini accompanying the brand, we figure -- hope, at least -- it can get you drunk.
The, uh, campaign went down in Rome, Milan and Turin, Italy. The brand: No Nice. The "branded" vehicles: dirty cars parked on the streets.
Weeeeak.
Starbucks is staging a sales sabbatical for several hours tomorrow. At Chairman Schultz' behest, all company-owned stores are shutting down so baristas can go back to basics.
"Starbucks partners will have an opportunity to connect and deepen their passion for coffee with the ultimate goal of transforming the customer experience," Schultz said in a staff memo.
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