What do you do when you've pigeonholed your career in an award-winning TV series? If Eva Longoria and Sarah Michelle Gellar are any indication, you get behind a beverage. (Or change your name. The sirens of Desperate Housewives and Buffy the Vampire Slayer are now, legally, Eva Longoria Parker and Sarah Michelle Prinze. Uh ... yeah.)
Eva and Sarah, among other celebrities, are helping promote a flavored water drink called HINT. It boasts zero calories, no artificial sweeteners and total lack of tact.
Here's to their health. (We're brand-whore traditionalists, so we'll stick with Evian.)
On New Years Day, Euro RSCG, NY launched the Open for Fun campaign on behalf of Ritz. They told us it was "multifaceted" and "integrated," two slabs of PR bait that grip our attention like the iron hand of Russia. Watch the spots: Crummy, The Opener and Videogame. They're weird and, according to our friends the press people, operate on the premise that "95 percent of Americans want more fun."
And we totally wish we were making that up.
Finishing up its work for Porsche as the account shifts to Cramer-Krasselt, Carmichael Lynch, which landed Subaru without review in November, has released its last work for Porsche. To launch the Cayenne GTS in the states, Carmichael Lynch created a new TV spot and, along with Fabric Interactive, a new website which is currently counting down to the vehicles January 28 launch.
In the commercial, a Cayenne driver ascends the mountains overlooking LA and, in a nod to some sort of urban myth, revs its engine to which other Porsches respond. It's really that simple. The site doesn't have much on it for now other than the spot itself, a countdown clock and a little engine rev thingy. Hopefully, we'l see more January 28th.
While brands certainly don't want people using their products, logos and other related imagery to create products of their, own, the hammer that Ford legal dropped on the Black Mustang Club seems a bit heavy handed. Recently the club created a calendar which contained images of club members' cars photographed by the members themselves. Ford didn't take kindly to this and asked CafePress, the service the group had chosen to print the calendars, to kill the project claiming all the images in the calendar are the property of Ford...including the Black Mustang Club logo (this has been clarified in the update below. in actuality, it was CafePress which, based on past Ford trademark dealings, initially refused to print the calendar).
It's understandable that a brand would and should do everything it can to protect itself from any kind of potential negative effect but to attack a group of people who, clearly, love the product in question simply for showing their love of that product is, well, idiotic and more harmful to the brand had they done nothing at all.
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Wendy's, apparently not pleased with its red wig campaign, may be leaving Saatchi & Saatchi, AdScam's George Parker reports. A Saatchi source tells Parker production has ceased on all work. George didn't like the red wig campaign citing its lack of relevance to the brand and its lack of message content.
We're not sure we agree. Following the death of iconic Dave Thomas, Wendy's work hit a low point. We think the red wig campaign succeeded in eliciting a "whoa, that's pretty good in a weird sort of whacked way" reaction. Whether it sold any hamburgers we know not.
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With help from Stink and TBWA\China, Psyop put together "Together" for Adidas and the '08 Olympics. Tagline: "Impossible is nothing." It's very Nike, with a little power-to-the-people in concentrate.
Victory, meet China.
Brandkeys publishes this thing called the Customer Loyalty Engagement Index. According to this year's index, Starbucks lost serious ground in '07 for forgetting what made it a big name in the first place: the coffee experience.
Who's winning the loyalty of Third Place defectors? McDonald's, which stole ground from Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts last year. To leverage its swell in traffic, the burger-and-clown franchise is opening coffee bars throughout the States, and it'll be pushing lattes, cappuccinos and frappes.
Maybe to prove there's no magic to SBUX that can't be duplicated elsewhere, McD's will be calling its coffee peddlers "baristas" and making coffee machines visible over the bar.
Hrm. We're having trouble picturing ourselves sipping macchiattos over a tile floor that smells like pee. But hey, two apple pies for $0.99? Can't beat that.
Dave and Eddy claim they've found THE GREATEST AD EVER. (And it's not that damn Volkswagen ad.) In an attic!
Visual fetishists, prepare to be disappointed. It lacks color, imagery or music to boost its emotional cred -- just 1,033 words to paint its picture. It's compelling, clever and persuasive, if you bother to read it. And it's for the Volvo! See the ad, sandwiched somewhere amidst Dave and Eddy's gushy storytelling, right here.
The Zune is getting mighty sexy ad-wise. (Not like Microsoft hasn't got the blow to cash -- er, the cash to blow.)
The brand enlisted TAG, SF to build a silent spot for the 20-foot GeoffreyTron billboard in Times Square. The final product, Zune Tron, made use of work by Stardust, whose job it was to enliven the spot without use of actual sound. That's a tall order considering the product is an MP3 player, but it turned out damn pretty. It must have been gorgeous in person.
GEICO supports wildlife conservation. Not convinced? Watch the gecko have a heart-to-heart with an otter and a jellyfish, courtesy of the Association of Zoos and Acquariums.
The gecko shtick never gets old. We're glad GEICO didn't lose sight of that in the face of its neurotic caveman's mushroom cloud popularity.
Catch the gecko in the flesh at the San Diego Zoo's Children's Zoo from January 5-February 17. You'll meet a few real geckos, and a big fake one too. (The GEICO mascot, that is.)
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