For the elite (or just the super-boughie), Sprint is running a deal on a $10.5 million Blackberry smartphone that comes with a private island. See ad here.
Very convincing.
Would-be island takers are invited to enter their Billionaire Identification Numbers to initiate a money transfer. Meanwhile, poorer users are admonished to settle for the $199 (plus $100 rebate) offer instead.
Those curious about finding out whether the company's really giving away a free island are severely guilt-tripped by a pop-up stating that you better have the assets if you're going to screw around, because if you were really on top of the world you wouldn't be impersonating a rich guy, would you?
The offer sports Sprint's new "Sprint ahead" tagline, but operates with a tone significantly different from its psychedelic last effort. Maybe the slogan should be "Sprint in all directions."
For Mountain Dew, it's not far-reaching enough to be down with street culture. Apparently it wants to be in with the Dirty South too.
A firm called Mirrorball.com has sent us a weird new take on the Green Label Project for Mountain Dew.
Meet Willy the Hillybilly, the face of the drink pre-dating the '60s. One-time tagline "Zero Proof Moonshine" also harks back to Prohibition, which is when the catchy Mountain Dew song in the ad was written.
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To prove to us (and possibly itself) that it is indeed "the world's coolest, healthiest market," Whole Foods has launched a YouTube channel called The WTF? Network, a play on Whole Food's initials (if you just ignore that pesky T).
The channel lives up to its acronym, and not in a super-cool way. The featured, very shaky video follows a girl riding a unicycle around the veggie section of the supermarket. We're sure this was funny as hell for her friends, but it really didn't make us salivate for six organic lima beans at $8 a pop.
Or laugh, for that matter. In fact, the grave frowns we wore for the video's :20 run has begun to hurt our faces.
WTF indeed, Whole Foods?
Considering Energizer's got a stranglehold on the beloved Bunny, an icon in our childhood, it's understandable that Duracell may have trouble competing on the same front.
But a broken clown toy? (Possibly beaten into submission by that rolling pin to the left of it?!??) And we won't even touch the It component. Are you trying to give us nightmares?
Tagline: "Lasts longer, much longer. Sorry." No, Duracell, we're sorry.
Update: Kristof just shot us another ad from the same campaign, which you can check out here. We've just been overwhelmed by fond memories of Mommy screaming "PICK THAT SHIT UP!" in a drunken rage.
Three new ads by Clearasil give us chills, mainly because we think the old school brand is taking a huge positioning risk. But the effort is welcome - we were sick of all those Neutrogena-type spots where Jennifer Love Hewitt tries winning her career back in a towel. (Oh wait, she's since moved up to underwear.)
In this spot, a pubescent boy makes a clear (and wince-worthy) pass at his friend's mom. Here, a girl comes onto a guy while her mom shows him baby pictures. And here, a guy stands up in the middle of an auditorium and tells a speaker it's okay to picture him naked.
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It's a visceral pleasure to watch a good Nike ad. Few companies can consistently pair graceful victory alongside the carnality of sport (remember the gypsy ad?).
Anywho, Wieden+Kennedy, Portland put together this piece called The Line for Nike and Dick's Sporting Goods. We wouldn't call it the best spot we've seen, but it's got a nightmarish werewolf-under-the-moon aspect, which, while not deeply moving, meets expectations if nothing else.
W+K: what did we say about an ad not being a film?
Here's a distraction that's sure to derail your workday. In the interest of going simpler, Candystand gives us Jetboost, a game where all you have to do is make the little jetpack-wearing man jump as high as he can.
Each level lasts just a few seconds, which strangely makes you want to do a bunch. Oh, the marketing magic of bite-size.
Addictive. But then again, shiny objects usually are when you have something more important to do.
Keep the volume down if you're in your cubby hole -- er, cubicle. To note, we've long since stopped noticing what candy is advertised - but, foreseeing this, Candystand since began forcing users to sit through a short ad while the game loads. Those clever candy peddling rogues.
- The American Legacy Foundation and 45 other groups have written a letter to RJ Reynolds asking the company to take Camel No. 9 off the market claiming it is "nothing more than a veiled attempt to sell more cigarettes to girls and young women."
- The film The Ten is getting MySpace play courtesy of Special Ops Media.
- The Advertising Softball World Series has launched a new website introducing its 25th silver anniversary tournament party that will be played out this October 7-11 in Las Vegas.
- Austin has launched its first intractive marketing group, the AustinIMA. To celebrate the launch, the organization is holding an event next Thursday. Roy Spence and Yvonne Tocquigny along with speakers from Austin Ventures, nFusion, Sicola Martin, and T3 will address the group.
- Disney's Family Fun and Wondertime have reported ad page increases of 28 and 61 percent respectively.
- Imus may return and so may some advertisers. Like this is s surprise.
Brentter has the full story on Coke's Weiden + Kennedy-created Happiness Factory film which made its "global premiere" in Second Life yesterday. The three and a half minute film (oops, sorry. we're drinking the Kool-Aid here)...um...commercial follows the travails of a Coke factory worker who travels across Happiness Land in a quest to get the factory working again.
We passed on the story yesterday since anything remotely related to Second Life makes us laugh...uh...sorry. We should have said "take less seriously." After dumping millions into Second Life six to 12 months ago, didn't marketers conclude it was a waste of money? Call us callous but YouTube has greater reach than SL by far. Oh but, oops. The vid is on YouTube also...with a whopping 434 views. Hmm.
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Finally! It's been, like, forever since we've been able to slather over a celebu-campaign. It's like they all decided to heed that research that claims celebu-tising doesn't work. Or, we're so immune to it all, we've missed any recent campaign that might have barfed itself up from the bowels of desperate marketers and their agencies who can't find anything meaningful to say so they grab a celeb and slap on a logo.
Anyway, the latest celebu-campaign comes courtesy of Chanel which has photographed Keira Knightley wearing nothing but a top hat over her breasts and a shirt draped across her lap. Stunningly beautiful as she is, we can't help but wonder, as we do with all her appearances, how much photoshopping the girl received this time around. After all, the marketers behind her not so recent appearance on a King Aurthur movie poster didn't think she had enough curves up top and manufactured some for her.
We're not saying anything's manufactured in this poster nor are we going to taunt the agency which created the ad. We're just going to sit back and drink in the beauty that is Keira Kightley and appreciate her - and Chanel - for sharing it with us.
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