We like to make cracks about English humor, but to be truthful we love it. There's stuff that passes in the UK that just never could here, especially when it comes to advertising.
This Aldi ad is one example. Its whimsical and decidedly naughty approach to competitive pricing falls together with an equally epic tongue-in-cheek tagline: "Aldi. Like brands. Only cheaper."
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Here's an idea with interesting potential. For Diesel, European comms firm Fullsix had a baby burp of an epiphany:
Facebook's Like capability has become an online content standard. If Liking pages, content and brands online is so successful for spreading brand equity around, the Like ought to be replicated in the real world.
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That's the dream, anyway. ONE.org has launched a free app that enables you to mobilise in an instant to fight disease and extreme poverty, wherever you are and whenever you feel like it.
The technology isn't anything you haven't seen before, but it demonstrates the power we hold in our hands and take for granted.
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Agency interns, take heed! Observing that you are hard-working, underpaid and apparently extremely hungry, Little Debbie's holding its second annual Intern Hero contest.
The prize: piles and piles of breakfast yummies. The demand: create a sign asking Little Debbie to send you breakfast -- the more creative, the better. Snap a photo of yourself with the sign inside or outside your office.
The conditions: you must be an employed intern, over 18 and a US resident.
Entries wrap July 18, 2011, so whip out your Sharpie quick if you want to win you some Blueberry Creme Rolls! Here's more on how to enter.
Good consistent social work (not in the Precious sense, though) by Luckie & Co.
This country's drowning in cowboys and glamour goths. And to show today's fashion-strapped men that it knows what the real priorities are, Old Navy's enlisted Camp + King, which in turn produced two fashion spots for two fake brands: Supar Tool and Corporado Menswear.
The ads tear a new asshole out of two douchey mainstream aesthetics: the Eurotrash vampire metrosexual and the cowboy complex.
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Remember Greenpeace's zealous campaign to get KitKat parent Nestle to stop killing orangutans? New year, new take on the mission.
This time, the target of Greenpeace's gleefully effective marketing is Mattel, whose low-cost packaging options contribute to deforestation in Indonesia. The weapon of choice? Barbie's off-again, on-again beau Ken, who, well, isn't into dating "serial killers" (no, not even the kind with exploding conical bras).
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Beattie McGuinness Bungay's fables campaign for ING Direct UK are inviting at first glance, bearing a vague resemblance to The Wind in the Willows, but are most readily compared to Aesop's Fables -- except with "morals" only loosely tied to unmotivated plotlines.
The ads try compensating for this with an occasional stab at tongue-in-cheek humour, but that fails to compel. (Maybe it's the British/American divide?)
Otherwise, the work is beautiful -- typical Psyop. There's a lesson for you: without actual substance to the idea, even the best production firm can't save you.
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Here's the unholy union that you knew was coming. The AARP appeals to the self-deprecating golden-agers of 'morrow in a kitsch-ass ad called the "Get-Over-It-a-Thon," starring Betty White, Betty White and wicked senior poster girl Betty White!
The premise is simple: You're not too young to register for AARP, and it's only $16, so bite the bullet.
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This isn't creepy at all. To plug its aggressively pink N8 smartphone, Nokia's produced "Freedom," a music video that Influencia describes as "a mix of Lady Gaga, Rihanna and The Exorcist." Its frontliner is none other than Mattel's Barbie, circa 1950s or around the time the pointy bra was born.
Barbie appears in all her plasticine antiquated glory, outfitted in a pink the same shade as the N8, sometimes with garishly coloured hair, other times with Sharpie tattoos, at least twice with Nokia signs covering her mammaries, and a few times -- disturbingly enough -- lounged on top of an N8 amid a circle of her own disembodied limbs.
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Nike's ads are epic so often it's almost banal. But this latest, "Chosen," is an anthem like no other. Filmed over two years across seven locations (Hawaii, Florida, New York, Los Angeles, Whistler, Aspen and Bali), it whets your appetite for adventure with bruising sports too often relegated to boyish recreation: skating, surfing, BMXing, snowboarding.
Famous faces include skater Paul Rodriguez, snowboarder Danny Kass, and surfers Julian Wilson and Laura Enever. But as good as their cameos in pro form is the brand finale: the swoosh, and Nike's "Just Do It" slogan -- symbols tattooed into our cultural roots -- brought to the fore in flames. Perhaps the advertising you would expect from Volcom clothing , but this is a new step for a company such as Nike.
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