When politics and pop culture meet, it's always a little fun to watch the synergy. Adverlab points us to this spot for Louis Vuitton, which slid from the Lolita-esque Scarlett Johanssen series to a celebrity survey that includes Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet Union's first (and last) president.
The New York Times observes that Gorbachev "appears the last comfortable [...] holding on to a door handle, as if the bag contained polonium 210."
Upon examining Gorbachev's expression, and then the bag, we've concluded there's definitely not a bowling ball in it. (Although it may well be perestroika.)
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has just burrowed into L'Oreal's ass for the use of false eyelashes in an ad for its Telescopic Mascara, a product that promises to make your lashes "up to 60 percent longer."
The ad features Penelope Cruz, who sported the illicit hairs. According to the ASA, the ad should have made it clear that the actress was wearing falsies. L'Oreal claims this is "common industry practice" - just as, we imagine, all of these conventions are.
Since when are we playing Nazi to the (unrealistic?) appearance of stars in ads? If we're going to unleash the dogs, maybe we should first address the copy writers that come up with lines like, "Imagine, lashes that could reach for the stars."
On a mission to benignly molest any and all Sci-Fi classics we may have placed on the altars of our souls, DirecTV tears into the scene in Aliens where Ripley fights the alien queen.
In this appropriation she's really peeved because the queen won't leave her in peace to watch her DirecTV.
Nice touch with Sigourney Weaver who, according to Adfreak, joins William Shatner, Pamela Anderson and Charlie Sheen in the annals of DirecTV's illustrious ad history.
Post Kill Bill, Daryl Hannah doesn't seem to be doing much, so who wants to bet a cookie that the next ad is a Bladerunner nab?
Need more cynicism in your life? Try some Bill Maher. This season the HBO Store gets big pharma on our asses with a storefront of bottles, creams and tonics of all sizes - branded with celebrity.
Seeking snickers? Swoop some up, right next to the P. Diddy bottles.
What uncannily logical placement. Whenever we need a snicker, it generally helps to find Diddy on TV. He's always doing zany things, like running New York, screaming at divas or standing on top of floats. His antics add froth to our otherwise dull celebrity-consuming lives.
What do you do when you want to call attention to Amnesty International's Make Some Noise human rights campaign? You get a bunch of celebrities doing strange things to make noise, of course. After all, that's what they're great it, right?
There's something a tiny bit depressing about seeing Cuba Gooding Jr. in a TV commercial. After all, the guy went from Oscar winner to...underwear spokesman? That's gotta hurt. However, these new Martin Agency-created, Lost Planet-edited Hanes commercials featuring Gooding Jr. and Michael Jordan are quite good. Gooding, perhaps channeling a bit of his Jerry McGuire-esque charm, gets a bit Oscar spastic-like when he meets Jordan who's wearing a Hanes t-shirt.
In a second spot, he thanks Jordan for gifting him a pair Hanes Comfort Soft Waistband boxers. It doesn't go so well. But Gooding makes it work so well we like watching him as much as we like watching Jennifer Love Hewitt in her Hanes commercials. OK, that didn't come out so well.
Polaroid's Malibu promotion den is a hot spot for celebrities great and small, famous and, uh, infamous.
Convicted felon Chris Paciello, a former Mafia associate that went down snitch way to avoid life in prison, was recently captured in a promo shot with Entourage's Kevin Connolly after a big party at the beach house.
Some time ago Paciello pleaded guilty and later turned in affiliated buddies after a $300,000 bank heist and a break-in on Staten Island that ended in bloody murder.
Life for him seems pretty sweet now. The distinctive Polaroid first appeared on TMZ, where the mobster was only addressed as Kevin Connolly's "buff buddy."
Well, that party promo clearly banked more attention than Polaroid probably thought - or hoped - it would.
If we ever thought Old Spice was past its prime, we were horribly wrong. We should have guessed they had long-term comic genius when they enlisted Bruce Campbell to help them win youngbloods with winning condescension.
The grand old deodorant brand hits us again with a spot called Armpit for its Collector's Edition. Compiled by Wieden+Kennedy, it begins and ends with the maniacal laughter of the company's "marketing president," Alex Keith.
We don't want to blow the spot for you but this print ad sums up the humor and vibe.
Armpit marketing is actually a clever idea. And good inclusion of yellow flare and exclamation points! They give the whole concept just the right amount of trying-hard! pomposity.
We love Old Spice. If we were 100 percent male back here, we'd all be Axe wearers, but boy do we love Old Spice.
The Simpsons' Mr. Burns has hacked into the Flight Log of David Neeleman of JetBlue to show him what it really takes to run a successful business.
"Your rates make a mockery of the corporate greed our great confederacy was built upon," Burns snarls. Oh how we LOLed.
It's a rare brand that can tap into pop culture and incorporate iconic personalities without making asses of themselves. In this case, JetBlue makes good. We look forward to the next brittle wrist-slapping.
Usually, he's just slowly walking around his Battlestar mumbling prophetic statements about the importance of mankind in that gruff voice he perfected so well back on Miami Vice but now Edward James Olmos is appearing, again, in two new commercial for Farmer's Insurance. In the first, Olmos is thrown, hands tied, from a plane without a parachute but is "rescued" by a pair of parachutists who, oh, just happen to be free falling through the air to save him by untying his hands and affixing a parachute to him. Of course, on the ground it's revealed it's all just a scene from some movie.
A second spot, also part of a movie set, has Olmos in the future being chased by a flying motorcycle while being shot. Olmos and everything is undamaged. The message in the two spots is things in real life are not indestructible which is why one needs insurance, namely Farmer's
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