The camera zooms in. It zooms out. It pans across. It love's it's subject. It adoringly tries to make...oh screw it...it's just another winding road car commercial. That's probably what visual effects company A52 thought when LA agency Team One asked them to "winterize" a previously shot commercial for the 2006 Lexus IS. Explaining the strategy, Team One Executive Producer Jack Epsteen said, "We have a long history of relying on A52 for complex visual feats and in this case, we felt that tapping into the company's artistic expertise to add snow effects to this spot would be an interesting way to back-up the 'Why live in one dimension' tagline.'" See the work here and wallow in a full regalia of HD resolution, digital-matte, CGI, camera tracking data, geek-speak.
While digital manipulation is nothing new, we'd say A52 did an excellent job making winter look like winter. We wonder how much better it might have looked if the original work was a bit more inventive than "another winding road car commercial." Although, with almost every car commercial following this exact approach, there's got to be some very convincing research out there indicating this is the approach to take. Anyone care to share?
Finishing out the year Goodby Silverstein & Partners in San Francisco and Francois Vogel of Paranoid have shared their final spot from the HP Digital Photography campaign - the one where frames of the commercial become photographs which are then handed to others. Goodby is calling this one "Cafe Society" but from the looks of it, we think they should have called it "Nightclub Society." Then again, we haven't seen the inside of a supposedly hip "cafe" since, well, ever so we have no idea what we're talking about. We still like the spot though.
Continuing the reveal of its 2005 Book of Tens, Ad Age has published its list of the Ten Most Watched Videos on AdAge.com. They include such wonders as the GoDaddy Super Bowl spot, the McDonald's Japan McHottie spot, the Pepsi Sumo Chickens, Anheuser-Busch's military Super Bowl tear jerker, the Honda Grr spot and more. Wallow in the glory that is advertising.
A week ago we told you Virgin Mobile, treading where no other marketer dared, on December 20 would be launching a spot exclusively in the United Kingdom featuring alleged coke-snorting supermodel Kate Moss. Well, since the dawn of the Internet and sites like Japander, there is, of course, no such thing as a country-exclusive ad campaign so here we have Kate Mosss chatting on the phone with her hyped up agent in a Virgin Mobile shop.
Ad Age has collected its list of Ten 2005 Ads America Won't See, half of which you've all seen here over the course of the year. They range from Napster's sexy tease over :30 music previews, the the Unilever Big Horn spot, to a reverse streaker spot from Scotland's Irn Bru, to Fanta's spitters other oddities of advertising. Check them out of this last week before the holidays.
Here's something you don't see in a car commercial every day. BBDO New York has created a spot, for the 2006 Mitsubishi endeavor, in which the entire background is made up of Japanese Origami. It's a bit more interesting than your typical winding mountain road spot.
There's not much Google does that doesn't garner praise which has lent itself to consumer love and consumer generated media. Micropersuasion reports someone likes Google Maps so much, they went and created a commercial for it on their own.
Refreshingly casting aside the holier than thou attitude most marketers spew forth when dealing with less than family-friendly topics, Virgin Mobile, after every other marketer dumped her, has decided to hire Kate Moss, place her in a TV spot and poke fun at celebrity's public images. Unfortunately for those of you hoping to have a cocaine snorting contest when the ad airs December 20, you're out of luck unless you live in the United Kingdom, the only place the ad is planned to air. Here's the spot.
Bud Light, perhaps in a nod to what we can expect from them during the Super Bow, has launched Ted Ferguson: Under the Helmet, a website featuring a slice of life look at Ted Ferguson, Bud Light daredevil, an every-man's stunt man. You never know where these things are going to go but, well, this doesn't seem that interesting. That said, it is pretty comical watching the guy treat listening to his girlfriend as an excruciatingly difficult stunt to accomplish. Perhaps this is one of those campaigns that needs to be "given legs" upon which to "blossom."
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Stanton Optical
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