The Hardee's Flat Buns commercial has caused an uproar in Tennessee with Tennessee Education Association President Dr. Earl Wiman (who you've got to hear) saying, "It is unbelievably demeaning." The ad shows a female teacher dancing seductively in front of a class that raps about the positivity of flat buns which the teacher, of course, does not possess. The commercial is part of a campaign launched earlier this summer which included the Flat Buns website.
Wiman wants concerned citizens to complain to Hardee's, saying, "I am asking that all of our members and the public who care about children and their education to contact their local Hardee's to voice their concerns."
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Steve Portigal from Portigal Consulting notes this ad for UK health club Cannons with the headline, "Because a new girl has started at work and she's hot," wouldn't play so well in America or Canada because we're a bit more politically correct than our forefather nation. While the ad is harmless enough, we agree. No doubt, an army of cause groups would be all over this one as soon as it hit the streets.
A little bit Happiness Factory and a little bit OutPost Gerbil Cannon, this new commercial for Guinness created by BBDO in Ireland and edited by Cut + Run celebrates what's inside its beer by shooting futuristic-looking Speed Racer-like guys out of what looks like musical instruments onto a set of drums. The result is an orchestral masterpiece of sorts
And, yes, we get it. The guys are beer. Though we are a bit irked by that first shot which is supposed to be the reflection of beer in one of the guy's helmets but, rather, looks a bit like a melting brain. But that's just us. Similar as it might, in theory, be to the aforementioned spots, it does get points for a certain originality we find hard to describe.
The four day shoot used real stunt men shot out of real air cannons onto real, eight-foot drums specially made for the shoot. Now that's a shoot we wouldn't mind attending.
For pure amusement it seems, Heineken has released DraughtKeg, a site on which you can upload your face to a futuristic robot who will then appear on the dance floor grooving to pseudo-futuristic dance music. It's all very retro...in a futuristic sort of way. And it's to promote their new, uber-cool keg that's, apparently, really, really better than your standard keg.
Let's imagine ourselves sitting in on the Publicis Modem Berlin Cameron (sorry, our PR rep mis-spoke. The campaign was created by Berlin Cameron. Modem handled online work and subcontracted out the creation of this website to Brothers by Choice) concepting session for this piece of work.
AE: "So you all saw the thing. It is pretty advanced for just a keg of beer, right?
AD: "Futuristic, even."
COPY: "The thing looks like some sort of mini-robot."
AD: "I got it! Robots. Beer. The future. A party. A robot dance party!"
AE: "Um, what about Svedka's robots?"
COPY: "Who gives a shit. Ours will be way better because...ooo...I got it...we'll let people upload their heads to the robots! All that social media shit, you know."
AE: "Uh, Trailer Crashers did that."
AD: "Dude. It's ALL been done before. It's not like you expected an original idea, right?"
AE: "Uh, I guess. Hey, just make it look cool OK? Like the music and shit. And make sure you show the fucking product!"
COPY: "Dude, we aren't idiots."
AE: "OK. I know. You rock. I need it next Thursday."
AE/AD/Copy: Three way fist-bump
Pity the poor conference attendee. At every turn, they are bombarded with useless handouts that, two feet later, end up in the trash barrel. Or, worse, they find themselves on every email list known to man after leaving the conference. Rather than foist this crap on attendees in a manner that's annoying and far too easy to ignore, why not provide them something useful they won't want to toss as soon as they come into contact with it?
At a recent media conference held in Tel Aviv, Israeli retail fashion chain H&O had the right idea when it created seat back mounted "chair vests" complete with pockets filled with bottled water, a snack bar and the reatailer's catalog, all easily stowed in front of a captive audience without a trash barrel in sight. Come on conference sponsors, take a hint from H&O and give your prospective customers something they can actually use.
Damn you, AdFreak. We were all ready to get busy with work this morning and you go and point us to a new Renault commercial which, as well as having hotties in bikinis riding bikes, contains the theme song from the movie Never Ending Story, a movie we love and whose contagious music we can never get out of our head once we hear it. We might as well just throw in the keyboard, call it a day, go rent the movie and watch it over and over again for the rest of the day. Yes, we know, the movie and the song are totally bubble gum kid stuff but we loved them then and we love them now.
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A long time a go in a place far, far away, a certain class of people were once not so affectionately known as retards. Now, far more affectionately, if a bit sterile-sounding, they're known as mentally-impaired/challenged/disabled. As well, there once was a class of people known as cripples. These very same people are now known as the handicapped.
In the 19th century, doctors coined the terms midget and dwarf to describe people whose height was other than normal or proportional. These height-challenged (oops, did we just make up a new one?) are now known as little people. Doctors even threw around the terms moron, imbecile and idiot to describe people of varying (and low) IQ levels. Now, not so much.
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There are so many confusing messages emanating from the cover of this Lands' End catalog, we simply don't know where to start. First, there' the very curvaceous back end of women juxtaposed just beneath the title of the catalog, Lands' End, as if illustrative of some sort of early American west conquest for land but with a tone far removed from that depicted in the Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman movie Far and Away.
Then, there's the young boy tugging on the women's spandex-like skirt with a cute, semi-mischievous look on his face. Is the woman his mother? Is the boy just some random kid grabbing at some random woman's skin tight, bathing suit-like skirt? Is he just doing what all men eventually do, literally or figuratively, when they grow up? Or is this some art director's realized wet dream?
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Creativity is subjective at best but we think we'll have overwhelming support when we say the newly released London 2012 Olympic logo sucks. On the other hand, creativity is subjective at best but also we think we'll have overwhelming support when we say the newly released 2012 Olympic logo is brilliantly infused with modernity of motion and the mastery of motivation. You choose. We can't.
Viewing the logo, designed by Wolff Ollins, initially caused an immediate WTF? Letting the logo sink in while viewing the illustrative brand video behind the logo causes an entirely different reaction. The support for the brand direction could have easily gone down the ill but well traveled road of Olympic fist pumping, rather it quite eloquently examines what motivates humans to achieve. Interestingly, it wasn't for quite some time, we realized the logo's imagery visually represents the numeric date 2012.
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OK, we get that this VW Beetle commercial is supposed to somehow transcend the fact the thing's a car and is something far more...well...different but tagging a commercial about a car with "Some people don't really want a car" while showing the car leads us to say, "Well, yea. I don't really want that car. I'll just take that really cool, over sized VW Beetle balloon the guy's carrying around over his head." All of this beautifully crafted confusion comes courtesy of DDB Barcelona.
Two print ads accompany the spot, one of which illustrates very simply how the VW Beetle can brighten up your day. The other conveys the thrilling rush a vehicle can cause.
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