Occasionally we see work from agencies that falls short and disappoints. Earlier this week, we took a look at the work gluelondon did for the Royal Navy. It was a site that let visitors send naval-themed personalized messages to their friends which would be delivered via email or mobile. Well, let's just say the site was a bit kludgey and took forever to load even loading several times in the middle of its presentations. Usually this work just lives on continuing to cause disappointment without a care from either the client or the agency. Not this time.
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It's a back. It's a knee. It's a head. It's a butt. It's a distended stomach. It's a gigantic breasts. It's a...wait...should we have to work that hard to figure out what a visual is in an ad? Of course not but in this case it really doesn't matter because this is an ad for a skin care product. And back, knees, heads, butt's, stomach and gigantic breasts all have skin. In this ad for Vaseline Intensive Care Cocoa Butter, the marketer keeps us guessing which, when you think about it, is one great way to get people to pay attention to your ad.
We like gluelondon but we're not that impressed for their recent work done for Britain's Royal Navy recruitment efforts. Basically, it's a website that lets you send personalized video messages to your friends. Well, not all that personalized. From several videos of the Royal Navy doing their thing, one is chosen, the sender writes a message, chooses a name from a name list and then emails the thing to a friend or to the friends mobile.
Sadly, the site takes eons to load. It's one thing for a site to go through a slow pre-load which then results in a stellar experience but this site goes through a slew of very slow pre-loads, some of which stutteringly occur in the middle of the presentation which, itself, is far from stellar.
Targeted to 15-24 year olds, famous for their lack of attention span, we question how many will make it far enough through this site to actually click the Send button.
When we heard there was yet another Axe viral...uh...branded entertainment thing floating about, we were fully prepared to hate it, figuring it'd be more of the same, lame tickle/dress/undress/ogle the hottie trivialized trash. But after viewing Let the Game Continue, a multi-part full-blown movie that follows the travails of a guy whose car has gone up in flames and the escapades he experiences with various women on his way home, we were truly stunned by its entertaining goodness. We watched the whole thing...every bit of it...all the way to the end. That in and of itself earns this effort very high marks from us.
Since this is a commercial, Axe does make several appearances in the movie but they are fully part of the story line and do not detract from but actually add to the the subtle humor that carries through the film's plot. Damn, I just called it a film. Hate that. Anyone for Filmercial?
Thank you, 7 Eleven! Finally, we can feature an ad campaign that objectifies men. Rather than scantily clad women, we have scantily clad men vamping for 7 Eleven in Australia to promote the chain's frozen Slurpee. With gleeful abandon, the men in the ads are given the full beefcake treatment and portrayed as poolboy, pole dancer and maid. Contrary to what one might assume, this reverse double standard-ish campaign was not created by a bunch of giggling female creatives sitting around the conference room table but by five guys at Leo Burnett Melbourne...who probably also giggled madly while sitting around the conference room table. This ought to keep us editorially balance for at least another year, don'tcha think?
When we heard Philips was a new logo for its environmentally friendly -focused product line called The Philips Green Tick, we thought "Eew." "Disgusting." "Gross." Then we looked at the logo, saw that it looked nothing like a tick and said, "Huh?" The thing looks more like an ear of corn with a circle around it than the disgusting creature that love to borough itself into your skin.
Certainly, the word tick has many meanings but the sound a clock makes or a check mark or an informal unit of measure were not what immediately came to mind. Perhaps, unlike in Northeast America, they don't have the nasty blood sucking creatures in the U.K where this campaign originated. Perhaps, as is usually the case, we're talking out of our ass and making a big deal out of nothing. You choose.
Just where do we start with this one? First, some lessons in PR 101. Don't send a press release to a media outlet touting you've offered exclusivity and then, in the same press release, mention you've posted the commercial in question on YouTube. Last we checked, there are several billion other people who have access to YouTube on an given day.
Second, don't call something viral and, in the same press release, mention the commercial won't launch officially until the next day. And third, don't create a commercial that features insects getting pelted by food substances while filming it all in slow motion. Insect have cause groups to, you know. Fourth and finally, for God's sake, don't call a commercial a "film" unless you have your egotistical head stuck so far up your Hollywood wannabee ass, you can't tell the difference.
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Now here's an art director's wet dream. Giving sunglasses far more cred than they deserve, Chuck McBride's new agency, Cutwater, has turned the average pair of Ray Bans into some sort of cultural icon. Oh wait, they already earned that status so we guess it's all good. Produced by HSI Productions and directed by Michael Haussman, the spot ends with the super, "Never Hide," which, for a sunglasses commercial, is pretty twisted but exudes so much positivity.
Any commercial that tells us to "make up your fuckin' mind fuckin' make up your mind" is good in our book. This might not be saying much but we liked this commercial more and more with each viewing. Fans of frequency in the media department will love that notion. Give it a watch. It's not your average sunglass commercial. Maybe Chuck's stabbing video has, indeed, led to good things.
Naming the best Super Bowl commercial is, at best, uselessly subjective and wholly irrelevant but we're going to do it anyway. And, in a shocker, we're going to agree with Advertising Age's bob Garfield and dub the Emerald Nuts Robert Goulet commercial our favorite. It's just twisted and quirky enough for us to appreciate and, not to be dismissed (although it usually is with Super Bowl ads), did a pretty good job of sliding some product benefit into the ad. So, Bob, what do you think? More importantly, what does everyone else think? Are we nuts? Oops. Sorry. Anyway, both of us (Angela and Steve) thought it was the best so we're going to honor it the Adrants Favorite for this year. The ad was developed by Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco and was directed by the kooky and famed Perlorian Brothers.
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As Sunday turns into Monday and time allows for the additional digestion and review of Super Bowl commercials, Bud Light's slapping ad has us laughing out loud this morning. When we viewed it during the game along with the insanity of the rest of the event, we didn't have time to enjoy the very hilarious wink/nod embedded in that ad. You all, of course, remember the Agency.com YouTube video fiasco in which Tom Ajello's fist bump became the signature of something...um...less than positive about the ad business. Well, wasn't it hilarious to see that very same notion become the basis of the Bud Light Slapping ad in which a guy, in response to an offered fist bump, says, "Yo, Steve, fist bump is out man!"
After that, the commercial turns into a humorous slap-fest but the funniest part of the ad is the end when the old dude (ad exec? hmm) offers up a fist bump and says to the young dude, "Nice job in there, Larson. You saved the account" to which the young dude responds by slapping the old dude. There's no way this commercial's creative concepting occurred without mention of Agency.com and its famouos fist bump. Nice work, guys.
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