 To promote its new Range Rover Sport, Land Rover has launched a website called, "The New Rush," which launches you into a night time cityscape complete with nightclub and mysterious people on the sidewalk. All of this, of course, is interspersed with touch points that explain the vehicle's features. While we think this an engaging and information filled experience, one Adrants reader thinks there's a drug overtone to it writing, "...it appears RUSH is some sort of red light district type nightclub with all sorts of party-goers hanging out front and a blinking red R florescent sign. Also, when you roll your mouse over one of the couples, a conversation bubble pops up that says, "What lines." Now being a bona fide drug researcher, I can assure you that this can have double and triple meanings especially since this creative relies more on heroin based sensibilities then cocaine ones." We've retired from the drug scene so we'll have to leave it to those in the filed to offer further comment.
The campaign is also supported by outdoor pointing to the website.
Wednesday, it was Mitsubishi's turn. Today it's Batman's turn. The "caped crusader" has taken over the Yahoo homepage with a bunch of flying bats and a fairly friendly half screen, window shade ad unit promoting the upcoming movie. And no, it doesn't work with Firefox.
 For Your IE's Only So, today, Mitsubishi launched their cool-ish Yahoo page take over to promote the new 2006 Eclipse. By using the a,s,d,w keys, visitors can drive the car around the Yahoo page before heading to the car's microsite. It's engaging enough as page takeovers go but we have one concern. It's hard to believe that most marketers, especially a supposedly savvy marketer like Mitsubishi, still think Internet Explorer is the only browser worth designing for. You see, we use Firefox here because, well, it's just, like, way better than Explorer. We also spend our entire day writing about advertising. You'd think Mitsubishi would want those who write about advertising to easily and without need to fire up another browser, view their page takeover creative. Apparently the 10 to 20 percent of us that use Firefox don't matter. Actually, maybe that's a good thing. Those that use Firefox also use it because most of this fancy stuff doesn't work with Firefox and we like that little "feature" just fine.
 Johnny's Drunken Stupor Adrants reader and Animal Publisher Bucky Turco comments on the Johnnie Walker "Keep Walking" outdoor campaign which has featured imagery that conveys forward motion or progress. Recently, Turco noticed an execution of the campaign that used dominoes as imagery and questioned the choice of that visual as it relates to spririts advertising, commenting to Adrants, "The other day I came across this Icon ad that featured swirling lines of falling dominoes. The image of falling dominoes seems a dubious illustration to use for progress, especially for a spirits brand. Does it mean that if you don't drink enough JW your life will begin to "fall like dominoes." Could it mean 'Keep Walkin' fast this way so your drinking troubles don't catch up with you? Or is simply 'Keep Walking,' even if its not in a straight line?"
Spirits advertising has to walk a fine line between imbuing a sense of adventure and excitement and the plain truth alcohol can make you drunk and stupid. Perhaps this illusory image of dominoes gets a bit too close to crossing that line.
After leaving Saatchi, famously, as the Saatchi 17, Ad Age reports four of the 17, all of whom are currently employed at Interpublic, won, in an awkward and final snub to their former employer, Effies for work done while at Saatchi. If that wasn't enough drama for the evening, Leo Burnett Chief Creative Officer Cheryl Berman, during her opening speech, wondered why creative giants Lee Clow, Dan Wieden and Jeff Goodby were not in attendance citing the second class value placed on the Effies, which measure performance over beauty, by many in the industry. Perhaps if the Effies were held at a location a bit more exotic than the New York Marriott Marquis, us shallow ad folk might be a bit more willing to whip out our bling and attend. Then again, we're all about the flash and the glamor, right? Beauty over brains. Art over commerce. Kick ass creative over steroidal sales increases. What fun are sales increases when you can play Hollywood wannabe in Cannes?
Oh, lest we forget what's important here, TBWA/Chiat/Day's iPod Silhouette campaign took top Effie honors.
GM (via Modernista! one assumes) is using street art to promote its new contradiction in terms, the Hummer H3. We suppose line extensions are the natural path for any product to take but a small Hummer just doesn't thrill the same way a big Hummer does. This street art was spotted by flicker user Runs With Scissors. The work was done by long time graffiti writers TATS CRU, Inc.
We'd be happy to link you to the H3 microsite but it's buried so deep under layers of fancy, slow loading Flash, accessible only from the Hummer.com front door, we'll spare you the agony. Take our word for it. It's there but it doesn't have near the amount of informative information as one might find in this Car and Driver pre-production review.
 Have Pity On My Ass Putting things in perspective and dramatically altering the meaning of the latest Carl's Jr. commercial featuring Paris Hilton, comes this altered voice over version of the spot with Richard Dreyfus reading Apple's "Here's to the Crazy Ones." While listening, the spot takes on an entirely different meaning. In some cases, it pegs Paris is a true idiot. In others, it creates a sense of pity for someone who has clearly lost their way. Originally, the intent of the Apple message was meant to be complimentary to those who think different and change the world in a positive manner. Yet, when voiced to Paris frolicking with a Bently and a Burger, it leaves one overcome with sadness and disgust with respect to the state of our culture.
While we had to fire up dusty old Internet Explorer for it to actually work, IBM, as part of its Rolland Garros sponsorship, is running in interesting Flash expand-o-banner which opens to reveal a customizable tennis player which you can pit against other online players. The scores of the actual tournament are displayed at the lower left of the banner. It was engaging enough to catch out attention which is a rarity. View here. You may have to reload a few times.
BAGnews Notes takes issue with a recent print ad for ExxonMobil touts the company's emission reducing efforts. Analyzing the ad, BAGnews Notes writes, "ExxonMobil is primarily involved in the production of gasoline, which is primarily responsible for air pollution and ozone depletion caused by auto emissions. The ad, however, refers to the capture of steam. If you read the ad copy, aren't they doing a bait-and-switch in which steam capture is (intentionally) confused with emission reduction? Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems the company is using one process to cloud the other."
Yesterday, Diageo announced the launch of a new ad campaign for Smirnoff ICE and Smirnoff Twisted V, starring a guy named Uri and his friend Gorb, both of whom have horrible imitation Russian accents. The snore-inducing press release claims the two "use their street smarts and unique cultural perspective to cut through the clutter encountered in daily life." Oddly, the campaign itself is not all that snore-inducing. See the commercials after the jump.
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