Today, Dasani launches a new $20 million campaign designed to set the bottled water maker apart from the crowd. The campaign is decidedly more adventurous than your usual water bottle marketing. As described in the New York Times today:
...in one Dasani commercial, a man and woman frolic in an elevator as a security camera captures the action, but they turn out to be husband and wife. In another spot, a woman spends a night out on the town with an extremely attractive man, then heads home where she gets undressed and jumps into bed � with her teddy bear.
Bummer, I was hoping for another round of bikini babes fighting in a pool of...oh...bottled water.
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BX Media Group has contracted with the New York Port Authority to manage the content on the Authority' PATHVision transit information system. PATHVision delivers ads and informational spots to travelers and commuters on 227 screens
throughout 13 PATH stations using video formats rather than typical transit posters. Ads can be created using traditional video or Flash and Acrobat type formats.
Rather than having a fixed transit poster up all day long, advertisers can time their messages to particular segments of the day based on the nature of the message (a dinner idea) or the type of person they want to reach (an early morning commuter versus a weekend leisure traveler).
"Due to the large number of commuters traveling into New York City from New Jersey on a daily basis and the revitalization of the World Financial Center area in New York and Penn Station/Newark in New Jersey, PATHVision offers advertisers a truly unique and creative avenue to place their messages in front of a captive audience," said Chief Strategy Officer, Melvin Wilson. "We will make possible the full use of the media formats available on PATHVision. The advanced technology creates an opportunity for advertisers to grab the attention of travelers that can now look at entertaining moving media to pass the time and make their commutes more enjoyable."
BX Media Group's chief strategy officer, Melvin Wilson, was interview a couple of weeks ago and covered here.
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In his weekly article, Scott notes this year's Cannes winners being independents versus large conglomerates (a good thing) and how awards shows can stifle effective marketing (a bad thing).
It can be argued that the most effective client solutions often don't include cutting-edge TV ads, and that awards shows such as Cannes harm the industry more than consolidation by perpetuating its dependence on the 30-second spot. There are, too, greater challenges to the relevance of agencies.
Yet, he contends, rightly so, their necessity.
Ads are the only tangible product agencies produce, and they want that product to be of the highest quality. When it comes to peer-group benchmarking, employee morale, client confidence and new-business opportunities, awards aren't as meaningless as critics of them would have you believe.
And anyway, who doesn't like the pomp and ego boost that comes from an awards show?
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Oh, don't get all excited. That babe in this still from a new commercial for Toyota isn't what she seems. She looks pretty good though up until the end. So there's that and a kid who builds a wooden Hummer, a bitchy diva, Danny Devito schilling for DerecTV, a bear who wants his Smirnoff, a Land Rover that gets the right of way, and a toked out dude in the basement. See them all here.
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