People In Need of an Intervention Convinced Bahamas Will Cure All

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Hmm. These four news commercials for the Bahamas are both dumb and funny at the same time. To urge vacation-hesitant weirdos to consider the Bahamas as a destination, the spots center around a "Bahamavention" during which very weird stuf happens and people are converted into Bahamas vacationers. Is it just us or is that Bahamas logo strikingly similar to various versions of the Microsoft Windows logo?

by Steve Hall    Dec-13-06    
Topic: Commercials, Good, Strange



Sara Lee Skin Care Campaign Releases Bravia-Style

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Sanex, the Sara Lee body care brand (wait, don't they make frozen cakes?) is working with PR agency immediate future to release a European commercial Sony Bravia-style. The agency has set up a site that will follow the creation of the ad which involves "over 100 bodies imitating skin cells." We've been promised updates as the campaign develops and we'll share them with you, good or bad because, as you know, criticizing something can be as much fun as praising it.

UPDATE: Oops. Someone forgot to tells someone something. The ad's already out. So much for the sneak peeks. It aired in Denmark in November. We'll still share any goodies regarding the production of the ad if they are of any interest.

by Steve Hall    Dec-13-06    
Topic: Brands, Commercials, Online



NewsFlash! Sex Doesn't Sell...At Least in America

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Publisher Emap has shuttered the U.S. edition of its lad book title FHM. Apparently, the title isn't growing as much as the company would like. The U.K. edition of the magazine and the FHM's U.S. website will continue operation. Who new there cold be such a thing as too many scantily clad women for the market to bear?

by Steve Hall    Dec-13-06    
Topic: Magazine



Agency Christmas Cards Get Even More Elaborate

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Back in the day, a Christmas card was just that, a card sent to clients thanking them for their business. Of course, that expanded to vendors, friends, family and the with the advent of the Internet, the entire world. What was once a simple secretarial...uh...administrative function has now become the hottest job on December's traffic list. Check out this entry from UK agency Proximity which dragged out the entire agency to appear in the thing. I guess one has to wonder what happens to general agency productivity on client work during Christmas card production week. Perhaps a footnote attached to the card acknowledging the amount of resources transferred from actual client work to Christmas card production is in order. Oh screw that. We're waiting for An Agency.com Christmas: The Movie.

Oh, and speaking of the Christmas card movie, here's one from Barkley. Something about a spaceman. We lost interest after a few minutes.

Oh, but any card that simply has the chipmunks singing and agency heads bobbling is a winner in our book. Sorry, we're easy to please. This one's from Tinsley Advertising. (Just who is that girl in the yellow bikini?) OK, OK, that sound loop is making our head explode!

by Steve Hall    Dec-13-06    
Topic: Agencies



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Bloody Heads Urge Seatbelt Usage

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Shock value is the new Second Life. Oh wait, we used up our lame Second Life references already. Anyway, we had Volkswagen crashing their cars to prove their safety. We had cars crash to urge people not to drink and drive. And then there's bloody hell breaking lose inside a car to prove to people wearing a seatbelt is far better than killing your friends with your head. Watch it and wear your seatbelt. It delivers a strong message but you won't see it on TV here in the States. We're way to squeamish about being that honest. We like our sugar coated lives and all the pretense that goes along with that fairy tale life.

by Steve Hall    Dec-13-06    
Topic: Best, Commercials



Roehm Reamed, Homes Eaten, Mel Gibson Gets A Menorah

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- Lost Planet thinks they've made a trailer for their Xbox 360 game that'll shatter cultural norms, change lives and trigger brain aneurisms on-sight. It's a fair trailer but it won't look that great six months from now when some other game has kicked its ass, as these things tend to go.

- Fledgling supermarket Bloom cozy up with agency BooneOakley to make a real-live gingerbread house in South Carolina (of all fucking places)! And yes, we will help them eat it.

- News from our incognito buddy FishNChimps: Coke steals from actual creative people. That always leaves a bad taste in one's mouth. And considering they've been riding the holiday polar bear thing and/or copying Pepsi's campaigns for the last two hundred years to the nth degree, that really came as no major shocker. To witness the fuckage of other creative companies, hit Urban Counterfeiters.

- Join NPR's first-ever holiday craft contest before it is gone. Forever. Perhaps you can beat the cleverly rendered Mel Gibson menorah. Yeah, you heard us. A Mel Gibson menorah. Craftwise, it could be unbeatable.

- SAB Miller's Columbia by Bavaria beer is raffling off the famed "Man Smoking" painting on February 28 as part of a promotion.

- Southwest Airlines...blah, blah, blah...CGM contest...blah, blah, blah...YouTube...blah, blah, blah...win a trip...blah, blah, blah and blah.

- AdJab is as pissed off as we are about people labeling things viral before they actually become viral.

- George Parker is all over Julie Roehm's ass crapping on her supposed avalanche or job offers, delivering the inside story on Draft/FCB's lack of promised analytics skills and poking holes in the Advertising Age Jonah Bloom "in-depth" Julie Roehm interview. - Contributed by Angela Natividad



Starbucks Brainwashes Boston Cabbies

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Catch Up Lady takes paranoid note of Starbucks' infiltration of Boston cab drivers, who seem to be in cahoots with It's Red Again, the pay-it-forward campaign that's got people doing all kinds of weird shit like buying baked goods for each other. And smiling! What's with the smiling?!

Catch Up Lady vows to bar herself indoors but to be honest we'd like to get in the way of the people giving out movie tickets and orgasmic pastries. Clearly another demonstration of how Starbucks intends to take over the world, to no positive end. - Contributed by Angela Natividad

by Angela Natividad    Dec-13-06    
Topic: Campaigns, Good, Outdoor



Newsflash! TimeLife Hooks Up With Brightcove to Release 'Get Smart'

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Whoa. Stop the presses! Are you ready? Are you read ready for this? Now....oh, we're so excited about this...you, yes you, with help from TimeLife and Brightcove, can get...hold your breath...Get Smart: The Complete Collection. Yes! It's true! People have been clamoring for this for 40 years! Fourty years, my friends. Can you think of a more important DVD release to use when announcing a partnership a partnership between a big publisher and an online video/TV company? No, we didn't think so. Damn, these guys are good at generating buzz! Wow, that took a lot of energy to write. We have to go take a nap now and then order up our copy of Get Smart: The Complete Collection.

by Steve Hall    Dec-13-06    
Topic: Online, Video



Dept of Defense Says Don't Drink with 'That Guy'

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The Department of Defense takes a shot at drinking with That Guy, another one of those characteristically we-speak-your-language government campaigns that, in a wildly uncool manner, attempts to demonstrate how uncool it is to be a drinker.

The site feels a bit dated and we agree with Bill at Make the Logo Bigger: there's not much of an attempt to reach out to swig-happy women, and you know we've seen a few. It's also a little stupid to put a "Fun Stuff" section on a site that hopes to lay it on thick about the mals of the bottle. - Contributed by Angela Natividad

by Angela Natividad    Dec-13-06    
Topic: Campaigns, Online, Social



College Guys Dance in Underwear in Innovative New Holiday Video

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Scamp directs us to yet another holiday video. It takes place in what looks like a dorm and involves two guys in Santa hats dancing around in their underwear. Since five-year-olds do this all the time we failed to see what was so special about it.

The video was created by some "directors/graphic designers" called Type2error operating out of the UK and, we suspect, out of this same dorm room. Well, we look forward to watching their talents develop, which should happen shortly after their voices change and they discover tube socks and vegetable oil. - Contributed by Angela Natividad

by Angela Natividad    Dec-13-06    
Topic: Bad, Online, Video



Dog Judo Back, Still No Judo, Still No Point

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Rexley and Roy of Dog Judo are back in a holiday promo as pointless and confusing as ever. Watch them duke it out over philosophy and headlocks while wearing gis, swigging beer and eating chicken. And don't forget to pick up some Christmas cards, which are just so awkward you can relish in the feeling of alienation that emanates from family and friends. - Contributed by Angela Natividad

by Angela Natividad    Dec-13-06    
Topic: Campaigns, Online



Toyota Swathes the Usual Pitch in Elaborate Flash

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Toyota pairs up with Swedish agency SWE to create On Toyota's Mind, a site that's supposed to creatively communicate to Swedes what Toyota's philosophy and values are without directly selling vehicles.

The site's certainly unique and has interesting music involving what occasionally sounds like a goat, but despite assertions that "we're not trying to sell any car directly on the site!" (PR guy, verbatim) every graphic leads to a cleverly-rendered media-kit style pitch about different facets of Toyota and new vehicle features. And unless what they're referring to is the tone in which this Flash-ridden kit was written, we're not finding much philosophy either.

We much preferred the Aygo campaign. At least then they were more direct about their intention: actually getting a car inside your living room. - Contributed by Angela Natividad

by Angela Natividad    Dec-13-06    
Topic: Campaigns, Online