Last week Arnold Worldwide launched several new PSAs for City Year, an organization of 17 to 24 year olds with diverse background who mentor, tutor, clean up neighborhoods and generally do good things.The spots are full of "we are change"-iness but that's to be expected from an organization that's out to, well, change things.
The spots were shot by Redtree Productions documentary filmmaker Josh Seftel who's received his fair share of independent film awards. All the spots can be seen at the City Year website here.
Under the premise that bottled water consumption is more a trend than a necessity, a spankin' new company called TAP'D NY is pushing tap water. In a bottle.
Yeah, that sounds weird. What I guess it's doing is running a full-on campaign to encourage people to drink tap water, and if not tap water, then local water instead of something from, oh, Fiji. Why encourage distributors to ship a product over 8,000 miles when you can get the same 100 percent tasteless! goodness from a factory near you?
That's how TAP'D NY is justifying its otherwise-dodgy product position: Don't buy bottled! But if you have to, buy us! -- er, local! Each unit contains gently-purified New York tap water. As a bonus, there'll also be some smart-ass statement written on the side, like "Water just like mom used to serve" or "bottled water without the funny accent."
Thirsty for more? Read the blog, gussied up in festive orange. The company promises not to self-promote too whorishly, but it's doing a great job of finger-wagging at rivals.
- BMW's holding a media review worth $155 million.
- Remember Memento? Imagine if it were an ad for Sony Ericsson.
- The Institute for America's Future hopes to derail the political bullshit train with an ad campaign about "major challenges facing the country." That's cool and all, but is this nearly as exciting as this? Don't answer, that's rhetorical.
- "Mom, what are those?" "Tadpoles, honey." "Oh. What do they have to do with being 'knocked up'?" Good luck with that.
- If PETA's ads were always this cute, I might have wanted a pig for a pet, not for breakfast. I like the point it made though. And look! They didn't even have to embarrass anybody.
- Here's a Wrigley Juicy Fruit ad in the style of that DoubleMint candy raver-looking thing. In this one, Julianne Hough invests the Juicy Fruit jingle with country music flair. It was so peppy and sweet, watching it gave me a cavity.
- In the unlikely event you need a laptop to match your Mandarin dress, Hewlett-Packard's got just the thing.
To draw eyes to the 6.7 million uninsured residents living in California, Blue Shield erected 40 naked statues at a Los Angeles-based event for universal healthcare coverage. Each statue is frozen in a vulnerable position, which reflects the state of people living without healthcare coverage.
I like the effort. It brings a bit of provocation to a public landscape without making it seem cluttered with advertising. See more photos.
- Amalgamated clears air over "Virtual Drinking Buddy" rip. In addition to starting a dialogue with Robbie Wenger, Amalgamated founder Charles Rosen told Adrants, "in no way are we above stealing ideas around here - but it wasn't the case this time. we really didn't know about robbie's virtual drinking buddy until he emailed us about it after our mike's spot ran." That's serious grace under pressure, and we were completely charmed.
- Smart way to promote sober driving.
- Tribal DDB scores Wrigley account, must now work out how to adhere gum to 'net users. Shouldn't be too hard. Just chew a little and avoid this kinda crap.
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To promote "Music for Life," whose theme this year was the dearth of drinkable water in some countries, the Red Cross and Studio Brussels let loose a thirsty black kid, who invaded TV studios and stole sips out of TV personalities' glasses.
It's hilarious. He just races onstage, gulps water down, and races off again without a word. Nobody can keep a straight face, and one chick just looks totally lost.
A video montage of the effort was put together and disseminated under the catchy name "Black boy wants water." As the Guerrilla Communications blog points out, it kept people awake -- and better still, got its point across.
The effort purportedly raised 3.3 million euros for drinkable water. It also won two golds, a silver and a titanium award at Cannes this year.
The tireless MoveOn.org is giving free Obama buttons away to anybody willing to part with their email, mobile number and address data. (What a tradeoff!) Packages include:
o One free Obama button.
o Three Obama buttons for a $2 donation. Just think how spiffy your tatty old backpack will look this September.
o 45 BUTTONS for a $20 donation, which, stylewise, would put you in direct in competition with this here little lady.
A moving ticker on MoveOn's site reports over 1,776,804 buttons have been ordered so far. I smell a trend afoot. Don't get left behind!
Still others can be used as weapons for the defenseless. That's the impression we got from this ad by Amnesty International, which is admittedly about a year old and maybe 1:30 too long. The animation and the idea are good though, and I like the sound of the scribble over the music.
Time's drawing near for the September 2 debut of 90210, the CW's remake of '90s pop classic Beverly Hills, 90210. Worried that the network will slut it up a la Gossip Girl, the Parents Television Council is admonishing advertisers not to sponsor the show unless a pre-screening is released.
Read the elongated back-and-forth. In a nutshell, the PTC insinuated that the CW won't release a pre-screen because it doesn't want large, socially-responsible advertisers scrutinizing all that naughty, dirty, bad, baaaad content. The CW says it just doesn't want to spoil a highly-anticipated premiere. In the end, it'll probably win this girlfight.
Concerns about poisoning our pure American youth aside, the PTC's got a definite beef. For its last Gossip Girl print campaign, the CW used the headline "Mind-blowingly inappropriate!", a statement the PTC made to rebuke the show, to promote the new season.
Hilarious. Anyway, the PTC ain't going down without a yowl. It's contacted 136 major advertisers about the 90210 pre-screening issue. Cheers to the virtue of vigilance.
Image credit: the NY Post blog.
Three high school kids stand at the side of a track. One pulls out some chewing tobacco, then everyone's attention is captured by a rabbit with antlers. Bad taxonomy job? The creature spits tobacco out on the kids, everybody goes "Daaaang," suddenly somebody's missing a front tooth, and the moral is, don't chew tobacco.
"Dip. It can make your teeth fall out!"
By EnviroMedia for Spit It Out Texas. I don't get it. Off-topic, anti-tobacco ads -- no matter how disgusting -- always make me nostalgic for Big League Chew.
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