Oh how we just wanted to let this one go. Really, we did. And we thought it would just go away like every other occasional unveiling of an agency's always-embarrassing internal workings.
As idiotic, far-fetched and plain absurd as the Arnell Group Pepsi document is, anyone who's ever worked in the industry knows this brand blatherific crap is the norm when it comes to a renaming/rebranding/logo project. It's. Just. The. Way. It. Is.
We're not defending the document's overblown inanity but pick up any creative brief or major rebranding document you've ever written and read it. Then multiply the idiocy you just read by about 100 and it makes perfect sense, given the size of the Pepsi account, the Arnell/Pepsi document is as hilariously verbose and mind-boggling as it is.
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Ever heard of The BeanCast? It's OK. Neither had we up until a few months ago when this half of Adrants was invited to appear. It's a podcast. Well, a new one is up and it's - surprise - all about the Super Bowl. Yea, we know. It was duller than a newspaper circulation department this year but, hey, it's our job to discuss the ads ad naseum, right?
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Step aside Obama Girl. You've been outdone. While we will never forget your undying love for Adrants and Steve Hall, we simply have to elevate Ignited Art Director Thad Papadakis to a higher status of obsessive devotion for the Valentine's Day love song he created for AdWeek journalist Eleftheria Parpis.
Instant press! Sweet.
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Ah...the fist bump. That manly expression of...well, who the fuck knows? The whole fist bump thing is stupid, awkward and dumb. And has become even more so since Agency.com's Subway video.
It has nothing to do with homophobia, as some have dubbed it when called a "fist kiss" in this Shaquille O'Neal and Mike Breen ESPN commercial, rather everything to do with some men's odd desire to appear "yo, dude" cool or something. It's just dumb.
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For the first time in many years, the ad blogs didn't live blog the Super Bowl. The reason for the change? Simple. One word: Twitter. With at least four different hashtags (words that let you follow a particular Twitter stream), a cascading waterfall of real-time opinion flooded through for all to see. Thousands of people could live tweet their thoughts in 140 character bits instead of a few attempting to type 3,000 words a minute to publish three stories per ad break.
The Twitter stream we arranged along with AdFreak, AgencySpy and Adland was #superads09. It was near impossible to read every tweet but some information did bubble up. People liked the CareerBuilder spot. They liked the Pedigree ad. They liked the Hulu ad. The like all three Doritos ads. They liked Pepsi's Bob Dylan spot.
They hated both GoDaddy commercials. They hated H&R Block. They hated SoBe Life Water. They hated Toyota's Faces. There was debate over the Teleflora ad which not so subtly made fun of, shall we say, less that beautiful people and just how much backlash that spot might generate.
A service called Thummit asked Twitter users to give each ad a thumbs up or a thumbs down and tallied the results here. Oddly, Bridgestone topped the Thumbs Up list with its Hot Item spot. That was followed by the Doritos remote control spot, Coke's Heist and Monster.
Topping the Thummit Thumbs Down list were, no surprise, GoDaddy's Shower and and Baseball commercials. They were followed by Toyota Faces, H&R Block's Death and Taxes and Cheetos Chester the Cheetah.
Over at the USA Today Ad Meter, Doritos topped the list with Free Doritos (Crystal Ball) followed by Budweiser's Circus, Budweiser's Stick, Bridgestone's Potato Heads, Doritos' Power of the Crunch and Car's.com.
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OK so, um yea. Like PETA was ever going to actually pay $3 million to run a commercial during the Super Bowl. Of course they weren't. But that didn't stop them from stunting their way to Super Bowl notoriety with a GoDaddy-style banned ad strategy. And on top of that, they twisted things around to make it look like NBC was being more racy than PETA.
PETA contends NBC's response to their ad had "PETA bigwigs blushing like beets." Um, right. More like they were fist bumping each other and laughing at how NBC just fell right into their trap.
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"hi there!
thanks for a great site!
thought u might like this, an awsome video with skateboarding tv
cool stuff.think you' d love it!!"
"Came over this link while surfing the net. It's a new ad from director Daniel Eskils and KesselsKramer. It's really cool, and I have no idea how it's done!"
Well it must be pretty f'ing good then right? Can't you guys just come out and say you are working for the brand? The agency? The seeding company? Instead of telling us you just randomly "came over" (which is actually pretty gross when you think about it) an "awesome video" that's "really cool" and that we're going to "love it!"?
Dear Advertising Community,
Hello?? Is anyone out there?? It's January 20 and the Super Bowl is less than two weeks away and all we have in terms of advertising buzz leading up to the game is...crickets. Aren't we all supposed to be drooling over what we'll see that day in terms of commercials? Aren't brands supposed to be fanatically seeding their commercial in advance of the game? Isn't Bob Garfield supposed to be doing some sort of pre-game bloviation?
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Oh no. Here it comes. Another marketing babblespeak acronym. Yes. Are you ready? OK. Viral Bridge Marketing. Yup, VBM, people. What's it all about? We're not really sure but it's described as part of an "innovative deal to monetize the sequel to 'Evolution of Dance.'"
Comparison shopping site Saveology and self-improvement site PeopleJam have teamed and developed "an approach that allows a viral video and its sponsors to meet consumers at the intersection of their tastes (Evolution of Dance 2) and needs (saving money in a tight economy)."
Eesh, if there's anything that'll kill a, hmm, potentially viral viral before it goes viral, it would be this.
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In a yet to be published (we are told) letter to Advertising Age in response to its publication of the Top Ten Ad Songs of the Year, The Apollo Project's Paul Horn makes the convincing argument the songs are nothing more than a representative playlist one might find on a Brooklyn-based hipster music blog.
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