Okay. Just imagine for a sec that 24 were -- work with us here -- a French New Wave film.
Beautifully-coiffed, but crucially helpless, blonde in bath towel: Millions of people are going to die ... and we only have 24 hours to save them!
Blase half-dressed hubby: Yeah, but, oh, it's Saturday. Then he lifts a copy of The Stranger back up to his face and adds, 24 hours is tons of time. I could do save them in two.
The lady over-protests, as women are wont to do, so he gets all existentialist on her ass: Aren't we all going to die eventually?
Outfitted with Brigitte Bardot knockoffs, abstract antiheroes and -- in the instances of 8 Kilometres -- a painfully mod '60s style battle of linguists, Stella Artois re-imagines three contemporary action flicks in the style of old-school French cinema. The videos are best seen with the stunna shades off, a glass of vermouth, and an extra-long unfiltered cigarette, held in that special way.
No ad:tech's an ad:tech unless there's a session that speculates, however pointlessly, on the future of advertising. This particular variant featured New Media Director Robin Sloan of Current TV and General Director Travis Katz of MySpace. The moderator was Editor in Chief Nicolas Arpagian of Prospective Strategique.
Interesting sidenote about this panel: Arpegian posed all questions in French; Sloan and Katz wore magic insta-translating devices that enabled them to respond in English without missing a beat. It was so "Star Trek."
Sloan was up first, and he kicked off with something unexpected. Positioning his presentation as if we were already living in the year 2019, he walked us through the "past" 10 years.
On her new Current show Target Women, Sarah Haskins wonders where men learned to treat women so badly. In a hilarious analysis of Carl's Jr. advertising, Haskins arrives at only logical conclusion; it's unequivocally the burger chain's fault.
Haskin's dubs Carl's Jr. advertising Douchebaggery 101: Embracing Your Inner Douche and proceeds to tear down the chain's ad campaign while explaining how it make men...well...douchebags.
Special bonus: Haskins tries to wash a car Paris Hilton-style with decidedly less grace provong the point all advertising is fake anyway.
The best line in the video comes when Haskins describes guys as, "Good natured DoucheBros who eat fries like they're at a DoucheBag party about to win the award for DoucheKing of the Douche-O-Trons." Wow.
See? There is life after internet stardom. Its not always an exciting life but it does pay the bills a bit better than making funny videos from your apartment.
Justine Ezarik (where were you during SXSW? Were you even there??) has been doing the online video thing for years. Over time - and hey, we all have to make a living - she's increasingly pimped products in her videos. And, for the most part, the work has been just fine.
Currently, she, along with seven other YouTube Elite, is pimping the Sanyo Dual Camera Xacti. Last Fall, she even stepped off the internet to appear in...OMG...a TV commercial for Mozy backup software.
Some claim Justine is selling out. Well, of course she is. Everyone does and there's really nothing wrong with it. To the high and mighty who decry these moves, the bills have to be paid somehow.
With help from digital agency Holler, footwear brand Kickers is launching an online comedy sketch series called "Random Bandits," which features characters from TV show Modern Toss and guest voice-overs from the UK's The Office.
The effort'll run for three months, beginning in the first week of April, and will "send up everything from entertainment, popular culture and even social networks." Hope you're equipped with that slapstick Brit wit. You'll definitely need it for this dive back into MySpace.
- Ex-Ofsted chief proposes that kids learn social media skills -- Wikipedia, blogging, podcasting, Twitter -- in primary school, alongside other communication skills like handwriting and keyboarding.
- How far would you go for some glacier-fresh Kokanee? As far as the dudes in this spec ad? (Gotta say: the premise is cheesy, but production is clean.)
- Kevin Spacey to do Michel Gondry-directed ad for American Airlines.
- Killed Idea alert: "the following ad for Krystal Hamburgers created by the Johnson Group in Chattanooga was killed for fear of 'clown retribution.'" Ever read Jpod? This sorta reminds us of that.
Since you're probably a postmodern hipster, it's highly likely you love yourself some Flight of the Conchords.
Well, that's cool, we do too.
To promote Season 2 of the show, HBO partnered with Deep Focus to launch the Flight of the Conchords Lip Dub Video Fansterpiece. It's about as grand as it sounds, and one-time creators of fan fiction will probably relish the opportunity to reinterpret FotC's "Hiphopopotamus vs. Rhymenoceros" with their own wincey music videos.
According to Deep Focus, Facebook outreach generated about 470 comments and about 5400 "likes." The two top videos were edited into a single mumbo-jumbo one and incorporated into a Flight of the Conchords ep -- and yeah, that's on cable TV, man.
Remember Gary Brolsma, the Numa Numa Guy? Of course you do. Hoping to tie his lovable lip-syncing magic to a big brand, The Martin Agency tapped him to produce "Numa Numa Guy with GEICO," an amateur-style vid where he sings Somebody's Watchin' Me while GEICO's trademark gecko dances behind him.
What makes the video awesome is you don't really notice the gecko at first. But as you acclimate to the context, suddenly you're like... "WTF is that thing in the terrarium, shimmying in the background?"
A great article by Wharton School Professor of Operations Eric Clemsons entitled "Why Advertising Is Failing On The Internet" takes a deep look at the current state (shambles) of advertising and what the future looks like after we all bid adieu to the industry's current lameness.
In a nutshell, and this is not a new line of thinking, it's all about people seeking information (because it's readily available) rather than having it shoved down their throats (as it has been since the dawn of advertising.)
