Anomaly/NY worked with Santogold, Julian Casablancas and Pharrell Williams of NERD to produce My Drive Thru, a paper doll music video for Converse. It's effortlessly dope, more so because Pharrell is the coolest fucking celebrity in the entire world. Oh, and the other two are also pretty awesome.
This is part and parcel of Converse's "Connectivity" campaign, which rocked well from Day 1. Scoop My Drive Thru up free on the Converse website, which was revamped to reinforce the celebu-paper doll thing. (Also very cool.) Click "unfold" for screen takeover -- minimal laggage -- then download the track.
During this week's Television Critic's Association Press Tour held at the Beverly Hilton, MarKyr Media Co-Founder Marjorie Kase interviewed Mad Men Creator Matthew Weiner for Adrants. Mad Men, a show about advertising that's set in the early sixties, debuts its second season this Sunday, July 27, on AMC at 10PM.
MK: How has the Ad game evolved since the early days of Mad Men?
MW: I think the biggest difference is all of the conglomerates in advertising. They take the competition out of the market place. The ads themselves, I don't think are particularly bad or anything. There are still great ads being made with amazing amount of talent in advertising. I meet them and I see their work and I'm impressed and I'm amused and I enjoy it.
MK: Aside from all the sexism, drinking and smoking, how has the industry office culture changed?
MW: Well I don't think that's changed. I think that when you go to an advertising convention, the drinking is still there, and all the smoking is happening out in front of the building. I think people still go to strip clubs. There was a joke about Peggy last year that made Pete punch a guy in the face that was "She's like a lobster, all the meat's in the tail". That's from the New York Stock Exchange last year, that's not historical research; I was worried that would sound too contemporary.
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Expectations are high when a press release promises, "Cute Lepers will Cure Your 'Terminal Boredom' This Summer!" But there are no lepers, cute or otherwise. It's just some pop band on tour.
To make a point about how women make less money than men in the work force, Swedish firm Miljopartiet de grona ran a print ad that compares currency featuring men to lower-value currency featuring women. The tagline: "Different gender, different worth."
Commercial Archive observes the idea's been done before; moreover, income disparity is slightly more complicated than some male-chauvinist exec going "Hey, a girl, I'm gonna SAVE."
On a casual YouTube quest for gender-disparaging videos, I found this clip about penis power. Please watch it. It will make your whole day. (Yes yes, SFW, but plug your headphones in.)
- This fake Guinness commercial illustrates the pleasures of multitasking among friends...while naked...and having sex.
- To varying degrees, most people feel it's OK to have advertising in free online video content. The highest level of acceptance (82 percent) was for ads in full length TV shows (shown online).
- 50 Cent is not pleased with Taco Bell's publicity ploy urguing him to change his name to 79, 89, or 99 Cent to promote new menu items. 50 Cent has filed a lawsuit claiming his name an likeness were used without permission.
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Serena Software launched a Facebook super group to promote its business Mashup Composer. Check out the row of enterprise-chic Super Mashers. No hipsters here, except maybe for Mascara Man in far left beside Token Polo Guy. But hey, bet you can't tell which one ISN'T REAL.
"Before long, you'll be seeing just how easy it is to @#$% it (or mash it) with Serena Software."
What the hell's "@#$%"? Is that cog-talk for "mash"?
To show how the penny is shortchanged in the value hierarchy, Office Max launched a campaign called "Power to the Penny." Toting a hidden camera, comedian Matt McCarthy pisses people off all over New York City by trying to buy stuff, like steak dinners, with nothing but bags full of copper coinage.
My favourite scene from the above video:
Chef (who pops outta nowhere): "How about if you come in here and you order the steak, and I take the steak, and I put it in the blender, and I give you the steak in a milkshake. Is that a steak?"
Long pause.
Matt McCarthy: "Why don't you go back in the kitchen, because you're not helping the situation."
I wish I had a penny for every time daddy said that to mommy.
More videos at PennyPranks. Each one ends with a clip-happy visual orgy of everything you can buy at Office Max for a penny. Crayons! Yardsticks! Glue! It's diorama time.
In a sort of funny, sort of lame, sort of introspective, sort of awkward, sort of cheesy, sort of insightful, sort of self-indulgent, this promotional video from Chicago Creative Partnership attempts to instill the notion the agency really, really does take the work it does for brands personally.
Hmm. Not sure crapping on oneself is the best motivational strategy but, hey, everyone responds differently to a kick in the ass.
Inspserado?
Hey, hey, hey! Maybe being an intern at an ad agency isn't such a bad thing. That is if you're an intern at Naked Communications and the agency's client is Contiki Tours. On his first day, intern Gavin Chimes was ambushed with agency sending him on a surprise trip to Europe; first stop, Amsterdam.
The agency will be documenting his entire Contiki Tour, a company that offers travel tours for 18-35 year olds, so as to share the experience from the vantage point of an unsuspecting traveler. Any other agencies want to offer up a better intern program?
- The Social Path drew our attention to this perplexing Oasis ad where a girl gets knocked up by a cactus -- not for its own sake, but to justify half-assed Myspace campaigns.
- 50 Cent is upset with Taco Bell. Yeah well, we are too.
- Support your Presidential contender of choice with a handy-dandy kippah. Goes with everything.
- This is kind of neat. By the way, save water.
- Just what you need: a Samsung Instinct miniseries.
- Kanye West helps improve self-esteem. With vodka. But you probably already know that trick, don't you?
- Philippe Starck and BBC Two are doing an Apprentice-style series called School of Design. "Vous etes fired." Heh.
Revlon is churning through Hollywood stars and after the likes of Halle Berry, Jessica Alba, Elle McPherson, Susan Sarandon, Julianne Moore, Eva Mendes, Jaime King, the brand has signed a deal with Oscar winner Jennifer Connelly to appear in an upcoming ad campaign.
Famous both for brief nude scenes and her stellar acting abilities, Connelly is, in the words of Revlon President and CEO David Kennedy, "a modern, dynamic and intelligent woman. She is an accomplished wife, mother and actress and her successes complement the spirit of the Revlon brand."
Unlike most accounts where a little bit of pre-concept research is always a good thing, working on a women's lingerie or underwear account requires nothing more than a Neanderthal mentality and the libido of a 16 year old high school kid. It's like the creative brief writes itself.
Hmm. Let's see. Ooo...I've got it. Dude, it's lingerie! We'll show the product! And we can get a shit ton of hot babes for the shoot! And all they'll be wearing is underwear and bras! Dude, this is gonna be hot! And we'll have them play some choreographed girl on girl patty cake so we can get a little jiggle effect going. Dude! Bitches fighting! That rocks!
Up until the final tagline, "Your five senses prefer a Renault Magane" (which you have to listen to over and over to understand), this Brazilian commercial for the Renault Megane instills that sense of brotherly love you get when...well...you crowd surf your way home from work while some techno plays in the background.
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From YouTube channel: "Brian Deegan is becoming more of an X Games icon every day, and you know we can't have that! Must...smash...originality!!!"
See MySpace (turn volume down).
See funnier take on the "Must--destroy--[awesome thing]!" shtick.
Healthy Food Brands is reintroducing the Sweet 'N Low candy line. Chadwick Communications was selected to spread the word, so it created a print ad campaign that I guess makes the candy look low-fat yet saucy.
"Light my fire" is at left, and here's "Get off my cloud."
"Sweetened with isomalt and acesulfame potassium." LOL.
Way to get publicity, Red Tettemer! The Philadelphia agency is showing its love for AMC's Mad Men - which premieres its second season this Sunday, July 27 at 10PM - by redesigning its website to look like the 60's-based TV show. Drinking! Smoking! Sexism! Adultery! Cone-shaped boobs! What's not to love? Oops...wrong decade. Sorry about that.
"There's great confusion among consumers about what constitutes a certified used vehicle," preaches director Mark Mathews of GM's Used-Vehicle Activities, eyes wild with foreboding.*
"Manufacturer certified vehicles offer new-vehicle-like benefits and financing options where others do not; private sellers being the most risky option."
If you're not sufficiently flooded with self-doubt, go get ambushed. Fear monger of choice: Mullen.
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Mike's Hard Lemonade is hard up for some social and consumer generated media action having gone down the road of the personalized fake newscast which, like, everyone is doing to the point of absolute boredom. So it's very likely Mike is really really hard right now for Nashville Star contestant Ashlee Hewitt who, on her own we are assured, has written a song about Mike's Hard Lemonade and how a group of girls used to come into a bar she worked at and ordered Mike's Hard Lemonade.
Hmm. And here I thought only rap artists embedded brands in there music. Of course that could simply be because I never listen to country music. Anyway, here it is. Be happy for Mike and his Hard...Lemonade.
To promote Infiniti's Cirque de Soleil sponsorship, TBWA/Toronto created "Double Lines," which smoothly integrates mid-air performance with roadside performance.
Apt tagline: "Let the performance begin." I've got no complaints.
Ford has teamed with Entertainment Weekly to extend its sponsorship of the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure with a new Warriors in Pinks t-shirt and a chance to win one of four limited edition Zune 30GB music players donated by Microsoft. heck it our at fordcares.com.
Ooo...there's so much feel-good goodness here, crassly commenting on the curvaceous hotness of the t-shirt model would bring things down a bit don't you think?
Yesterday I read an article on JAMZ about Mad Men and how diversity advocates might threaten the show's authenticity. The author called Mad Men un-nostalgic and a "world where white men were kings." In what appears to be a reasonable justification to crystallize Mad Men as its own white male ecosystem, the author concludes:
Everyone is smoking, drinking, closeted, desperately unhappy. Choices and options are limited. That's the fabric that holds 'Mad Men' together. To suddenly throw in a little diversity would rip it to shreds.
I get the dude. It would be unrealistic to pepper those executive suits with black and brown faces for the sake of the PC police.
But it's also dangerous to use Mad Men as an excuse to shut diversity out -- something agencies are still too good at. That's gratuitous and unrealistically romantic. There's plenty of room to broaden Mad Men's scope without harming its precious and purported authenticity.
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- Bayer roasts babies over a fire but, of course, they, like those famous Puma ads, are not real and the brand has stated they, nor JWT, had anything to do with their creation.
- That Churchill pet insurance dog, in a recent commercial, seems to say, rather than his usual cathphrase "Oh yes," "Oh yes, fuck!" You decide.
- A mustached George Clooney does the goofy European commercial thing.
- In the UK, Nike has stopped selling its Mike Air Stab trainer after an upswing in knife murders.
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Get Your War On, the satirical anti-war comic series by David Rees, is turning into an online video series. See the preview at 236.com, where it will air exclusively.
The "video strip" will be put together by Flat Black Films, which did Waking Life and those Charles Schwab ads that I liked but everyone else hated.
Saatchi & Saatchi's The Breakfast Club campaign for JCPenney has been crapped by everyone on since it launched. Today, it's Rebecca Cullers' turn. On AdFreak, Rebecca does the math, writing, "I was 3 years old when The Breakfast Club came out in 1985. I didn't know the film existed until I was in college, where it was included in a class on culturally significant movies for Gen X. Now, there's more or less a decade separating me from today's incoming high-school students. Does anyone really think they will get the reference?"
She is absolutely correct in her analysis of the problem and for anyone at Saatchi or JCPenney not to have realized this is further confirmation far too many advertisers and their agencies, despite believing the contrary, are completely out of touch with reality.
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A couple years ago, we covered Glamour's Stiletto Run, a promotional event highlighting the launch of Dutch Glamour at which hundreds of women wearing heels ran a 75 meter sprint to win $10,000 Euros.
Last year the event was held in Amsterdam. We missed it but this year, just this week, it was held in Moscow and while a member of our vast Adrants reporting staff wasn't in attendance to capture the event first hand, thanks to Flickr, we can share all the glamorous, high heeled hotness with you today.
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