In this week's Ad Age TV Spots of the Week, my own agency's work is featured. RDW Group of Providence Rhode Island created a series of :15's for the Roger Williams Park Zoo. These spots were created by copywriter Wendy Boffi and art director Jeff Dahlberg. Ad Age shows two of the :15's with the first featuring a spitting fish and the second a tortoise. The tortoise, of course, is given the "slow and gassy grandma" analogy.
The gassy grandma spot was so "successful" the Zoo received complaints saying today's grandmothers are not slow and gassy, they are cool and hip. People asked that the spot be pulled. To which we said, it's a joke, get over it. Besides, the campaign's run is complete so you're out of luck.
Other spots this week include a pre-movie commercial from another agency I worked for, Leo Burnett, featuring a Quasimodo-like character for Keebler's Cheez-It; a boring car commercial for the Nissan Z; and a dude with body odor so bad he knocks over the foosball figures for Right Guard.
Alicia Silverstone will make her television debut in a new NBC series this Fall called "Miss Match". In the series, she plays a lawyer who ends up becoming a matchmaker to her clients. Silverstone is a Vegan and as part of her contract with NBC, she will not wear wool, leather or silk which poses challenges to Roberta Haze, the show's designer.
This list of items Silverstone will not wear is long, however, she will wear old leather shoes since they were made a long time ago and are, according to her, grandfathered from current animal rights offenses. Convenient thinking.
England's Virgin Mobile launched a viral campaign, called Red Academy, that spoofs competing mobile service provider, Orange. Orange had recently run a campaign extolling the virtues of the company's phone trainers who educate users about Orange's extended digital phone features. The Virgin campaign pokes fun, stating that people don't really need all those digital bells and whistles - less a set a trainers - since phones are really for calling people.
This is another in the ongoing battle between the two mobile phone giants and is representative of the type of head-to-head comparative advertising that is sorely lacking among many companies. European companies, in particular, often have to avoid direct comparisons to conform to local ad laws. The campaign was created by Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe/Y&R and was seeded and tracked by DMC.
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