Dolce & Gabbana Let's It Rip

We suppose there's always a time when an advertisers wants to poke fun at their stuffy selves and who better to do it than high styling Italian fashion brand Dolce & Gabbana. In this romantic interlude, a couple passes more than just gifts between each other. Oh, and it being all funny and stuff, the site, called "For Real Lovers," encourages you to pass it around to your friends virally.

Bacardi Promotes Planet Party With Viral Cleavage Vacuum

Designed around informing aliens as to the odd party behaviour of humans and the rules aliens should follow when in contact, Bacardi has put together Planet Party, a compendium of human party behavior. Visiting aliens can swoop in on the party scene and observe human nightclub behavior and conversation.

One humorous video illustrates how alien females might mis-interpret leering I-could-eat-you looks from earth-bound men as an invitation to snack.

Starbucks Brings Holiday Cheer to Times Square

An Adrants reader admired this Starbucks placement in Time Square and sent it in to us this morning. If you can wade through the onslaught of Times Square's commercialism to see it, this little structure reminds one of those water-filled wintery landscape things in which snow would fall if you shook it. Full size image is here.

ESPN Scares Crap Out of Athletes in New Campaign

To promote its Winter X Games, ESPN has launched a Fear Factor-style ad campaign capturing normally fearless X Game athletes with hidden cameras in situations inducing fear such as being stuck in a locked closet with roaches. Created by Los Angeles-based Ground Zero, the campaign, apparently, attempts to make athletes appear more real.

ESPN EVP Lee Ann Daly summarizes the campaign. "This project was incredibly fun--it might be the first time ever that a series of carefully planned practical jokes were captured on film and used to make a TV campaign. This time we kind of turned the notion of X athletes' fearlessness on its ear and instead of focusing on their admirable, fearless, athletic talents, we captured X athletes scared out of their wits in the midst of some really fun practical jokes. The spots capture the sense of humor a lot of young folks enjoy nowadays."

Advertising Predictions For 2005

It's the time of year when the prognosticators begin to spill forth their insight into the following year's activities. The first worthy set of predictions comes from Pete Blackshaw writing on ClickZ. He puts forth six intriguing predictions ranging from weblog backlash followed quickly by mass adoption of the format to reimbursed-per-view advertising to continued mis-integration of Super Bowl spots with marketer websites.

The most intriguing, however, is his prediction that wireless access with move to a model akin to television. That is, it will be free in exchange for viewing an advertiser-sponsored log on page of sorts. This model will, thankfully, kill the price gouging currently foisted upon consumers by the likes of T-Mobile, Hilton Hotels and others who force people to pay obscene sums of money to access the Internet.

DoubleThink Prepares to Pitch Mitsubishi Account

Madison Avenue veteran Harry Webber is preparing his ad-hoc agency team, DoubleThink to pitch the now-in-review Mitsubishi account. On his website, Webber explores the plight in which Mitsubishi has found itself including sagging sales, exiting marketing execs and dealer service problems.

Webber framed the challenge thusly, writing, "...what a wonderful challenge for the creative mind. An automaker spurned by its big three godfather. The eve of an eagerly awaited new model with a 7 year gestation period. An unpopular dealer organization up in arms. A quality issue that may have put the automaker in last place in US sales. The hasty exit of an iconoclastic marketing director after his public slap to the efficacy of network television. A president and CFO who has made a public statement about the importance of 'getting the most innovative thinking.' $200+million to spend on said 'innovative thinking.'" While the industry might scoff at such efforts from an outside group, this is exactly the injection the industry needs. Granted, Webber is, most assuredly, not an outsider but he brings together creative minds, most of whom, have never worked in advertising before. Let's see what he comes up with.