Where's The Dirt, Dude?
Our intrepid NYC informant, ex-bike messenger and publisher, Bucky Turco, points us to another ad campaign that has latched onto bike messenger street cred. Just a short time ago, Lincoln used real bike messenger's names without permission to promote their SUV. This time, Coors Lite has used bike messenger imagery on a large, lower Manhattan billboard. The billboard shows the messenger riding along, scraping ice off the billboard.
Turco tells us the ad looks OK until you look more closely and, if you know anything about bike messengers, things are a bit off. "At least they didn't make the mistake Lincoln made by actually trying to co-opt real bike messengers. It seems Coors was content with a softer, safer, and extremely unrealistic looking courier. Kudos to the art director for adding the dirt patterns on the messenger bag, too bad they missed the clothes and fingernails."
While most of us might not notice these details, to a bike messenger, they seem to be important. Turco was a bit put off by the way the messenger in the ad was portrayed saying, "...what self respecting bike messenger rides through the city without a lock and chain around his waist? Don't worry we won't get into the fingerless gloves, goofy helmet, and J-crew like model."
Ouch. Additional images here and here.
As flicker user Bahi P comments, in reaction to a British Airways billboard with the headline "Rarely is check-in as quiet as a mouse" accompanied by an image of an Apple mouse, "Rarely is one company's logo so prominent in another company's advert." We're sure there's a co-marketing agreement here but the commentary was too good to pass over.
After teasing us for a month, it's nice to get at least a bit of gratification after only sixty seconds. While sixty second gratification isn't always a good thing, in the case of the Maryland State Lottery, who brought us the elaborate Bovine United mystery, a fast finish can be quite pleasurable. Especially when really bad, mock German band, "I'm So Hot," videos are involved. Created by Eisner Communications, this :60 spot allows us to wallow in the absurdity of a wannabe band for 55 seconds before we are relieved to learn they've been put out of their misery by the Lottery's "The Hot Family game.
In this week's Ad Age TV Spots of the Week, we're also treated a kooky, War of the Worlds-like spot for a new game, "Destroy All Humans"; an annoying bug dying on behalf of a pest control company that has a frog as its mascot (you can't make this stuff up); more ridiculous attempts to make Buick cool; a Trojan condom commercial that drags out the HIV card; Lance Armstrong causes an entire town to go fitness crazy for a fitness center and, finally, a fan that pushes a TV off a piece of furniture because Poliflor Furniture Cream With Teflon creates such a slippery surface. A furniture polish that breaks TV's is a good thing? That "I'm So Hot" German band needs the fan more than the TV does.
GM (via Modernista! one assumes) is using street art to promote its new contradiction in terms, the Hummer H3. We suppose line extensions are the natural path for any product to take but a small Hummer just doesn't thrill the same way a big Hummer does. This street art was spotted by flicker user Runs With Scissors. The work was done by long time graffiti writers TATS CRU, Inc.
We'd be happy to link you to the H3 microsite but it's buried so deep under layers of fancy, slow loading Flash, accessible only from the Hummer.com front door, we'll spare you the agony. Take our word for it. It's there but it doesn't have near the amount of informative information as one might find in this Car and Driver pre-production review.
