When several people started sending in this image of a Johnny Walker outdoor ad that shows Johhny making his way across a broken bridge, the initially innocuous imagery and our agnostic sense of politics caused us to wonder, "What's so special about this ad? It's just a picture of a friggin bridge." Well after the ad came to us a few times, we realize, "Oh, people are pissed off because Leo Burnett/BBH and Johnny Walker are making Middle eastern fun of bridges destroyed in Lebanon." Oh, OK. Now we get it. Yea. Fuck that shit. We're pissed off too. How dare they stoop to such insensitive tactics to sell a bit of liquor. Whatever.
Anyway, for its part, Leo Burnett says the ad was intended to lift morale which Mack Simpson thinks would have been better expressed as "raise spirits.".
Joining Coke's ongoing Coke Side of Life Stageside thing in which artists perform to a background of subtle Coke branding is Jay-Z who follows Na-Yo who appeared in the promotion earlier this year. Jay-Z appears at Radio City Music Hall in a white tux backed by a full orchestra. We're not sure Jay-Z does it for us but we're sure he will for some. In any event, it's not a bad way to offer up a little entertainment while achieving a bit of brand awareness albeit questionably measurable.
Using flash back scenarios which explain current misfortune, Winston-Saloem agency The Woodbine Agency created a series of commercial for its client Peidmont bank that illustrates the importance of making proper financial decisions and the downside of making bad ones. The series of commercial can viewed on YouTube here.
Anytime a spot tosses in a joke about pooping on people's heads, it's guaranteed coverage on Adrants. In this spot, created by TBWA/Ciat/Day and directed by Hornet director Monkmus (gotta love those self-important one namers), features a goose talking to the dustball dude about the PSP's travel friendly features. Watch it here.
 George Parker tells us the story of a German magazine that fell prey to the openness of the interweb or, perhaps, was just plain stupid. The Cologne-based magazine, a yet-to-be-launched book aimed at teens, called Objektiv found an image of a model to use in a promotional piece and slapped the headline, "Deutsch Ist Geil!" or "German is Hot!" next to her. While it's very easy to troll the Internet for millions of images that suit any particular purpose, the group behind Objektiv found the image of the girl, 19 year old Czech model, Jaimy, on her site, Sweet Natural Girl, a psuedo, semi-pornish, girl next door type site. These kind of sites, whose sole revenue stream consists of drooling, horny guys who will throw money at anything just to see fleshy hotness, don't take kindly to their images being used in such a widespread manner by a for-profit entity without remuneration. Obviously, legal action has ensued. Apparently, the fact she's Czechoslovakian didn't sit well either but that's for you political types to analyze.
This was done before prior to a theatrical presentation but now it's made its way to movie theaters. To promote its new B LIve website which, humorously, appears to be under construction, Bacardi placed a pre-movie ad in Dutch theaters showing people grooving to a DJ. Half way through the ad, the power (in the ad) goes out, the music stops and the people stop dancing. A few seconds later, a guy in the theater stands up and starts beatboxing to which the dancers in the actual commercial respond to and begin dancing again. A woman in the theater stands and begins to dance as well. While the whole thing looks very staged, if real, it does seem to eliminate the pre-movie monotony that has taken over theaters.
- NBC has launched Star Tomorrow, its first exclusively online series in which competitors will vie for singing career and people will vote online to influence the competition. Part of the program is the Versa Lounge, named after sponsoring Nissan Versa and an inside look at the program.
- After Starbucks pinged a few employees with a free iced coffee offer and urged recipients to forward the offer to a friend, the coffee giant canceled the offer because it spread too far and stores were giving away too much free coffee. Not a bad problem to have.
- Announced earlier, EA has put its technology along with Microsoft's Xbox Live service will serve changing (versus static) ads to players of the game Need for Speed Carbon.
We're just guessing that Britney's K-Fed couldn't find any brands to product place in his newly released 'Lose Control' music video. That's the only explanation we can come up with for the sudden close up shot midway through the video of a dancer wearing a GoldenPalace.com t-shirt. It's perfect. Everyone's going to check this video out of morbid curiosity and there GoldenPalace will be for all to see in the middle of this...um...less that great music video. Much appreciation to Adrants reader Dario Meli for tipping us to this.
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