We're not sure whether to laugh at or be concerned for Boston which got quite angry with Turner Broadcasting's for its ten city publicity stunt which, over the past two weeks, placed circuit board-like devices throughout each city, including Boston, to promote the the company's Cartoon Network Adult Swim Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Wednesday, all hell broke loose in the city of Boston when a commuter noticed one of the devices under a highway overpass above Sullivan Sqaure Station in Charlestown.
Bomb squads were called. Subways were shut down. Traffic was diverted. Newly seated Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick said, "It's a hoax and it's not funny." Boston Mayor Thomas Menino threatened legal action. All because a few promotional items were placed around the city.
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AdJab's Chris Thilk told us a few weeks ago AdJab would be ceasing its operations at the t'end of January. Well, the end of the month is here and that last jab has been published. Four of the main contributors to the site, Chris Thilk, Tom Biro, Adam Finley and Bob Sassone leave their parting thoughts and send AdJab off into the good night. We're told all of its content will live on to be forever indexed by Google and referred to by those of us in the advertising industry.
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In what may possibly have been his only chance at a chick that hot, the protagonist for SFR France's latest ad demonstrates the frustration of getting close-to-laid before your doctor decides to leave a message about your genital problem on the answering machine. Wish we could sympathize with the guy, but he's kind of a tool so the ad only made us feel a warm tingle as the girl slid away and started putting her clothes back on.
Great way to demonstrate that with a mobile phone, a personal call is actually personal.
A source points us to a UK trend of snippy little domestica ads showcasing women acting out the spectrum of nasty human emotions for love of a product. The ads run along the same undercurrent: antagonists have a quality about them that's shared by kids who get in trouble long after 3rd-grade because they still haven't learned to share. (We know what happens to those kids. They grow up to be amazingly magnetic sex gods and goddesses who write ad news for a living.)
A couple of illustrative ads include this one for Toyota Yaris, where a woman passive-aggressively crashes her boyfriend's plane after he kicks the door shut on her car; and this creepy Quorn one where a girl with a fork acts out over health food.
If this is any indication of quietly growing womens' sentiments in the UK, we're disinclined to visit anytime soon, particularly if there are forks nearby. Feel free to send in more of the same or an explanation if you happen to have one.
Santa Clara agency throws together several ads for Unifieo's Export Quality Courses, programs made to teach Brazilian youth global skills. The ads encourage them to take the courses, which could lead to positions better suited than under-the-table positions for the self-entitled and sexy. There's also an au pair and cook variation.
We think the imagery is gorgeous and mixed with subtle irony. While Brazil trains youth to find better jobs outside the country, American post-collegiates break the doors down in Europe and South America for plebe positions, aspiring to live out overseas fantasies that would do Marie Antoinette justice. Priority issue? Despite the uncute factor of underpaid all-hours work, Brazil sees no end to young hot foals willing to take them.
Okay, there's more than just a one-handed man in the spot we're about to show you, but for us that's what stuck out, and we think that's what they wanted because they saved him for last.
Veteran group VoteVets is raising money to put this MoveOn-supported ad on air during the Super Bowl. It's meant to stop the escalation with the same (occasionally effective) psychological tactic 15-year-old boys use to get girls to put out in the backseat of cars: If you support escalation, you don't support the troops.
Click the above link to help them raise money, or just watch a series of vets try making you feel real real bad. Like we said, it's a fairly effective method.
We are big on the Bond reinvention characterized by Daniel Craig so maybe it's only natural that we'd be mildly iffy about this new campaign by Mazda, which takes the freshly-lit Bond torch out of Craig's hands and puts it in the claws of the usual two-dimensional leather-clad woman who skulks in the dark.
Building on the 12 Second Thriller campaign, which might as well have been a series of Viagra shorts, Mazda brings us Every Drive's a Thriller, boasting two :30 films directed by Luke Scott, Casino and Desert Treasure.
We'd say that we're turned on enough to buy an MX-5, and the whole power woman in black motif is always a bit exciting, but the Zoom-Zoom thing makes it feel a bit silly, a lot like the compressed and cartoony "Hello Moto."
Really. What can't you sell between two long leather-clad legs?
Channel 4 and viral site BoreMe are launching Germ2, the 2nd annual International Viral Awards which seeks the best viral work. Last year London based viral agency Maverick won the Best Commercially Produced Viral for a campaign to promote the racing simulation game Juiced. The awards are also open to individuals around the world, not just professionals. Entries can be submitted at until March 31st.
Maxim brings VIP-exclusive event Hotel de Maxim to the South of France to celebrate the Super Bowl in style. A nod to the jet-setting days of St. Tropez in the '60's, Hotel de Maxim shoots to bring party-goers a fete that will make P. Diddy's parties look like visits to The Jungle. With a mix of martinis, slots and caviar, Grandmaster Flash on the tables and live Sirius broadcasting, all it's missing is a vice orgy replica on Second Life.
Marketing cameos will include Cadillac, which will be sporting its White Diamond Escalade; Absolut, bringing its Flavor Fountains and martini station; Coors and the Bullet Girls; and Samsung, who'll be setting up an LCD TV Video Wall Garden.
Hotel de Maxim PR guys asked us to picture Bridget Bardot walking barefoot across the beach as Mick Jagger pours Champagne, but after detailing the scene we're thinking more along the line of Penelope stumbling around with a bowl full of cocaine in Blow right before the cops bust in. Decadence is decadence. Not a huge difference, yeah?
Portland, Oregon-based TAOW Productions just nailed a contract to manage Diamondback's BMX bike team. This means they manage their events and activities, getting the BMX lifestyle out in the open and hopefully also increasing consumer demand for Diamondback's products and services.
TAOW thinks it's looking at a new kind of model for experiential marketing intended to nail "cool market" influencers, a phrase we find lame, but short of "jaded and bitchy" we can't think of anything more polite to address the demographic they're referring to. TAOW's other recent efforts included icons like hip hop's Kanye West and Rodney Pete, formerly of the NFL. Their brand partners also include prominent lifestyle labels like Red Bull, Diesel and American Express. So maybe "the little agency that could" knows something other marketers don't.
We think people are going to like this new Super Bowl commercial from first-time advertiser Garmin which is promoting personal GPS. We saw the music video of the spot earlier but here is the finished :30. It's 50's-style battle between a monster than emanates from a driver's wind blown road map and the driver whose personal GPS device converts him into a monster fighting super hero. It's just weirdly different enough to achieve some decent recall. Though, it might suffer from the dreaded "what was that commercial selling?" problem the morning after.
Fallon created the commercial for the first time Super Bowl advertiser and will launch a corresponding microsite this Saturday before the game. There's also a blog that digs deeper into the world of the Maposaurus.
- Former Gawker Founding Editor Elizabeth Spiers, now founder of Dead Horse Media plans to launch several new blogs. One will cover organic living.
- Online ad spending is predicted to increase 18 percent in 2007 while media spend in other media decline.
- If you want the background behind those 20 websites Toy, New York created for OfficeMax, here's the video that recaps the project.
- Apparently, consumers aren't the only ones having trouble understanding a brand's positioning. In a recent Louws Management Corporation study, it was found just 1/4 could clearly articulate their company's brand positioning. Oops.
- Incumbent Riney is out of the Sprint Nextel pitch. Goodby, O&M and Y&R remain.
- Boobs and bikinis are now hawking coffee at coffee shops.
While Advertising Age's Jonah Bloom has had issues with what we've written a couple times, we are, without doubt, sure he's going to take issue with what George Parker recently wrote about a column Jonah did on Crispin Porter + Bogusky backlash. Commenting on Bloom's statement about ads being "events" and hatred of Crispin's work actually being a good thing for the client, Parker wrote, "Listen Jonah baby, do me a favor, go and rent a copy of 'The Hucksters' and check out the scene where Sydney Greenstreet as 'The Soap Baron' spits up a huge gob of phlegm on the boardroom table to show agency guy Clark Gable how you go about catching the consumers attention. It's disgusting, just like holding a pile of dog shit, or having a crazed Nazi with a Nurse Diesel assistant shilling for VW. You don't have to spit in someone's face to get their attention."
Parker's gleeful criticism doesn't end there, adding, " And don't give me that shit about 'Ads as events.' They're fucking ADS... Get it. If I want an event, I'll go to the Super Bowl, and not for the ads. This is what happens when you have people who've never worked a day in advertising, writing about advertising. Pathetic!"
So who's right? No bullshit George who has years of advertising experience or CP+B-defending Jonah who's made a successful career in journalism?
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