We seem to have a thing for those fake magazine cover ads and it looks like DDB is using the trick as its last stand for JC Penny before handing over the reigns to Saatch & Saatchi who will give us its "Every Day Matters" love. But, for now, it's still "It's All Inside."
In the March issue of GQ, the cover of another magazine, MANdatory, appears complete with manism headlines such as "There, there. How to tell her what she needs to hear" and "Emotions. Could there be more than two?" It's not terribly creative but it does stand out in a sea of messageless, Dolce & Gabanna-like ads that fill the magazine so we'll give them points for that. It did get us to stop and read it.
Alas, the retailer is due for a squishy Love Marks makeover which, hopefully, doesn't try to make the place more than what it is: a moderately priced department store that sells moderately styled items to moderate people. Everything doesn't need to be high end, ya know.
Pizza Hut has launched a search or a new VP. OK, not really. It's just a marketing stunt to find an Honorary VP of Pizza through a YouTube video promotion in which entrants submit video please as to why they should get the gig. The winner gets $25,000 and free pizza for a year. Hardly proper compensation or a VP level position. Especially from a company that can afford to put Jessica Simpson on th Super Bowl. Anyway, the YouTube submission area is here.
There's only five submissions so far. Aside from one moderately funny joke, there's not much competition if you want to jump in.
This, from FishNChimps, is just funny. Lynx/Axe is at it's silliness again, this time covering an unsuspecting father in law to be with body spray only to result in the oddly uncontrollable attraction from his son's fiance upon re-entering the room.
We love it when people take an old standby and try dabbling in some trend-setting necromancy.
Macaroni and cheese, which only devolved into Easy Mac as time went on, is now Supermac for Chelsea inhabitants in the know. Alongside plain-jane mac and cheese you can get French Onion, Lobster Thermidor or Mykanos-style mac.
And of course you have the option of partaking with or without breadcrumbs and whole-wheat pasta.
What we've got here is a burgeoning industry where a killing can be made transforming old-school foods with natural oils, whole wheat and occasionally seaweed (use your best judgment). Somebody needs to get to work on Top Ramen.
When you're a starving model and you're desperate to appear in a fashion ad, what do you do? You create a fake Gucci ad, get it placed in a newspaper and have the bill sent to Gucci, of course. An unknown man placed a call to Swiss weekly SonntagsZeitung, the paper ran the ad and, yes, sent the $50,000 bill to Gucci. Oops. The paper claims the order "came in too late" to be checked to validity.
The man has previously attempted to dupe once pretending to be Puerto Rican singer Chayanne to book concert venues. Does this man need help or is he the industry's answer to guerrilla marketing? He might want to steer clear of Boston if it's the latter.
This moving spot entitled "Stuck" for the ABC CANADA Literacy Foundation goes out of its way to get serious about adult illiteracy. The piece illustrates a fast-moving world in which a highlighted few seem suspended in time.
Great way to demonstrate that with limited or no reading skills, you can only get so far. Subtlety is indeed king.
Created by ACLC, Toronto.
Man, Ed O'Neill has come a long way since his Married With Children Days. Now he's a spokesman for an AOL effort which urges people to watch videos on AOL video for zero cents a day. Aside from the fact, in order to view the videos, one needs a computer (which costs money) and an Internet connection (which costs money), it all sounds pretty good. Oh, and you have to look at ads too. But those really are free. Nothing like begging for ad impressions. Hmm.
Those Punk Marketing guys really know how to capture attention. In a surprise hijack of our ADHD-afflicted mental states, a bathing Cleo appears for the sultry third installment of the book's twisted "storytime with a stripper" effort. And while arguably more chaste, we like it way better than PETA's striptease state of the union.
"Business people must rise up and take back subtlety," Cleo purrs as she toys with a bar of soap. Interesting point. And we're appalled that we sat through all 4.5 minutes of it. If this is indeed the best way to capture an antsy websurfer's attention, how best to capture a reader's? Does the book come with illustrations?
Catch the first and second vids here.
Sometimes a well-written, polite letter just doesn't cut it. It certain times, what's needed is the purest, most unfiltered expression of thought and what better devive to transfer that blunt thought to a piece of paper than a big 'ol sharpie. In a new Brand Buzz-created campaign, that's exactly the message. There's no need to waste time with fancy words when you can quickly scrawl out your thoughts with a Sharpie.
A collection of :15's broke February 19 on national cable and print will hit March issues of Better Homes & Garden, Family Fun, Parents, People, Sports Illustrated, Martha Stewart Living, Redbook and Oprah.
See the ads here, here, here and here.
Aware of the average college student's ongoing state of starvation, Kraft puts together University of St. Arvin, where users can auto-generate depressed letters to parents and otherwise scam their way into some Easy Mac.
Our memories of dorm room subsistence are vivid and not very pleasant. We haven't touched Easy Mac since. But even if processed insta-food is behind us, microwaving stuff that shouldn't be microwaved is not.
We're glad we've been given the opportunity to experience this small pleasure from the safety of our own monitors. What can't a computer do for you today?
In support of equal marriage rights, agency Young & Rubicam, Chicago join forces with director Max Vitali of HSI Productions. The resulting smile-coaxing spots crush the notion gays will do nothing but cross-dress and debauch if permitted to marry.
The series comically emphasizes the familiar and occasionally frustrating domesticity we all experience after a given amount of time with our partners. We also dig the candid tagline, "Gay marriage is just like yours. Only gay."
Thus inspired we thought it would be nifty to add "Adrants is just like you. Only sexaaaaaay" to all future marketing efforts. We find it catchy.
If you're a fan of Jennifer Love Hewitt and watch her CBS Ghost Whisperer show on Friday night, you know she loves to wear some of the oddest fashion as well as tease us with her cleavage. In fact, she's always loved the attention paid to her chest and has said, "My breasts have a career of their own. I just accept them as a great accessory to every outfit."
Her breasts are now a featured accessory for Hanes' new Hanes All-Over Comfort Bra with Comfort Straps, a product women of her shape can appreciate. Hewitt has appeared in Hanes campaigns before and been featured in our own spoof story but this one, created by Martin Agency, is, as the press release states, "targeted at women who have specified a need for a bra that offers no-slip straps and no pinching or sliding."
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We all have to deal with vermin from time to time, but rarely do we have to fight them for our fried chicken, dolphin v. man-style. This is what patrons of a KFC in Greenwich Village had to do when a deluge of vermin ran a rampage across tables, chairs and trays.
Graham and Jamie fill us in on the story and include a clever little comic where PR guys (of course) save the day. Because in the end, tons of rats generate tons of press for KFC and "Customer Mania!" parent company Yum! as a whole. You just have to know how to spin it. No advertising is bad advertising ... right?
Jeff Burkett points to a hilarious spoof of a Microsoft Zune Phone commercial in which "Steve Ballmer" does the informercial-style thing hawking all the supposedly wonderful things about the Zune including Windows Paint, MS-DOC Executive Appointment Calendar, a clock and a RAM driver...all for $9. What's even funnier is a video of the real Steve Ballmer laughing at the $500 Apple iPhone and tossing it off as some sort of over-priced phone no one will buy. If memory serves, the iPod was pretty expensive when it first came out. I guess we'll see who's right over time.
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