For years we've made fun of stock photography and the marketers that use it pointing out the pitfalls such as the same models appearing at the same time for different advertisers and the poses that are completely devoid of anything resembling real life but we've never gone so far as to dedicate and entire web page to them.
Now we have "9 things I learned about the world according to anonymous stock photo models." From creepy parents to "curly haired black women 'going moist' for wireless broadband routers" to "People who sit in cramped cubicles answering customer service calls in drab corporate call centers are overjoyed to help fix your DSL modem" to the over representation of African Americans to stupid laptop poses to "Random-ass white dudes should be placed all over your corporate website for no fucking reason," this site cuts through all the crap and tells it like it is. Check it our before you choose your next stock photo
To push TLC, its on-the-go flight update function, Orbitz gets behind YouTube in these ads which, if nothing else, show the perfect good-bye depends as much on the timeliness of your beloved's leaving as on your demonstration of suicide-inducing sadness.
Funny funny. We like how the gay one is labeled LGBT. It really led us to believe the spot would be racier than it was.
There's just something about the phrase "master of disguise" that dissolves us into giggles.
Grey Worldwide and Asabailey Viral Advertising put together an explorer-style "branded entertainment feature" (not viral) to showcase Tanqueray's adventurous new Rangpur gin. Created for the Globe Probe and set in mystery-ridden India, the show has an Austin Powerness to it that's inexpicably appealing.
Take a seat for The Hidden Lime Groves of Rangpur. It's actually almost worth it until the Tanqueray comes out of the snake basket and you realize that you just lost 10 minutes of your life to a gin ad.
Alongside that chic McBride run for its Never Hide campaign, Ray Ban is also pushing this funny little YouTube effort that both laughs at and laughs with the hipsters.
Really. It's a pair of dudes wandering around catching Wayfarers with their faces.
But that aside, it does a good job of taking the occasional stodginess associated with Ray Ban and demonstrating how the post-post-modern uncool-cool kids have invested it with new life.
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How do you make cancer funny? With tighty whities and hairy men, which make most everything funny.
For Olay's Skin Cancer Takes Friends, effort, which encourages watchers to get free screenings, Company X and Saatchi and Saatchi put together a spot about a screening station on the streets of New York. Only one man balls up to take the exam and he strips all the way down to his briefs, to the horror of passers-by.
Check it out on the Company X website.
The ad was shot with a set of hidden cameras and reactions were for the most part genuine. Company X editor Barney Miller gushes, "Every friend I play it for says something along the lines of, 'Wow, that's funny. I really need to get a skin cancer screening.'"
Hrm. Okay, then.
In an effort to put all those overpriced, hipsteresque pussy vodkas back in their place, the grand daddy of vodka, Stolichnaya, constructed a 10,000 square foot traveling hotel and gave it a celebu-gasmic opening in LA May 2. With everyone from Bai Ling to Apple Guy Justin Long to ER's Shane West to Andy Dick to Devon Aoki to Bijou Phillips to James Blunt and even Paris Hilton who looked bored out of her mind, Stoli did the pop up store thing in high style. What, you expect more? There's only so much you can say about celebrities and LA.
- Classic "How many licks does it take?" Tootsie Pop commercial gets a makeover. not sure we like.
- With rampant ageism in this industry, here's a few reasons why it isn't always such a great idea to cast out over 40s.
- Cynopsis reports, "MySpace agreed to acquire PhotoBucket for a reported $250 million in cash and bonuses. Photobucket, one of the darlings of the Web 2.0 phenomenon, is the web's dominant photo sharing site with 41 million registered users."
- ABC will air Lost three more seasons ending in 2010. That's two seasons too many.
- Do you design movie posters? Do you think they are stupid/ Think you can do better? now you can design your own with Movie Poster Toolbox.
- Verizon and Fergie have teamed to offer mobile phone-based wireless tickets to her upcoming tour.
- MySpace is said to be purchasing Photobucket for $250 million.
- Fewer and fewer people may not be watching your TV ads but if your target audience is kids under 2, you're in luck. Ninety percent watch.
Apparently there's art to emo. Positing that faking sexual androgyny and and crying into your pillow is a legit lifestyle (who said it wasn't?), self-proclaimed "o.g. emophiliacs" Leslie Simon and Trevor Kelley push their new novel Everybody Hurts: An Essential Guide to Emo Culture.
Learn how to interact with the world through unwashed hair and red-rimmed eyes. Jasus. How much Linkin park can one really take in a day?
The book's getting a push on MySpace. Users thus far have given it a rating of 53.3 percent. And lest you be confused, that's not sub-par, that's failure. Sing about that, baby.
Perhaps they do put drugs in fast food. How else can one explain the stupidity of two zoo workers who are so enamored with their Arby's Barbecue Bacon and Jack Melt they are oblivious to the mass exodus occurring right before their eyes. Damn, we'd love to be that distracted while in a Monday morning traffic meeting.
You learn something new every day. For all these years we've been hand cranking our garden hose reel when we could have been lazily watching it neatly crank itself had we purchased a No-Crank Hose Reel. Thanks to the beauty of online video via YouTube, we now know we can be even lazier than we already are.
Now about the actual video that informed us of this wondrous contraption: it's weird. But, we'd expect nothing less from our friends over at Keta Keta who brought us the famed Make Love, Not Terror; Make Love, Not War; Vegas Red; the Israeli Holy Virals; the gay Holy Viral; the Koolanoo pool babe; the James Bond version of the Koolanoo babe; Network2's kinky voyeurism and the Propecia flying pool babe.
This particular video gives us a man who takes gardener out for a very gay day that's supposed to, perhaps, weird us out so much, we'll agree completely with the tagline, "There's a better way to make your gardener happy," and go run out and buy a No-Crank Hose Reel.
This new spot for Traveler's Insurance lauds the surgical reattachment of rabbit feet to their hosts following a growing public realization that luck means little when you've got good insurance.
Fallon, Minneapolis did the spot. The PR girl was quick to note the rabbits' paws were dyed with a vegetable base and that the American Humane Association was on set along with the frolicking little extras. Well, we're sure PETA is too busy with other things to decry the loss of a potential pro-bunny crusade.
We smiled a bit and reflexively clutched at the string of hoodoo chicken legs around our necks. Hands off, Fallon.
Here's a fun nod to Marvel's continued success over DC when it comes to transforming its comics into movies. Following Spiderman 3's $150 million opening weekend, Superman and Spiderman dish about who's got more comic movie muscle Apple vs. PC commercial-style.
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