It's a back. It's a knee. It's a head. It's a butt. It's a distended stomach. It's a gigantic breasts. It's a...wait...should we have to work that hard to figure out what a visual is in an ad? Of course not but in this case it really doesn't matter because this is an ad for a skin care product. And back, knees, heads, butt's, stomach and gigantic breasts all have skin. In this ad for Vaseline Intensive Care Cocoa Butter, the marketer keeps us guessing which, when you think about it, is one great way to get people to pay attention to your ad.
Perhaps giving eMarketer a run for its money, a new site and newsletter, MarketingCharts from Watershed Publishing, publisher of MarketingVOX and MediaBuyerPlanner, has launched to provide marketers with charts, graphs, tables and all manner of data for marketers, advertisers and agencies.
We are told, "Content will focus on daily updates of key marketing data, both traditional and interactive, and daily stories digesting the latest studies and other data-intensive developments. Users will be able to download Excel files of data for their own use." The site will be edited by former MarketingVOX editor Vahe Habeshian.
XLNTads, a sort of network that brings together people who like to create stuff (CGM) and brands interested in tapping that expertise for their advertising needs. While sounding a bit like a cheap way for marketers to get ads made, they are approaching social and consumer generated media the right way by involving those who are in the thick of it. They have formed a Creator's Advisory Board, which includes such famed CGMers as Kevin McNalty to make sure the marketing minds at XLNTads are in tune with the segment.
As a run up to its official July launch, the company is hosting a contest which will award $5,000 to the person who develops the best campaign to promote XLNTads itself.
Apparently, this is what web design firms do during down time. Seemingly for our amusement and, in the process, to demonstrate their stellar design skills, 10mg interactive has offered up a stuffed bunny who needs surgery. With defibrillator, razor, scalpel and other surgery tools, those inclined can zap the bunny, cut him open and play with his intestines. Fun, huh? We're definitely calling these guys for our next project!
Wow. We just might have to start liking Agency.com and put that whole Subway deal behind us. But, maybe not since the Subway video-creating Agency.com is not the same as the London-based Agency.com that created this new work for British Airways' new Club World Cabin. While lushly displaying all the first class cabin's accouterments, visitors can play a game in which the cabin's features are explored while searching for a pair of airline tickets which, if found, enter one in a drawing. The drawing's winner receives two tickets in the Club World Cabin from London to New York and a stay at the Intercontinental Barclay Hotel. We entered. Twice.
Mashing up the green movement, artistic collaboration and esoteric naming devices (consider Gnarls Barley), all of which are really hot among organic smoothie-sucking elite, Blake Hamster comes at us with manifesto in hand, burning down traditional e-tail norms and whatnot.
And while we're not sure what's happening in the picture at left (a rape? A drug transaction? An arm's-length grope?), we crazy-dig their eco-sexy overpriced fare.
Plus they come at a good time considering duds have finally surpassed electronics, revenue-wise, over the Internet.
It's understandable women don't want to sit on a toilet seat covered with piss launched by men who can't aim properly so it makes sense an airline would eventually provide bathrooms for women only. That's exactly what Silverjet has done but it also leads us to believe they cater to only to lesbian mile high club members. Where's a poor straight girl to go?
For some reason, Miller Lite thinks it's beer is only for smart people. Or at least that's what Crispin Porter + Bogusky wanted Miller Lite and the rest of us to think as we watch this recent commercial. We've all seen these idiots out and about and have always distanced ourselves from them. Nothing like being lumped together with a bunch of chanting idiots...especially when a beautiful bartender mistakenly thinks you're one of the buffoons.
Speaking of bad context, AdFreak observes an awkward instance for wood: at a theme park.
If you've seen Shrek, you know it's possible to incorporate raunchy grown-up giggles into apparently tame kid-fare without looking like a total asshat.
Six Flags Great Adventure in Jersey has yet to learn this subtle art, considering they erected a gigantor billboard for their big wooden El Toro ride upon which is writ "It's good to have wood" - right over the head of the perennially cheerful Bugs Bunny.
While they were at it, they might as well have gone all the way and made a cock-shaped roller coaster in the style of the French. Then El Toro would have been aptly named.
A company makes a 12-month media buy and it passes as news worthy of publishing. We passed on the press release yesterday figuring, oh, who the hell wants to read about a company that just made a media buy? That's like sending out a press release when an agency holds a traffic meeting. MediaPost didn't pass on it and features it as it's first story in its Online Media Daily newsletter. We're not even going to mention the details because you can read all about it over at MediaPost..
Even funnier is the byline on the story. It took two entire human beings to make this story happen. OK, OK, they did make a phone call to one of the company's CEOs. Apparently, one person had to dial the number while the other asked the questions. OK, OK, 12 month online media commitments aren't common. OK, OK, supposedly it's a lot of money. Whatever. We have a traffic meeting to attend. Oh wait. We have to send out a release first. OK, now we can go. Later.
For this edition of Contextual Advertising Screw-Ups, a festive Pizza Hut ad appears atop a CNN story about a death row inmate who, for his last meal on earth, ordered pizza for a transient.
And while that was fuzzy-sweet of him, we weren't quite raring to order pizza online immediately thereafter.
(Note to Pizza Hut: add the word "killer" to campaign negative keywords.)
We do love a good contextual advertising screw-up. And because we're feeling nostalgic, let's tilt our heads and recall the time Expedia sent 35,000 troops to Iraq, or the time Microsoft sponsored the Wii contest water death, or the time a turpentine ad added texture to the tale of the pregnant girl who drank it to off herself.
Hearing this rendition of Duran Duran's Hungry Like the Wolf as played by Bruce Campbell smarmy lounge act-style for Old Spice's Ahoy Body Spray makes the eighties seem like an era much more distant than the actual 20-25 years that have past would suggest. Surrounded by a bevy of beauties in front of a fire, Campbell, recently seen in an equally smarmy role in Spiderman 3, offers up his rendition of the Duran Duran hit which the girls seem to love. Or maybe it's the Old Spice Ahoy Body Spray they like as indicated by their Axe-style attraction to the man as he plays...or pretends to play. At one point during Campbell's serenade, his hands completely leave the keyboard while the smarm continues to ooze from the grand piano.
This campaign very wittily separates itself from Axe while, at the same time, mocks Axe's man-magnet approach to selling body spray. Even the Hungry Like the Wolf lyrics play into the joke. This is Campbell's second outing for Old Spice and it works. His first involved sitting around a fireplace dispensing advice with the same smarm displayed in the second outing.
This recent work was created by Wieden + Kennedy and directed by The Perlorian Brothers.
The aptly named agency Mother, New York gives us Maternacord, the ultimate Mother's Day surprise.
Our favourite scene from the promo video:
Daughter: "It's tingling."
Mom: "That means it's working."
Why get Mom an iPod when you can umbilically reconnect? It's so deliciously creepy.
We just thought this was funny. And it wasn't that long ago, either.
In April 2004 Garrett French of Web Pro News wrote a post about Google's announcement of GMail - which, in Google's "loose, freewheeling" style, fell just before April Fool's Day.
"How long," French scoffed, "would it take before that ocean of email burst from the Google server farm and sank Washington?"
*Observes moment of silence for nostalgic wave*
Funny how standards can change.
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