'Tis the season for back-to-school, and Target hits the notes without once going flat. In its latest spot, two roomies meet for the first time, shake hands, then dance their asses off to Calabria by Enur. Sometimes they're battling; other times they're totally in tandem. Meanwhile, they manage to magically decorate their oversized room.
Sassy stuff though. Tagline: "Be happy together, design together, save together. At Target." But it could also have been "West Side Story, meet Conspicuous Consumption. Now wiggle away your differences."
Think the happy together signals the birth of a new cover song? The Turtles had kind of a Target vibe going on, and it'd make a nice transition from Hello Goodbuy.
Dr. J puts a little throwback spice into Dr. Pepper with "Drink it Slow" by Deutsch/LA, part of Dr. Pepper's just-launched campaign, "Trust Me, I'm a Doctor."
In the spot, former basketball player Julius Erving -- your homie Dr. J -- encourages users to drink Dr. Pepper slowly, to better savor its 23 flavours. "Hey, I get it, 'cause half my life's been in slow motion," J adds. Cut to a sound bite of his dunking triumphs as he lobs an ice cube, slow-mo-style, into a faraway glass. I like the little kick he does.
Kelsey Grammer will to appear in a future spot as Dr. Frasier Crane. I'm hoping they also use Doogie, but it's doubtful since Old Spice already stole that thunder.
A younger Dr. J also appeared in a Converse spot this year.
Probably inspired by the Eva Mendes nipple drama, Adrants reader Brian Guth sent us this billboard idea for the "Got Milk?" campaign.
The text: "You should know that milks [sic] nine essential nutrients make for one irresistible body!"
Before I saw the picture up-close, I thought it was a shot of flowing milk, which would have made for a neat foreground against the clouds in the sky. But nah, it's just another nipple.
Here's a wee throwaway video I took in the ad:tech press room, which is where we hole up from morning 'til the first party of the night.
Featuring Brent Terrazas, Steve Hall and Really Loud Guy Who Asks for Business Cards and Puts You On Annoying Mailing Lists.
Seriously. He doesn't even ask for your name. It's just "Miss, got a business card? I HAVE A NEWSLETTER."
While ad:tech Chicago's "The Role of Email in a Web 3.0 World" was mostly theory, I liked its feel-good flow. Moderator Christopher Marriott of Acxiom Digital got panelists comfortable without making viewers feel like they were sitting on the outside of an inside joke. It's a rare and beautiful skill.
Marriott acknowledged it was late in the day and told us up-front that the panelists were debriefed on his questions beforehand. As a result, he said, they came laden with slides to answer three major questions:
1. How might the nature of email change as it goes more completely cross-platform?
2. Can email coexist with the semantic web (web 3.0) ... or co-opt it?
3. What role will The Consumer play in creating web 3.0 email?
Before we get too deep down the rabbit hole, let's define web 3.0.
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For its back-to-school campaign "New School of Thought," Adidas Originals went all hipster and whatnot. The company partnered with trueAnthem to create a widget that gives away free music by Ultraviolet Sound and 30 percent discounts on Adidas Originals gear. The widget also includes short Adidas audio ads mixed by the band.
The street-sassy shoe brand joins Converse, Gap, Cartier and even Vanity Fair in disseminating free MP3s to the masses.
Why this might be smart marketing: if iTunes listeners switch Coverflow on, listening to your track will expose them to your marketing message, along with the album art. And if the campaign music's been uploaded onto last.fm, then last.fm users expose their friends to your brand when they listen to your track. So go stimulate those white earbuds, you go-getters, you.
- Need to brush up on your dating skills? Head over to the Stop Hating Dating Game and engage in some choose your own adventure action. It's all to promote a book, of course.
- New York Festivals has formed a partnership with China's SiTV to showcase its International Advertising Trophy winners on XiYuan, China's show about advertising.
- What the James Bond Quantum of Solace theme song will be since Amy Winehouse ain't.
- "Harvey Marco, standing ECD at Saatchi LA, is confirmed to have resigned from his role, yesterday August 5th. This according to a Saatchi LA insider."
- Need a Doctor Who fix? 2 Entertain and gas Agency has it for you with an online quiz.
The beginning of this video touting the delivery company's online trackingvideo asks, "How best to grab the attention of office workers during their bust day and drive interest online?" This simple answer? Affix a cursor to the side of the DHL truck and drive it around the city. Hey, this is advertising, not brain surgery.
In addition to "nude" Olympian appearances in a recent Powerade campaign, Olympic swimmer Amanda Beard got "naked" for PETA in support of the organization's Don't Wear Fur campaign. Apparently her public appearance at a news conference in Bejing was too much for Chinese officials to handle who shut her down, reportedly, for safety reasons. She then moved to another location an unveiled the ad to the usual swarm of photographers and gawkers.
Likely, China isn't so accepting of PETA's freedom of speech-enabled mode of operation given that, according to PETA, Chinese fur farms aren't the greatest places for a furry animal to find itself.
So all those Verizon commercials with the "It's the Network" crowd showing up en mass have, in some way, become institutionalized and, well, boring. But, sometimes, boredom is the keystone of a long-running, successful ad campaign. Still, it's always interesting when a brand decides to shake things up a bit.
Now this is Verizon so don't expect Snickers bars shot out of a cannon by Mr. T but this new video is a welcome extension of the ongoing "It's the Network" campaign. In the video, a guy makes a call in a park and the network crowd follows him around. It's all staged, of course but it's a nice departure frokm the corporate looking television commercial versions of "It's the Network."
Teasingly, the closing tagline reads, "Where will The Network show up next?" This could become interesting. Especially if they do truly unstaged versions.Though it's sad this video has been on YouTube since July 15 and it only has 5,282 views. Perhaps they need some seeding expertise.
Like a mashup of country club elitism and Rastafarian grooviness, these new Mother New York-created videos from 10 Cane Rum are delightfully intoxicating and elicit a blurry, drug-addled fogginess. After two days at an ad conference, these videos perfectly identify with the current mindset. And even if you haven't just survived an advertising conference, you'll love where these videos take you; to that serene Caribbean world where everyone is perfect looking and the run flows freely on the warm, sunny beach while the bothers of the real world slowly slip away. Can you feel it? Are you there? Are you running to the store right now to buy some 10 Cane rum?
Tuesday night at ad:tech Chicago wrapped up with a keynote by author Clay Shirky, "Here Comes Every Customer: The Former Audience is Talking Around You."
The Big Idea, if intro speaker Drew Ianni is any authority: "The internet is the most important thing to happen to the human species."
That's a pretty high and mighty manifesto. Upon taking the stage, Shirky tried conveying the same idea with more precision -- and a much higher word count.
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