Southern Comfort (with Lime!): for when you're beyond sensory cognizance. The music sucks, your conduct questionable, everyone's funny, and Ugly at left is starting to look like a Good Investment.
The spot's called "Suspended Moments" and is part of a big hard year-end push. Also, in efforts to get down with the music scene, Southern Comfort goes by SoCo now. (It worked for J-Lo, Diddy and BevMo, right?)
Beginning next month, "SoCo Music Experience" webisodes will air on Heavy, My Damn Channel, Pitchfork.tv, Complex.com and DeathandTaxesMagazine.com. I'm not sure what a "Music Experience" is, but if I had to guess, I'd say they're like trashy music videos with slipperier floors. And heavy on the indie bands for good measure.
On Visa's behalf, Morgan Freeman congratulates US Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps "on having won more gold medals than anybody EVAR." The ad started airing hours after Phelps exceeded his own expectations of winning eight gold medals -- seizing his 10th on Tuesday. (He is now up to 11.)
Don't tell me they didn't have this bad-boy lying in wait, because I seriously doubt Freeman looked up from his gardening or whatever to go, "Oh! Phelps delivered the goods, I think I'll put together another sepia montage and say 'Good job' all over the world."
A recent Nielsen Online buzz tracking study found Phelps is the most-discussed Olympian athlete online. And on TV last night, I found out Phelps' wingspan is 6'7" -- THREE INCHES WIDER than he is tall. Also, his feet bend 15 degrees more than the average swimmer, making them more flippery or something.
UPDATE: Everyone seems to think I hate this ad. I don't. I think it was crafty of Visa to have it on the pipeline, I think it was a lovely way to fist-bump Phelps, and I think the campaign as a whole is a positive step away from the mediocre "Life Takes Visa" stuff we've been seeing. There. Please feel free to untwist your underpants.
Apparently asterisks are bad.* In a campaign called "Don't be an Asterisk," the US Olympic Committee and the Ad Council associate them with steroids and inauthenticity.**
Witness as a high school jock repulses once-loving classmates when an asterisk starts forming on his forehead. (Apt, I guess, since steroids are supposed to make you break out like whoa.)
But here I was, all this time, thinking the teen angst market was reserved exclusively for the zit zappers. Speaking of which, J&J -- parent company of Neutrogena! -- funded this effort, which was put together by TBWA/Chiat/Day/NY.
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Affiliate Summit Boston was held August 10-12 at the Seaport World Trade Center. Affiliate Summit brings together those who, well, engage in affiliate marketing. What's affiliate marketing? Basically, it's revenue share advertising. A site runs ads for free but gets a cut of whatever sale occurs through the advertising. If you've seen those amazon book listings on websites then you've seen affiliate advertising.
Here's another great definition: "Affiliate marketing widens the scope of your internet presence by encouraging other websites to become advocates for your services, increasing your online exposure and improving the efficiency of your advertising spend."
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See the new Colorado Lottery spot by Cactus. It promised instant fun but didn't deliver, although the spot probably would've been mildly amusing if it weren't buttressed by a threat to hit us with talent fees if we host the goddamn ad and don't take it down by October 6.
Fucking wet blankets.
Some guy who makes Presidential kippahs is experimenting with a John Edwards "cheater" kippah. But he's not sure if he really wants to sell them because he read The Secret and doesn't want to send negative energy into the universe.
Go help him make up his mind.
Oh the horror! The double standard! The blatant sexism! Wait. What are we talking about? Oh yea. Nudity in advertising. Put a few nude or barely dressed women in an ad and everyone cries OBJECTIFICATION! Place a few nude guys in an ad and the whole thing becomes a squirmy laugh.
Of course, the guys in this ad for the Norwegian Automobile Federation aren't quite the objects of desire we see in the usual "hot chick sells stuff" variety of ads but still. Where's the outcry? Where's the cause group supporting the rights of these men? Why are we laughing when we should be raging against the machinations of a clearly sexist piece of work? Oh the horror! Will someone please call a cause group!
Yawn... Oh, wait. Not yawn. This continuing Enfatico fuckery is just too precious to leave alone. Besides, like elementary school bullies, we in the ad industry simply can't bypass a chance to pick on anyone who, well, isn't - through an unfortunate confluence of events (or is it intentional idiocy?) - just begging for a lashing. And today's whipping boy is WPP's Enfatico. Crispin Porter Bogusky must be very thankful Enfatico has taken the stage.
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Guerrilla marketing firm CreateHere stenciled 35°85°* all over Chattanooga to promote 35°85° A Chattanooga Party, which I guess is a free house party thrown by CreateHere and other local businesses. (I concluded that based on the Facebook page and not the website, which only gave me some Wordle-looking nonsense. Who decided making readers crane their heads and squint was a smart game plan?)
Oddly (or stupidly) enough, the party is not at 35 degrees latitude and 85 degrees longitude. Google Maps says that's somewhere in China. Let's hope nobody put on their party pants and tried going.
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- At left: a French mushroom ad! OMG cute. Caption: "Paris mushrooms: it's when they're in your mouth that they're the happiest." Go make them happy. Our resident expat PT Ford isn't so amused.
- Nothing starts the day off better than a kung fu drink ad.
- Dario at Invoke sent us this shot of the Newfoundland-based Hits 99.1 FM van.
- Worthless but interesting tag cloud tool. This one lets you pick fonts and colors. Pop in a URL, see what your homepage mentions most. (Adrants loves itself some Leigh.)
- Public School Intelligentsia learns us a new word: frumputante. Think cash-money bag ladies in Juicy Couture sweats. Streaky hair a plus. Ugh.
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Is sex (or the hint of) allowed to sell in China? If you are Volkswagen and Dynamic Marketing Group is your agency then, it seems, yes. Or if it isn't sex, maybe it's the realization that things have changed in Chinese culture and the country wants the rest of the world to know it.
Out with the old and in with the new as it were. Up with the hemlines and out with subservience. China wants to join the rest of the world and wallow in rampant commercialization. Welcome to the party, China.
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