For those of you that value conferences for the "networking," ad:tech Chicago's opening night party kicks off at 8PM on Tuesday.
It happens at Enclave, which you probably remember from last year. From 8-10 there'll be open bar and hors d'oeuvres -- usually tasty but scarce; I stand by the kitchen entry for just this reason. From 10-11, it's a cash bar, which is your cue to exit stage left and go find a good jazz club anyway. That's what Chicago's really about,* and boy will that SEO guru think you're cultured!
Good news: sporting your ad:tech badge grants you free entry. Register before September 1 for a free expo hall pass. And if you want to know where Enclave is, it's at 220 W. Chicago Ave -- right between N. Franklin and N. Wells.
See you by the kitchen.
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Impressive if a little in-your-face. With help from SheKnows, Deep Focus and VideoEgg, NYC-based creative producer Fred Ehrhard used video banner ads, a Diggable top-10 list and Twitter hashtags to convince his girlfriend to marry him.
In the event that you want to help the stalwart Fred along, use the hashtag #sayyesD to tell Delila, the girl in question, why she should weld her life to his FOREVAH. Handy-dandy twitter search, however, has informed us that she's accepted, so now y'all can stop stressing about the additional work that's been imposed on the hive mind.
Wondering if this is the last we'll hear about Delila and Fred. Probably not. We can see the Caturday headlines now: IM IN UR SOCNETS, ARRANGING UR MARRIAGE!
Adrants reader Gareth sent over Levi's tribute to Senator Edward Kennedy. It appeared in the Sunday editions of the Times and the Globe and sports a rambling and whimsical quote from the Sen. ("The work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die"), then a message from Levi's itself: "Let us continue his legacy of faith in the people and faith in the work that has yet to be done."
Wordy but loaded with gravity. We like that it remains sparing and casual; apart from the text, a hand-sketched version of the Levi's logo appears over its current tagline: "Go forth," part of a campaign primarily targeted to meatheads at uni.
The ad reminds us of Kenneth Cole's "Different Shoes" campaign, and it's a wonder to us that KC hasn't seized this opportunity to add Kennedy to its list of creative-friendly quotables.
It could just be that we didn't look hard enough though, so if we're wrong, send that bad-boy over.
All the fun coordinated playtime stuff happens on Trafalgar Square. It gets Beatles karaoke (courtesy of T-Mobile!), it gets turfed, and on Saturday it hosted the largest-ever flashmob to dance to Thriller in tandem.
The event was organized on Facebook and Twitter to celebrate the King of Pop's 51st birthday. The video makes it all feel frenetic and cumbersome, but hey, whaddaya want, it's a bunch of fans on a mission.
Speaking of fans on a mission, remember that one time a sadistic jailer forced 1500 inmates at a Cebu prison to dance to Thriller? Oh, MJ, you impacted the world in ways you probably never imagined.
A spankin' new ad for Beatles Rock Band features the Fab Four alive and well, loitering with fans on Abbey Road. There's even an almost-convincingly-cut scene of George Harrison strumming alongside a kid with a Rock Band guitar.
The frothy setting -- utterly devoid of the angst that made them not-a-band-anymore -- melts into animated versions of the Beatles themselves, beating their instruments over the coloured Rock Band bars that tell you what string to hit. Song featured in the ad is Come Together off their Abbey Road album.
No strong feelings of disdain here; it's certainly a lot less callous than that one time Saatchi used All You Need is Love to sell diapers or the time Ben & Jerry's distilled the spirit of John Lennon in a hippie ice cream.
Oddly -- and we might change our minds about this later -- the ad made the notion of bringing the Beatles back as an animated pleasure-band a lot less traumatizing than watching a stilted cartoon Kurt Cobain play marionette for Guitar Hero. It's cheesy, sure, but it could have been a trainwreck.
Identity of the agency behind the ad remains a mystery for now. Word has it there'll be a reveal after the game comes out. Anyway, whoever you are, nice job; we'd be liars if we said the work lacked charm.
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- BBDO loses the Chrysler biz-nass. Read the detailed sitch and the straight-up tear.
- Political sand artist wins Ukraine's version of America's Got Talent. People in audience cry.
- iPhone users, Bump your way out of business card purgatory.
- Twitter penetrates network TV. (*sigh*) Via Make the Logo Bigger.
- New Bogusky/Winsor propaganda: Baked-In: The Power of Aligning Marketing & Product Innovation.
- Dictionary.com hipsters out, loses mind.
- "People with hangovers love Captain Morgan."
- Bloggers talk crowdsourcing on the BeanCast.
Being in the service is like living in a bubble: you do as you're told, go where you're sent, and live on-base, which has its own restaurants, shops and medical centers.
So one of the scariest things about leaving the military is knowing what to do afterward. Four years in, it's hard to remember what civilian life is like; worse still, you're rusty with the social and professional politics.
To help future former military members get a head start, Plaid created AreYouG2G, a clever little site that helps them construct outside lives based on what they did in uniform.
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Three Olives Vodka, the folk that pimped the nation for its best O-face, is back with a triage of TV spots.
Each scenario is the same: a bespectacled male is subjected to pain. He doesn't react. Then he downs a shooter of the vodka, squeezes his little shoes together and O's his little heart out.
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We're not really sure what New Yorkers read to give them that Big City somethin'-somethin', but NBC New York wants the crown for itself.
So it turned to Mother, which in turn conceived "Locals Only," a campaign that spotlights the website's granular take on the city. It's the spots that compelled us to visit the site, where we discovered it's a lot like HuffPo for deep-Manhattanites with a PG palate (more for NBC's sake, wethinks, than for the city's).
Yesterday's big story was a taser-toting robber grandma; today you've got a happy ending to a very old kidnapping story.
We also think the changing header -- "NBC New York [is intrigued by nude models]" -- gives it a personable touch, lending sass to a rag that, while not as gritty as NEW YORK POST, may well hold its own in the city's dense circle.
But enough about the site; let's move on to the weirdos. The punchline's cheap, and the news tidbits at the end feel a little shoehorned in, but the caricatures are wicked.
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We all get save-the-kids! mailers, and most of us have received the kind with the nickel or the quarter enclosed, for added effect.
But it never occurred to us how stupid this approach is until The Denver Egotist pointed it out:
If your envelope line reads "A Nickel Could Save A Child's Life!" and you not only enclose the aforementioned nickel, but spend a few more of them popping it in the post, you've just fucked yourselves and the importance of the message.
For those of us that have already passed precious shekels to a charity, it really leaves you wondering how much of that cash was recycled as nickels for the trash heap. But who knows, maybe this works, and we've been doing ourselves a great disservice by hoarding for retirement. What's that proverb? It takes money to make money?
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