To milk that cocktail-soaked troupe orgy for all its worth, the teases at Impact Theatre are releasing monthly calendar pin-ups as desktop wallpapers. While we're forced to retract our admiration of how their cocktail book idea was so much better than the dated calendar idea, the troupe is redeemed by the fact that they're only releasing the calendar one sheet at a time. Baring it all slowly is a fine art.
The pin-up girls are real-live Berkeley women so arm yourself with airbrush if you can't roll with it. Then again, Dove pushed the crap out of that Campaign for Real Beauty thing so this could work very much in their favor. Be the judge for January. - Contributed by Angela Natividad
In what's got to be among the suckiest jobs ever, BC Hydro commissioned Vancouver-based DDB Canada to create an illuminated billboard that ran 24/7 on the pedaling power of over 120 volunteers.
The campaign in toto featured 1500 LED lights, an enviro-savvy choice at least, and for every hour the reindeer was lit Hydro made a donation to the Canadian Association of Food Banks. Well, that's sweet. We hope the donation makes for some serious holiday dinner considering a lot of literal blood, sweat and (possibly) tears went into keeping that magical deer afire. - Contributed by Angela Natividad
This has Wexley School for Girls written all over it. Oh wait, of course it does...because they did it. They created it for MSN Search. Using the kooky infomercial format and several of its stars, Anthony Sullivan, Matthew Lesko and Tony Little, Infomercial Madness pumps up MSN Search informercial-style and offers visitors the chance to make their own promotional informercial. It's all a bit cheesy but, then again, we're talking about the cheesiest form of advertising here.
A recent study says that, contrary to the youth-savvy appearance of Apple ads, over 46% of Apple's user base is 55 and older. The 18-24 crowd actually shoot for Gateways, which makes more sense considering the average college student budget doesn't factor in a whopping $1500 laptop. Even if they do froth at the mouth for them.
In terms of mobility Apple still whoops everybody's ass. Purchase-wise they just may skew more toward the stodgy suited guy and less toward the cute crooked haircut guy in their sweet hand-holding ads. - Contributed by Angela Natividad
It's logical we're not too sure what this Dentsu Canada-created spot for madamedgar is all about because we were equally perplexed when we visited their website. Either we're not hip enough to know, don't want to take the time to find out or we're just plain stupid. You tell us.
Despite the lame On4Life tagline and the suggestion they've done this before, Levi's Red Tab campaign gets its point across nicely and doesn't waste words doing it. It also happens to be damn good-looking. Check out the subtle use of shading in one variation and the contrast between dark, light and body shape in another.
We've always lamented Levi's unique penchant for creating visually stunning, provocative adwork while somehow still managing to suck in the real world. Let's hope they get it right. They can start by firing the douche who named the campaign. - Contributed by Angela Natividad
In Altoids Factory, which looks suspiciously like a Chinese sweatshop, assist two little men in the hefty task of turning plain Altoids into sour ones by creating clusters beside the proper packaging. The game is mystifying as we couldn't begin to guess what some of the packages are supposed to represent and thus wasted a lot of time putting 'toids beside the wrong containers resulting in no transformation of any kind.
Keep your dirty dealings to yourself, PR guy Al Toid. We will not take part in your shady time-wasting practices. Oh, and your music sucks too. - Contributed by Angela Natividad
- Kid runs away from home, forgets passport, TV show promoted.
- Alex Bogusky gets his elf on over at Office Max.
- If you're going to spoof a Mac/PC ad for your holiday card, the least you could do what make it good. TM Advertising didn't.
- Joe Jaffe examines the long, slow death of the portal.
At this week's Search Engine Strategies Conference in Chicago, Jim Hedger from Webmaster Radio detailedhow Google is serving AdWords ads to terrorist sites within the company's social networking site Orkut. Some think it's malicious. Others think Google can't possibly monitor every single site in the world for content. Hedger also discussed how money earned from click fraud on these sites is "supporting" terrorism. You decide. Is there anything Google can or should do to minimize this?
In another attempt to keep Canada busy, Ontario-based Fuel Industries creates the following advergame for Johnson and Johnson.
Mr. Reach and the Mouth of Mystery has our hero Mr. Reach pursuing danger of all sizes and shapes to save his buddy Jerry the narrator. Both are dormant TV personalities from the 80's and 90's. The site calls this "a story filled with secrets, romance, and adventure that dates back almost three hundred years... a story that could actually hold the key to the very answers you are seeking."
Our only question is whether all this romance and adventure and shit takes place inside our mouths. Because that's normally where toothbrushes fight injustices of all kinds - in our mouths. And if the answer is yes, this takes place in our mouths, oh man. That's a porno spoof just waiting to happen. - Contributed by Angela Natividad
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