A girl named Mandy promised this video would reveal the COOLEST ROBOT EVER! We were skeptical but later decided she was right. Sure it won't shave your balls and get you off, but it will do a silly little dance. And it looks cuddly.
Here's another spot where robotics author Daniel Wilson, the star (and creator) of both videos, gets smack-talked by an automated phone system named Diane. We think it's just a cheesy way for him to represent his alma mater and show off his iPhone.
If you find yourself moved by the Carnegie Mellon alumnus' emotional subservience to robots, check out RoboU. CM's robotics unit could apparently use some new junkies.
For client Orange, the Alternative is doing that gesture-based advertising thing. Do a little hand-dance to bring news, film clips or music videos to your fingertips.
We see a less useful, but strangely more amusing, version of this technology every time we go to Virgin Records in Times Square, the home of that Nirvana floor display where you can step on or kick projected babies and bubbles. (It's actually more benign than it sounds.)
With what Advertising Age calls Hamlet-like indecision, Hyundai has decided to keep its ads in the Super Bowl after all.
Here's our brief coverage of its flirtation with pulling out. (We hate that!)
AdAge dubs the move "a most unlikely ploy to drum up pre-Super Bowl buzz." Replace "most unlikely" with "feeble," and you've got our opinion.
Not to tear open old wounds, but waffling was what lost Kerry the 2004 election. (Say what you will about Bush, at least we always know where he stands. To our endless, purgatory-like chagrin.)
And going back to that useful Hamlet reference, didn't everybody in that play die because he spent such a long time caressing his volatile emotions?
We spent some time in the Philippines last week. Good news for old-school brand goliaths: free promotion is alive and well alongside freeways and in living spaces (at the same time!).
That, and offshore telesales. We're in the money now, baby.
Adrants reader Atif sent us this spot, snapped by Engadget at CES 2008. It causes us physical pain.
Not to say every questionable piece doesn't have its audience. Atif thinks the veins as headphone wires idea is cool, actually.
Everyone bitched and McDonald's listened. Under pressure from the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood and 2,000 angry parents, the fast food giant haspulled the advertising it had placed on Seminole County, Florida's report cards. Graciously, McDonald's will still pay the cost of printing the report cards, the initial reason given for the ad placement.
In the customs line at Heathrow we saw this leggy ad reading "I love Italian shoes."
And then we blinked. What's that logo in the upper left-hand corner? Is that a wide-open, heart-shaped pair of legs? Then we understood. If crotch shots keep Britney in the public eye, why not use the same method to promote the quality of Italian footwear?
The logo and ads are brought to you by ANCI, the National Association of Italian Footwear Manufacturers. The ad we saw (and hastily snapped for posterity) goes on to say, "The words 'Made in Italy' are a guarantee of fine Italian-crafted shoes."
Who are we to say a quality product can't open wide every once in awhile?
We really like when business to business advertising leave behind the idiotic metaphors that so pervasively fill their advertising and, instead, opt for something, well, more fun. For power plant and air traffic control software developer QNX, Fuel Industries created The Pocket Geek, an online game whereby the player acts as manager to a developer for a five day project. In the game, a set of management tools helps the manager keep the developer fed and his productivity up. Between each day, there's an IQ quiz. Unfortunately, we blew the pocket geek up after just two days. Guess we suck as a manger. It was fun though.
After spending some time with Cheetos' new Orange Underground, a full blown movement "committed to transforming sterile order into messy mayhem," its primary purpose of urging people to do wacky Random Acts of Cheetos that don't involve eating makes perfect sense. After all, Cheetos aren't even food. They're just a bunch of man-made chemicals mixed together and placed in a bag. This campaign is much like the Mentos/Diet Coke thing whereby people were urged to perform all manner of chemical wizardry as opposed to actually consuming the products, both questionable, at best, as to whether or not they, too, are actual foods.
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- The Denver Egoist, which covers the Colorado ad scene, is in search of an additional writer and is holding an essay contest. Check it out here.
- It seems American Idol judge Paula Abdul along with Madonna may perform during the Super Bowl. No one at FOX is confirming or denying anything and it's unclear when (and even if) either of them will make an appearance.
- Maybe because it's now OK to make movies about girls who have teeth in their vaginas, it's OK to develop an ad that looks just like the body part.
- The Green Effie Awards has announced its call for entries which will be due February 15. The Green Effies honor eco-marketing campaigns. Info here.
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