OK so here it is. And it's nowhere near as good as the Kevin Federline version. Yes, it's the Sanjaya Malakar version of the ongoing "you're a has been" Nationwide Insurance ad campaign. In the Malakar version, Sanjaya travels to India to seek advice from the Gurucci (sp?). Hmm. Is that like some sort of inside joke? A mashup up Guru and Gucci?
Anyway, the Gurucci's advice couldn't be more perfect. When Sanjaya asks what the most important thing is in life, Gurucci replies, "A good retirement plan...and a hair cut."
It's a bit odd, perhaps, to handle a fast food client such as Burger King and to write a book about proper dieting. But, this is advertising and most what this industry does never makes any sense at all. So, it's without surprise Alex Bogusy will publish The 9 Inch "Diet" which will focus on the ever increasing portion size that has distorted America's eating habits.
While it's being presented as a "real" book rather than the agency's earlier Eating the Angus Diet which was part or a marketing campaign, one may never truly know how, or if, this fits into CP+B's plans for Burger King. No one's talking.
Hollywood-based Image Metrics which has done special effects and animation for several Harry Potter Films and Grand Theft Auto released a demo illustrating the realistic quality of their animation technology. The person in this video from the company is not a real person. Her face is an animation.
It's very lifelike. And who needs a whining, demanding actor when you can just program one instead? Everyone says geeks will inherit the earth. With this technology, it seems they just might. Right from their keyboards.
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Photographer: Jessica, can you unsnap one more button for me?
Jessica: Like this?
P: Yea. Now put your left hand on the bale of hay...
J: What's a bale of hay?
P: Uh...it's that rectangular, straw-like thing...
J: Rectang...oh...like that square thing?
P: No, the rec...never mind. Yea, the square thing.
J: Like this?
P: Yea. Now lean left, sit up straight and stick your chest out.
J: You want to see my boobs?
P: Well, yes....uh...sorry...I mean no. I mean I...yea...no...just some cleavage.
J: Is this good?
P: Just a little bit more?
J: But the next button might pop open..wouldn't that be too much boob?
P: Girl, there's no such thing as too much boob...except this is an ad...not a Playboy shoot.
J: They're 34D, you know
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"Everyone has something to reveal. They just need to be unbuttoned," Levi's croons, crowning its "Unbuttoned" campaign for the classic 501 jeans with "spoonfuls of soul and swagger" (I just love that line). On personal subsites, three artists -- Estelle, Nikka Costa and Wale -- describe why they became musicians and pass on a free track for users to download.
Each MP3 has a different sound, but they all feel big and breezy. (Slightly off-topic, isn't it nice to see so many companies share downloadable ear candy? It's like trick-or-treating, except with iTunes instead of a pillowcase.)
Music isn't all Levi's is baring. Other celebs with something to share include the adorable Jamie Bestwick, who's giving away a free BMX video, and there's a Perez Hilton giveaway coming in September. (They gave us the link, but it's still doorknob-dead.) What Perez is giving away I'm sure I don't know, considering his two cents always come free.
This Zappos spot, where a smiling courier hand-delivers a little bit of happy to customers in a small neighborhood, is infectiously charming.
I like how it brings the brand offline and makes it feel down-home and local: it's your friendly online shoe conglomerate! This approach would ring disingenuous for most internet giants, but Zappos has a coupla things going for it:
1) Getting a package in the mail gives people warm tinglies.
2) Its service really is just that good. The first time I placed an order with Zappos, the shoes didn't fit, and they sent a replacement pair even before I returned the old ones. "Just drop them in the mailbox whenever you can," the rep said (I could hear him smiling!), and boy did that feel nice. Cartwheel-nice, even.
Read more about Zappos' ad efforts riiiiiiiight here.
Ooh, ooh, new time-wasting website. The makers of I Can Has Cheezburger?, home to many LOLcats, have launched Engrish Funny. And yeah, it's exactly what you think it is: random pictures of really crappy Asian-English translations. Diggin' the Domo favicon and rating system.
Channel 4 enlisted London-based doctor Farrah Jarral and filmmaker Masood Khan to discover what it calls "the sunnier side of Islam." (Not to be confused for the Sunnier Side of Truth, which is slightly more musical.) The pair went out to meet 500 men named Osama over the course of 50 days. Each was asked the question, "What do you love?"
This Osama loves freedom and that Osama loves life, family, photography, friends, snow, skate, surf, music, art, "being me" and flashing gangsta-gangsta peace signs.
See more at the Osama Loves website. This one is probably my favorite. He ought to be bearing a sign that screams "Osama loves CUTE OVERLOAD!"
Or not.
To harvest new users, Canadian wireless firm Fido deployed white male and female figures -- refugees of rebel bathroom signs? -- across Toronto. They've appeared as chalk art, or hanging from trees, and recently as big-ass balloon dolls, quietly coaxing viewers to text 411 to 10987.
The effort's been toted as the first Canadian use of "flogos" -- flying logos.
Rubberneckers that text 411 to 10987 get invitations to upcoming "Fido Sessions." Some, like the Art Sessions, seem infinitely cooler than the guerrilla campaign itself. See artist The Dark put up some wheatpaste art from an Art sesh. (Why Fido wants to teach art, I don't know, but if it keeps those crazy kids with knives off the streets...)
Organized by Bos, Toronto, which previously did a really neat thing for Fido where billboards threw snowballs at each other.
Planned Parenthood Ohio is using a stodgy, responsible-looking older woman to rationalize its newest campaign, "The A-Word," which from what I can tell is made up of one video and an "Abstinence" graphic in smudgy Courier. Two of the tabs, "Affordability" and "Advocacy," are still "Coming Soon..."
The site was put together by Eisen Management Group, who argues "Planned Parenthood has been characterized in a largely false and negative light for far too long" -- that is, as champions for sex, however safe, but not abstinence.
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In partnership with modeling firm IMG, Bebo's launching yet another web series called Model.Live, whose tagline, "Reality TV just got real," rings a little, well, hollow. (In its defense, episode 1 -- which consisted mainly of serious, sleepy conversation between the people representing these models -- was just dull enough to convince me it's real shit.)
The show aims to reveal the truth about how professional models live. And it's not all coke and parties. These girls field degrading commentary and make dramatic, career-altering decisions every day. Sadly, no Mama Tyra can stand over their shoulders and guide them gently to a Victoria's Secret contract.
The 12-episode series follows three wannabe-supermodels from NYC's Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week to Milan, Paris and Elsewhere. It went live yesterday on Bebo and Vogue.tv. Clothing company EXPRESS -- a brand that's long affiliated itself with the runway by sole merit of its Muzak -- is sponsoring. Every week, it will air the models' responses to featured questions from fans.
- It's the best of this year's Plaid Nation tour! Diggin' the chick who says plaid is God's favorite color.
- Anna Kournikova's still around. I like how her Maxim bio reads, "Before simply being superhot, Anna was a superhot tennis player." Put "simply being superhot" on your resume next time you get shafted, then see who throws sponsorship money at you.
- Naked guy runs across America.
- Last Visa "Go World" spot by TBWA/Chiat/Day. Michael Phelps: he keeps going and going and going and going...
- Check out Google minus Google. Running a search without getting results from YouTube, Blogger, or Knol feels sort of ... fresh.
Imagine if the Coke Happiness Factory got hijacked by dancing Reds that prefer fruity vodka to sugar water. You're probably picturing "Airship," the latest spot for Stoli Blakberi, put together by Publicis/London and production company Stink/Psyop. Music by Prokofiev.
Part of what keeps me drinking Stoli is unwavering affection for its advertising. On TV or in print, it's always got the same feel: over-the-top, cartoony, propagandistic. Disney's "It's a Small World After All" meets the hoarse ballads and frosty grit of Moscow.
Stoli is a proud, heavy-handed romantic, and taking a swig is like surrendering to history: the beautifying dizziness, concrete on your lips, bile in your throat. It's a suffering, and a brand, baptized in nostalgia.
Ever since the movie Empire Records, Liv Tyler (and that not so unknown actress by the name of Renee Zellweger) have served those in need of eye candy quite well. In movies. On the red carpet. And in ads.
Last week, Gap broke a new campaign featuring, among others, Liv Tyler. You can check out all the photoshoot goodness here. She's still looking good.
The other day I was complaining -- or was it more like bitching? -- about how all car ads seem pretty much the same. (If not "the same," then "zealously derivative.") Then Organic busts out with this really weird ad for the Chrysler Town & Country.
It's all words. The narrator's telling this bizarre story, then the words appear in front of you, so you get this tiring but riveting experience of seeing and hearing crunchy nouns like "pocket pony" and "crabapples" at the same time. (Don't ask, just watch.)
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Who knew people still read TV Guide? Apparently enough still do to make it worthwhile for ABC to buy out all the ad space in the August 25 issue in advance of the upcoming fall television season. The network will buy 21 pages in the issue and insert a DVD for New York and Los Angeles subscribers and newsstand sales.
When a movie chooses not to preview for critics, it's almost a foregone conclusion the movie will be bad. Hopefully, that isn't the case with The CW's 90210 which has also decided not to screen the show for advertisers or the media.
"Classic" 90210 was a good show...for the first few years. Over time, it got worse but people kept watching. All the way through the cast's high school years, their college years and the first few years of their "real world" life. The cast became like Twitter friends. No matter how mundane their lives were, you simply couldn't turn of the "weekly update." It was an unhealthy addiction.
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Here's a crappy camera-up-to-the-TV version of the Chevy Traverse ad that keeps playing during the Olympics. (Don't worry, you're not missing much in terms of sound.) I sat through it twice yesterday and didn't really get the correlation between Shirtless Man Lovingly Laundering and Chevy Traverse with Folding Seats.
Twitter's not keen on it either.
Fortunately, there's YouTube. Scroll down to the comments. Past all the complaining about double standards and whatnot, someone explains that both the man and the Traverse are "beautiful, useful, and everything you ever wanted ... and them [sic] some."
Ohhhhh. Suddenly the tagline makes sense.
OMFG! Can you believe it! Is it really possible? Could this really be happening? Could we really be getting this excited and worked up over an agency spoof site and the realization it was created by an ad blogger? Apparently so, given the endless press Adomatica's Robert Gilbreath, creator of Enfartico (now defunct), received following the launch and "leaking" of his Enfatico spoof site.
AgencySpy has full on, breathless coverage in lengthy detail for those who want to wallow in the juicydetails of a fake agency website that's managed to garner almost as much press as the agency itself. That said, it's sad Enfatico couldn't just go along with the joke. It's sad they just officiously shut the site down. It's sad they didn't launch their own CGM/UGC/Web 2.0 response. It could have been fun. Oh well. In this instance, the party line was followed to the letter. No company wants it's brand toyed with but Enfartico was hardly doing harm to Enfatico.
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For client Little Debbie, Marcos Ambrose joins forces with a talking koala. They're so cute together, it's oddly gratifying to see them draw housewives' attention at the supermarket or co-pilot a race while koala eats Zebra Cakes.
"I thought you only ate eucalyptus leaves?" Ambrose demands, slightly miffed, right before he peels out onto the track.
Collective awwwwwwwww. Don't you just want to rub their tummies and feed them a Devil Square?
The spots went live in tandem with racing season. So far Ambrose isn't doing too terribly, no thanks to his choice of snack food, but a talking marsupial riding shotgun (think of the crumbs!) probably keeps things interesting.
See more of their routine on Little Debbie's Miles of Smiles website, put together by Luckie & Co., which also did the creative.
I got up early this morning to play with the website for Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, a Wackness-meets-Go-type movie featuring Michael Cera and Kat Dennings.
It feels totally inspired by the chaos of Manhattan. You're hit with a trailer, after which you can enter the site, riddled with cardboard cut-outs, frenetic noise (honking horns, sirens) and, under "Music," an Infinite Playlist that's not so infinite. (Two songs so far. Will there be more? Somebody needs to contract this guy.)
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So I woke up this morning and heard on the radio that John McCain's getting sued for using Running on Empty, a song by Jackson Browne, in one of his anti-Obama ads without permission. That McCain, what a maverick.
I doubt he's losing sleep over it though, because another artist, John Rich, actually digs McCain enough to give him his own song. It's called Raisin' McCain, and while it bears a slight satirical resemblance to Raining McCain in name and subject matter, Rich's effort is actually not a joke.
That's some catchy shit right thar. And is it just me, or do sequins give our star-spangled banner a little more oomph?
One-time babykiller Gary Oldman is back on the hunt -- this time, for glory. Following in the footsteps of Rosario Dawson and Neil Patrick Harris, the actor is starring in his own web series, The Gloryhunter.
UPDATE: Looks like Oldman's not in The Gloryhunter after all. (We never got to see it; Silverlight is not our friend.)
Oldman appears in an ad for ITV's live football (that is, soccer) programming. See ad.
So weird seeing Oldman kick soccer balls around after trying to off Natalie Portman in a bathroom. Guess that's the way of things.
- Diggin' these Beijing Olympics-based efforts for Mini Cooper and Samsung. Well, the Samsung one might have confused me if I saw it in person, but the Mini rickshaw thing is pretty dope.
- Should Starbucks engage in latte art? American coffee snobs, a subculture Starbucks helped create, would probably argue yes -- if it's at all serious about maintaining luxury cachet. (Which I increasingly doubt it is.)
- More Michael Phelps ads by Visa. PS -- Phelps scored a perfect eight gold medals in the Olympics this summer. It's so exciting, I'm starting to get spam about it.
- So I guess Verizon is not that into disco.
- Rainbow tribe daddy Brad Pitt is launching a body wash in partnership with Kiehl's. The product will cost $16.50 market, he'll appear in no ads, and 100 percent of profits will go to JPF Eco Systems, a green charity he and Kiehl's started together. How sweeeeet.
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