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Abraham Lincoln And Talking Beaver Shill Drug

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Adrants reader James Baldiga sends us this decidedly weird promotion for sleep drug Rozerem which features Abraham Lincoln, a talking beaver and a guy who can't sleep. The three explain healthy sleep and how the company's drug can put you to sleep when you can't do so yourself. Drug ads are boring. Sleeping pills are mundane. The combination of Abraham Lincoln, a talking beaver, a guy who can't sleep and a drug company promoting its sleeping pill are not.

by Steve Hall    Jul-18-06    
Topic: Good, Online, Strange



Snickers Gives New Yorkers A 'Hungerectomy'

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B.L. Ochman sent us this photo of a bus emblazoned with "Hungerectomy" in typeface identical to that used by Snickers. While it's certainly a campaign for Snickers, we're not quite sure the "ectomy" thing and all the nasty medical connotations that brings to light are necessarily what Sickers would want people to associates with its tasty treat.

UPDATE: Thomas Sherman reviews the campaign here and says he doesn't understand why the agency behind it wouldn't "give it some legs" by buying keywords on Google for the weird ads in the campaign. He also says the words make him feel like he'll get some sort of disease if he eats a Snickers bar. We don't disagree.

by Steve Hall    Jul-18-06    
Topic: Outdoor



Legal Battle Over, Truth Campaign to Continue

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Yesterday, the Delaware Supreme Court ruled in favor of the American Legacy Foundation in a legal battle stating the Foundation's Truth campaign does not vilify or personally attack tobacco companies and their employees as claimed by the Lorillard Tobacco Company. While this certainly is a very good thing, we hope someone, anyone will get rid of the whole inane radical hipster-ish approach the Foundation has used in its recent campaign in favor of something...anything...different.

by Steve Hall    Jul-18-06    
Topic: Good, Policy



Time Sheets Suck

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Well, it's definitely not Numa Numa but, then again, time sheets are not that fun. These two German singers from Datebeat stopped by some German agency to do their rendition of "Time Reports."

by Steve Hall    Jul-18-06    
Topic: Good, Strange



Russian Agency Debuts World Cup 2010 Identity

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With the World Cup barely over, Russian agency Park has created an identity (unofficial) for the next World Cup to be held in South Africa in 2010. The identity wraps itself in the "speed, power and stamina" of the leopard, the symbol of South Africa. And yes, there is a specially designed football bra to hold round objects of a different sort. You can see the campaign identity here.

by Steve Hall    Jul-18-06    
Topic: Campaigns, Good



Lexus ES 350 Spot Bores

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Here is, perhaps, one of the most uninteresting car commercials we've seen in, well, ever. Trying to highlight the engineering feats of the new Lexus ES 350, Team One Advertising, along with Digital Domain, have created spot with an oddly mismatched voiceover, awkward pacing and the inclusion of special "computer aided design" effects intended to reinforce the spot's concept but, at least to us, don't. No doubt the digital effect and production of this spot are impressive but they can't make up for the less than exciting message the spot tries to convey.

by Steve Hall    Jul-18-06    
Topic: Bad, Commercials, Creative Commentary



Sony Vaio Colorizes, More Contextual Corrigendum

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- Adverbox highlights a new campaign from Sony for its line of colored notebooks computers which consists of television, transit and magazine. It was created by Ignited Minds.

- American Copywriter says leave the industry jargon out of your ads and remember to speak in your target audience's language, not your own.

- Not to be outdone by Burger King's Hollywood Aspirations, GM has kinda sort but not really said they're going to make a move as well but they have no idea what it's going to be about, who will star in it, who will fund it or how it will be distributed.

Here's yet another online contextual advertising oddity. It's a banner for Caron Trust next to pictures of fiery Beirut.

- Campus Media Group is looking for organizations that want to reach college students this fall. Each year, CMG chooses one organization that has a message it needs to share with the 18- to 24-year-old demographic. CMG will work to have ads placed in some of the nations top college and university newspapers free of charge for a period of one academic school year.

by Steve Hall    Jul-18-06    
Topic: Campaigns



Bud Light Creates Zagar, Transplanted Tribal Dude

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Bud Light has created this Aborigine-like guy called Zagar and featured him on his own website and blog written by his "roommate," Steve. Videos on the site follow the the Crocodile Dundee-like, fish-out-of-water antics that come with cultural transplantation. Some of its funny. Some of its lame. The site has all the usual wallpapers, AIM icons and downloads and there's also a Flickr page and the very bloggy blog written by Steve which has all the required bloggy blog bells and whistles. So far, there are three posts that point to the three videos on the site. One wonders how long Bud Light will go to the expense of creating videos to foster blog content given that they are TV commercial quality.

more »

by Steve Hall    Jul-18-06    
Topic: Campaigns, Good, Online, Strange, Weblogs



The Battle: Ad Agencies Versus SEO Firms

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Tribble Ad Agency which isn't really an ad agency but rather a search engine marketing firm or an agency that offers SEO or a just parody site designed to crap on the current state of the ad agency business has caused a debate between ad agency types and search engine marketing folks who are jockeying for position as to who's best suited to handle a company's online marketing. We think the SEO guys are a little bit more right than the ad agency guys.

In announcing their launch last month, Tribble had this to say, "Tribble Ad Agency has opened it's doors and launched our blog to consume companies' ad budgets and deliver next to nothing by way of online ROI. We promise to build your website all in flash so it never ranks in the search engines. We also like to use image navigation with complex DHTML menus that are unspiderable and employ random 'keywords'." And it goes on deliciously from there.

by Steve Hall    Jul-17-06    
Topic: Agencies, Strange



Site Helps Ladies Learn How to Tease Guys

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Seriously. No, seriously. Ignore that rollerbabe because this one's for the ladies. This is not another gratuitous attempt from a marketer to turn humans into receptacles for lust just to sell a product. Nope. This site, created by UK agency Outside Line we're told, is special. It doesn't feature the phallic-shaped product every time a page loads. It doesn't slather on the saucy language and offer cutesy teasing advice, it doesn't have a game with crappy navigation that makes sure the whole notion of teasing is reinforced and it doesn't have a section that features beefy, not completely clothed hunks as eye candy.

by Steve Hall    Jul-17-06    
Topic: Games, Online



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