As part of the Global Fund RED campaign to fight AIDS in Africa, The Independent has been redesigned today by Giorgio Armani and half the papers ad revenue will be donated to the Global Fund ro Fight AIDS. It's all part of the Maria Shriver/Bono-created campaign that aims to urge big business to contribute to the fund in an ongoing manner. The companies already involved are Gap, Converse, Emporio Armania, American Express and Motorola. All those companies have developed RED product lines and a portion of the revenue that comes from sales of those lines goes to the Fund.
Maria Shriver explains the effort telling The Independent, "How do you think Magic Johnson [who has HIV] is still around? He takes two pills a day, which he can get from any drugstore. But those drugstores don't exist in Africa, and millions can't get to the drugs Magic Johnson can get. That's where the RED money's going." So far, $10 million has been raised.
This really qualifies as old news but since it was overshadowed earlier by Motorola and we were prompted by our monthly GoDaddy email, we'll share with you that GoDaddy has, in addition to Motorola and many others, hooked up with Danica Patrick to sponsor her Andretti Green Racing car. In a video that includes the unveiling of the new #7 Team Motorola IndyCar, GoDaddy CEO Bob Parsons interviews his new "GoDaddy Girl" in a most excruciatingly awkward manner that can only be likened to Joe Simpson obsessing about his daughter Jessica's 34DD's. While Bob reads from cue cards, Danica sits next to him and through her bored demeanor, you can just hear her say, "What the fuck am I doing here with this cheese ball?"
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We don't know if this is more contextual buffoonery but we do like the idea of IBM ads surrounding a story about Apple's design guru Jonathan Ive in this BusinessWeek Online story.
There's nothing like illustrating the strength of fine china by parking a sports car on top of four tea cups. Huh? Strength of fine china? Is that really a quality a tea cup needs to have? most people drink tea with a tea cup, not park their car on top of it. Oh...wait. This is marketing. I'm sorry. Of course you park a car on top of tea cups when you're Canadian china chain William Ashley and are trying to attract attention to your flagship store during Toronto Film Festival Week. Our bad. Great promotion.
Fergie, aka Stacy Ferguson, is getting some help from Retail Entertainment Design which has put together an in-store promotion with retail chain Vanity to promote her new album, The Dutchess. From September 19 through October 23, in-store and online promotions will promote the album as well as offer a chance to win a trip to meet Fergie. Those who have participated in prior Vanity promotions will receive a text message with the offer.
Los Angeles-based SWAY Studio crafted the marching band-like precision CGI in this spot for the new Hyundai Santa Fe dreated by Dalls-based The Richards Group. In the ad, 362 robots movie with marching band finesse in acknowledgment of the 300 or so actual robots in the new Alabama Hyundai manufacturing plant. The spot broke yesterday.
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Here's one of the better online ads we've seen in a while. Coming from Y&R Interactive Israel for Logitech, it capitalizes on the fact that when you see video online, you expect to hear sound. With this ad, you don't at first but with each increase of the volume slider in the ad, the guy peering into the webcam gets increasingly more active until he gets blown away and Logitech speakers come into the frame. The ad does a nice job involving the viewer, relating the ad to the product's purpose and showing the product.
The Effie Awards is running comparative a ad campaign to promote its revamped awards show. Created by New York-based Anomaly, the campaign pokes fun at other award shows with charts humorously describing the focus of the other shows. Citing the Clios' obsession with the hot agency of the moment, D&AD's focus on any Guinness spot, the Andys' love of anything that has to do with agency anniversaries or agency Chritmas parties and Cannes' fixation on ads that make no sense, the Effie's hopes to remind people it's only concerned with awarding ads that actually work.
Oh, and the whole rebranding using charts and graphs created in Excel is intended to further instill the show's focus on results versus fluff. Check out the full ad here. It's a big jpeg so you'll be able to see all the details of each of the charts in the ad.
Yesterday during lunch, Nathan Burke checked out a promotion on the Volvo website that contained the headline, "Who Would You Give A Volvo To?" So he checked out the site which asks people to submit stories and/or videos about special people in their lives and why he'd like them to have a Volvo. While car manufacturers don't give cars aways every day, the wording of the promotion certainly might lead someone to believe one would be. But, buried deep in the FAQ is this: "Is there a Volvo vehicle being given away as part of the 'Who Would You Give A Volvo To?' campaign? No. The WWYGAVT campaign is intended to make people think about the safety initiatives Volvo has taken in vehicle development and therefore why they would consider a Volvo for the special individuals in their lives."
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You don't normally see gorillas in car ads. At first, we thought this was another one of those GE Dancing Elephant spots but no, it turned out to be a BBDO-created ad for the new, four door Jeep Wrangler...not exactly a tasty treat for an other worldly-huge gorilla to snack on. There's two more spots coming in the campaign.
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