Spar, a restaurant sitting in a beach in Mumbai, India, recently conducted a guerilla campaign where large clam shells were strategically placed along the shore. When people reached down to open the shells they found a talk bubble ad that says "Looking for Seafood? Spars Seafood Festival."
Definitely something we'd take home to show the natives to demonstrate how much cooler every other country is besides our own. "Even the ads are better!" we hear ourselves boasting before some disgruntled relative bitchslaps us with the very shell we brought to brag about.
Cheers to Spar. It would have been awesome to throw in a plastic Mardi-Gras style pearl necklace, though. You know, make the whole festival idea seem more festive. It's kind of a buzzkill to open a huge shell and have nothing but a piece of paper to show for it. Oh, well. We'd still take it home.
Cahan Associates Founder Bill Cahan who, in a video on his agency's site and on YouTube, says he's concerned about the video featuring just him but them proceeds to feature just himself in the video. In oh-so-tired, oh-so-overdone close crop, shaky camera, ego-centric style, the video goes on in wondrously blatherific style explaining how the agency wants people/clients whose hearts beat a little faster, whose palms are sweaty and who are not quite sure what they are going to get. Now that sounds like a smart client doesn't it? Anyway, Cahan says he's not going to use buzzwords and then, yes, proceeds to use them.
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Reverse Cowgirl directs us to a weird series of photos involving penises dolled up like faces to showcase KSUBI sunglasses. What struck us was not the penises but the other ads that appeared on the Papermag blog.
This Zune ad at the top of the page uses the same idea, manipulating elements of hands and fingers to create faces and features. Cool juxtaposition.
And we couldn't help smiling at the Dewar's ad whose tagline, "The quality of the article should be its greatest advertisement," was just too funny alongside the penis shots.
Oh, man. Can somebody please write a book or at least some kind of blog on the delicate feng shui involved in web ad placement?
Yahoo and Doritos marry up for a consumer-generated-media contest in which the best Doritos video to hit their site by mid-January gets aired on a coveted Super Bowl spot. A crass man at the bottom of the screen repeatedly shouts, "Watch and vote for your favourite Doritos commercial NOW!"
We were really into Doritos for a minute because they had that Japanese nut-crushing thing going on, but then they started littering and now they resort to the all-time laziest but most prevalent campaign style of the web 2.0 world: begging.
We're embarking on a new horizon in which we were supposed to work with consumers, not beg for creative at every open opportunity. Are we just going to hand over our cushy jobs and Foozball-ridden offices like that? Just like that? Come on, guys.
- The networks never saw a meme they didn't want to jump on so it is without surprise they're all slapping ads for their shows up on celeb site PerezHilton.
- Dammit, online customers are good for the music business!
- This Fall, New York City taxi cabs will begin showing NBC programming. Come on! We don't want to be distracted from the city's eye candy now do we?
- Anyone with the name Hamish McLennan is bound to attract attention and the Hamish McLennan that is the CEO of Y$R did just that with the terse firing of the agency's vp world creative director Michael Patti who was said to be under delivering.
- Conde Nast is going after brides-to-be on MySpace with a page offering Brides.com video and photo content.
Saatchi and Saatchi throw together this print illustration of a rower fit to slip into a formidable Scylla-and-Charybdis-like vacuum because his Bose noise cancellation headphones are so awesome he just can't pay attention.
Funny how you get punished for not paying attention in real life, but this same deficit comes as a premium when illustrating how distractingly awesome a given product happens to be. Does that really help sell shit? We love the idea of getting lost with Beethoven but if the composer himself can actually fly down from heaven and lift us out of a boat destined for disaster then all the better, you can sign us up for some Bose headphones right now.
We somehow doubt the sound quality is that great, though.
Under the tagline "Milk's favorite cookie," Draft FCB orchestrates a playful set of Oreo prints that illustrate "the dunk aspect of the Oreo twist, lick and dunk ritual and showcases the simple fun that dunking Oreo cookies in milk can bring," says Laurie Guzzinati of Kraft.
Okay. We can't fault Draft for saying "twist, lick and dunk" considering that's exactly what we do when we have the occasional Oreo. But after that lions-fucking insanity, which comes to mind every time we type out "Draft FCB," we just can't keep a straight face.
No doubt, this is some marketers cheeky idea of a promotion but we're going to have to wait a while before we find out who's behind it. But let's not let details get in the way of celebrating the collection of celebrity pubic hairs which, when mounted and autographed, are sold...all to make money to donate to charity. Locks of Love? Screw that. With everyone body grooming these days, there ought to be a whole lot more pubes to donate than head hair. So when you celeb Shave Everywhere, don't just let it all go down the drain. Use your god given attributes to help those in need! Besides, you drain won't clog and it'll be much nicer on your house cleaner.
Oh, there's a countdown clock on the site insuring we check back to see what this is all about on January 15. Hmm. Philips? Yea, we think so.
We're not sure if these are real and have a strong suspicion they're not, but the idea that they could be makes us happy. And even if they aren't, the strength virals have in consumer-generated media makes them just as legit WOM-wise for the respective companies involved. Just look at the arguments they generate.
To wrap up the whole car-wars thing, the super-short synopsis: BMW gets snarky with Audi. Audi bitches them out. Subaru jumps in. Bentley pwns all. In fact we think we've just been sold on it. Why couldn't the Pepsi/Coke wars have ended like this?
If you work in advertising, you've certainly seen the hilarious but extremely truthful parody Truth in Advertising. It was only a matter of time before the classic got an update and, today, it got a big one. This parody of the parody, called The Truth in Ad Sales does a great job uncovering what really happens between a media agency and a media seller and how the final sales pitch makes it to the conference room for presentation. It's British so it's be funny even if it isn't but it is so it's worth watching. It's got all your favorite Wanker and Bugger All commentary complete with mention of social media and "MyTube." Hmm, MyTube. Now there's a possibility. Oh wait. Silly us. The porn industry has already jumped on that one.
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