Packaging Girlhood lists the best and worst 2006 marketing campaigns aimed at girls and their sometimes less-than-savvy guardians.
Worst includes the Dora the Princess campaign for turning an educational show into a stock purveyor of pretty-in-pink stereotypes. The Bratz Party Plane with juice bar also made the cut.
We always thought Bratz' eclipse over Barbie apt. Barbie was inspired by a German doll named Lilli, actually meant for adult males. That our 21st-century improvement over the Nordic sex kitten was a multi-ethnic series of skanks with DSL lips just kills us.
The list for Best include the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty whose crowning glory was the oft-spoofed Evolution ad of '06, and the transformation of Super Mario's Princess Peach into an entity capable of making her own rescues.
So cheers to real girls who say no lip gloss and aren't afraid to stomp in puddles.
You'd think a vehicle mark notoriously known for lacking originality would make at least a slight effort to step their game up if they've got major marketing dollars to throw behind an idea. Any mediocre idea can be prettied-up with cash. Even cutting another project up, tossing it in the air and making it slightly unrecognizable would be fair game, and it would only take five or six more minutes. But maybe that asks too much of Suzuki.
Make the Logo Bigger unpacks a delectable rant on Suzuki Films, a Suzuki marketing effort aimed at inspiring audiences to move from television to the 'net to find out what happens next in a sultry French Connection-style multi-platform drama called "The Briefcase," which suspiciously echoes BMW Films' "The Hire."
"Maybe it's fitting they copied [BMW] since Suzuki is an imitation of a real car," Bill snarls.
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- A case is made for the implementation of browser level ad filtering.
- New York City cabs get decked out like bulls to promote televised bull riding on cable channel Versus.
- Sprint is on the hunt for a new creative agency for its $1.6 billion creative account.
- Advertising Age's Jonah Bllom likes the new Wall Street Journal.
- Qwest won't jack you up, mobsters recycle, Mini beats SUV in bullfight and more new commercial in Advertising Age's TV Spot of the Week.
- Merrill Lynch says U.S. ad spending will increase 2.9 percent in 2007. Traditional slows but isn't dead.
- In response to FOX's cancellation of The O.C., tweens and teens mourn throughout the nation.
- England has now banned the advertising of cheese during children's programming.
- The Webber Dance School is has placed footstep patterns on treadmills in health club so people can try to learn the steps while working out on the treadmill. Nifty, indeed.
Slapping down over-expectant fiancées, college-bound sons and horse-loving daughters, Titus Cycles claims there are far more important things in life than over-priced engagement rings, stuffy colleges and thoroughbred horses. Namely, over-priced bikes for those who think a perfectly good Schwinn is only good enough for a mailbox. Check out the witty print campaign by TDA here, here and here.
Smartly opting to name themselves Three Melons instead of Two Melons, thereby avoiding comparison to an entirely different set of melons, the company has launched a site to promote Sony's Muteki Home Theater in Argentina. We are told Muteki means "invincible" in Japanese which, apparently, motivated the agency to create an online game in which a young samari, trying to be invincible, works towards becoming a powerful warrior.
To play the game, an agency representative tells us, "The whole site is in Spanish (we are translating it) but I don't think you'll have trouble to play. Just click where it says: "HAZ CLICK AQUI PARA JUGAR" (you must accept the site conditions). Then use the mouse to move the samurai and click once to jump or to use the katana. Collect 5 yellow symbols and you'll activate the Muteki Power (double click to release it)."
We had a few minutes of fun with it but we don;t think we became invincible. Give it a try and let us know if you can.
Just as search engine marketing was undervalued earlier this decade but turned out to dramatically exceed all growth estimates, Right Media CEO Mike Walrath, in a post on his company's blog, contends the industry just might be in the same place with online display advertising. While acknowledging the existence of unsold display inventory, Walrath argues a confluence of events - traditional media moving online, improved metrics and open ad platforms - may fuel display as search was fueled earlier by its own confluence of events. To be clear, Walrath's Right Media plays in the area of open ad platforms making his argument appear to be self-serving but his arguments are sound and worth considering.
Blurry red squiggles are infected with wit in an episode of Budweiser's weird new Crowntown TV effort. We don't totally get it and even entertain the thought that it might be blinding us slowly, but we can't seem to stop watching. It doesn't help to wonder what passers-by must think as we snicker irrepressibly in front of a monitor of what looks like wiggly Rorschach testing units.
Web Strategiest points our noses toward something a-brewing in Germany. We're not really sure what this thing is as the teaser seeks not to explain but to bewilder and confuse, but with our powerful deductive logic skills we conclude it's some shape-shifting magic widget that will equip Ultimate Driving Machines with Bluetooth, MP3 players, GPS and possibly the ability to sprout wings, fly and slay enemies with lasers from 100 meters or more.
The promo is appropriately called Anticipation On Approach and the slick German masterminds hope to keep us guessing until mid-January. Although we think we'll give our brains a rest and stop thinking about it right now. We're fairly sure that in a year or two whatever fascinating doodad they plan to bless us with will be stock in every new vehicle that slides off the conveyor belt.
The Silly Girl points to Gawker's cure for the raft of New York city skinny girls who, for years, have been causing trains to be late because they pass out from lack of feeding themselves: a new ad campaign. Speaking as bluntly as more ad campaigns ought to, Gawker's ad is headlined, "If You See Something, Eat Something" with body copy that reads, "Look bitch, we don't care how skinny you need to be by the time your Hamptons share starts, we just want to get to work. Sweet Christ, why don't you just drug yourself thin like the rest of us? For fuck's sake." Now that's an ad that didn't get needlessly ruined by lengthy approval processes.
Ad Freak tips us off on this dandy little spoof for emo cologne which, with its drama-filled mod vibe, skinny ties and stars of ambiguous sexual orientation, assures emo lovers everywhere that if it isn't enough to bleed emo out of your tortured wrists you can always leak it out of your very pores and accost innocent bystanders with emo aura.
We don't even have to smell it. The very thought makes us want to cry.
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