Berlin-based Mairie Beautyman over at Treehugger says the movement to get society more enviro-conscious made some serious inroads this 2006. That's good news. And to illustrate the point there's some pretty yummy imagery:
"Let's play with metaphors and say Green in 2006 was a strapping football player, a quarterback with a helluva arm. This guy got right up in your face, and breathing down your neck, he told you, "I'm not going anywhere." Then, suited up in threads including post- consumer plastic, shod with vegan cleats, he threw his fair-trade-certified recycled pigskin right out of town."
Imaginative. But what's with all this talk? Somebody needs to send a creative team over there so they can do more than just pipe dream these delectable (and yeah, probably also recyclable) scenarios.
This past Sunday during Desperate Housewives Rembrandt Oral Care aired a commercial for its long-running and very pretty Brilliant Mouth campaign. It's available on YouTube so you can check it out here.
The use of romance to hawk hygiene isn't new; Listerine has been doing it as far back as the '50's, admonishing conscientious teenage boys to check their breath twice before that big date. And don't even get us started on Lysol, which used to be a douche (the feminine kind, not this kind).
So this is a contemporary take on a very old idea. The imagery is better than in the '50's though, and we like that Rembrandt takes a grown-up approach instead of trying to compete with all those overgrown Crest Kids. We are way over sparkly gum-flavoured toothpaste.
To celebrate the opening of its performance store last fall, Adidas released an ad with its three telltale stripes running up the Arc de Triomphe. As a general rule we like the fusion of contemporary culture with traditional icons. So the ad is interesting in that way but there's not really much else going for it.
Unless you consider contentious social sentiment. The French, who just last month tweaked out over the rampant commercialization of the Champs, must not be too stoked about it.
For Valentine's Day Auntie Anne's unleashes a slew of websites into the ether, kind of like Office Max did last December. Each features some weird animation, a video or an invitation to expound on love's meaning. Plus each e-card has a coupon for a free pretzel.
We can think of few things we want more on Feb 14 than supple golden curves so we can hardly complain. And we know people under a budget will probably appreciate the free pretzel provision. The sites for the campaign are:
www.aLoveYouCanCountOn.com
www.FunkyValentine.com
www.CupidsDiet.com
www.LoveIsForTheDogs.com
www.ItWasWorthIt.com
www.aPairOfMonkeys.com
http://www.whatisloveanyway.com/
http://www.shessotwisted.com/
http://www.threedownfouracross.com/
Here's a Russian vodka commercial that releases all that pent up, iron curtain crap the country had to endure for so long. Like a 16 year old kid returning from a week spent on vacation with the family to the privacy of his own room to urgently release thats week's "build up," Russian marketers are undergoing a release of their own. In this commercial for Kreslova vodka, a lonely Russian man's imagination drifts to the pleasures of beautiful woman clad in nothing more than tiny thongs and cleavage-enhancing lingerie. And it's all the vodka's fault. Damn. Where can we get some of that imagination-enhancing vodka here in the states?
Mcrosoft is, of course, pulling out all the stops to launch its new operating system, Vista. As part of the launch today, New Yorkers were greeted with a gigantic billboard outside the Terminal Building. The billboard was not your standard static board but was alive with Cirque du Soleil-style acrobats hanging from ropes while unfurling large tarps in the shape of the Windows logo. TBWA used a similar approach for Adidas in Japan back in the summer of 2003.
We passed on all the hype surrounding the K-fed Nationwide Super Bowl commercial offending fast food workers but after seeing the spot, we can't leave it alone. We have one thing to say: Get a Fucking Sense of Humor, People! For fuck's sake, can't we laugh at anything anymore? OK, so the commercial really isn't funny but that's not the point. The point is through some sort of American political correctness on steroids trend and an orgasmic proliferation of cause groups for every minute issue imaginable, we are no longer allowed to laugh at anything. We can't make fun of anything lest we offend someone. We can't tell joke unless they are of the scrubbed-clean second grade variety. We can't even call someone white or black - even though they are - lest we be labeled racist. Stop the insanity, please!
A survey of 2,500 men and women ages 18 to 59 was conducted by New York-based Brand Keys and found - through some sort of proprietary prediction model - Budweiser, Footlocker, Frito-Lay, Pepsi and Coke will benefit most from the money they spend during this year's Super Bowl. This is the third year the organization has conducted the study which you can download here (Word Doc).
Is it just us or are people idiots when it comes to navigating to popular websites? A recent Hitwise study featured on eMarketer found MySpace to be the top search term for 2006. Also on the list are ebay, Yahoo and Mapquest. Are we the only ones that realize all you have to do is add a .com to these popular names rather than search for them? Hmm. I suppose somewhere in the world, there are still people who haven't heard of the Internet either. Oh well. At least Hitwise is making some money with this nonsense.
For her 2008 Presidential bid, Hilary Clinton has gathered together her advertising team including GSD&M CEO Roy Spence, Voluntary United Group of Creative Agencies CEO Andy Berlin and former BBDO Senior Executive Creative Director Jimmy Siegel. Spence is a close friend of Clinton and has known both Bill and Hilary since 1972 and worked on Bill Clinton's bid for the Presidency.
Already, the Hilary Clinton campaign has been seen advertising on blogs through the BlogAds network in an effort to reach the several very powerful political influencers who inhabit that space.
|
|
