It seems $50 million dollar marketing decisions can now be made on the basis of winning or losing a newspaper's ad popularity contest. Yes, that's right. CareerBuilder has placed its account in review because its ads did not make a top ten appearance in USA Today's Super Bowl ad poll, a tiny survey based on just a few hundred people with absolutely nothing to do with whether or not an ad affected sales.
Cramer-Krasselt President Peter Krikovich is pissed. Livid. Dumfounded. And steaming mad and tells Advertising Age he responded to CareeBuilder's opening a review based on the poll by asking, "You have to be fucking kidding me, right?" The agency has resigned the account and will not participate in the review.
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Bucky Turco sends us this very, very cool U.K. commercial for the Nissan Qashqai SUV in which the vehicle is used as a skateboard to demonstrate its agility. A giant-footed person hops on the car and takes it for a spin as if it were an actual skateboard. The results are impressive. We like
Uh, oh. Marketers. Advertisers. Do not use this. Repeat. Do not use this. This being a technology that allows you to use lasers to put temporary graffiti on buildings from hundreds of feet away using a laser wand. If you do use it, you know what's going to happen. The entire world is going to look like Times Square because every building will be turned into a "temporary" billboard. Come on. Admit it. You know you can't resists this. Check out a video of it here.
Australian arist Justine Cooper throws herself behind a drug-and-disorder parody show called Havidol: When More is Not Enough.
Havidol is for sufferers of Dysphoric Social Attention Consumption Deficit Anxiety Disorder (DSACDAD), or people who suffer from worry about life, tension, fatigue, aging, or stress. And we're not too sure how Havidol can help, but it does promise to increase your inclination to do spontaneous and exciting things - like jump off cliffs without restraints.
One testimonial reports, "I felt confident in myself and my relationships. I exercised regularly. I slept quietly through every night and awoke each morning feeling refreshed and ready to start a new day. I now know I had a treatable disorder." Thankfully for those in the dark, marketing for Havidol ain't shy - TV, print, outdoor and interactive work are accounted for, and we dig the Havidol merch. If only Zoloft made hoodies this hot.
Check out the exhibition info for Justine's show.
Imaginary disorders are stacking up as a wrist-slap to big pharma, but we wonder which will actually cross over into "Oh fuck, I really need help" land. Major drug companies, marketing mavens in their own right despite all the jokes we make about them, are notoriously clever like that. You know how it is: things start out as a joke, then spiral into serious real fast, and all of a sudden everybody's on Xanax.
CoolzOr features a very interesting guerrilla outdoor effort by Oklahoma Truck Supply which placed a mock up of an 18-wheeler vertically in the middle of a field which, or course, makes it stand out like a bald Britney. Yes, it's stunt marketing but, to us, it works. If you have a field and a spare 18-wheeler (or a mock up of such), why not turn it into a promotion. And yea, yea, yea, before you jump all over us telling us this sort of thing's been done before, we offer this thought. If we only wrote about new stuff, guess what? There wouldn't be anything to write about because, as you well know, it's all been done before. Thankfully, some re-hashed ideas are better than others which, again, thankfully, gives us something to write about.
Stardust Studios enlists the magic stylistics of Nathan Reifke to add colour to their Signature Series IDs, inspired by limited edition signature skateboard decks starting in 2004. The first 15 have generated accolades from both artists and enthusiasts of unsanctioned - er, action sports.
The Fuel TV release of Number 16, which aired in December, is a collabo with design director Neil Tsai and animators Kevin Ferrara and Daisuke Yamazaki. The spot starts with a natural birth - the sprouting of a plant - and evolves into man-made machinery.
"This piece tries to portray the universe as a literal giant machine and the subsequent relationships of its parts," Reifke says. "My hope was to call to mind that we tend to be very anthropocentric without much regard for the other inhabitants of this planet. [...] My goal is that people get lost in [this piece] like a daydream, and that for just a second they will feel a sense of wonder. That sense of wonder is what makes us ask questions and, ultimately, what leads us to explore this amazing place."
How dreamy. We don't know much about art, but we do know pretty, and this is certainly that. Will it appeal to civilian skaters? We're not sure. It probably depends on if they're stoned or not.
AdPunch points us to a commercial for the Danish Road Safety Council from last year which replays backwards what seems to be a real accident. Everything from the flying glass, exploding airbag and facial expressions are caught as the women in the accident narrates the commercial wishing she'd driven a bit slower, could turn back time and apologizes to the apparent death of a young couple she caused. Powerful stuff.
There's an even more shocking version of the campaign here (on DailyMotion which is like the world's slowest video site, unfortunately) in which a man hits a boy on a bike and he ends up going through the windshield. The campaign was created by Locomotion in Denmark. We'd love to know how this campaign was shot and if, in fact, these are actual accidents shot backwards.
Pity the poor female who, according to the Seattle Times, isn't allowed to pursue the perfect orgasm recently offered by British Columbia's Victoria in its tourism campaign. The city recently submitted an ad with the headline, "Your Search for the Perfect Orgasm is Over," to the Seattle Times' Northwest Life Sunday magazine but the ad was deemed too racy. Ultimately the ad did run but with the much blander headline, "Your lust for fine fare can now be satisfied." The ad is part of a Trapeze Communications-created campaign which created the campaign's theme, "Victoria, B.C, Full of Life."
Come on America! You know need all the relaxation we can get. Let Canada offer up it's fun for all of us to experience.
We'd elaborate but really, it's exactly what it sounds like. And normally we'd launch into some kind of diatribe about how tailoring Brand You is a life work (does Mr. Peanut go nutty? Does the Green Giant yell 'enough is enough'?) but something about Britney's bald enraged head discourages us.
"I think she's going to commit suicide soon," whispers a scandalized intern nearby. "Oh my God - I'm so sad." He bites his fist to repress his laughter. We stared at him awhile longer and realized this is probably the way most of her former fans are reacting. She's dropped long and hard from the Toxic days.
We wouldn't be surprised if some maverick company decided to rescue the Spears (a la Virgin's Kate Moss swoop post-scandal) and make her a freak poster child. It would certainly draw attention. Look at all the attention going to waste that she's generating now.
- Adland wonders if Gladys Hardy, an 88 year old woman with a MySpace site and who's called into Ellen several times in just some sort of marketing promotion. It sure smells of it.
- Fox Interactive Media Buys Ad Targeting Firm to Leverage MySpace Profile Data. Let's mine that data, guys.
- ABC is creating a spin off of Grey's Anatomy with the Addison Shepard character and Taye Diggs. This just does not sound right.
- MediaBuyerPlanner reports, "Shares of the two largest, publicly traded billboard owners, Lamar Advertising and Clear Channel Outdoor, have skyrocketed in the past 12 months, growing 36 percent and 43 percent respectively."
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