To promote the upcoming Canadian Filmmakers Festival March 22-25, GJP Advertising has created a campaign that marries popular films with good old Canuck goodness. The campaign consists of television and print. In the ads, the movies Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind are given the spin. We're not entirely sure we get the spin but, then again, we're told it's a Canuck thing. See the two spots here and here. The print ads are here and here.
Tian tells us comedian Eric O'Shea has some advice for creative departments the world over. O'Shea suggest selecting songs for commercials that actually have some relevance to what you are trying to sell. We won't spoil the fun by listing his suggestions. Just watch the video. We hope you will heed his advice. We guarantee your commercials will be far better.
We've since relegated Hostess to the banks of childhood memory along with Pixie Stix, Kool-Aid and other non-food food, but we actually did swoon when we saw this promotion for their new 100 Calorie Packs.
Plug in your Calorie Pack preferences and the 100 Calorie Crooner will sing a song that sits somewhere between the Beauty School Dropout scene in Grease and Sinatra's last live rendition of Strangers in the Night.
The denigration in standards from Sinatra to Grease to the 100 Calorie Crooner didn't escape us, but the gaping void left by lack of class is nothing that can't be filled with three mini-cakes (at 100 calories total! Come on).
Commendably persistent in its quest to spark the libido of speed-freak co-eds (previous attempts one and two), Mazda throws the weight of some slightly-below-indy Canadian bands behind a new virtual driving game.
Created by Fuel Industries, the courses were shot on college campuses and university students can choose between three.
We played the game and it seemed promising until we realized the speed couldn't be adjusted (from what we could tell, anyway) and we didn't even have to mess with the right or left functions. Just keep pushing the forward button and the car turns for you. If only real-life cars were that smart. Oh wait, Lexus might be.
Learn something from Candystand, the branded-game pros, or even Nokia, who really struck gold with almost the same idea. In fact, it was made by the same people.
Ew, a sloppy seconds campaign. Not cute.
American Legacy expands on their Become an Ex campaign with three spots on re-learning behaviour typically associated with smoking, like drinking coffee, driving and starting your day. The campaign is by GSD&M out of Austin, TX, a city where smoking is permitted in designated indoor spaces.
The ads feature bewildered middle-aged characters bumbling over said activities as they try renegotiating space without the soothing puff-puff. It's a little like watching Britney Spears stagger around like a bald Cyclops after her latest failed stint at rehab.
We just love when big companies usurp the ideas of others and claim to be the first at something when, in fact, very clearly, they are not. Why? Because we get to trash them for it. Had anyone behind the Gene Simmons Family Jewels show done even the tiniest bit of home work, they'd realize they were not, in fact, the first to launch an assvertising campaign. Far from it. They're not even the second. Or the third. Or the fourth. Do your homework, people. Damn, a simple Google search turns up 17,500 results!
While slapping panties that read "Gene Simmons Family Jewels"on 25 models and having them prance about tomorrow at the Hard Rock Cafe's Times Square location to promote the second season of Simmons' show, those involved seem to have forgotten this very thing has already occurred in the same city. NightAgency, which created the concept, did it for New York Health and Racquet Club. Kodak did it at a trade show in Boston. A Russian tire shop did it. MTN did it in Italy. And those are just the ones we've covered.
If you really must see this ill-name "first," hurry over to the Hard Rock Cafe in Times Square tomorrow, Thursday, March 22 at 12PM.
UPDATE: Our explanation seems to have caught someone's attention. The words "world's first" have been removed from the press release.
We're thinking bra sizes over in England must follow some metric other than that of the U.S. In this Bravissimo campaign, woman of various bra sizes hold placards stating their bra size. Oddly, none of the women look anywhere near as big as their stated sizes. We cold be wrong but the woman with 30F? She looks flat. Anyway, the editor of Adrants requires that all bra ad campaigns receive full coverage so we must comply with those wishes whether or not we agree. Take a look at the ladies individually here.
The odd hats at ATTIK hustle us back to Want 2 B Square, a macabre interactive world meant to promote the equally macabre (design-wise, anyway) 2008 Scion xB.
Like any interactive world there's a lot going on, a lot of which we've already covered (1, 2). But we did see something new we really like - this video entitled Boy Meets Girl. Directed by Sean Donnelly of Anonymous Content, two square-headed kids play "I'll show you mine if you show me yours" and instead of baring warped genitalia (as expected) they flip open one another's heads and explore the contents.
In the same twisted way that one could look at Secretary and call it "a gently bent love story," one could say Boy Meets Girl blithely expresses the innocence and exchange in that first boy/girl encounter. Gently bent, of course. We dig the campaign more and more.
Enough to nail a Scion? If they keep wooing us like this, we'll get there.
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Avril Lavigne wants us all to know she's not a pantyless Britney Spears telling Jane magazine she's "not a party person and I always wear underwear." nor that that's all cleared up, we can move on to more important things like her paparazzi spitting habit and how she hates professional autograph grabbers.
In an interview in the April issue of Jane she explains, "I don't know what the big deal was, because I've been spitting at paparazzi the past two years I've lived in L.A. Then they made it into a story; they said I said 'fuck you' to my fans, which, like, uh, I would never do. When you're outside of Hyde, or like any club, there are paparazzi guys holding glossies, they have nice little blue Sharpies, and they want you to sign them so they can sell them on eBay. They're called 'professionals,' they follow you everywhere. So I was like, 'Fuck you. Fuck you!' ... Of course it was [directed at the paparazzi]! Oh, and everyone was laughing - the photographers wanted me to spit on them. I was like, 'Ha-ha-ha-ha ha-ha-ha!' It was funny. But I think if Britney had had no underwear on that week, my spitting thing wouldn't have been talked about."
Anyway, if your want to hear her dish even more about her husband's drug use, his fidelity, her fighting with fans, her wedding, song writing and all sorts of other super important stuff, be sure to pick up the magazine at the end of the month. Or don't and spare yourself the celebu-whining.
We knew Lonelygirl15's creators had this in the plan all along so it was without much surprise to see a blatant product placement in the middle of Bree's Lonelygirl15 video today. After she meets Jonas and Daniel at a truck stop and they drool over her tucker girl cut off jeans and tied plaid shirt, she hops in the car with the two and they take off. During a stop on the road, Bree pulls out a package of Icebreakers as the camera blatantly zooms in and the three discuss the sourness of the Icebreakers before they get on the road again. It;s not the first time brand names have been dropped in the series but this is one of the first formal deals.
Hey, nothing comes for free. There's only so many videos these guy can make before they need some cash to support the effort. The series' creators and Bree's talent rep, Creative Artists Agency worked with Hershey's agency, Tracy Locke on the deal.
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