Match.com has this incredible knack for drawing our attention - mainly because they can't hold together a consistent ad campaign, as evidenced here and here and here and here and here. Here they even try being somebody else for awhile.
Anyway, we recently came across this banner ad that uses the pun "Heavy petting" to invite users to enter their pet preferences for a different take on the whole matching thing. We were later brought to this puppy love landing page.
Animal humor always weirds us out when it's too closely related to the topic of hooking up. But more importantly, didn't True already pull out the pet prattle?
After reluctance on our part and a helluva lot of persistence on theirs, Scion finally won us over with their Want 2 B Square thing. We even almost dig the cars. Almost.
But if we had a scrap of distaste left for the dumpster-esque vehicles, it's wiped away with this new Little Deviant effort they've launched for the xD, put together by the same guys who built Want 2 B Square.
The game could ride on the merit of its description alone:
"Send the sheeple from the streets and find them in the highrises. Knock the stuffing out of them and collect their blood. It can be used to your benefit. Turn that awful bleating into awesome bleeding."
Violence against sheep? Shameless bloodlust? We'd leap into a Scion right now but we'll be distracted with the Deviant site for awhile. The goth vibe and sadistic humor remind us of old-school computer games like The Seventh Guest - a nice little throwback.
Riding the coattails of Spiderman III, Agency.com, London has put together this weird video contest for Pringles. The idea is to throw together a video with Pringles as the star. We'd call it a stretch to make a hero out of potato chips, but it can't be any less off-putting than getting rescued by a spider suffering from involuntary costume changes.
Entries made thus far are pretty broad. This one is like America's Funniest Home Videos, except without Bob Saget. And for some reason that we're failing to wrap our brains around, this one involves a crab. (The animation's pretty awesome, though.)
Winners get 12 months unlimited Cineworld passes, valid at all UK theatres and at Cineworld Dublin - not a bad deal.
Pringles last did the CGM thing in March, when they were courting new jingles. Guess Spiderman's not the only one suffering from an identity crisis.
Oh, the horror! Here we go again. It seems the blogosphere - that square, internally mirrored box in which opinionated blowhards spew forth mindless drivel, their commentary ricocheting off the inner wails of the enclosed box for every other blogger to see and respond to while everyone else outside the box ignores it like children in a sandbox at a backyard cookout - is up in arms...up in arms, we say, over...over...wait for it...comments bloggers have made about - and as part of - Microsoft's new "people-ready" slogan.
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Since we, rightfully so, in our opinion, chose to heap praise on Arnold's Cannes't video coverage of the festival and somehow recklessly neglected to mention the just as equally interesting Cannes Fringe coverage, we finally had to go to Cannes to find out what all this Cannes Fringe stuff is all about. Though we made in name only - and were rightfully dissed - with a mention in the latest Cannes Fringe coverage of the Shots party, we still feel like we were right there with the rest of the world's drunken ad industry.
OK, so Asa and Alphabet Soup, yes, I did get that:-)
For it's fourth outing, Arnold's Cannes't team found Ogilvey's Nancy Vonk and Janet Kestin who spoke about their work on Grand Prix contender Dove Evolution and how it has affected their work for other clients. In a nutshell, many clients eye's were opened by the work and have become more willing to explore similar, non-traditional approaches to their advertising.
Also explored in the video is Cannes night life. mostly a montage of joyful advertising bodies happy to be away from the office for a week, the segment does a nice job encapsulating the non-awards portion of Cannes. We still don't know about the tattoo or where Meredeth went.
Alas, it was R/GA's Nike + iPod which won the coveted Cyber Lion.
- All those predictions about the death of the upfront? Still wrong. It's looking healthy and on it's way to 9 billion, up three percent from last year. Death of the :30? not this year.
- PricewaterhouseCooper says global web ad spending will hit $80 billion by 2011.
- Even more Cannes idiocy: Wrath of Cannes
- Howard Stern may be sued by weight loss company JEC for disparaging comments he made about Stern regular, Cabbie who is using the product.
- Johnson & Johnson has pulled creative duties for all but one account, Acuvue, from IPG's McCann Erikson, a loss of $90 million for the agency.
While it's no big deal to be inundated with press releases on a daily basis, Kaitlyn over at Catch Up Lady was pleased to receive one from Heinz the other day promoting its Heinz 57th Anniversary Wedding Bell promotion in which the company gives away a commemorative Heinz 57 porcelain bell and hosts. Because the company is approaching its 5,700th giveaway, the company will choose one lucky couple who's been married for 57 years and throw a $5,700 party for the couple and 57 of their friends in their home town. To enter, couples send in a copy of their marriage license.
Census Bureau information indicates there's a pool of 1,667,000 people who were married in 1950 to draw from. Pretty good odds considering many won't even hear about this promotion.
MindComet is behind this What Good is Your Old Phone effort which encourages people to submit videos of them trashing their old cell phones because, of course, on June 29, everyone is going to run out and buy the iPhone making all existing cell phones useless.
Hmm. Now here's something that's never been done before; highlight and make fun of a bunch of idiots in order to make the viewer feel superior. Oh but wait. In the case of this BMW Driving School promotion, this approach works perfectly. After all, most drivers are a bunch of idiots who think their way of driving is the only way to drive.
BMW wants us to know that, unfortunately, most, if not all, we've been taught about driving is wrong and that their way, above all others, is the best way. No doubt you'll find someone you know quite well among the nine idiots in this video promotion if not someone closely resembling yourself.
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