Last Sunday at 9:20PM, all 200 UK television stations aired a :90 commercial for Vodaphone which likened the provider's mobile Internet service to saving time by dropping watches and watch parts from London and Glascow's sky. The commercial, voiced by Dame Judy Dench, was created by Bartle Bogle Hegarty.
Also part of the campaign is a homepage takeover effort that, at the same time, the pages of eBay, Google, Pricerunner, MSN, Rightmove and YouTube fold up and turn into a single image of a phone. Digital outdoor boards simultaneously flickered on with the campaign's message at 9PM, 20 minutes prior to the broadcast of the commercial. BBH creative and blogger Simon Veksner brought the campaign to our attention.
For all of you who think we do nothing around here but heap praise on agency-of-the minute Crispin Porter + Bogusky, we have news for you. We have a new favorite agency and you've probably never heard of it. It's in Cleveland - which many a New Yorker may never have heard of either - and it's called Brokaw. In existence for 15 years, the place just drips with wit.
Tossing political correctness aside, Brokaw created a campaign for Horton Crossbow which proudly proclaimed "Hunters really aren't so different from other environmentalists. We just like to keep souvenirs." Then, the agency released a 15th anniversary video highlighting its work but, eschewing all sense of normalcy, self-mocked itself with a montage and song that was so bad it was good. Following that, it did some really nice work for the Cleveland Art Institute.
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Yet another idiotic morning radio team has been chastised by lawyers for their mindless attempt at humor. While it's all kind of fun to crap all over Britney Spears and her recent head shaving event, Spears' lawyers are not amused by Clear Channel Communications' use of Britney's image for Florida station WFLZ. Her crazed head shaved image appears next to WFLZ morning show host Todd Schnitt under the headlines "Total Nut Jobs," "Shock Therapy" and "Certifiable." A letter was sent to Clear Channel from Spears' legal team, Lavely & Singer demanding the removal of the boards or a law suit may follow.
Bitterness and anger can be a common emotion when it comes to employment issues and the negative treatment co-workers receive from their superiors for issues outside their control. Those are the emotions eight former WPP MEC Interaction employees may be feeling today after having their office in Chicago shuttered by WPP MEC Interaction Founder Alan Schanzer.
According to a source, the Chicago office, which handled the Sears interactive business for four years until Schanzer moved it to his New York office last November has been shuttered. The source tells us the account, originally won five years ago by the New York office, was moved to the newly-created Chicago office four years ago because the account was "a task his team couldn't handle."
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One could look at this eBay auction promising a marketer complete access to this person's non-personally identifiable information for a 30 day period so as to razor target the marketer's advertising as a joke or one could realize this is exactly what the future holds: people divulging detailed information about themselves and selling it to the highest bidding marketers in return for a promise to view all their advertising.
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- Taking home the Cannes Promo Grand Prix is TBWA/Whybin Auckland for a piece of work for Adidas called "Bonded by Blood."
- Former Strawberry Frog Amsterdam Executive Creative Director Al Kelly has joined Fallon Minneapolis as Executive Creative Director.
- Yahoo CEO Terry Semel has resigned and will be replaced by Co-Founder Jerry Yang...who's now all grown up and can handle the job. Semel will become a non-exec chairman (what ever the hell that is) with former Exec VP of Advertising and Publishing stepping in as president.
As a bit of therapy from time to time, we're happy to view "making of" videos just to remind ourselves how much work goes into creating a commercial and, conversely, just how easily unfair it can be to quickly criticize such work with reckless abandon. So, today, we do our penance in watching this video which documents the making of a new commercial, The Journey, for Motorola's Rizr Z8 high resolution mobile phone.
The ad, which follows the same actor through 150 years of video technology, was created by Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO and directed by MJZ's NicolaiFuglsig. As part of our penance, we offer no critique of this work.
While the guy in this Livesavers commercial is being ever so polite to his girlfriend who asks him what a "muffin top" is while sporting one herself, he's doing no service to women who, if they are "muffin top"-prone, should never dress in a manner which would expose said "muffin top" in the first place. Know thy body. Dress appropriately.
Of course, that line of thinking may not quite be in line with the angelic message Livesavers is trying to bestow upon us with this campaign.
Yup. If it isn't cute animals or beautiful women, it's babies and Huggies has gone all out with this McCann Erickson Israel-created Don't Worry Be Happy-themed commercial which examines a world populated only by babies with one maintaining his happiness in the face of endless setbacks. We can only imagine the headaches the director had to undergo to achieve this little slice of brilliance.
We're wondering if we're supposed to believe the Lenovo laptops actually survive the thrashing they receive in this :90 or if it's just some art director's wet dream sold to the client as some sort of ethereal "film." Either way, it's good but we still don't quite understand what it is we're supposed to take away from this ad.
OK, OK. So it has to do with that Willy Wonka theme song about defying explanation.
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