We don't know why, but lately we're paying a lot of attention to the ads that appear on MySpace. Taking advantage of the teens who sit around filling out blog questionnaires all day, T-Mobile recently launched a quiz campaign where you're asked all sorts of inane multiple-choice questions by people who still think other people say "posse."
A variation involving pets is here. We're reminded of a campaign Match.com is also running.
It's always wince-worthy to watch big brands work hard to catch the thought streams racing through a whole 'nother world. Then again, maybe there's something to these individual-toting ad messages. MySpace's Shawn Gold did recently mention the social networking giant wanted to release user psychographics.
In the race to stay salient in the We-Can-Be-Phones-AND-Radios! pissing contest, Sprint drives right to the point with its new "Sprint Ahead" campaign, which boasts psychedelic graphics to highlight the tagline, "Music so fast it's trippy."
We hate to get our metaphors mixed but trippy music brings the one-time hazard of CD-skipping to mind, something that, before iPod, drove us crazy. And anyway, do we really want to use the word "trippy" in any context shared with sprinting?
Sounds like an accident waiting to happen.
The campaign was orchestrated by Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco.
Back in the day, people scoffed at the practice of parting with cash to acquire a bottle of water, a product readily available free from any faucet. Now, water, a product which costs its makers next to nothing to produce, is standard fair in convenience and grocery stores the world over.
An alien visiting from another planet might think this paying for water thing is one of the most illogical of all observed human behavior but he would be wrong. Until he observes humans paying $40 for a bottle of Bling H2O marketed by none other than the ubiquitous bare-assed, sex-sells hottie, he won't have a true understanding of how the human race has "evolved" since his last visit.
While our alien might hypothesize anyone marketing a bottle of $40 water must have their head up their ass, the ad will certainly confirm that assumption quite clearly.
ad:tech has announced a new Exchange Series debuting at the Chicago conference, July 31 - August 1, 2007. The Series is an on-site learning extension of its panels, workshops and technology exposition. Each day of the conference begins with a morning keynote.
Wednesday morning begins with "The Art of Conversation: Building Great Brands in the Digital Age". Panelists Tor Myhren, Executive Creative Director/Executive VP, Leo Burnett Detroit, and Robert Levrone, VP, Television, Dow Jones are introduced by Boyd Peterson, Senior VP, Consumer Research, Yankee Research Group. The presentation will explore how all marketers can leverage digital media and platforms to establish a dialog with their customers and how they can leverage the resulting conversations to learn more about their customers, continually optimize messaging and delivery, and ultimately, drive brand preference.
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A long time ago and a land far, far away, there were these things called movies which people would gather together in large building with big screens to watch as actors told interesting stories captivating the minds of the audience. It was a quaint life. The movie-going experience was enjoyable and something the whole family looked forward to enjoying. Then, something happened. Something very, very bad.
Aside from apparently dramatic increase in the level of human stupidity which yielded screaming babies, ringing cell phones, freely wandering children, mouths that won't shut the fuck up and idiotic parents who think the theater is just as good as getting a babysitter ruining the movie-going experience, marketers also contributed to the demise of the once wondrous movie-going experience with their increased presence.
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Perhaps, in reaction to a luxury jet company using the famed WW II flag image, said it best, writing, "Freedom Honor Integrity. The Freedom to use one of the most revered (and rights-free!) photos in history to sell, yes, trips on a luxury jet. The Honor to use six WWII soldiers--three of whom were later killed in the battle of Iwo Jima--to hoist your sales. The Integrity to...oh fuck it. I am not a patriotic man. I do not "love" my country. I love my parents and my girlfriend. And American icon exploitation is nothing new. But this is just...retarded tastelessness!"
The ad appeared in the Jason Binn-published Hamptons magazine. A reader voiced a complaint to the luxury jet company which elicited a defensive response you can read here. It seems just about anything can be explained away now.
Here at Adrants, we sometimes receive things that are so beyond weird, we can't help but utter, "what the fuck?" Usually this utterance leads to a quick toss off of the work courtesy of the delete button or , conversely, it motivates us to craft a little story about it because, well, we like weird, WTF stuff. Now, it seems, someone has turned our "what the fuckness" into an actual campaign. Yes, Bos Toronto has created a new campaign aptly called WTF? for Canadian retailer Mac's Convenience.
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A buddy at Deep Focus sent us this news about Rap Cat, demonstrable success that guerrilla advertising, performed properly (assuming Rap Cat was), unlocks the quality of loyalty and evangelism in the demo it's meant for.
We don't know about all that. And five pages on a video that we couldn't hang with past the first minute was five pages too many. We did think Rap Cat was a good way to showcase how vacuous mainstream rap is (and has been for awhile), and maybe it's commentary on the whole lolcat phenomenon too. Who knows.
All we know is we felt embarrassed watching it, and somewhat impatient, and a little aggravated, and after all that washed away we had a strong suspicion Rap Cat was intended to generate just those feelings. Because it sure wasn't funny.
(For the record, Deep Focus had zip to do with Rap Cat. The bling-sporting feline was the brainchild of Amalgamated, a wee NYC firm.)
"Welcome to DMBDO, the hottest agency in the business, where the work comes first, unless something better comes along." This is the welcome line for Puppet Agency, a wicked take on agency life in serial form.
We tried in our lazy two-minute way to figure out who was behind it, but the whois on the domain is, of course, anonymous. But we've been tipped it's BBDO. Blue Sky Agency.
The featured agency episodes, though, are funny as hell and surprisingly insightful. They take every inane frustration you suffer at your desk, talking to all sorts of digression-happy vainglorious folk, then magnify them - with puppets! And oh, what a theme song.
See the first installment, Junior's Advice. Way to encapsulate a character that doubles as both puppet and complete tool.
If we ever thought Old Spice was past its prime, we were horribly wrong. We should have guessed they had long-term comic genius when they enlisted Bruce Campbell to help them win youngbloods with winning condescension.
The grand old deodorant brand hits us again with a spot called Armpit for its Collector's Edition. Compiled by Wieden+Kennedy, it begins and ends with the maniacal laughter of the company's "marketing president," Alex Keith.
We don't want to blow the spot for you but this print ad sums up the humor and vibe.
Armpit marketing is actually a clever idea. And good inclusion of yellow flare and exclamation points! They give the whole concept just the right amount of trying-hard! pomposity.
We love Old Spice. If we were 100 percent male back here, we'd all be Axe wearers, but boy do we love Old Spice.
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