The college dorm room. Ah yes. That tiny, not so personal space that sees more action in one semester than in the entire run of Big Brother. Is there anything that hasn't happened in a dorm room? Not anymore thanks to IKEA who's released a video in which heads randomly pop out of a dorm room's enclosed spaces and begin to beatbox. It's all to get people to head over to roommateliving.com on which IKEA hawks its college room-ready wares. And yup, there's even an IKEA College Night promotion from July 6-9 where college students and high school seniors can bring their IDs to IKEA stores for a chance to win free stuff.
Why go to the trouble of producing an actual campaign when you can just film the casting sessions and upload them to YouTube? Seems laziness is the new Second Life. For AXE, Jun Group has adopted this new trend (well, at least we're dubbing it a trend) has placed three casting videos on YouTube for their target audience, college men, to slather over. Two videos (one, two) feature a single model doing her rendition of Bom Chicka Wah Wah and the third marries the two (and other auditions) together.
The guys over at Brand Experience Lab were kind enough to share this ad for Silverjet's "women-only loos" with us.
The concept was clever and probably would have rung unexpectedly fresh if, twice before watching it, we weren't told the approach would be "a little different for an upscale airline!"
But since the surprise was spoiled and we are for the most part tired of Mile High Club jokes, the whole thing seemed kind of trashy.
If we ever harbored any doubts about whether gender division actually prevents the nice from going naughty, we would have visited a public men's room at 2 AM or picked up a Colette novel.
Maybe knowing that a bare ass is at least the quickest way to get our attention, Toto's Clean is Happy shows us the backsides of its spokespeople before we ever see their faces. (Which makes things sort of awkward when we finally do.)
And we could have dealt with that. What we couldn't deal with was the smiling woman telling us a bidet is all about relaxation and wellness as she sat, perkily perched, atop a toilet.
The site was put together by the Jonestown School of Advertising. Must have been a pretty hit-or-miss project. For every classmate whose junk in the trunk we wanted to gawk at when we were in school, there were at least 10 that we hoped would keep theirs stashed.
Martijn over at Fresh Creation pointed us to this ad for Videotron, which sought to emphasize the HDTV experience with a crash test dummy.
We dig the voice-over and the concept, but why haven't crash test dummies been retired to the annals of old-school yet?
We never get tired of a rip on boy bands, especially when the pith is as thinly-veiled as it is on Fruit Guy Fans, a site for a Fruit of the Loom-sponsored boy band whose costumes are just as fruity as its music.
The concept's actually pretty sound, resisting the urge to go over the top like so many other parodies (or not) tend to. Download MP3s for would-be one-hit wonders like "You Can't Overlove." Our favorite is "Dream."
Thanks Bill for the heads-up and the bad poetry.
This really takes egocasting to the next level. For those who find even virtual networking a problem, Brando gives you USB Virtual Friends, which enable you to invest a little plastic buddy with all the qualities you really need in a desktop partner. Including a photo.
Far from a mere memory-logger, these dolls give you a virtual world where you are master. Give them personalities and your choice of over 100 preprogrammed dialogues for communication.
Available in Virtual Boyfriend, Virtual Girlfriend ($17, respectively) or sets ($30).
Some people will go to great lengths to keep their beer cold. Other people, such as the chap in this M&C Saatchi-created Fosters commercial, are simply insane. Or, he have the ability to detect, perhaps, a tenth of a degree temperature difference that might be caused by the sun walking from the bar to his beach chair. While his buddies are ogling beach beauties, this guy is acrobatically following tiny bits of shade to protect his beer from the sun.
It seems Google's YouTube has debuted a new in-video style ad format. It's not pre-roll. It's not post roll. It's a transparent banner that appears on the bottom of the screen several seconds after beginning of the video which the user can either minimize or click on. If clicked, in the case of this example, the advertiser's video opens and plays within the same YouTube video window as the original content. Once the advertiser's video has played or if the close/minimize button is clicked, the original video commences playback right where it left off.
So it's a bit of a mashup between banner advertising and the standard :30 with a bit or user-controlled DVR-like behavior tossed it. It's certainly new. It's definitely different and we have to admit, we like it a lot.
There's nothing dirtier than a self-righteous agency that dips into unarguably unethical practices to nail, uh, unethical practices.
So with that completely objective introduction, we present you with Miivi.net. "Hey," you say. "That site doesn't exist." That's because it was taken down after a "D'oh!" by the MPAA, which realized, the hard way, that pirates - real pirates - stick together.
With help from an equally pompous agency called Media Defender, the MPAA launched fake movie torrent Miivi, which promised "fast and easy downloading all in one great site." The real purpose of the great site was to catch sinners in the act of sinning. There was even an app that simplified the downloading process.
Pirate Bay called shenanigans, leaking news of the gross deception to ZeroPaid. The site got pulled shortly thereafter.
Dumbasses.
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