Holy shit! It seems we've been targeted by a Miami serial killer according to a WBFX news report. Curiously, all five of the serial killer's victims have been male, in their 30's and work in the media industry. Chillingly, our name has been scrawled in blood on a wall in Miami and on a piece of paper found by the police naming us the killer's next victim. Even more chillingly, we were just in Miami for a conference.
In fear, we've barricaded ourselves into our offices with one inch thick back issues of Vogue and blocked the the windows with the hundreds of Casale Media bags we've collected at ad:tech conferences over the years. The police have been called and we hope the industry's prayers are with us.
OK, OK. It's all just one of those personalized video promotions, this time, for the Showtime series Dexter which will begin airing on FX in the UK.
Spike TV, to promote it's manliness, has tossed all manner of stereotypically manly imagery including fast cars, guns, fist fights, poker and water-drenched, bikini-clad, moaning women squeezing their breasts together into a promo which ends, of course, with an orgasmic explosion. OK, we get it. Spike TV is all about men.
Players in the Philadelphia Phillies dugout, like bleacher buffoons playing to the camera, act out all manner of baseball fan stupidity to drum up interest in a series of games with the Pittsburgh Pirates. Ad agency Bubble in Philadelphia created.
AdPulp's David Burn points to anonymous ad blog Agency Tart on which the writer castrates his (or her) client for telling him permission should have been requested when he told the client Monday he'd be out of the office this Wednesday through Monday...but fully available via Blackberry. We all know some clients like to keep their agency folk on a tight leash but after laughing at the client thinking the whole thing was a joke, Agency Tart minced no words over being treated like a kid and wrote, "[the client] proceeded to tell me that he expects me to clear it in advance with him any time I plan to take off, as it might not 'coincide with the company's needs.' You gotta be kidding me. While I'm gone, I'll scour the souvenir shops looking for a device that will help him get his head out of his ass."
Clearing your vacation with your immediate supervisor, yes. Sharing your vacation plans with your client, yes. Being required to ask your client if you can take time off like a second grader asking his teacher to go to the bathroom...um, not so much.
The Simpsons' Mr. Burns has hacked into the Flight Log of David Neeleman of JetBlue to show him what it really takes to run a successful business.
"Your rates make a mockery of the corporate greed our great confederacy was built upon," Burns snarls. Oh how we LOLed.
It's a rare brand that can tap into pop culture and incorporate iconic personalities without making asses of themselves. In this case, JetBlue makes good. We look forward to the next brittle wrist-slapping.
Cummins & Partners, Melbourne put together this ad for Multiple Sclerosis in Australia, in which the various body parts of a naked model are stamped with blank expiration dates. The text reads, "When you have Multiple Sclerosis you never know what will expire next."
Way to adopt decadence to educate. Cummins & Partners is the same firm that in March put a coin-operated scientist on the street, also for MS. Clearly these are the guys to go to when you've got a disease that merits discourse.
We were screwing around on some foreign news site when we saw the banner at left and thought, "Hey, Smokey Bear! Can't believe that guy is still around."
Out of curiosity, we hit www.smokeybear.com and found a creepy video that involves a child singing some song about forest fires, coupled with imagery of a spark igniting stenciled animals and a forest.
Smokey's Vault is a feature that brings Smokey into 2007 with a bunch of hip little spigot-thingies. There we discovered that Smokey was an actual baby bear that in 1950 rolled charred (and orphaned) out of the forest after a (clearly unprevented) forest fire.
And that's way more about fire-shy Bear than we ever thought we'd know. Those spigots, or at least that Bambi-esque banner ad, are clearly very effective.
In its ongoing attempts to demonstrate it does have a sense of humor, Microsoft put together Easy Easier for potential Forefront users in Canada.
The premise is actually kind of cute, as you learn how to defend your operating system against the likes of ninjas, secret agents and legions of the undead. But as usual with Microsoft there's laggage like mad and just an overall "Please love me!" feeling.
We felt pleasantly provoked by this ad for Marithe + Francois Girbaud, in which female models take up the mantles of Jesus and the Apostles for The Last Supper. There's also a man that we're guessing is supposed to be a Magdalene, or maybe a Judas, figure.
We love how the viewer is first slapped with recollection of the Da Vinci original, but beyond that the image merits a good long look. The facial expressions are wildly illustrative. And there don't appear to be chairs or table legs.
more »
Let's be realistic. Artsy qualities aside, one of the biggest selling-points for European films in the US market are the sex scenes. The hot, steamy, sometimes seamy or wholly improbable sex scenes.
With that in mind, YouTube user EUTube released a montage called Film Lovers Will Love This!, in which a bunch of steamy moments from EU films (well, mainly Amelie) are knitted together to join in one harmonious slogan: "Let's come together."
Supporters call it a celebration of European cinema but British Conservative MEP Chris Heaton-Harris called it a "cobbling-together" of "44 seconds of soft porn" that wastes taxpayers' money and does nothing to solve the European film industry's "image problem."
We figure it's a little lopsided to glean quotes from a British publication when it's the Italians, Spaniards and French doing all the grunt work. After all, where do you find those racy PSAs we love so much? Not at the home of Big Ben.
|
|
