There's this little video ad that's been hovering in the corner of our MySpace homepage for over 24 hours (which means we've seen it about 648 times). It is entitled "AT&T Simplified Billing." In it a girl named Justine demonstrates (via iPhone) how AT&T simplified its billing process, thereby simplifying her life.
Backstory: Justine complained about a very long, very high bill in a previous spot on her blog, so to appease Her Highness AT&T decided to remove its itemized detail.
The fruits of UGC are finally being realized.
A few days ago we watched this (subtitled!) video for the Miss Teen America pageant, in which Miss South Carolina is asked (by a girl named Aimee Teegarden! Who finds these people and how do beauty pageants get so many of them?) why 1/5 of Americans can't locate the US on a map.
Her response was curious at best, but the point she made was that too few Americans have maps, and we also need to help South Africans and the people in the Iraq.
This on its own is probably not worthy of rantage, but this - inspired by Miss South Carolina's epiphany - kind of is.
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Given: It's hard to make SEO interesting or even appealing to marketers who would rather be designing graphics for a direct mailer or fantasizing about making music videos.
MRP Web Media gives us The Lost Brad Tapes, a compilation of the world traveler's attempts to become a website success. Supposedly these tapes have just been liberated from a vault, where they were wrongfully hidden on account of their incendiary nature (you know, kind of like The Secret).
In the first installation we find our hero in the desert, talking to a disembodied voice who is supposed to represent a website sage. He reminded us of James Brown, which resulted in us looking up James Brown clips for half an hour in order to validate this resemblance. It turns out he doesn't sound much like James Brown at all.
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Advertising Week -- which we're sponsoring -- fast approaches. With that in mind, the country's top advertising icons and slogans are going to be competing for a spot in the Madison Avenue Advertising Walk of Fame.
Dude. This is exciting. Or it should be if you have a soul.
Entrants include the Keebler Elves, The Geico Caveman and Gecko, and McGruff the Crime Dog, which we haven't seen since we were about 8. And slogans in the running include "Got Milk?" and "Just Do It."
"It is every brand's dream that their campaign icon or slogan will take off and become a fixture in American culture," gushes Ron Berger, chairman of Ad Week.
That's, like, really sweet.
If so inclined, cast your vote here. Voting started yesterday and will last until September 25th. Winners are announced the day after.
Probably hoping to cash in on some zombified consumerism a la Target Breezeway, Philips has decided to turn 3D into a marketing tool.
And not just any marketing tool. A "fascinating, high-impact 3D experience," no glasses necessary. That blows the IMAX theatre out of the fucking water!
So if you're into the idea of watching splotchy orange stuff come racing after you, then by all means come be spellbound at the 3D WOWzone, a large 132-inch screen built to blow your mind.
The WOWzone will be making its virgin appearance at the Philips booth in Hall 22 at the IFA 2007, an earth-shattering event that takes place between August 31 and September 5 in Berlin.
This kind of thing always makes us laugh and we're never really sure why.
JBS, which focuses on men's underwear, recently fell into the disfavor of Norwegian consumer association Forbrukerombudet, which determined its current run of ads are discriminating toward women.
Before the effort that got them in so much trouble (see left), JBS conducted a whole campaign in which women wore men's underwear, under the premise that dudes just don't like looking at other dudes.
Most of the imagery in the last campaign was pretty cute, and maybe woman-empowering in some weird way. More realistically, the spots probably brought the homefront to mind - at some point or another a girlfriend is likely to don her man's accoutrements. We just like doing that kind of stuff.
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For the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, Habitat for Humanity has enlisted Quincy Jones and Usher to "[implore] Americans not to forget the victims of the storm."
Quincy Jones will also be commandeering calls to action on his video podcast series, distributed by Wizzard Media, which also put together this teaser.
Lest we forget, much of Katrina's problem was racial, and that is just one (more) reason why lots of people still need your money.
We hate to be callous (or do we?), but it's always been our view that an administration doesn't have to be racist to be careless and negligent.
This snarling boy is George Hotz, who unlocked the iPhone last week after about 500 or so hours of work that included a soldering iron.
Why are we talking about him at all? Because one of his iPhones snagged $25 million on eBay (according to Vox and Globe and Mail). He also got a 350Z, three more iPhones and a consulting gig.
There's a lot to be said about doing something you're not supposed to and giving a lot of people something they want really, really badly:
- You get a lot of press
- You (maybe) get some clout
- You (occasionally) make a ton of money which, while not necessarily proportionate to the work you've done, is exactly proportionate to how much people want what you've got, and the fact that you - and just you - are the only one who's been able to hand it to them
Now excuse us while we hot-wire a hybrid Porsche with wings.
It's always nice to see a model with a sense of humor. For her Intimates collection, Elle Macpherson put together a funny little set of ads that 1) look completely home made, 2) have a quality of the impossible and 3) are still sexy.
Check out Drummer Girl and Bubble Girl. (We really liked Bubble Girl.) Others include Balloon Girl, Saucer Girl, Tuba Girl, Bomber Girl and Joke rGirl.
The Glue Society directed the spots, with help from The Names Agency.
- Uh Oh. Not good. Cynopsis reports, "Online job seeking site Monster.com suffered a security breach potentially exposing the confidential information of 1.5 million users then waited 5 days to report it."
- Gap ads featuring John Mayer and Lucy Liu get facials scars, mastectomy, respectively.
- Copyranter wishes Diesel would return to its usual form of advertising which made no sense and was sick.
- We love it when agency execs are escorted to the door by security.
- Advertising Age reports AT&T has placed its $3.4 billion media buying and planning account into review. A consultant is involved and incumbent agencies have been invited to pitch.
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