Remember Debbie Gibson? You know, the one whose many hits include "Only in my Dreams" and "Electric Youth"?
We do, but just barely.
Here is an update on Debbie Gibson. To start with, you now have to call her "Deborah."
Anyway, Debbie Gibson is conducting scholarship auditions and a reality show taping for her pet project Camp Electric Youth (keep your volume down unless you want an electric deja vu attack). This is her performing arts summer camp for kids between seven and 17.
"I was the Hannah Montana of the '80s and I have a lot of experience and knowledge to offer today's aspiring performers," Debbie says. (Yeah. Like "you're never too young to start a career in reality TV.")
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So there's this BBC show. It's called Neighbours and it's changing stations to channel Five. To make the transition as smooth as possible, Five tapped VCCP, which came up with this sunny little print and bus campaign.
All the characters are featured in ha-ha-you-love-us! fashion, under intersecting street signs that read "Same Ramsay St." and "New home." We were like, Hey, this looks festive. Neat wallabee.
Then we thought, Why are there so many parrots in this picture? The enigma drove us to Google, where we found this.
Suburban parrot diaspora. Only in the wild and wacky UK -- or, in the case of Neighbours, Australia, apparently.
Here's footage of the Loch Ness monster, live in Tokyo! Wait, don't pick up the crossbow just yet. It's actually just a promotion for The Water Horse.
The monster was created with help from a water screen and water jets. We hope it's not hungry for people or trucks.
Tokyo seems to be the spot where all the monsters come to play. Doesn't seeing Japanese across the screen add a realistic "monster footage!" quality to the video? We thought so, anyway.
Gawker has put together a nice list of commercials dubbed "The 25 Most Memorable Super Bowl Ads." From Budweiser's Zebra Ref to Pepsi's P. Diddy truck to Anheuser Busch's weepy (in a good way) military tribute to Reebok's Terry Tate to Robert Goulet messing with people's stuff for Emerald Nuts to FedEx's Stick and Castaway to Career Builder's Monkeys to Christopher Reeves' appearance for Nuveen to Britney Spears in her prime (such as it was) for Pepsi to ETrade's Wazoo to Monster's When I Grow Up to Budweiser's Frogs to Kevin Federline's Nationwide fantasy to classic Cindy Crawford for Pepsi to GM's suicidal robot to, of course, Apple's 1984, it's a stellar collection.
Now if only we could have one year where every spot in the game were as good as these. Well, at least we can imagine. Check out the entire collection. Unfortunately, after viewing, Sunday may be a big let down.
There are a few of these, but here's our favorite from a series of new print ads from BBH UK for Levi's. Possibly because there's so much obsessive "maleness" here at Adrants we like anything with hot girls in it? Don't look shocked. You all knew it, anyways. Possibly because we were the guy drooling at every girl who passed by in the high school hallway and had a cheesy Gold's Gym T-shirt on? No matter. Love it. Love it.
Go check out the entire collection over at Scamp's blog. You'll see that BBH has made a very cohesive, simple and effective campaign. (Or so says Agency Spy)
Courtesy of MediaPost's Out to Launch, we have one of the two ads Gatorade will run for its G2 low calorie drink. One ad will feature Dwyane Wade and one will feature Derek Jeter. The Derek Jeter ad has Jeter walking through the streets of New York while elements of a baseball field follow him and fill in the landscape behind him. There's some nice special effects in this ad but aside from that, there is absolutely nothing special about this ad. It's run-of-the-mill celebu-sport figure 101. Not quite lame but close.
Garmin's 2008 Super Bowl commercial leaves behind last year's Maposaurus for this year's Napoleon who, after racing through the streets of France (anachronistically in a car?), arrives to command his troops but has to hide that nifty yet-to-be invented Garmin navigational device, hence the explanation for his famed placement of his hand inside his coat. Witty enough. Catchy tunes. Just not sure we get that whole time shift/travel thing. Unless, of course, Garmin has now embedded time machines in their products.
Tierney Minneapolis created. Some behind the scenes footage is available here.
We've got two more advance Super Bowl screenings for you. They come courtesy of Goodby, Silverstein & Partners and, yes, they are those much talked about Hyundai commercials which, in a nice press-play "will we, won't we" dance, kept everyone wondering if we'd ever see them. Well, here they are.
The first, called Tomorrow is a bit pompous in its assumption it'll rank quite highly on USAToday's Ad Meter and that Mercedes, BMW and Lexus aren't going to be too happy. First, who cares about the USAToday Ad Meter. Aside from the press play it gets, which can't, of course, be ignored, it's a highly unscientific, meaningless popularity contest. Second, apart from its insider appeal to the ad industry, it's a fairly innocuous commercial without much going on except for some nice beauty shots of the car. Having said that, it's a pretty amazing looking car coming from Hyundai which, in one sense, is the entire point of the commercial.
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Fearless follower of all things American Apparel, Copyranter brings us American Apparel's apparent video debut with its own channel on YouTube. Now, aside from all those racy images over which everyone obsesses, we can all now obsess over booty in motion thanks to impossibly hot American Apparel model Kristen who tantalizingly wags her ass in our face while wearing polka dot panties. WTF? Is this supposed to sell clothes or become the next masturbatory fixation for teenage boys?
We're expecting a good show this year, partly because of all the buzz-building teasers. Other factors: agencies depended less on UGC than in Super Bowl '07, :30 spots cost more on average, and points of interaction for audience members (mobile voting/ranking, secret online spots).
Oh, and expect more woman-oriented ads than usual because of Feb 3's proximity to Valentine's Day.
Breakdown of Expectations (Feeling geeky? Keep track of the ads with our handy Adrants Pre-Game Commercial Chart and Notes which we will continuously update):
Lots of teasers this year. Notably, Budweiser leaked five teasers out of 10 total Super Bowl spots. Others -- like this one for Sobe or that GoDaddy thing -- are more like prologues for the real thing. Some brands were so lazy they didn't even bother to tease; they just tossed the ads out there or -- yikes! -- repurposed old ads.
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